Well, 4 months ago I posted a challenge for the summer: read 50 great, weighty, must-read books. Last summer I read almost 100 books, and was a regular friend of the Teton County Library. This summer, though, I wanted to be more social, and I wanted to read bigger books, so I figured that 50 was easily doable. WRONG. One book alone took me an entire month to read (I’m glaring at you, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, although you were worth it). All in all, I read 22 books, plus one Did Not Finish (Walden: who dreams of torturing high school students with this crap?) plus a textbook and lots of outside research for my job. Rather shabby, you say? Oh, well: I do feel much more edified and satiated than when I was in Spain, where I read a dozen books over the entire year and spent far too much time just toodling around on the internet.
I’m not going to be a book blogger: see this blog post to read the “top five sins of book reviewers,” and realize that I would commit every one of those sins. Read this post to see this comment about reading Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley: “reading this stuff is like drinking a rotten milkshake made of velvet, peat moss, and 200-year-old roses” and realize that I would never make you laugh your pants off like that, and go to this blog to realize that it’s all already been dissected much more drolly.
That said, I’ve added a few comments, to inspire you to pick up a great book, or else to run away! Run away!
So, behold, the list!
Summer 2011 Book List:
1. Annals of a Former World · · by John McPhee
®2. Half the Sky · · · · · · · · · · · by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (8/31/2011) (10 out of 10; incredibly inspiring, terribly heart-breaking: about the plight of women around the world. Makes you want to pick up your comfy American woes and go thrash somebody.)
3. The Shell Collector · · · · · · by Anthony Doerr
®4. The Botany of Desire · · · · · by Michael Pollan (8/21/2011) (6 out of 10; I guess I learned something about how Michael Pollan thinks tulips are sexy and Dionysian. And that Johnny Appleseed was Dionysian because he brought the promise of alcohol [hard cider and applejack] to the frontier. Marijuana is Dionysian. Potatoes are, somehow, also Dionysian. This book was mainly about Michael Pollan and his personal philosophy, versus anything really about botany. Still, worth reading, if you’re into food and want to shake your fist at Monsanto, while toasting Dionysus.)
5. The Child in Time · · · · · · · by Ian McEwan
®6. Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (6/14/2011) (7 out of 10; Barbara Kingsolver still isn’t my favorite writer, but she does write a gripping tale, and this is an interesting bi-cultural-ish view of America and Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century.)
7. The English Patient · · · · · · · by Michael Ondaatje
®8. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler (7/31/2011) (8 out of 10; this book took me AN ENTIRE MONTH to read. Very detailed, very much ‘and then the Sanskrit character X turned to the character X1 because of the cultural dynamics of blah blah blah’ but one of the best, most eye-opening books about language history I’ve ever read. OK, probably the only entire book I’ve read about language history. But still. Loved it. My life goal is to get a PhD in Historical Linguistics, so this seemed like a pretty good start.)
9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
10. Me Talk Pretty One Day · · · by David Sedaris
11. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius · · by Dave Eggers
12. Midnight’s Children · · · · · by Salman Rushdie
®13. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary · · · · · · · · by Simon Winchester (6/18/2011) (8 out of 10; murder? insanity? the OED? It’s all here. And it’s a true story! A quick, easy read that will knock your socks off about dictionaries. Really.)
®14. Drums of Autumn · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (6/25/2011) (6 out of 10; still the same old characters [no matter that they change names and are supposed to be entirely different people; Diana Gabaldon is a 2-character, 1-plot lady, and she is able to spin it out for an entire series.], still the same old trick [“they’re from the future! when will the others find out?”], and yet I still gobble it up.)
®15. The Fiery Cross · · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (7/15/2011) (6 out of 10; see above)
16. His Majesty’s Dragon · · · · by Naomi Novik
17. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
18. The Orchid Thief · · · · · · by Susan Orlean
19. Dune by Frank Herbert
20. The Fifth Child · · · · · · · by Doris Lessing
21. Encounters with the Archdruid · · · · · · · · by John McPhee
22. The Book Thief · · · · · · · by Markus Zusak
23. Rebecca · · · · · · · · · · · · by Daphne du Maurier
®24. A Tale of Two Cities · · · · by Charles Dickens (5/16/2011) (5 out of 10; I’m sorry… am I allowed to not like Dickens? There, I’ve said it: I don’t like Dickens. I know he was a pioneer, and his genius has been copied so many times that he only seems cliché, although the original of an over-repeated formula cannot be, by definition, cliché… but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I like believable characters, no matter what’s going on in the plot—sure, two men who look identical but are not related at all (mystery? never solved) and who really have no character traits in common end up switching places so that *spoiler* the good man with the beautiful, kind wife goes free and the scrummy, bitter man ends up sacrificing himself gallantly on the guillotine—that’s fine by me. My problem is with the fact that the good man is always good, and the beautiful, kind wife is always beautiful and kind, and the scrummy, bitter man is always good except when he’s being secretly gallant (and that was the only character twist in the entire book). Give me some dimension!)
