So, naturally, after last month's total reading goal failure, I am going to be more prudent in the number and difficulty of reading goals I set for myself this month. Ha! (Ha, I say!)

In all honesty, I feel a little more confident about the amount of time I have to devote to reading over the next month, since I will be settled (for the most part) in one place, working on my dissertation, and avoiding the epic car trips and midnight plane journeys that characterized June. So, another month of unbridled readerly ambition. I will let you know how it goes. (And I should say that I form these goals as a challenge to the upper limits of my time and ability, not fully expecting to be able to finish every book I set my sights on. Still, it would be nice to get a little closer to completion than I did last month.)

• New York Times Notable Books Challenge
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury
• [If I have time: Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which I was meant to read last month]
  
• Year of Down Under (the same two short books as last month)
  
• Alice Springs by Nikki Gemmell
• The Cardboard Crown by Martin Boyd
  
• 52 Plays/52 Weeks Challenge
• Let's be serious, now: at least 10 plays this month.
  
• Non-fiction Five Challenge
• Watching the English by Kate Fox, which I am halfway through.
• In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
• Chunkster Challenge (sneakily extended by one month to enable me to finish my last two books
• Watching the English (see above)
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (also a work-long-in-process for me, and an enjoyable one at that)
  
• Book Groups
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (Classic Lit)
• The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi (21st C Fiction)
• The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (Beyond Reality)
• Hard-boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami (Beyond Reality)
• The Bone People by Keri Hulme (Book Awards)
• Black Swan Green (see above) (Booker Prize)
• Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick (Slaves of Golconda)
• David Copperfield (see above) (Inimitable Boz)
  
• Preparing for teaching next year
• The Iliad by Homer
• As much Euripides as I can fit into my 52 plays project.
  
• Unaffiliated Reading
• The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (I am halfway through this read from last month)
• Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning
• Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy (which has been sitting on my "currently reading" list for far, far too long)
  

So, all in all, I am aiming to finish a novel-length book (fiction or non-fiction) about every second day, and a play every third day. Well, we can but dream.

(And it is so fun to plot my imaginary reading.)