Wayward Readings & 2006 in Review:

As 2006 comes to a close, I realize that there are several books I read over the year that I never got around to commenting on. Whether I read them for my classes , for my book group, or for fun, here are a few others that occupied my time this year:

Michael Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White -- Follows the trials and tribulations of Sugar, a 19th Century prostitute in England ... sort of a contemporary Moll Flanders, in a way. Not terribly "literary," but it's good "fluff" reading.

Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac -- I read this for book group. Fun stuff, and the movie's just as good. Wonderful wordplay throughout the work, akin to a French Oscar Wilde.

Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz -- Introduced this in A.P. English in the spring; it went over like a lead balloon, but I liked it. A classic of magic realism.

David Yaffe, Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing -- Great series of essays that detail the influence of jazz on post-WWII writers like Mailer, Salinger, Ellison, et al.

Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho -- Worst piece of gothic drivel I read all year (not that I read a lot of gothic drivel this year, mind you). I read it for book group in preparation for our January discussion of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. 'Supposed to have been very popular in its day. A real clinker, in my opinion.

Charles Dickens, The Christmas Stories (A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Haunted Man, and The Battle for Life) -- Read these and taught the first three for my fall Newberry seminar. Carol is by far the best!

Gary Paulsen, Soldier's Heart -- Began the year in my Dimensions in Reading class with this novel of a young man's coming of age as a foot soldier in the Civil War. My students enjoyed it!

Colin Higgins, Harold and Maude -- Technically, this is a re-read for me. But it's been years since I taught this book, and I used it in my Dimensions in Reading class. Brilliant dark humor with a liberal dose of Zen koans and irony make this book a winner for any reader!

In retrospect, I guess I've read about thirty-three separate books this year, not counting the various and sundry readings I've had to do in addition to those (e.g., literary criticisms, secondary sources, and biographical accounts for the Dickens novels, re-reading the books I normally teach in class, and the fact that many of the Dickens works I read this year I read twice -- once for content and basic plot, and once later for analysis each week with my students). Plus, that dern'd Pynchon novel was arguably the longest novel I've ever read: 1,085 pages! A-and my wife's Us! magazine keeps appearing in the bathroom each week, riveting me to the latest happenings in the lives of Paris, Britney, and Brangelina, so . . .

Ne'ertheless, already for 2007 I have some awesome old-school science fiction waiting to be read, as well as some much-needed non-fiction regarding Miles Davis, Samuel Johnson, and the Afterlife!

Who could want more?

Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

Taking a much-needed break from novels that exceed three-hundred pages and require thought, on Christmas morning I returned to one of my guilty pleasures: science fiction.

This Hugo Award-winning novel takes place in 24th-Century New York City, where mind-reading Espers ("peepers") mix with "normals" and help to regulate law enforcement. Consequently, crime has become virtually non-existent. Enter Ben Reich, one of the wealthiest New Yorkers and one who is willing to do anything -- even commit the first premeditated murder in eighty years -- to acquire the wealth of his business rival, D'Courtney. Enlisting the help of a couple of peeper acquaintances, Reich gets his hands on an ancient weapon -- a gun -- and locates D'Courtney in the midst of an elaborate parlor game at one of Maria Beaumont's elegant parties, only to find himself subsequently pursued by Esper cop Lincoln Powell in the party's aftermath.

Part detective novel, part Dostoyevskean meditation on crime and guilt, part Law and Order, and lots of paranoia a la Philip K. Dick with a Freudian undercurrent, The Demolished Man is a fun and fast-paced book that'll satisfy your old school sci-fi jonesin'.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Over the years, my experiences with this novel -- the quintessential Dickensian bildungsroman -- have been as varied as the life experiences of the title character himself.

Let's begin in 1987, when I was assigned to read the book in the late Professor Tom Deegan's British Literature seminar during my BA years at Saint Xavier University. Being the cocky twenty-one year old English major I was back then, I didn't bother to read it -- much like I didn't read Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews in the previous semester's class taught by Professor Norm Boyer. In retrospect, I don't regret those decisions: I remember our class discussion of the Fielding novel lasting all of 15 minutes; I recall no discussion of the Dickens novel at all. So I didn't waste time reading a book that never got discussed at length anyways.

That copy of David Copperfield remained unread on my book shelf for years.

Fast forward to about ten years ago when, on a lark, I decided to read it ... and was hooked! It was by far the best book I'd read in years, and I still recall reading it in our old den -- the room that would eventually become my son's bedroom. My impressions of the book at that time were positive: it told a great story with passion and humor, yet also provided enough social commentary to remind you that you were reading a serious work of fiction. It was the perfect balance between the "fun" of early Dickens and the social critic of later Dickens.

And now I re-read it for my upcoming Newberry class, and yet another set of reactions.

As much as possible, I try to read the work in question during the preceeding term, assuming I'll then re-read it piecemeal with my students each week, thus bringing as close a reading of the text as I can in a short time span -- two full readings within several months. When I began Copperfield in the fall, it was pretty much what I remembered, but I wasn't exactly "enjoying" it. It lacked the "fun" I remembered from my reading a decade ago. So, having gotten about a third of the way through it, I set it aside and went directly to Bleak House -- a haunting and complex work. I toiled away for a month on it, and upon finishing I immediately started Thomas Pynchon's Against The Day -- a wacky and complex work. Upon finishing that book, I then resumed Copperfield.

Amazingly, now David Copperfield went down like a smooth glass of water. On the heels of two lengthy and difficult novels, David Copperfield read easily ... almost too easily ... and I'm most immediately struck by how our experiences with one text impact our experience with the next.

Regardless, David Copperfield remains a wonderful book! Enjoy it!


Happy holidays, by the way. I'm looking forward to acquiring lots of new books this holiday season!! May you do the same.

Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day

I started this book on Tuesday, November 21st (the day it was released) and just finished it today. Whew!

Years ago I received a copy of Gravity's Rainbow as a Christmas gift, and I've been hooked on Pynchon's works ever since! By turns profound and hilarious, goofy and infuriating, beautifully eloquent and downright nauseating, his novels depict a world rooted in historical facts that are judiciously seasoned with hippie-era paranoia, jazz-inflected song lyrics, fetishisms, talking animals, quirky dialogue, and more pop culture references than a Chuck Klosterman essay. And despite publishing only six novels over a forty year writing career, the elusive Grandfather of Postmodernism has given us what may potentially be his final novel -- and it's a whopper!

Against the Day has an elaborate, rambling plot that goes something like this: Webb Traverse is a Colorado miner who moonlights as the Kieselguhr Kid, a dynamiting anarchist. When robber-baron capitalist Scarsdale Vibe puts a hit out on Webb, the Traverse kids -- sons Reef, Frank, Kit, and daughter Lake -- set out on their own narrative trajectories in part to avenge Webb's death. Along the way, each of Webb's kids gets involved in separate adventures that weave in and out of each other's lives as well as history itself, including the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Tunguska Event of 1908 in Siberia, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the early years of the motion picture industry in Hollywood, among others. We also get Skip the ball lightning, Thorvold the tornado, a young Groucho Marx, a Viennese operetta entitled The Burgher King, the walking dead, Chinese things, tarot cards, and lots of mayonnaise ... and peering down upon the action at all times are the wonderful Chums of Chance, a quintet of ballooning aeronauts who drift throughout the narrative with their lovable Henry James-reading skydog, Pugnax.

