Reading Resolutions 2012

I wasn’t going to do a reading resolutions for 2012 because these things always tend to be a crapshoot for me. I’ll line up a list of great books I want to tackle for the coming year, and then that list will completely go out the window about a week later. That’s partly because there are just so many books out there to read, so no one list can really be all that motivating, but also because reviewing books for a living tends to make it hard to keep to any personal guidelines. To get an idea of books publishing in 2012 that I’ll check in on, have a look at my Interesting New Books — 2012 page.

That said, I may actually have a reading resolution I can keep to. Instead of doing specific books, which I think just isn’t going to work, I’m going to make this resolution a genre, and that genre is philosophy. I’ve always had a soft spot for theory/philosophy in general, and the past few months I’ve been getting more and more in the mood to read this stuff. But I’ve always read it very piecemeal, following whims more than anything. So this year I’d like to be a little less whimsical about it in that I’d like to hit as many of the major writers I can from the Western philosophic/theorist tradition. That, if anything, would amount to my reading resolution for 2012.

And while I’m talking about reading to be done in the new year, this seems as good a place as any to note that I’m going to do a Big Read for the spring, to start around April/May. I already know which book it will be, and I’m pretty confident that it will be one that longtime readers of this blog will be eager to take on. More info on that to come.

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