A little ambition never hurt anyone?

fresh from the library.

I have accumulated a stack of books I would like to [start and] finish before 2012 rolls into town:

• What I know Now, by Ellyn Spragins
• The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
• Hemingway's Boat, by Paul Hendrickson 
• The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson
• The Beatrice Letters, by Lemony Snicket