Happy 2006!

Welcome back to Draggletail, the blog where we claim that we're going to accomplish easy reading goals and then never do.

To start out the new year, I thought I'd make a little list here of things I'd like to read. Some day. Maybe this year, maybe not.

• River of Doubt, by Candice Millard. An account of Theodore Roosevelt's journey down the Amazon in 1912. I hear that Teddy becomes infected with flesh-eating bacteria! Cool!
  
  
• Speaking of decaying flesh, I also want to read The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai. Am I weird?
  
  
• About Grace, by Anthony Doerr. A friend cannot recommend this novel highly enough. I read a few pages the other day and he writes beautifully. Looking forward to this one.
  
  
• Lucrezia Borgia, by Sarah Bradford. Corrupt papacy, incest, Medicis, evil stepmothers - what's not to love?
  
  
• Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami. I don't have many Japanese writers under my belt. Murakami is a favorite in my book store, and he's arguably one of the most popular Japanese writers around, so I'd like to give this a go. I hear Kafka on the Shore is also good.
  
  
• Big Mo recommended a couple of books that look interesting (thank you!), and have been duly purchased: The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, and The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. Why haven't I heard of these before? They sound great.
  
  
• Journey to the End of the Night, Celine. A friend recently read me a few pages of this French classic about war as we sat around drinking one night. Celine is dark, nihilistic, angry. Just my type! The passage my friend read to me was funny, too. I would like to read the whole book this year, but I think I'll have to be in a particularly vicious mood in order to dive in. Which I can totally see happening.
  
  
• Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin. A co-worker's recommendation. I like her, so I'll read it.
  
  
• Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops, by Art Chansky. I'll also probably read Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four, by John Feinstein, which comes out in February. One by a Tarheel, and one by a Blue Devil. Fair's fair. But seriously, now: What is it with these guys and their excessive use of colons in book titles?
  
  
• The Quiet American, Graham Greene. Because I am going to Vietnam, and I like Graham Greene.
  
  
• Wonderland: A Year in the Life of an American High School, by Michael Bamberger. This book is a non-fiction account of the year leading up to a Pennsylvania high school's prom, which is apparently the best prom in America, or something. I love me stories about teenagers, and real-life teenagers with prom issues are even better. I'm hoping it reads something like Friday Night Lights, which I loved.

Happily, I should be able to start off my reading year with a bang: I have a 30-hour plane flight coming up this week, so I'll have quite a bit of enforced reading time. Love that.

And with that, beloved reader(s), I am off to Southeast Asia for three weeks, and likely will be without an internet connection until I return. Though I seem to recall some laptop-related hijinks taking place in the temples of Angkor Wat during Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, I can't be certain that Angelina will be available to help me blog on my tour. So good-bye until February... keep your fingers crossed that I don't get avian flu.