Our staff share their literary resolutions for the new year.

“Read happier books.”

– Rosalind McClintock

“I work as a children’s and YA book specialist, so I have to keep up to date in this area. But in 2020 I’d like to balance out my kids and YA reading with some more adult novels, especially those that play with form or genre, or are challenging and unconventional in some way. I also have a bad habit of stopping reading non-fiction books around two-thirds of the way through, so that’s another resolution: I really need to see more books through to the end.”

– Leanne Hall

“As a bookseller I constantly succumb to the temptation of must-read new fiction and as a result the many reading resolutions I set myself for 2019 remain unfulfilled as the year comes to an end. One of my big resolutions was to finally make a start on Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time – a series of novels I’ve wanted to read for many, many years. So I’m carrying that into the new year and even if I only read 2 or 3 volumes of Proust in 2020, I’ll be a happy woman. I’m also keen to make a bigger dent in my ongoing project of reading all of Anita Brookner’s and Jean Rhys’s novels, and to revisit Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I think about this masterpiece all the time; it’s time to experience it with older eyes.”

– Joanna Di Mattia

“Finish the second half of Ducks, Newburyport!”

– Bronte Coates

“My resolution is to keep exploring Australian fiction as part of my overall reading and to dedicate more specific pockets of time for reading. I also want to get back to Tudor History as I have put it to the side for the last year or so.”

– Amanda Rayner

“I don’t read anywhere near enough history, biography or science – and I really need to read some environmental books. I mostly read crime, which I love, but I’m hoping that in 2020 I branch out towards the non-fiction parts of our shelves a bit more often – that way maybe I can learn something more relevant than how to hide a body.”

– Fiona Hardy

“My literary resolutions are always the same, each and every year. Find more time to read, and continue to read as widely as possible. After all, sleep is overrated, right?”

– Tye Cattanach