What I found most fulfilling here is the way in which Pynchon manages to link this novel with his previous five novels, tying together underground postal systems with the beginnings of modern weaponry with speculation about civilizations below the earth's surface with simple father-daughter and parent-child relationships, never once losing typical Pynchon themes and motifs like corporate greed, political conspiracy, labor issues, and harmonica marching bands (trust me on this). Had I not read his earlier novels, this work might seem like a rambling mass of 1,085 pages of jibberish; having read the other books, this is an elaborate "singl[ing] up all lines" of the massive ongoing novel that is "the works of Thomas Pynchon."

Which is not to suggest, however, that only veterans of Pynchon's works will enjoy Against The Day. Au contraire, this novel is much more accessible than his ever-daunting 1973 masterpiece, yet more enjoyably complex than, say, The Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland. If ever a reader wanted to experience the wacky world of Pynchon and follow the story to boot, s/he might reasonably opt for Lot 49 or Vineland before attempting the Rainbow -- or, dare I suggest it, cut his teeth on Against The Day.

Let the reader decide. Let the reader beware. ; )

Charles Dickens, Bleak House

This was actually a re-read for me, since I read it a few years ago for the Biblioholics Anonymous. Nevertheless, it is one of the next novels in my chronological reading of Dickens's canon: I spent about five weeks reading it, and finished it on the evening before Against The Day was released.

When you read Bleak House, you realize that you're in the presence of a masterpiece. It comes to you from the darkest corners of the novel, where even the minor characters wield significance; it comes to you from the two separative narrative points of view, at first a bit jarring but, eventually, quite necessary; it comes to you from the setting, which transports you from the mud and fog of London's streets to the sterile arrogance of Chesney Wold to the pox-ridden delapidations of Tom-All-Alone's; it comes to you from the mysteries heaped upon mysteries -- the Chancery suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce that grinds on ad infinitum, the deaths of a solitary military man and a prominant lawyer, the spontaneous combustion of a rag-and-bones shop owner, the parentage of an innocent young girl, and the sufferings of My Lady Dedlock. Throughout, mysteries are steeped in curiosities wrapped in enigmas.

The fun of Bleak House comes, in part, from watching those mysteries unfold (it is said that this is the first "detective novel," and paved the way for Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone and the fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). There is humor, but rather than the rambling, shambling slapstick of Pickwick, here you get the voice of Dickens the social satirist (via such unforgettable characters as Mrs. Jellyby and Mr. Turveytop, among others). And it is pure pleasure to watch Dickens navigate our reading through a myriad of settings and characters and plotlines, fulfilling our expectations here and subverting them there, all the while in a prose that is well-paced and beautifully rendered.

This was even better the second time around! It's long, but well worth it!

Ben Mikaelsen, Touching Spirit Bear

Cole Matthews is a fifteen-year-old juvenile delinquent who, in an attempt to avoid jail time for savagely beating a classmate, agrees to spend one year living alone on a remote island in southwest Alaska to complete a Native American healing process called "Circle Justice." At first, Cole is defiant. He attempts to escape, and in an ultimate act of poor judgment charges a white "spirit bear," which promptly mauls him and leaves him for dead.

So begins this outstanding novel by Ben Mikaelsen.

Like so many YA novels, this is a story about an adolescent's "growing up" and becoming a better person by novel's end. What makes this work truly enjoyable, however, is the author's forays into Native American spirituality as he details the difficulty with which Cole must overcome his demons to achieve inner peace. Also, Cole's experiences are drawn from the author's own troubled youth and exposure to Circle Justice, so there is a voice of authenticity behind the writing that makes Cole's characterization all the more poignant.

By turns a gripping adventure and a compelling meditation on Life's tranquil beauty, Touching Spirit Bear is a great read! I highly recommend it.

* * * * * *

These last two months have been insane. Although I've done a ton of reading and have lots to post here, I haven't had the time or energy to do so lately. I will do what I can this week to catch you up on the things I've been reading.

The biggest literary news, of course, is the release of Thomas Pynchon's 1,085-page tome Against The Day on November 21st. I'm trying to read about thirty pages a day in order to finish it by Christmas. As of today, I'm up to page 428. It's an incredible book. As I read the novel, I hope to contribute to the PynchonWiki as well as Pynchon-L's group reading of the novel starting in January, 2007. More to follow.

Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History

This book is essentially a history of the development of the library, from its earliest beginnings in Mesopotamia to the public library we use today. But it's much more. In elegant prose, Battles regales the reader not only with the "stories" of major developments in library sciences over the centuries, he also gives you loving descriptions of the ways in which books have been handled, bound, and catalogued as well as fascinating character studies of the many people who contibuted to developments in the library sciences: Aristotle and Cicero, John Harvard and Jonathan Swift, Melvil Dewey and Alfred Kazin, among others.

Library: An Unquiet History is further filled with trivia for the eager bibliophile, such as phony titles from Dickens's "false facade" collection, titles from books that exist only in literary works, descriptions of the personal libraries of famous writers and thinkers, even details on how the role of the librarian has changed over the centuries.

Interestingly, one thing that emerges from Battles's writing is an appreciation of the fragility of the library and the intellectualism for which it stands. In retrospect, the history of the library is really the history of its destruction and the suppression of its works, whether at the hands of a Julius Caesar or a Joseph Goebbels. But like a phoenix emerging from its own ashes, the library is testament to the endurance of intellectualism in the face of fundamentalism, demagoguery, and military might.

This is an interesting and well-written work of non-fiction that I enjoyed. You will, too.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

About four years ago I encountered a list of the top science fiction novels of all time, which included many I would have expected to see on the list (e.g., War of the Worlds, Stranger in a Strange Land, Brave New World) and several I had never even heard of (Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light and Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, for instance). A Canticle for Leibowitz fell into the latter category and, after scoring used copies of the novels on the list that I hadn't read, I set about reading them as time permitted. Only now have I gotten around to the Miller novel.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is flat-out one of the best things I've read this year, and I can't believe it languished on my shelf all this time.

In terms of setting, the novel focuses on post-nuclear holocaust civilization as it struggles its way through about 1,800 years of development. Divided into three sections, the first section takes place about 600 years after the "Flame Deluge" (i.e., the present-day's nuclear holocaust) as civilization works its way thru a new Dark Ages; the second section takes place 600 years after that, as civilization undergoes a new Renaissance and Enlightenment; the final section brings the novel full-circle as mankind once again enters a Space Era, bringing with it the renewed capability for nuclear annihilation.

The story itself follows a cloister of monks who have managed to base their entire belief system and way of life on the writings of the Blessed Martyr Leibowitz: a collection of blueprints, letters, and even a shopping list. Miller makes abundant use of Latin phrases and terminology to fashion the world of the monastary, and the novel -- while beginning with a humor that is dark and reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove -- steadily develops a vision that is altogether bleak.

Read the book and check out the soundtrack. Great stuff here!

Cynthia DeFelice, Under the Same Sky

Joe Pedersen is the fourteen-year-old son of a farming family in upstate New York. It's the start of summer and Joe has his eye on a motorbike, but his parents won't simply buy it for him. The alternative: he agrees to work for the summer on his family farm, laboring side-by-side with migrant farm hands, and as he experiences first-hand the prejudice against his fellow laborers it quickly becomes the most important -- and educational -- summer of his life.

