Every time I resolve to read through a lengthy work of literature, I am reminded of the funniest scene in Temporary Kings, the penultimate book of Anthony Powell’s 12-volume novel cycle, A Dance to the Music of Time. A wealthy industrialist is informed by his doctors that he has less than a year to live. He takes the news manfully and decides to spend his final days locked away in a cottage reading “the best — only the best — of all literatures, English, French, German, Italian, Scandinavian.” Only a month or two after he begins this exercise, the doctors revise their opinion. He is not so sick after all. In fact, he might have decades to live. Relieved by the news, he rises from his study, leaves his books behind, and goes back “to making money, governing the country, and achieving all-time records in utterance of conversational clichés.” He never thinks about literature again.

I first came across that scene several Christmases ago, when I burned through the Dance during the dead evenings of the holiday. I felt the shock of recognition. Like that industrialist, I take on ambitious reading projects. Unlike him (or so I prefer to think), I complete them. For me, the big reading project is not a singular affair. It is an annual challenge that begins during the otherwise empty days between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. This is a time when I find myself free of work but pressed on all sides by religious and familial obligations and in need of some release. I have found it a necessary coda to the holiday rituals. After the last guest leaves and the wine glasses are cleaned and put away, there is no greater pleasure than sitting down........

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