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And, it looks like 2009 will be...

<drumroll>
The year of Dickens!
</drumroll>

Samuel Beckett, J. M. Coetzee, Charles Dickens, and Ian McEwan all have 10 or 11 entries in the index of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Jane Austen has a respectable six, as do the combined Brontës). However, not all index entries are actual must-read selections--some are merely other works mentioned in the book's text. Beckett and McEwan "only" have eight actual must-reads; Dickens and Coetzee have ten. Considering I've never heard of Coetzee or any of his books (what'd he do, pull a Blagojevich with the book's editors?), so I'm declaring 2009 The Year of Dickens! Woo-hoo!!

So that'll be some dozen and a half novels, dozens of short stories, and a smattering of plays, essays, and longer non-fiction works--should be a busy year! I'll be getting an early start with A Christmas Carol, as read by Patrick Stewart.*

*Next year will conveniently be the sesquicentennial of A Tale of Two Cities, if I need a justifying excuse for all of this.