DeFelice gives the reader an engaging and suspenseful story with characters that are well-drawn. The humor that she incorporates into the saga of Joe's development enhances his characterization nicely, making him a "typical" young man who is learning the value of money, the strain of peer relationships, and the agonies of that first adolescent infatuation.

I enjoyed this book. You will, too!

Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

For about the past forty years or so there has quietly developed a whole subgenre of literature that offers a "retelling" of an established literary work, but from the point of view of one of the minor characters. Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea are good early examples of this genre, "retelling" Hamlet and Jane Eyre, respectively. This genre also describes the entire Gregory Maguire ouvre.

Which is one of the reasons why I feel somewhat disappointed by Atwood's latest novel, The Penelopiad. While I had hoped she'd give the Stoppard and Rhys treatment to the character of Penelope and the events of Homer's Odyssey, I was disappointed to find a novel that, well ... doesn't say much that I hadn't already heard before. Its "story" adheres closely to the Homeric epic for obvious reasons, but the voice of Penelope -- who laments her inferior position within the household, and comments on how little credit she is given in the "official" mythic accounts -- merely echoes that of Elpheba from Wicked (the catty competitiveness between Penelope and Helen even parallels that of Elpheba and Glinda). And having read Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale years ago (which I think is a masterpiece), Penelope doesn't seem to "say" much about man/woman relationships and society's perceptions of those relationships that hasn't been said already.

What I did enjoy about the book was the conversational approach Atwood took to giving the stories of the ancient Greek underworld and the myths, maintaining the spirit of the oral tradition from which all of these myths derive. Penelope peppers her narrative with countless sidebars involving characters we all know from Greek mythology, and these serve to season the narrative nicely with fresh qualities that a simple rehashing of The Odyssey wouldn't. All told, I was more interested in her observations of the underworld than her trite feminism and obvious characterization of a teenaged Telemachus.

Bottom line: Methinks Maguire's Wicked covered the same ground and did so more entertainingly and profoundly.

Philip K. Dick, The Man Who Japed

Here's a fun mind-bender of a novel!

The year is 2114. In post-nuclear holocaust America, Allen Purcell finds himself in a position of power as he quickly ascends the government ranks to the position of Director of Telemedia, soon to be solely in charge of all that society deems ethical and morally correct. The problem is, one night he sneaks into a public park and "japes" (i.e., vandalizes) a statue of Major Jules Streiter, the founder of Moral Reclamation and symbol of all that this society must hold in reverence. The other problem is, he doesn't remember doing it. Dick's novel follows Purcell as he tries to unravel the circumstances that made him jape the statue, all the while trying to elude the authorities, his business superiors, and a mysterious Doctor Malpardo and his lovely sister, Gretchen.

I'm a relative newcomer to the fiction of Philip K. Dick, but I can certainly understand the cult-like attraction to his work. Although he mostly wrote during the decades spanning the fifties thru the seventies (he died in 1982), his characters and worlds and situations seem amazingly contemporary: paranoic page-turners that offer a glimpse of what our future may (already) hold. I read this book in one sitting!

Check it out.

New Thomas Pynchon Novel Due on December 5th

There was great news on Yahoo! yesterday:

NEW YORK - Thomas Pynchon fans, the long wait is apparently over: His first novel in nearly a decade is coming out in December. But details, as with so much else about the mysterious author of such postmodern classics as "V." and "Gravity's Rainbow," have proved a puzzle.

Since the 1997 release of "Mason & Dixon," a characteristically broad novel about the 18th-century British explorers, new writings by Pynchon have been limited to the occasional review or essay, such as his introduction for a reissue of George Orwell's "1984." He has, of course, made no media appearances or allowed himself to be photographed, not counting a pair of cameos in "The Simpsons," for which he is sketched in one episode with a bag over his head.

This much is known about the new book: It's called "Against the Day" and will be published by Penguin Press. It will run at least 900 pages and the author will not be going on a promotional tour.

"That will not be happening, no," Penguin publicist Tracy Locke told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Like J.D. Salinger (who at one point Pynchon was rumored to be), the 69-year-old Pynchon is the rare author who inspires fascination by not talking to the press. Alleged Pynchon sightings, like so many UFOs, have been common over the years, and his new book has inspired another round of Pynchon-ology on Slate and other Internet sites.

Late last week, the book's description — allegedly written by Pynchon — was posted on Amazon.com. It reads in part:

"Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

"With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The description was soon pulled from the site, with Penguin denying any knowledge of its appearance. According to Amazon.com spokesman Sean Sundwall, Penguin requested the posting's removal "due to a late change in scheduling on their part. We expect the description to be reposted to the book's detail page in the next day or two."

Locke declined comment on why the description was taken down, but did reluctantly confirm two details provided by Sundwall, that the book is called "Against the Day" (no title is listed on Amazon.com) and that Pynchon indeed wrote the blurb, which warns of more confusion to come.

"Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur," Pynchon writes. "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."


Watch for it on Amazon.com, foax!

Harald Weinrich, Lethe: The Art and Critique of Forgetting

Since so much of a typical school year for me is devoted to reading (or re-reading) works of fiction, I like to immerse myself in some good non-fiction over the summer months, whether it be for pure entertainment or the enhancement of my classes. Here is a book that falls into the latter category. Literary works that offer depictions of an "underworld" or "hell" are staples of the A.P. English course I teach, and as one of the five rivers of the ancient Greek underworld, Lethe (translated in the Greek as "forgetfulness") is perhaps the most "literary" of the rivers (cropping up again and again in poetry and fiction as a metaphor for intoxication, for sleepiness, even for truth, etc.), and Weinrich's book traces the various ways in which memory and forgetting function throughout works ancient thru modern.

Admittedly, this book addresses a number of authors I've either never read (e.g., Simonides, Rousseau, Saul Bellow) or never even heard of (Themistocles? Chamisso? Kleist?), but the premise of tracing the notions of why memory is significant to, say, society's morals is a fascinating topic when Weinrich examines how memory (and, in turn, forgetting) functions within the works of Homer, Dante, Kant, Proust, Pirandello, and Weisel. Several years back, I read Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge, which similarly traces a common theme through the whole history of Western literature (starting with the Genesis myth and concluding with a reading of the works of the Marquis de Sade), and while I found Shattuck a much more engaging read, I thought Weinrich more focused in his analysis. Some of Weinrich's strongest points were perhaps reserved for addressing why memory is important to cultural literacy, what constitutes an event worthy of memory, and why forgetting serves social significance (beyond the society and time period in which its event occurred).

Make no mistake: this is hardly "beachside" reading for the average high school student. But it was something I found interesting and useful for classroom use, taken all in all.

Happy Bloomsday!

"Bloomsday is a holiday observed annually on June 16 to celebrate the life of Irish writer James Joyce and commemorate the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. The day is also a secular holiday in Ireland. The name derives from Leopold Bloom, the protagonist in Ulysses, and June 16 was the date of Joyce's first outing with his wife-to-be, Nora Barnacle, when they walked to the Dublin village of Ringsend." [...]

Read more about it here.

Check out The Brazen Head, an excellent James Joyce-related website at The Modern Word.

And here's The Onion 's take on it! : )

Cheers!

Adam Nicolson, God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

Over the past seventeen years of teaching I've been on countless commttees -- none having ever gone smoothly, mind you -- and it is the mere fact that a committee of fifty-four well-educated but religiously biased and politically savvy individuals can somehow reach consensus on one definitive translation of the Holy Bible that makes the whole idea of consensus within a committee all the more astounding!

