Resolved.

[karenhealey]

So, what are my resolutions this year?

1) Read the Four Great Classical Novels (and maybe the fifth).

Reading resolutions went well last year, so let's continue the trend! Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber are fundamental literary works, and also reputedly great fun, huzzah!

I'll be reading in English translation, my Classical Chinese not really being up to scratch. Good translation recommendations highly welcome! Good annotated translations for someone almost completely unaware of most of the necessary cultural grounding super duper highly welcome.

2) Read the works mentioned in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.

HOO BOY. To those of you who are not familiar with this book a) go read it now and b) it features a preternaturally well-read young woman and her almost all equally well-read friends, who quote Hamlet and The Revengers Tragedy at each other in much the same way I drop Community and Princess Bride quotes on the initiated. It's an immensely fun book, and it references a vast number of literary works, and I am going to attack them with a will.

One caveat: I'm not resolving to read the entirety of all the works mentioned, because Janet is an English major for the four years the book covers and she burns through a lot of pages. But I'll read, for example, some of the more exciting bits of Paradise Lost, or a couple of Donne's most notable works as representative of what she's doing. Another caveat: I was an English major myself, and have read a ton of the relevant works already; those I may or may not re-read, depending. Ugh, the Romantics.

3) The computer goes off by midnight.

It's going to be a really really busy year, Internets. I'm going to be regularly getting up much earlier than my internal clock prefers to do workshops and teacher intern placement, and next year I intend to be teaching. This means I have to get into the habit of signalling to myself that work is done for the day so that I can get enough sleep, and that means switching off the computer.

This isn't a hard and fast rule - doubtless there will be a few nights where I have to finish assessments and lesson plans at 1am, or the odd weekend night where I just want to run my hunter around Pandaria until I pass out. But it's a general resolution I'm going to be doing my best to keep.

And that's it! How about you, internets? Any changes you're making or ambitions you're undertaking for the new year?

Comments

[zeborah]

I don't normally make resolutions, partly because it never occurs to me until like the 5th of January by which it seems too late, and partly because I suck at habits and the like, so it's actually more effective for me to wait until I'm suddenly inspired to scrub the floor or go to the dentist than to resolve to do it.

(Seriously, I'd been putting off both for years, and then one morning each I just woke up and thought, "Huh, I think I'll [phone the dentist|scrub the floor] today." And did.)

But I love your #1 and am tempted to attempt the same. I did once try Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it was weak curiosity since I was trying to write a book with a similar title at the same time, and I didn't quite click with Romance and then I got distracted by shiny. So it seems fair to give it another try.

[puzzlement]

For me it is The Year of Octavia Butler and James Tiptree Jr. challyzatb tells me that starting out with Tiptree's novels is not the right place to begin, but even the University of Sydney library is limited in its Tiptree supplies (and most are in rare books, un-borrowable).

I look forward to any blogging about the Four Great Classical Novels you do!

[challyzatb]

I was present when this resolution was made, Karen, and did it ever make my little heart happy.

Dream of the Red Chamber is also on my list for this year! How exciting.

My plan for this year is to take a calligraphy class.

[karenhealey]

Oh cool, let's read it at the same time so we can talk about it! You know way more than I do about the background, I want to leech off your brain.

[challyzatb]

Totally! It seems to have one of the most positive representations of two women in love in premodern Chinese literature, so I'm really excited.

[carrie_ironhorse]

I need to actually finish Dream of the Red Chamber—I read the first two volumes in a class, and didn't ever obtain the rest of it to finish it. I quite like Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West (entitled Monkey) but some of the episodes have been abridged, so's you know.