25. Eat, Pray, Love · · · · · · · by Elizabeth Gilbert
26. The Lake of Dead Languages · · · · · · · · by Carol Goodman
27. A Wizard of Earthsea · · · · by Ursula K. Le Guin
28. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay · · · · · by Michael Chabon
29. All the Pretty Horses · · · · by Cormac McCarthy
30. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
31. The Highest Tide · · · · · · · by Jim Lynch
32. All the King’s Men · · · · · · by Robert Penn Warren
33. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret · · · · · by Judy Blume
34. Brideshead Revisited · · · · by Evelyn Waugh
35. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao · · · · · · · · by Junot Diaz
36. Middlemarch · · · · · · · · · · by George Eliot
37. The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
®38. The Catcher in the Rye · · · by J.D. Salinger (6/3/2011) (… out of 10; I read this on the airplane on the way back from Spain and sped-read through it while simultaneously playing Bedazzled on my personal backseat console. I’m assuming it was good. Listening to some good academic discussion on the value of the book is probably in order, because I’m not sure I remember enough to pronounce weighty statements on why this is a Classic That You Ought To Read.)
39. A Clockwork Orange · · · · · by Anthony Burgess
®40. Tess of the D’Urbervilles · · by Thomas Hardy (5/12/2011) (9 out of 10; ah, drama! ah, England! ah, Tess and the plight of women! A fantastic, fantastic book: the only annoying parts are Hardy’s asides about how Tess had been wronged, how Tess was an angel who wouldn’t dream of taking advantage of her situation, etc. etc., but eventually you come to realize that the asides are the genius of the entire book. Hardy gives a clear commentary on the sexism and classism rampant in 19th Century England, with the compelling drama of Tess thrown in on the side. An excellent read. ALSO, watch the new(ish) BBC version and you will melt in Tess’s innocent eyes and drool over the evil Hans Matheson [Alec D’Uberville—the rich purported relation] and the equally-evil-but-purportedly-angelic Eddie Redmayne [not-so-subtly-named “Angel”].)
41. The Death of the Heart · · · by Elizabeth Bowen
®42. The Great Gatsby · · · · · · by F. Scott Fitzgerald (7/26/2011) (3 out of 10; not really my cup of tea. Sorry, green light; your symbolic weightiness is not enough to draw me into liking this book.)
43. I, Claudius · · · · · · · · · · · by Robert Graves
®44. A Walk in the Woods · · · · by Bill Bryson (8/29/2011) (5 out of 10; listened to the book on tape. Not bad; Bill Bryson is always humorous, and so is his account of hiking the Appalachian Trail. He blathers humorously about the problems to be encountered along the trail, then not so humorously about his bear-phobia [“take my word: run”], and about how he’s never camped before in his life, and how he’s going to hike 2000 miles with an overweight idiot [to whom he also, annoyingly, gives invented dialogue: I’m sure his exaggeratedly dim-witted companion never actually used the word “capacious”], and he whines incessantly about how the Federal government is mis-managing our public lands [to some extent, he’s right; hey, he has the audience and the drollness that he can whine his affronted ass off, but if he really wanted to make a difference, taking pot-shots at the Forest Service and Park Service isn’t going to do much] but it is, in general, a diverting story.)
45. The Moviegoer · · · · · · · · by Walker Percy
®46. It by Stephen King (8/3/2011) (3 out of 10; Stephen King is an excellent writer. Sci-fi is an excellent genre. This book has an excellent plot and excellent characters, but it was FREAKING WEIRD. This book does not inherently get a 3, but my perception of my reading pleasure was around a 3. Please, read more Stephen King, and read It if you want to be seriously disturbed [that’s what King’s best at], and do not judge me for not liking to run away, screaming.)
№47. Walden · · · · · · · · · · · · · by Henry David Thoreau (8/27/11) (0 out of 10; DID NOT FINISH. I could barely get through the first part of the book without falling into a stupor, or suppressing the desire to hurl the book away. Or just hurl. One description of Thoreau that may have influenced my decision was “inestimably priggish.” Walden is interminably priggish. URGH.)