Nicolson offers plenty of good stuff here. He provides an interesting portrait of King James I, a walking paradox whose desire to prompt this all-inclusive translation project stems from his own religious biases and immense ego; he details the meticulous and ingenious methods used by the translators to arrive at a text that is at once readable and literary, yet ambiguous and accessible; he weaves within the narrative the "dirty laundry" of many of the key translators, continually reminding the reader of how such a majestic text derived from very human readers; and he affords an abundance of details about the Jacobean era to give one a solid sense of the zeitgeist in which the King James Version was created.

(For me, this book works well with the teaching of Shakespeare and Milton, as well as the early Puritans.)

This was recommended to me by one of the students in my summer Newberry seminar on Milton's Paradise Lost, and is a good book for anyone who wants to see just what goes into the translation of text, especially one rife with religious and political significance. Although I've read numerous books on the writing and translating of the Christian Old and New Testaments (and I'll list a few good recommendations below), God's Secretaries reminded me of just how much political importance was associated with a particular bible translation ... something which I suppose I'd forgotten about.

Rather than its dogma, I prefer the study of biblical text from a literary standpoint -- the stories, the mythologies, and the meanings we, as readers, have historically granted these stories. A few books I've read on the subject, which are quite good (some of which are Pultizer nominees), include:

Charles Panati, Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions

Jack Miles, God: A Biography

Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism

I also enjoy the works of Elaine Pagels, especially Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, The Origin of Satan, and The Gnostic Gospels

If you (like me) are intrigued by why many human beings seek religion and a belief in a deity of their choice, you may wish to check these out.

Peace.

* BTW: I received as a Father's Day present a copy of Karen Armstrong's A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I'll let you know how it is. (6/19/06)

Calvin Trillin, Tepper Isn't Going Out

It's simple:

After a hard day at the office, Murray Tepper likes to park his car (always legally) along the streets of Manhattan and read the newspaper quietly. At first, no one other than drivers looking for parking spots (and who are much dismayed by the notion of anyone sitting in a parked car, reading) are bothered by this, but gradually Tepper garners the unsolicited attention of pedestrians who, inspired by this simple act of civil obedience, now crowd the streets in hopes of sitting on his passenger side, seeking advice and enlightenment from Tepper. Eventually the news media, a book agent, and City Hall itself become swept along in what turns into a hilarious legal battle for this Everyman and his right to park and read. And when questioned why he's sitting in his car reading, Tepper's answer is always simple: "There's seven minutes left on the meter."

Tepper Isn't Going Out is an entertaining and quick read. Aside from some mild satire involving city politics, media celebrity, and literary tastes, this is not a book to read for deep meanings ... and that's fine, too. In some respects, the novel does with/for New York City what A Confederacy of Dunces does with/for New Orleans (structurally, both novels are similar), and it made me notice something, albeit hard to describe, about a New York "style" of writing that is reminiscent of authors like J.D. Salinger and E.B. White -- an easy, crisp, and lightly witty prose style that, except for references to laptops and the internet, could have just as easily come from a 1956 issue of The New Yorker.

I'm not crazy about the cover of the book, for whatever that's worth. The pastel colors and Crayola-like drawing perhaps "work" with the prose style I just mentioned, but I don't know. Sometimes when I like a book but dislike its cover, I'll play a game with myself and try to "re-invent" the cover, and in this case a quirky Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post-like scene might work better. But again, for whatever that's worth.

This is yet another fun book with which I had the pleasure of starting the summer. I'm on a roll!

Frank Portman, King Dork

Every so often a book comes around that's just a fun read, and Portman's debut novel was just the ticket to kick off my summer reading. Recommended to me by a friend and colleague, the novel is, as its basis, young Tom Henderson's contemporary rant against what he calls the "Catcher Cult," the mindless belief amongst all Baby Boomers that somehow The Catcher in the Rye is the greatest book ever written. This he contends until one day discovering a stack of heavily annotated paperbacks once belonging to his father (who was a suicide when Tom was eight), and throughout the novel -- in between confrontations with his mom and stepdad, second-base hook-ups with girls, visits to a psychologist, and reveries about being in a band (and its hysterical revolving door of names and personnel) with his friend Sam -- "Chi Mo" (i.e., Tom) reads the various books in his father's collection in an attempt to learn more about the man he little knew (the stack includes, among others, Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, Graham Greene's Brighton Park, Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, etc.).

From a literary standpoint, this is a fun book. We get to hear Tom's reactions to each of the books from his father's collection, and whether he's giving each book an accurate reading or not becomes part of the fun of his character development. Also, he returns to The Catcher in the Rye periodically to denounce its dated language (the Holdenisms) and irrelevance to contemporary youth culture, but watching Tom's experiences in the first semester of his sophomore year parallel those of Holden over his weekend (the girl obssessions, the fights, the contemplations on religion, the conflicts with authority figures; at times, Tom even unknowingly lapsing into a few Holdenisms of his own) adds to the book's charm.

But for anyone who has ever wondered what it's like inside the hormone-addled brain of a sixteen-year-old boy, this is pretty much on the mark. Some things never change, regardless of your generation. And if you want a book that rocks (the author is the lead singer of the Mr. T. Experience), Chi Mo's observations on various genres of rock, not to mention the band name fixation, are absolutely hysterical. If you've ever been in a band, this is a must-read!

Looking for a fun summer read? Here it is!

A Much-Needed Update!

Well, needless to say it's been a few months since I actually took the time to list anything I've read. The entire Spring got away from me, I must admit, and while I did a good amount of reading, I simply didn't have the time, patience, or inclination to log-on and write about it.

Here are a few of the books I have read since ... well, January 16th:

Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories -- I'd never read any Kipling before, and this was the first 2006 selection for our Saturday book group. I was impressed not only with how entertaining the stories were (despite their being quite politically dated), and how much they seemed ahead of their time in terms of style. (January)

George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman at the Charge -- Hilarious stuff! Flashman is a recurring Fraser character who finds himself in various historical events and periods. Here he is involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Flashman is hailed as a hero in all his escapades, but he's a liar, a bawd, a coward, and it makes his adventures that much funnier! This is laugh-out-loud reading! (February)

Franz Kafka, The Trial -- Creepy and relevant! (March)

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son -- This was the next novel in my ongoing attempt to read all of Charles Dickens's novels. I began it on Wednesday, April 46th and finished it on Wednesday, May 31st. My goal was to finish its 948 pages before June 1st. This novel marks the start of Dickens's "Middle Period," wherein he tries to balance the humor and fun of his earlier novels with the socially conscious works of his later period. It was good. (April/May)

Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair -- A cool little book that was recommended to me by one of the students in my spring Newberry Library seminar. For bibliophiles it is a must ... especially if you've read Jane Eyre recently! Tuesday Next is the protagonist: a time-travelling literary detective! Simple, fun reading! (May)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (as published in installments in Stanford University's monthly facsimile of The Strand Magazine) -- Each year, Stanford's Discovering Dickens project publishes a Dickens novel in facsimile installments. This year, they gave Boz a rest and selected Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories from The Strand Magazine (circa 1891), and the stories are compellingly fun! (January thru April)

Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch -- Never finished it. I'd read Wicked last year and loved it. This book just didn't grab me . . .


