Do you have any reading projects planned for the coming year? How about the big monsters? I try and get through one every year. Last year, I read (and loved) George Eliot's Middlemarch. The year before it was Dickens' Bleak House, and the year before that it was The Canterbury Tales (though I confess I skipped a bit).
These little projects haven't always been a success btw. I gave up on The Divine Comedy (didn't even reach the end of the Inferno) and also on Proust. I slogged my way to the end of Milton's Paradise Lost, and though I liked parts of it, found it hard going overall.
I've got a weird, almost supernatural faith in the canon. It's like a substitute for religion. Harold Bloom is my go-to guide, and I generally follow his advice. My 2024 reading list is:
Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway
Charlotte Bronte: Jane Eyre
Jane Austen: Emma
Daniel Defoe: Moll Flanders
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim
Ian McEwan: Atonement
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse 5
Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night
Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End
Ted Hughes: Collected Poems
Oscar Wilde: Collected Essays
I doubt I'll read even half of them, but that's the plan. I'm also determined to give Proust another crack.