The books that remain ‘To be read’

It is customary for writers of blogs such as this to discuss the books that remain languishing on their shelves – the novels that they bought but have never quite got around to reading. More precisely, they discuss their ‘to be read’ pile.

I have always been very conscious of the books that I haven’t read.

I don’t actually own a vast number of texts myself as there isn’t much space in my study. Even here, though, in my own limited library, there are many volumes that I have never opened. Walking into a large well-stocked reading room or even a local second-hand bookshop can be an intimidating experience at times.

With this in mind, I have decided that I may well start to read some of the texts that remain, for me, ‘to be read’. In the coming weeks I expect to read some, but probably not all, of the following books, none of which I have worked my way through before:

Ngaio Marsh, Off With His Head

Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days

Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations

Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes

Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

Leo Tolstoy, The Sebastopol Sketches

Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Written down like this, the list strikes me as one of great diversity. It is, of course, this very diversity that is so essential if one is to read fully. And now to begin.