I'll get back in the update groove, dearest Reader. Just you wait. : )

Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

It feels like it has taken me almost a year to read this book. In truth, it's taken me since late-September to get through this thing, for various reasons. But part of the blame must rest with the book itself which, for as much as I love Dickens's work, is rough going.

In a nutshell, Dickens's fifth novel is the story behind the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, a sprawling week-long uprising that devastated portions of London and its neighboring countryside and led to a conflagration that destroyed most of the then newly built Newgate Prison. While it's considered a historical novel in the same way A Tale of Two Cities is "historical," Dickens focuses on mostly a variety of fictional characters who populate the tale, making this a work of historical fiction.

To be honest, the first half of the book is woefully dull and unhumorous, completely unlike any other Boz novel in that regard, and you read three hundred pages and it feels like a thousand because, try as you might, there are few characters you can grasp onto and enjoy -- even in their villainy. But the second half of the novel? It moves like gangbusters, and suddenly the reader is thrust into the heat of the riots, some humorous exchanges take place, a public execution is described beautifully (Dickens waxes poetic when it comes to blood and gore!), and you begin to care about the characters (as well as see how all that initial 300-page meanering falls into place!).

One Dickens scholar described this novel as akin to the "problem plays" of Shakespeare, which I can see. The character of Barnaby himself is an "idiot" (much like Faulkner's Benjy Compson) who occupies very little narrative space, all things considered. And while there are scattered examples of the stylistic flourishes Dickens will perfect in subsequent novels, the overall writing lacks that certain "flair" of excitement he invests in his other works. I suspect this is partly due to the circumstances under which this particular novel was written (i.e., it was planned a few years earlier to be his second novel, but became the reason for a battle with his publishers that, once settled, probably left Dickens with a bitter taste in his mouth anyways).

I recommend this book, but only to the die-hard Dickensians.

William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Knight's Tale" (from The Canterbury Tales)

Here is this year's selection for the "Obscure Shakespeare Play Reading Group," which will promptly meet tomorrow afternoon at the Irish Times to discuss the work.

The Two Noble Kinsmen -- which is Shakespeare's final play and a collaborative effort with his contemporary playwright, John Fletcher -- is a Jacobean retelling of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale": Arcite and Palamon, the eponymous kinsmen and subjects of Thebean monarch Creon, are wounded in battle when Theseus, the Duke of Athens, battles Thebean forces to honor the dead to whom Creon refuses proper burial. Taken prisoner but mercifully nursed back to health, the two kinsmen cast eyes upon the lovely Emilia from afar and immediately voice their love for her, which results in a rift between the two and subsequent animosity. They fight (nobly, I might add) and, by play's conclusion, one gets the girl (though not who you might think) and one gets mourned. A gross over-simplification of the plot, admittedly, but that's it in a nutshell.

Like last year's selection of Coriolanus, this is in my opinion an incredibly underrated Shakespeare play. Part of the problem here, I suspect, is that this is one work that critics and scholars generally agree was a collaboration, and that is perhaps off-putting for the Shakespeare "purists" (of which I proudly assert that I, too, am). Nevertheless, it's a surprisingly well-paced and unified work of literature despite the fact that it is a collaboration between two authors of such differing ages and talents. I also get the impression that this play makes the most sense to a reader when s/he has read all the other plays and The Two Noble Kinsmen is the last to read, because so much of the play harkens back to previous plays and motifs within them: the Jailer's Daughter's madness over unrequited love reminded me of Ophelia in Hamlet; Emilia's contemplation of the two kinsmen via their "pictures" recalls Hamlet's bedroom discussion with Gertrude over the "counterfeit presentiment of two brothers" (Act III, Scene vi); the Schoolmaster's play-within-a-play is reminiscent of, among others, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream; the list goes on and on, and while reading the play I noticed momentary glimpses of characters and situations and scenes from Coriolanus, Twelfth Night, Love's Labor's Lost, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Titus Andronicus, and even Macbeth. Fittingly, this is a play often placed at the conclusion of Shakespeare anthologies (I also occasionally read from The Riverside Shakespeare).

I had never read Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" (or, if I did back in high school, I didn't remember it), but in this case I read it after having read the Shakespeare play to sort of fill in gaps for whatever I found confusing, or to help me get a sense of what Shakespeare (and Fletcher) added to the storyline. Who would have thought I could use Chaucer as Cliff's Notes?! Ha!!

I enjoyed the play, and look forward to discussing it with Al, Mike, and Ben tomorrow.

Happy New Year, dear reader!

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

Here's a fun little piece of classic children's literature that will delight any bibliophile!

The Phantom Tollbooth tells of Milo, a young boy whose ennui is getting the best of him until one day he discovers in his room a mysterious box and a small turnpike tollbooth within (some assembly required) with an accompanying map. Because he has nothing better to do, he assembles it and drives his little car thru the booth, whereupon he is transported into the magical kingdom of Wisdom: he passes through the Doldrums until he arrives at Dictionopolis (ruled by Azaz the Unabridged), where he learns that the Princesses Rhyme and Reason have been banished by the ruler of Digitopolis (the Mathemagician, who, incidentally, is the brother of Azaz), and the kingdom is in chaos. Milo then sets out, with the help of Tock the Watchdog (i.e., a dog with a clock in its body) and the Humbug on a road trip thru the Forest of Sight, the Valley of Sound, the Mountains of Ignorance, and the Sea of Knowledge (with a brief stop on the Island of Conclusions, which you get to by jumping to Conclusions) to rescue the princesses, and along the way he meets a delightful array of characters, like the Spelling Bee, Aunt Faintly Macabre, Dr. Dischord and his faithful servant, Dynne, the Dodecahedron, and countless others!

"Good" children's literature (like "good" kids' films) is layered, with fun and enchantment for the children while providing something worthwhile for the adults, and Juster maintains an excellent balance between the absurdity of the characters and plot with the puns, wordplay, and tradition of the narrative itself. At its core, this is a road novel with a protagonist who will, along the way, gain an awareness of his identity and likely change his ways; much of the novel will also harken to such works as Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass, L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and even John Bunyan's Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress. In all, you have here a work that delights in puns and allegory while the protagonist learns that there is "much to see, and hear, and touch" in Life!

Frankly, I had never heard of this book until a colleague spoke of it and gave it to me as a Christmas gift. I read it in one sitting on the first day of our holiday break, and am now happy to spread the gospel of Milo and his wonderous journey!

Do check it out, and tell me what you think!

Don DeLillo, The Body Artist

Talk about haunting!

The protagonist of this short novel is Lauren Hartke, a performance artist in her mid-thirties whose husband has recently committed suicide. The majority of the novel centers around Lauren as she copes with the stages of grief in an empty house, only to discover a mysterious "ageless" man who has apparently been living in the home. She makes various attempts to engage him in conversation, but his responses remain enigmatic and soon you (like Lauren) are wondering if this man is somehow a physical manifestation of . . . what, her husband? his spirit? their communication-challenged relationship? her own grief? her guilt? or her creativity?

The novel never really makes it clear, but one thing is for certain: DeLillo's prose contributes to the enigmatic quality of the work, clearly hovering between a terse, simple style and a not-quite-but-eerily-almost Magic Realism, bringing to mind the deliciously layered prose of Faulkner and Morrison.

This is a novel you can either knock-off during a lunch hour, or spend several days dwelling upon. And that's a good thing. I would recommend you dwell upon this novel a while -- resonances are there . . .

Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

If you're looking for a good non-fiction read that's both fascinating and hilarious, here's your book.

From the start, Roach displays a playfulness and wit when discussing her subject matter, but it never veers into the irreverent. In fact, she is always respectful of the dignity of those who have given their bodies to scientific inquiry and research, and her humor has the tone of when you are at the funeral of a loved one and you're keeping the conversation lighthearted because the circumstances are anything but. Yet, she balances nicely that wit with the probing of a journalist who is, well . . . curious, curous about how our bodies can contribute to science long after we've departed from them.

And that's the part that I found wildly compelling here. Roach explores the various ways in which, when donating one's body to scientific research, that body can be used -- from automotive safety testing (instead of crash-test dummies) to organ harvesting, from military ballistics testing (as targets) to reconstructive surgery practice, from airplane wreckage study to cannibalism, and many more. I expect that you will be as fascinated as I was to learn, for example, how cadavers are preferred over crash-test dummies when testing automobile safety (windshield strength, airbag deployment, restraining belt safety, etc.) because (unlike a C-TD) they help us more accurately learn "how much force a skull or spine or shoulder can withstand" without using live subjects (p. 87), or how authorities use a complex combination of recovered airplane wreckage, seating charts, and descriptions of body remains to determine the cause of an airline disaster.

As a literature teacher, I found this book to have endless connections with works of fiction I've taught over the years, because Roach offers history, statistics, and research on such topics as decapitation (Macbeth), medicinal cannibalism (Moby-Dick), experiments in live burial (Poe's fiction), reanimation (Frankenstein), wacky experiments on the human body over the centuries (Gulliver's Travels), and even a recent eco-sensitive movement within the funeral industry (albeit a small one, out of Sweden) to permit one's remains to be turned to compost and, say, used to enrich the soil of a tree (something which Henry David Thoreau, I believe, would have loved!).

This is an excellent book!

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

I'm still in the process of reading the entire Dickens canon in chronological order and, concurrently, teaching the novels at the Newberry Library. I've already completed seminars on The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and The Old Curiosity Shop; my next seminar (in the Spring of '06) will center on Barnaby Rudge and Martin Chuzzlewit and, from what I gather, these two novels are the redheaded stepchildren of the Dickens canon.

I started Barnaby Rudge several months ago and, with the exception of a few passages, it was rough going. I had to put it aside and read other things, having gotten about 180 pages into it and being unable to focus on one meaningful event or likeable character. I will eventually read it, but for now . . . it's D.O.A.

Martin Chuzzlewit, on the other hand, is an incredibly underrated Dickens novel. While the title seems to me as off-putting as that other off-putting title of 19th-Century fiction, Ethan Frome (which, unless you've read the book, you think it's going to be dreary and boring stuff . . . and nothing could be farther from the truth!), this is considered Dickens's "American" novel, for he had recently made his first voyage to the United States, eager to see for himself this legendary land of democratic values and independent spirit, but he returned to Mother England in disillusionment. Chuzzlewit is, in effect, his scathing response to Americans -- as boorish, gun-toting, dim-witted hypocrites who flaunt their "land of freedom" while justifying slavery and various shows of intolerance. Here in the P.C. twenty-first century, Chuzzlewit might be an appropriate book to revisit, for it offers a glimpse of what Dickens's contemporaries thought of American culture back in 1843 -- and in many ways, sadly, not much has changed.

As a story, it's pretty simple: Old Martin Chuzzlewit is supposedly dying, and various relatives come out of the woodwork to ingratiate themselves to him in the hopes of securing their fortunes. Mr. Seth Pecksniff (hypocrite extraordinaire) and his two daughters, Mercy and Charity, move in the secure the fortune, while young Martin Chuzzlewit is forced, via Pecksniff's manipulations, to leave the premises in disgrace, thereby leading him to journey to America in search of his fortune. In typical Dickensian fashion, sundry subplots ensue, numerous memorable characters are introduced (especially Mrs. Sairie Gamp and her good friend, "Mrs. Harris") and all loose ends are neatly tied-up by novel's end, leaving the "bad" characters punished accordingly and the "good" ones duly rewarded for their virtue. As in his previous novels, money is once again a major element of the narrative, for it helps to distinguish the characters by showing the reader who values money, who schemes for money, and who is virtuous despite a lack of money.

Martin Chuzzlewit demonstrates a maturity of style and narrative control that his previous novels lack. By this time, Dickens had experimented with trying to sustain two separate narratives simultaneously (the Nicholas and Kate Nickleby plotlines come most immediately to mind), but here he seems to do a better job of balancing the plotlines. From what I understand, Dickens was quite proud of this novel and had hoped to be immortalized as the author of Martin Chuzzlewit. Although "Boz" would go on to produce more lasting and universal novels in his upcoming decades, this is not a novel to be ignored. It's quite good, actually.

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Truth be told, I'm much more of a Tolkien fan than a Lewis fan when it comes to each writer's respective fantasy fiction. The Lord of the Rings is an incredible literary work, and functions on so many different levels (as fantasy, as quest narrative, as allegory, as a modern retelling of every epic from Beowulf onward ...) and, for all I know, The Chronicles of Narnia may likewise be a work of such depth. If this volume, however, is any indication of what the entire Chronicles is like, I'm probably better off sticking with Tolkien.

As a narrative, the novel pretty much remains in the "children's literature" vein of, say, The Hobbit. Lewis's tale of four children who discover a portal into the snow-ridden secret land of Narnia via a magical armoir, and become embroiled in an epic battle of Good vs. Evil, has a memorable collection of characters, enchanting settings, and a distinctly Christian subtext. For me at least the main turn-off is the style which, because of its quaintly repetitive structure (not to mention a somewhat intrusive narrative consciousness), never really transcends the level of an elaborate children's story.

I'm not suggesting that this novel is necessarily flawed as a result of this. This was no doubt Lewis's design, and there's obviously nothing wrong with exploring Good vs. Evil through a children's story. Part of the problem here is that I've only read this one novel (which is Volume Two of the entire seven-volume Chronicles), so I'm taking the work out of its larger context. Just as The Lord of the Rings begins in the Shire with Bilbo's birthday and, over the course of the narrative, increases in complexity and darkness, so too might The Chronicles. I'd have to read all seven volumes to find out. Unfortunately, reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe doesn't leave me hungering for more; I think I get the idea here.

Has anyone else out there read it? Am I missing something?

Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

Pop culture is a tricky fence to straddle. On the one side you have the "critics," who diminish the importance of pop culture analysis, deeming it an exercise in futility because little worthwhile can come from that which, by its nature, is ephemeral (not to mention "popular"). On the other side you have the analysts themselves, seeking to make sense of (and give relevance to) the slippery miscellania of our Existence.

Enter Klosterman, who straddles that fence nicely in this collection of essays (each of which is separated by an informal blog-like "rant" or observation that offers something of a segue from one essay to the next). Whether he's examining the social significance of The Real World, the influence of internet porn on cultural definitions of beauty, the amorous conquests of The Fonz, the importance of Clint Black lyrics, or why Luke Skywalker is the first cinematic representation of that which would years later become known as Generation X, Klosterman draws from a wide range of topics -- sports, art, film, TV, politics, religion, etc. -- and provides compelling links among all of these to demonstrate that "[i]n and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself'."

