Science Fiction-Free September s24e21

Huzzah! We made it to another September. What better way to celebrate than abstaining from reading science fiction for a whole month?

Science Fiction-Free Septembers (SFFS) are my annual moratorium on science-fiction books (and, by extension, my regular reading habits) in favour of novels that I am less likely to read otherwise. Septembers tend toward more classic or literary fiction as a result. Sometimes, the selections are themed, but generally they're just books that I've felt I wanted to read for some time, and SFFSes are a good opportunity.

Last year I chose the books that had lingered longest on The List (what real book bloggers call their TBR, for To Be Read), and enjoyed myself. So I think I'm going to repeat that theme, more or less.

This year's picks are as follows:

• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville: This novel wasn't actually on The List until I started brainstorming. But I've wanted to read this classic for a very long time. I think I read it back in grade nine, but I don't recall finishing. (I doubt it.) My girlfriend in university had a copy, and I reread the beginning while hanging out at her place. So I can at least boast that I've read at least first three chapters twice.
• The Nigger of the "Narcissus" by Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness was required reading in high school, and I hated it. I tried reading it again about a decade ago, and still hated it. I don't blame the author for this; apparently Mr. Korzeniowski is one of the finest prose artists in English literature. This book, however, is one I've had my eye on for some time: not because of the eye-catching title (which at least one embarrassed publisher once bowdlerized as The N-Word of the Narcissus). I was informed, years ago, that it was the literary basis for the science-fiction movie Alien. It isn't exactly that, but it's true that Ridley Scott (and the Alien franchise) draws much inspiration from Conrad's works. The spaceship in Alien is called the Nostromo (after another Conrad novel), and its lifeboat was named the Narcissus.
• Rabbit, Run by John Updike: I worked at the public library as a teenager, and one day, my English teacher came in and checked out Updike's latest novel, S. (which we had just received; I hadn't even put it on the shelves yet). The next day in class, he complimented the novel, saying Updike was poetry. I read one short story of his, "Your Lover Just Called," in a second-year literature class, but the Rabbit tetralogy (and S., I guess) has been on my mental to-read list for almost as long.
• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway: I don't remember what acquaintance wrote a glowing recommendation of this novel back around 2009, and it's not my usual reading material. (But that's what SFFS is all about, right?) At present, it's the longest-surviving book recommendation on The List.
• A Confederation of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole: Rabbit, Run, The Cellist of Sarajevo, and A Confederation of Dunces are all leftovers from last year's SFFS, in case my planned books didn't carry me through to October. It only made sense to "promote" them for this year.

And in the unlikely event that these five books aren't enough reading for September, I have ongoing reading lists of Kazuo Ishiguro's books and classic Westerns, so I'll add Alan Le May's The Searchers and Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. And that should get me through September nicely.

I'm also curious whether other people's reading habits take a hard left turn like this for some reason or another. Please feel free to comment and let me know if you have anything like a Science Fiction-Free September.