What to read, what to read

The mountain of books I want to read gets bigger, the time, inevitably gets shorter. There is no possibility of reading them all - I am going to have to get super selective, so much better at forecasting whether this is the one to read , not that one. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is one that I saw reviewed in the New Yorker Magazine and thought I have to read this book, and my instinct was right. It's a - well I was going to use the word coruscating, because I like the sound of it, and it has, in my mind a connection with pouring hydrochloric acid into a filthy toilet bowl and cleaning it out, taking away the dark faecal stains and limescale - which is a horrible image and, in fact, has little connection to the real meaning of the  word, which is "flashing, sparkling, glittering, twinkling [twinkling!!] brilliant, dazzling, scintillating, exhilarating, stimulating, invigorating"  Serendipitously this all describes my reaction to the book and the book itself, because the book does glitter with thinking and feeling along with this undercurrent of cleansing and eating away at the pain with acid. It's a complex thing, it's a complex book.

But there are still more books I want to read. Here's the list as it stands at this actual moment, just after reading and skipping through the Guardian review pages where I awlays find books I want to read, mentally note them, and often forget until I see them again. 

1. Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot, Mark Vanhoenacker -= the review soeaks of the books beauty in terms that make me see this as a must read - but when? how.  Because there is also:
2. Criminal: The Truth about Why Bad People Do Bad Things, Tom Gash - "disproving the 11 most commonly believed myths about crime", from left and right wing points of view - it's not just about morality, it's not just about poverty. I've got form here - I used to work in juvenile justice, and we always used to say about our alternative to custody program that we had kids (16-18 year olds) who did bad things, not bad kids per se. So this is a "must read" - I am going to have to put "must read" in inverted commas now, because it's just a euphemism for "want", and the fact that wanting to read something is almost as beautiful as actually reading it sometimes better when the rad doesn't live up to expectations. (More about wanting and reading later). 

3. Then there's China Mieville - I don't really like his books, have tried to read Perdido Station twice and put it down, - even thrown away the copy that had its cover ripped off in some bookish accident, but every time I see someone praising his writing I think I must go back and try again, read another of his densely plotted and written novels of future dystopias because otherwise I will miss out on a brilliant writer. (More about wanting and reading, and missing out later). So I want read The City and the City - or do I?

4. Kazuo Ishiguro - there';s an article on him reading Proust while ill and imagining the novel that became The Artist of the Floating World, and I think I only have that book in an electronic copy and I would like to read most of  Kazuo Ishiguro's novels again.

And I haven't finished reading the Guardian review this week. More to come.