This book isn't for everyone, of course. My guess is that those of us born between, say, 1960 and 1982 (roughly the Gen X'ers or, as my friend Dave calls us, the Electric Company generation) will get the most amusement from Klosterman's observations. Folks who are either older or younger than this will simply not care about his swipes at Billy Joel's Glass Houses or his HBO reveries. Perhaps that's the biggest problem with pop culture analysis: it often fails to engage those who are not part and parcel of that particular "moment" in pop culture. But Klosterman makes valient attempts to bridge that gap, as when he writes the following:

Here is the easiest way to explain the genius of Johnny Cash: Singing from the perspective of a convicted murderer in the song "Folsom Prison Blues," Cash is struck by pangs of regret when he sits in his cell and hears a distant train whistle. This is because people on that train are "probably drinkin' coffee." And this is also why Cash seems completely credible as a felon: He doesn't want freedom or friendship or Jesus or a new lawyer. He wants coffee.

Within the mind of a killer, complex feelings are eerily simple.

This is why killers can shoot men in Reno just to watch them die, and the rest of us usually can't.

This is a humorous and insightful collection.

Eudora Welty, Losing Battles

First off, let me admit that I didn't finish reading this one. I got about a third of the way through it and, tired of waiting for something to happen in the story, I moved on to other things.

The "story" (such as it is) is divided into 6 parts, and involves an extended Mississippi family that gathers to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Granny Vaughn. Along the way, we are treated to a series of typically screwy southerners a la Flannery O'Connor as each one tells story after story about the family and various members of the community, much of which is intended to be amusing. The problem that I had with the novel, however, was that these stories weren't enough: I was waiting for something to actually happen!

Now, I've read two other Welty novels -- Delta Wedding and The Opimist's Daughter -- both of which I thought were good. And while Losing Battles had its moments of intended hilarity, I just wasn't picking up on an actual narrative to make the time I was spending with this book worthwhile. After about 100 pages or so, I felt like I "got" the idea of what the author was trying to achieve and . . . well . . . was ready for more.

One aspect of the novel that I must admit liking, however, was the effect of reading all that southern dialogue over an extended period of time. Somehow, you get a sense of the poetry behind southern dialect, and its cadences remain with you long after you've finished reading for the day -- much like the effects of reading Milton or Joyce or Proust for several hours at a stretch. Welty's command of southern dialogue (and dialect) is admirable, which is likely why my friend Donna (who, incidentally, listened to this novel on audiotape) loved the novel!

From what I understand, the "story" kicks-in in Part Six. But you have to wade through those first five Parts to get to it.

I hope the "story" is worth it . . .

The Top 169 Novels

I'm between books at the moment . . .

Today on the Pynchon-L listserve, a lister posted the "Top 169 Novels" recommended by readers of Thomas Pynchon (it was discussed on the list some time ago). These titles are ranked according to how many people recommended the work, starting with the highest number of votes.

How many have you read?

1. Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
2. Ulysses, James Joyce
3. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
4. The Recognitions, William Gaddis
5. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6. Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
7. JR, William Gaddis
8. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
9. The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
10. Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
11. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
12. V., Thomas Pynchon
13. Molloy/Malone/Unnamable, Samuel Beckett
14. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne
15. The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
16. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
18. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
19. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
20. A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust
21. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
22. Neuromancer, William Gibson
23. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
24. Ada, Vladimir Nabokov
25. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
26. Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
27. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
28. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
29. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
30. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
31. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
32. Chimera, John Barth
33. Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey
34. You Bright and Risen Angels, William T. Vollmann
35. Death of Virgil, Hermann Broch
36. Independent People, Halldor Laxness
37. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
38. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
39. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino
40. Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
41. Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabel
42. A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
43. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
44. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
45. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
46. The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
47. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
48. The Castle, Franz Kafka
49. The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil
50. Candide, Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire
51. Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
52. Auto-da-Fe, Elias Canetti
53. Roadside Picnic, Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky
54. The Red and the Black, Stendhal
55. Count Zero, William Gibson
56. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
57. Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
58. Watt, Samual Beckett
59. Two Girls, Fat and Thin, Mary Gaitskill
60. The Sot-Weed Factor, John Barth
61. Nog, Rudolph Wurlitzer
62. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
63. A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion
64. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
65. Omon Ra, Victor Pelevin
66. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
67. Fathers and Sons, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
68. Hall of Mirrors, Robert Stone
69. Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler
70. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
71. U.S.A., John Dos Passos
72. Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow
73. Journey to the West, Anthony Yu
74. Ubik, Philip K. Dick
75. The Bridge Trilogy, William Gibson
76. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
77. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Thomas Wolfe
78. Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
79. Light in August, William Faulkner
80. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
81. The Man with the Golden Arm, Nelson Algren
82. The Night (Alone), Richard Meltzer
83. The Rabbit stories, John Updike
84. A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov
85. House of Sleeping Beauties, Yasunari Kawabata
86. Underworld, Don DeLillo
87. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
88. The Counterlife, Philip Roth
89. The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Edith Nesbit
90. Always Coming Home, Ursula LeGuin
91. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
92. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
93. Dune, Frank Herbert
94. Dreams of Leaving, Rupert Thompson
95. World's End, T.C. Boyle
96. Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson
97. Memories of the Ford Administration, John Updike
98. Carpenter's Gothic, William Gaddis
99. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazney
100. The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
101. Life of Pi, Yann Martel
102. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Richard Powers
103. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
104. The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz
105. The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton
106. Vurt, Jeff Noon
107. The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse
108. Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes
109. Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford
110. Enderby, The Poet, Anthony Burgess
111. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
112. Libra, Don DeLillo
113. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
114. Harlot's Ghost, Norman Mailer
115. Wise Blood (& the complete stories), Flannery O'Connor
116. The Border Trilogy, Cormac McCarthy
117. Warlock, Oakley Hall
118. The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson
119. The Moviegoer, Walker Percy
120. Giles Goat-Boy, John Barth
121. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
122. Beautifull Losers, Leonard Cohen
123. After The Banquet, Yukio Mishima
124. Beloved, Toni Morrison
125. Death On The Installment Plan, Louis Ferdinand-Celine
126. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brian
127. White Jazz, James Ellroy
128. The Trial, Franz Kafka
129. Frank's World, George Mangles
130. Metamorphosis (& Complete Works), Franz Kafka
131. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
132. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
133. Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
134. Call It Sleep, Henry Roth
135. Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz
136. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
137. What a Carve Up, Jonathan Coe
138. Revolutions Trilogy, John Banville
139. Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
140. Disgrace, J.M. Coatzee
141. Weave World, Clive Barker
142. Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
143. The War at the End of the World, Vargas Llosa
144. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
145. The Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers
146. The Goodbye Look, Ross MacDonald
147. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
148. The Confidence Man, Herman Melville
149. Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood
150. A Month of Sundays, John Updike
151. Messiah of Stockholm, Cynthia Ozick
152. Valis Trilogy, Philip K. Dick
153. Locus Solus, Raymond Roussel
154. Time Enough For Love, Robert Heinlein
155. A Frolic of His Own, William Gaddis
156. As Above, So Below, Rudy Rucker
157. Women and Men: a novel, Joseph McElroy
158. A House for Mr. Biswas, V.P. Naipaul
159. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
160. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry
161. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
162. Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec
163. Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
164. Waiting for the End of The World, Madison Smartt Bell
165. The Story of the Vivian Girls (etc.), Henry Darger
166. White Noise, Don Delillo
167. Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone
168. Lampiere's Dictionary, Lawrence Norfolk
169. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Yes, I was one of the Potter geeks hanging out at the local Borders for the Midnight Magic release on 7/16/05, just like the last book . . .