®48. Snow by Orhan Pamuk (9/20/11) (5 out of 10; I felt a little too dumb to read this book. I read Pamuk’s My Name is Red and loved it. Either I completely missed out on the deep subtexts and just enjoyed the rollicking story, or else MNiR didn’t have any deep subtexts. Snow, on the other hand, has a few rollicking moments but is mainly just symbolism on a plate, as far as I can gather, and I’m afraid I didn’t quite get the cultural allegory/satirism/tragicomedy bits. Or maybe there wasn’t any symbolism. [Which I doubt, because Pamuk won a Nobel Prize mainly for this novel. Cliff Notes, where are you?] Anyways, not my favorite Pamuk book, and one that pushed me one seat closer to the edge of the Reading Weighty Books That Make Me Look Smrt bandwagon.)
49. Parrot and Olivier in America · · · · · · · · · by Peter Carey
50. The Penelopiad · · · · · · · · by Margaret Atwood
OTHER BOOKS (not on my list) THAT I READ ANYWAY:
®51. Travel as a Political Act by Rick Steves (6/10/2011) (7 out of 10; I had no idea Rick Steves was so thoughtful! I had only watched a couple of his shows, and sure, they’re fun romps through some European travel-mecca, but deep is not a word I’d ever have used to describe him. This book proved me wrong; he writes about traveling with a purpose, and why traveling is good for the world. And there are some good romps.)
®52. Lord John and the Private Matter by Diana Gabaldon (6/28/2011) (4 out of 10; not up to scruff with her original Outlander series.)
®53. An Echo in the Bone · · · · · · · by Diana Gabaldon (8/15/2011) (6 out of 10; I think I accidentally skipped one of the books in the series before reading this one, which didn’t really hurt my understanding of the plot, because *see #14-15 above for why every book in this series is practically interchangeable with the others.)
®54. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie (8/24/2011) (4 out of 10; I got it for $4 at a Border’s close-out sale, and that’s about what it was worth. Rather ponderous, slightly mysterious, and a few good descriptions. I enjoyed the 4 hours it took to read, and hope to promptly sell it back to a used book store for slightly more than $4.)
®55. El ParaÃso en la otra esquina by MarÃo Vargas Llosa (9/10/2011) (2 out of 10; uurgh… I started this book when I was in Ecuador [in Spring 2009] and I barely finished it this summer. A good commentary on the quest for paradise: one woman in France is pushing for a futurist, communist utopia, and one man in Tahiti is pushing for a primitive, sexual utopia. And the juxtaposition continues for 500 dense pages: salvation in communal sharing or individual freedom? in abstinence or wild abandon? in a stark, atheist future or exotic, ancient rituals? and on and on.)
®56. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (9/5/2011) (9 out of 10; Margaret Atwood is a genius, and this, like all of her other books, is a masterpiece.)
®57. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (9/12/2011) (9 out of 10; acerbic, hilarious, fantastic. Go blow some shit up.)
®58. The Language of Thought by Stephen Pinker (9/23/2011) (8 out of 10; a half-textbook/half-lit-review/half-here’s-some-sciency-stuff-for-the-rest-of-you-all book on psycholinguistic theory is keeping me RIVETED to the steering wheel. I’m driving out to Oregon as we speak and am listening to this book on tape and Stephen Pinker’s got me transported to the magical world of verbs and causality and all sorts of oodie-goodie grammar. I can’t wait to get back in the car tomorrow and finish it! I can’t wait to get to grad school tomorrow for Applied Linguistics! Oh, the inspiration!)
So now, I’m updating the list in the sidebar: I still want to read the 35 books I didn’t get to this summer, plus 15 more during the luxurious eight-month-long academic year (50 books + grad school + lots of skiing + hopefully a part-time job = possible?), but I don’t want to overburden myself, so you’ll notice that five are children’s books, one is A Game of Thrones, and one title contains the words “Murder” and “Mystery.” Feel free to comment on my choice of reading material--I gladly take suggestions.
Books to Read Sometime in the Future:
1. Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery by Terry Jones, Terry Dolan, Juliette Dor, Alan Fletcher, and Robert E. Yeager
2. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
3. Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
4. Close Range by Annie Proulx
5. The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
6. Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsberg
7. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (a re-read)
8. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (a possible re-read)
9. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl
10. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
11. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
12. Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
13. I Like You by Amy Sedaris
14. Rainy by Clyde Edgerton
15. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
