And then it was 2026 Ursula Sadiq 1/7 '26

So resolutions: is that still a thing? It's Ephiphany already so guess I should get mine out there.

I don't really have resolutions, I more do goal setting. 

Goal 2026.1 - See the milky way with my naked eyes. This means finding a place with minimal light polution on a moonless night. There are darksky maps to aid with this. I have not planned a trip for this, I'm simply stating this as a 2026 goal.

Goal 2026.2 - Read the following books

  1. Yi Sang - The Wings + Crow's Eye View << this on in particular is proving hard to source. I might have to settle for something else by him
  2. Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Faust, a tragedy in two parts
  3. Miguel de Cervantes - The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha
  4. Ryunosuke Akutagawa - Hell Screen
  5. Albert Camus - The Stranger
  6. Cao Xueqin - Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as Story of the Stone)
  7. Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
  8. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
  9. Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment
  10. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy
  11. Hermann Hesse - Demian, the Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth
  12. Homer - The Odyssey

Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis is also on the list, or lets say crossed off this list as I read it last month. 

Why these particular titles you might ask? Well, my kid got me into this video game and the main characters of the game are the characters from each of these books. (Except Yi Sang, who is the writer. Maybe he writes about himself? I guess I will find out.) 

I mentioned to my bookish fam this list about 2 months ago. And the books started showing up. This is about half of them - the rest are scattered about the house. An item of note not shown in the photo: CM Adams gifted my kid the almost complete works of Hesse and they are now ensconced in her bedroom. That "The Age of Goethe" book I found in my garage and though the commentary is in English, the Faust (errr, UrFaust actually) is in German. So that doesn't help me much. 

I anticipate a number of future posts will be about progress on this goal. 

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1/7 3 Comments
Those are some good goals.
nerdsholmferret
That's a nice stack of Odysseys you have there. Be a real shame if somebody... ADDED ONE MORE TO THE PILE!



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_(Emily_Wilson_translation)



"Many will dispute" yadda, yadda, it's a less traditional translation but I like it because...



1. It reads very well aloud, especially the funny parts.

2. It refers to slaves as "slaves".

3. It says Odysseus is "a complicated man" so it maps well to the Shaft theme song.
Brett Heller
You know, Hamlet threatened to get me the Emily Wilson translation also. Must be a complicated man trap. It is the top of my list for the version to read. Just need to acquire it first.

My brother just got me (err, my kid. He got it for my kid. These are all for the kid!) a pretty pretty copy of THE ILLAID and THE ODYSSEY translated by Samuel Butler. This version was done in 1900 and public domain. Maybe after Moby Dick (1951) I'll give it a shot.
Ursula Sadiq