The staff of the Thammasat University Library wish the TU community a happy and healthy new year.

One way to prepare for the celebrations or understand them better afterwards is to read some books from the TU Library collection.

For example, the popular novel Bridget Jones’s Diary and its film adaptation are set on New Year’s Eve. Copies of the book are available in the Fiction Stacks of the Puey Ungphakorn Library, Rangsit campus and the Boonchoo Treethong Library, Lampang campus. Students based at other campuses may order the book through the TU Library Book Delivery service.

Students may also view the film version of Bridget Jones’s Diary at the Rewat Buddhinan Audiovisual Center on the U2 level of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.

Students familiar with the story of Bridget Jones may recall that she makes New Year’s resolutions, as some people do in the Western World and Asia to continue good practices, change some behavior, accomplish a personal goal, and otherwise improve their lives at the start of a new year

Bridget Jones promises not to drink more than fourteen alcohol units a week, smoke cigarettes, or spend more money than she earns, among other resolutions.

Another book set during New Year celebrations is the play A Doll’s House by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.

The TU Library owns a number of books by and about Henrik Ibsen.

The action of A Doll’s House occurs between Christmastime at the New Year, as the main characters, a married couple, look forward to the New Year as the start of a new, happier phase in their lives. In the new year, the husband will start his new job, and he anticipates with excitement the extra money and admiration the job will bring him. By the end of the play, however, the nature of the new start that New Year’s represents for them has changed dramatically. They both must become new people and face radically changed ways of living. So the new year signifies the start of a truly new and different time in their lives.

Sill another well-known book set at New Year’s Eve is the novel Middlemarch by George Eliot. The TU Library collection includes different editions of Middlemarch and books about it and George Eliot as well.

In the novel, a priest is invited to a party on New Year’s Day, and observes that some of the guests are not happy, although the hosts notice no problems:

On New Year’s Day, there was a party, to which Mr. Farebrother was irresistibly invited, on the plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first new year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar. And this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the Farebrother family were present; the Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred had persuaded his mother that if she did not invite Mary Garth, the Farebrothers would regard it as a slight to themselves, Mary being their particular friend. Mary came, and Fred was in high spirits, though his enjoyment was of a checkered kind– triumph that his mother should see Mary’s importance with the chief personages in the party being much streaked with jealousy when Mr. Farebrother sat down by her…However, the party was a merry one, and Mary was particularly bright; being glad, for Fred’s sake, that his friends were getting kinder to her, and being also quite willing that they should see how much she was valued by others whom they must admit to be judges.

Here are some other observations about the New Year by authors, most of whom are included in the TU Library collection:

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

• G. K. Chesterton, A Chesterton Calendar (1911)

It’s important that, as we begin the New Year, look forward… We should project our intention ahead, so that we make this year a meaningful one…. When you look back… how would you think about the year that you have spent? Would you have a sense of contentment, saying that ‘I have lived that year well. I have served the purpose of that year.’? Or would you be looking back with a sense of regret for all the troubles you have caused?

• Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, 2 January 2018

I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year. This is always a hopeful time, as we celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another. And while 2009 was difficult for many Americans, we must also look back on this year with the knowledge that brighter days are ahead of us – that although our challenges are great, each of us has the courage and determination to rise up and meet them.

• Barack Obama, A Message for the New Year from the President, The White House, (31 December 2009)

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ring Out, Wild Bells, (1850)

May 2021 be the year of awakening and real bold change. And let’s all continue the never-ending fight for the living planet.

• Greta Thunberg

New Year’s Day–Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community.

• Mark Twain, Letter to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, (1863)

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!

• Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

Each age has deemed the new-born year

The fittest time for festal cheer.

• Sir Walter Scott

That life which is a beautiful thing is not the life that is known, but that which is unknown; not the past life, but the future. With the new year, fate may begin to treat you and me and everyone else well, and a happy life will begin. Isn’t that true?

• Giacomo Leopardi, Small Moral Works

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)