This is my list of books read in 2005 (well, since March or so when I joined BookCrossing and started keeping track.

1. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
3. The Faerie Queene, Books I-III by Edmund Spenser
4. The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley
5. Ulysses by James Joyce
6. The Rapture of Canaan by Sheri Reynolds
7. Timaeus by Plato (re-read)
8. Critias by Plato (re-read)
9. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler (re-read)
10. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (re-read)
11. The Seville Communion by Arturo Perez-Reverte
12. Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie
13. Parmenides by Plato
14. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
15. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
16. The Tale of the Unknown Island by José Saramago
17. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
18. Theaetetus by Plato
19. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
20. The Sophist by Plato
21. The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman
22. What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin
23. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
24. The Statesman by Plato
25. Mount Appetite by Bill Gaston
26. Notable Historical Trials, Volume III edited by Justin Lovill
27. Philebus by Plato
28. Rescue Ferrets at Sea by Richard Bach
29. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
30. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
31. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
32. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
33. Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
34. Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs
35. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
36. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
37. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
38. Laws by Plato
39. The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
40. Barometer Rising by Hugh MacLennan
41. The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
42. Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
43. Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs
44. Categoriae (Categories) by Aristotle
45. Such is My Beloved by Morley Callaghan
46. Complete Short Stories, Volume 1 by Ernest Hemingway (on audio)
47. “A” is for Alibi by Sue Grafton (on audio/re-read)
48. De Interpretatione (On Interpretation) by Aristotle
49. Children of My Heart by Gabrielle Roy
50. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
51. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
52. The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (re-read)
53. Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood
54. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

I’m getting frustrated with this. I haven’t been able to find any online commentary, books with notes–nothing. It’s very slow going even when it should be. It’s like reading a foreign language or something in code that you have to decipher. I’ve contemplated doing my own set of notes here, but I’m afraid that would just take up even more time.

ETA: Well, it’s gotten better. I’ve found some notes on Wikipedia under term logic and the0phrastus pointed me to some others. Still, it’s slower going than I’d like and can’t wait until I can get to some faster-reading material.

1. I want to read at least 3 books in French and work on some Latin translation throughout the year.
2. I want to finish the complete works of Aristotle by year’s end. (I’m hoping it won’t take so long once I’m finished the Organon).
3. I want to continue my CanLit project and be reading at least one Canadian classic at all times until I finish the list. Hopefully I’ll get some company in reading some of these books.
4. I want to be reading at least one book that I already own at any given time. I want to eventually reduce my shelves to Permanent Collection and *new* TBRs–not ones I’ve owned for over a decade!
5. To this end, I want to release all the books I don’t need, either through RABCK or wild release. I also have a classics book box in mind.
6. Speaking of releasing, I want to organise a public wild release of CanLit on Canada Day–maybe a big flag or maple leaf made out of books?
7. I want to return or renew books from the library instead of paying more for fines than I would have in buying the books.
8. I want to work on *writing* a book–at least 2000 words a week.

Book 5, The Rebel Angels (Book I of the Cornish Trilogy) (1981) – Robertson Davies
From the back cover:
“Gypsies, defrocked monks, mad professors, and wealthy eccentrics — a remarkable cast peoples Robertson Davies’ brilliant spectacle of theft, perjury, murder, scholarship, and love at a modern university. Only Mr. Davies, author of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, could have woven together their destinies with such wit, humour — and wisdom.”

Other useful links:
the Wikipedia article on Robertson Davies
the Wikipedia article on The Rebel Angels
the Wikipedia article on Trinity College
the Wikipedia article on Rabelais

My Thoughts:
Though I read this years ago, I’m choosing it for my next CanLit book since I eventually want to read The Lyre of Orpheus and figure I should highlight the two previous novels in the trilogy first.

Having resided at St. Hilda’s (the women’s res of Trinity college–thinly disguised as Spook in Rebel Angels), I have a special affection for this book.

I think I liked this better the first time I read it, though I did enjoy it this time too. I’m happy with my 9 rating. I sometimes felt that it dragged a little (the two Guest Night dinners especially). I know a lot more about the erudite references this time around even if I haven’t yet read Rabelais or Paracelsus (they’re both on Mt TBR, btw). I really liked parts of it too–the whole root & crown metaphor, the Sophia bits (it would have been nice to have more of that & less of Ozy Froats ;-)), and of course all the wonderful characters: Mamusia, Maria, slimy Parlabane, Darcourt, Hollier and insufferable McVarish.