Book Reading Plans for 2013

Since last year's plans for reading worked out pretty well (all except one, with plenty of other books thrown in), I thought I'd make some plans for 2013. Here's a couple of categories:

Zombies: I need to catch up on the zombie lit that has been accumulating on my shelf, like...

• Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall--A Star Trek convention is overrun by real zombies. Fun mash up of zombies and Star Trek fandom.
• Pay Me in Flesh by K. Bennet--Zombie lawyer in Los Angeles has tough cases and hard times.
• Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez--Zombies keep pestering a diner, whose owner hires a vampire and werewolf to take care of the problem. But there's more than just that (at least according to the back of the book).
• Night of the Living Dead Christian by Matt Mikalatos--An allegory of Christian transformation, possibly a Pilgrim's Progess through a zombie apocalypse?
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim by Mark Twain and W. Bill Czolgosz--Another one of those re-writes of a classic throwing in zombies, a la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But will it be as good?

English authors: Having lived here for a year and half now, I think I should catch up with some classics of English literature, or at least some famous authors, like

• Ecclesiastical History of the English People by the Venerable Bede--Written in 731 chronicling the early English Church. I saw Bede's burial spot in Durham Cathedral!
• Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll--Why haven't I read this book yet? I've seen a couple of movie and television adaptations, but not read the original.
• Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer--May be tough but I want to try.
• Brave New Family by G. K. Chesterton--It's been too long since I've read some Chesterton. This book is the one I brought from the USA.
• Sir Thomas More by William Shakespeare--I saw this in the Shakespeare museum bookstore and the title caught my eye. It's an unpublished, unfinished play that apparently was too controversial for its time. Judging by the title page, Shakespeare was more of a collaborator than primary author.
• Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers--a slim volume of witty essays by Sayers.
• Blessings in Disguise by Alec Guinness--Autobiography of the famous actor including his conversion to the Catholic faith! (Could probably fit in the next category)

Faith: Recent presents that I have put on high priority reading are the following:

• Book of Psalms, translated with commentary by Robert Alter--Great scholar on a favorite book from the Bible.
• Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures by Benedict XVI--A timely work on the proper relationship of religion and Western culture. Hard to go wrong with something the current pope has written.
• Render Unto Caesar by Charles Chaput--A timely work on the proper relationship between religion and politics by the archbishop of Philadelphia, who is perhaps more likely to go wrong than the Pope, but don't count on it!
• St. Benedict and St. Therese by Dwight Longenecker--A timely work on the proper relationship between Benedict's "little rule" and Therese's "little way." Another favorite author and a blogger who is a former Anglican minister, now a Catholic priest.
• Catholic Family Fun by Sarah Reinhard--A timely work on the proper relationship between faith and family happiness. Making faith fun in a family setting is a great idea and this book looks to have lots of practical ideas, activities, and adventures. This author is a lay person, so the book is listed last but will probably be read first so the suggestions can be put to use. The last shall be first and the first shall be last, right?

I'm also thinking about Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series (a Christmas present!), Susanne Cooper's Dark is Rising series, and Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy. We'll see how the year progresses!

Also, I'm signing up for a graphic novels challenge which will be in the next post!