Down The Road

Spent some time today considering what might lie ahead of me in terms of what I'll be reading up to the middle of the year. Normally I don't really try to figure things out like this, except for drawing up an occasional list of what I'm engaged in reading to remind myself to at least clear the way rather than just adding to the load. (That makes it all sound like a bit of a burden - which it isn't. It's more in the way of a commitment to control my skittish mind.) Today's figuring out is very much related to the fact we'll be in Saudi Arabia in fabled places in June, insya'allah, and some Islamic-themed reading is distinctly in order to add texture to the trip.

So it's my intention to pick up a very fine collection of excerpts of accounts of the Haj over the centuries that resides on the shelves in Maison KL, edited by that guy who wrote his own account of the Haj, somebody-or-other Wolfe, in the late 1990s. We've got an opportunity to travel north over the long weekend for Good Friday and I'm hoping to pick up the book, which I've extensively dipped into previously but never read cover-to-cover, and that's to be accompanied by one or two other texts focusing upon my faith, though I haven't yet worked out what they'll be - rereads or something fresh.

I haven't been reading any novels of late since completing Quixote, and I'm thinking of not touching anything in that line until 2014 Part 2. My main reading of late has been Christopher Hill's interesting little book on England's greatest monarch (well, not quite) God's Englishman. Cromwell has never exactly been a hero of mine, but it's easy to imagine why he might figure in someone else's pantheon of the great and good. I'm intending to finish this in a couple of days and then make headway in the splendid Symborska collection that I've been falling back on for poetic delights. Gosh, is she good! But dense. You need to be at full brain power even reading in a fairly relaxed manner. I should be eating lots of fish for this one.

I've also got it in mind to do justice to the other poetic material I purchased with my book tokens last year - Duffy, Armitage and Simic are all on the way. Fortunately I've not been asked to do any workshop for a Lit Seminar this year (maybe they've given up on me?) so I won't feel the weight of further tomes to clear come August. And then I've got one or two collections of poets local to this Far Place to do justice to. Oh, and I'm keen on tackling a few plays in any gaps I encounter. I sort of accidentally started reading something dramatic by Alfian Sa'at and, predictably, couldn't stop.

Blimey, that's already a bit overwhelming, eh? And I've missed a couple of things out just because I am overwhelmed and it's time to eat.