Having recently completed my 2024 recap, it's time to write my 2025 Vocabbett goals!
My focus will remain on Vocabbett Classics, where I annotate classic novels to make them more accessible to modern readers. Once I have a large enough collection, I'm going to start approaching schools and school districts, suggesting that they swap their existing editions with my brilliantly-annotated alternative.
At the moment, there are quite a few A-list books missing, and I don't want to waste anyone's time. If they agree to swap out the books, but I don't have half of them, that's not a good look!
That's why, in 2025, I plan to annotate...
1) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (coming January 2025)
This doesn't help my "school books" initiative, but I've already annotated all of it. Upscaling and digitizing all 100+ illustrations by Louis Rhead is taking longer than anticipated, though! Every time I complete it, I figure out how to make it look better, at which point I start the whole process over.
2) Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
My 8th-grade teacher did such an outstanding job teaching Romeo and Juliet that I--and probably 100% of my 100 fellow 8th graders--could recite most of it by heart.
Some of us enjoyed this; others absorbed the text through osmosis. If someone said, "A rose by any other name," they would reluctantly reply "would smell as sweet" with the world-weary resignation of an assimilated sleeper agent receiving his activation phrase.
Eventually we all got into the spirit, though (I suspect that for the teenage males, a substitute forgetting to fast-forward through topless Juliet in the 1968 version helped). Our vocabulary became pseudo-Shakeperean; everything was "over yonder."
3) Macbeth by William Shakespeare
This is the first and only "school book" I neglected to read in its entirety. I eventually re-read it in college, and am ashamed of my 9th grade experiment to this day.
However, by way of explanation, I will merely say that we read it during a time of countless quizzes, tests, essays, and gymnastics meets, and it was at this point I learned that many of my friends never did the readings anymore.
"I should try that," my stupid brain thought.
I hated the feeling of not being in complete command of the facts, and I never did it again.
4) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
It's been on my "I want to read this" list for a long time!
5) The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
Another book that won't help my collection when it comes to schools, but this is the first "gothic novel." I read it earlier this year, and actually rather sweet--full of medieval chivalry and "obviously I'd die for you, even though we just met, as you are a woman and I am a man." I want it to be part of the Vocabbett Classics Annotated Editions collection.
6) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Great Expectations is a school book if there ever was one...I started annotating this long ago and stopped. Time to finish it.
7) The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
To the best of my knowledge, I've never read The Federalist Papers cover-to-cover. Considering President Thomas Jefferson called them “the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written," I should probably read them!
I'll probably take a course on the subject before beginning, though, to make sure I don't miss anything.
8) Antigone by Sophocles
I vowed to never again annotate a book not originally written in English...The Iliad and The Prince took forever, as there are countless translations and I always want to create my own.
However, I've read countless translations of Antigone already, and it's a pretty short play...I think I can manage a Vocabbett Classics translation/annotated edition...
And if there is extra time (there won't be), in no particular order...
8) The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Why did I always think it was the portrait of Dorian Gray? Apparently it isn't. I haven't read it, but it's a good "school book" to have in the collection.
10) Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Kidnapped would be my second Stevenson book of 2025, but Treasure Island was fun enough to justify another. Kidnapped isn't a sequel, though--it's more about Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobite uprising, a subject so romanticized, I'd love to read an older book about it.
11) The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
Unsurprisingly, The Communist Manifesto is among most-assigned books at Ivy League universities. If impressionable minds are going to read it, they may as well get my scathing commentary and historical context at the bottom of each page.
12) A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I loved this book, re-reading it even in college. I doubt it's ever assigned in schools--it's too good--but it would be nice to have it as part of the Vocabbett Classics Annotated Editions collection.
What say you? Any comments or requests? I'd love to hear them!