For those of you who have not been following the comments to my recent posts on Dickens (here and here), Nancy Brown & Love2Learn Mom were kind enough to tell me about G. K. Chesterton’s biography of Charles Dickens, The Last of the Great Men. I’ve ordered it from the library and am excited to begin—the perfect kick-off to a new year of reading.

I’ve decided upon a Chesterton and Dickens concentration for the upcoming year. I don’t know that I’ll achieve the long-term goal of Writing and Living, who, as you know, plans to read Dickens’s entire body of work in 2006, but I plan to spend a few months, at least, in the company of these two amiable gentlemen, Gilbert and Charles.

A useful (and delightful) link: The American Chesterton Society blog.

My other monthly reading goals for 2006:

• Two children’s novels a month—newly published, or new to me
(first on the list: The Penderwicks—no surprise there)

• At least one adult novel not by Dickens
(first on the list: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and Life of Pi by Yann Martel)