Thursday, 1 January 2009

Just who is Tony, and what exactly is his Reading List?

Welcome to Tony's Reading List, a place where I pretend to know a lot more about literature than I actually do!

Tony?  That's me, a thirty-something Englishman who has somehow ended up living in Melbourne with a wonderful wife and two cheeky daughters.  Don't ask how that happened as I'm not too sure myself...

The Reading List?  It does exist, in Excel form, and it's getting longer by the day.  The list was started on the first day of my blog, and it now contains hundreds of titles, culled from the never-ending pile of books we call literature.

What do I read?  A lot :)  At the moment, my main areas of interest are Victorian literature (Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, George Eliot, Charles Dickens), Japanese Literature (Natsume Soseki, Haruki Murakami, Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe), German-language literature in the original (Heinrich Böll, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Theodor Fontane) and contemporary Australian literary fiction (Tim Winton, Steven Carroll, Elliot Perlman, Helen Garner).  I reserve the right to change this at any time though :)

What else do I do?  That's not enough?  Well, I teach English as a second language, currently to migrants, and try to keep up my own language skills in French and German.  I used to play football too, but those days are long gone :(

Why do I do this?  If anyone finds out, please let me know...
Posted by at
Labels:

8 comments:

  1. Hi Tony, I have just selected you as my copinaute for two Humbooks. Your chance to improve my reading list LOL. Mystified? See http://bookaroundthecorner.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/christmas-ah-humbook-they-say/#comment-5837

    ReplyDelete

  2. Lisa - I'll leave a comment there :)

    ReplyDelete

  3. Congrats on the blog, Tony! I love reading foreign fiction too, especially because I'm a translator and like comparing originals and versions to increase my reading pleasure. By the way, do you accept recommendations by regular mail, meaning, would you be willing to read and review a book sent to you? It would be a pleasure to contribute to your ever-increasing list with some short stories from my native Brazil! :) Take care and happy holidays!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. Rafa - Thanks! I've just been looking at your web-site, and I'd certainly be interested in taking a look at the 'Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories' collection. Please e-mail me at tonysreadinglist at y7mail dot com - I can give you my contact details then :)

      Delete

  4. Stumbled across your blog and like it very much and your post on "The year with the hare" was better than the book itself :-) Made me even think of reading it again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. buchpost - Thanks for the kind words :) I enjoyed 'The Year of the Hare', a nice gentle road-trip novel (and you can never get enough long-eared animals in a book!).

      Delete

  5. Through my blog I've got to know a lot more Victorian writers too. How can you ever get bored with Trollope?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. literarytaste - Even though I've read almost twenty of his works, there are plenty more good ones waiting to be read :)

      Delete

Every comment left on my blog helps a fairy find its wings, so please be generous - do it for the fairies.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)