I've been enjoying the Potter books since Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone came out in paperback, and our Book Group read it back in the Fall of 1999. And with each successive book, I've had mixed feelings about the series itself as well as the quality of each novel (e.g., in my opinion, Goblet of Fire is a clinker, though some Pot-Heads may disagree).

Nevertheless, I just finished reading Half-Blood Prince and thought it was pretty good. Rowling still draws heavily from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in various ways, and our book group has watched in each book as Rowling borrows again and again. For example, Tolkien has evil entity Sauron, and Rowling has evil entity Lord Voltemort; Frodo has a ring which makes him invisible, and Harry has his Invisibility Cloak; Gandalf and Dumbledore; Ringwraiths and Dementors; Gollum and Dobby; the list goes on. Half-Blood Prince continues the borrowing: notice the similarities between how the Fellowship enters the Mines of Moria, and how Harry searches for the entrance to the Room of Requirement, and later how Harry and Dumbledore seek entrance through a solid wall in "The Cave." I also detected a bit of Tolkien's Dead Marshes when Harry and Dumbledoor see the Inferi (and, of course, fighting off Inferi with fire, like Tolkien's Weathertop episode).

Sidenote: Let me just say that, regardless of the Rowling book, Quiddich chapters bore me to death. But that's beside the point.

I thoroughly enjoyed the pacing of Half-Blood Prince which, like all the Potter books, has a rapid element of crime fiction to it that always engages the reader. Likewise, the "new" magical elements introduced in this book, like Horcruxes, are fun to consider from a religious or philosophical standpoint. Yet I still cannot fathom those who denounce the series for its supposed "occultism" -- au contraire, if nothing else Harry Potter celebrates friendship, loyalty, academic discipline, family ties . . . not to mention those who make the ultimate sacrifice for those they love (you'll know of whom I speak when you read the book).

Sadly, Goblet of Fire hits theaters this November. I hope it's better than the book.


(By the way, I caught this on Wordsmith.org on 7/29/05 and wonder if Ms. Rowling knew it when she created the "Sorting Hat.")

Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Flat out, one of the best books I've read in a while!

Maguire takes a character that pop culture has deemed Evil Incarnate (based on L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel and, of course, the popular 1939 film) and invests her with a family, an education, an activist sensibility, a libido, and a wit! Drawing more from the Baum novel than from the film -- and those readers who are only familiar with the film will undoubtedly notice some inconsistancies with the Maguire novel . . . so read Baum! -- Wicked traces the birth and education of Elpheba as she encounters a rogue's gallery of Munchinlanders, talking Animals, tictok figures, etc. More importantly, Maguire gives us a fictional world that is likewise plagued with dictatorial political figures, conspiracy and intrigue, terrorism, social activism, and inherent absurdity. And, er . . . flying monkeys.

There are several literary works out there that take an established literary figure and create a "backstory" for him/her. Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (which tells the backstory of Bertha Rochester, the madwoman in the attack from Jane Eyre) and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (which gives an account of Hamlet from the point-of-view of two of its minor characters) come most immediately to mind. But Maguire makes the world of Oz our world, and there is a stunning relevance here between the Oz on the page and our own post-9/11 existence (even though the novel itself was published almost a decade ago).

And while it's a fun read, it's definitely a book that will leave you with more questions than answers. Consequently, multiple readings make this a rewarding novel to experience -- something which, in my opinion, makes a work of literature valueable.

If you haven't done so already, read Wicked. Read it soon!

Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop

Despite its incredible popularity when it was first serialized (take that, Ms. Rowling!), this is certainly not Dickens for the faint of heart. Ironically, it's the evil dwarf Daniel Quilp, a perfect example of a satanic character (akin to Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian), who provides some of the best laughs in the novel (he sure knows how to treat a mother-in-law!). Woeful melodrama aside, however, for the most part this novel is a prolonged meditation on death and moves relentlessly deathward all along.

Lolita-esque Little Nell lives with her Grandfather in his curiosity shop until Quilp takes possession of said shop after it is revealed that the Grandfather's been gambling away the payments. Nell and Grandfather take to the streets of London and the English countryside in an attempt to escape the clutches of Quilp, whose influence has created a freakish network of travelling actors, lawyers, and other assorted Dickensians who may (or may not) lead the pair back to Quilp!

For readers of Shakespeare, this makes an excellent companion-read with King Lear: Little Nell and her Grandfather parallel Lear and Cordelia, both in temperment and sensibility; their journey away from Quilp's oppression (as well as the parade of freaks that follows them throughout their journey) sends them into a wilderness much like Lear's banishment; finally, both works offer variations on the concept of "nothingness" (and its connection to Life), giving both a distinctive (albeit early) Existential quality.

I enjoyed this book although, for those readers expecting the "happy marriages" and bliss that conclude The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby, this is much more . . . um, well . . . solemn.

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Unbearable, indeed.

I can handle books that are "depressing." In fact, most (if not all) literature is at its essence rooted in tears and pain of some sort, anyway. But this novel beats 'em all.

That's not to suggest, however, that I necessarily disliked the book, or that I wouldn't recommend it. There are passages in Kundera that are beautifully rendered, and much of the philosophical flourishing will give the reader occasion to pause and consider how the notions apply to his/her own life. One of my favorites is early in the novel and, as it turns out, becomes the basis for the novel's themes:

"We can never know what we want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come [...] There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture [...] If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."

Some of the book, however, left me feeling unfulfilled, and I sort of wonder if it had to do with the translation (Kundera is a Czech). Nevertheless, a colleague of mine *swears* by Kundera (and highly recommends his novel Immortality), while another friend said the film The Unbearable Lightness of Being is an excellent complement to the novel (i.e., each taken on its own is okay but, together, they inform each other . . . kinda like Pink Floyd's The Wall).

Either way, I've now read Milan Kundera. So much for that.

Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Frankly, I find it amazing that this book isn't more popular. Next to David Copperfield, this is one of my favorite Dickens novels. While Pickwick is just innocent fun and Oliver Twist is dark and foreboding, Nicholas Nickleby has a wide range of tones, from the sinister (during the Dotheboy's Hall chapters) to the amusing (with the Crummles family) to the melodramatic (Smike's scenes) to the psychologically thrilling (Ralph Nickleby's unravelling). Along the way, Dickens offers *just enough* social commentary to make his point without brow-beating the reader. And the characters! What delicious evil in Wackford Squeers and Sir Mulberry Hawk, what hilarity in Mr. John Browdie, and what nobility in Newman Noggs and the title character!

Yet, for all its good points, I'm still disappointed in Dickens's portrayal of female characters. With the exception of Nancy in Oliver Twist, I have yet to encounter a woman in Dickens who isn't, at best, a poorly developed outline of a character. Of course, this is a gripe that most scholars likewise have with his work and, as I continue to read my way through the Dickensian canon, I will hopefully find a female character worthy of praise.

My next Dickens outing: The Old Curiosity Shop.

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

Last year, I decided I would attempt to read the entire Dickens canon in chronological order, leisurely working my way through all sixteen novels (this is going to take me a few years, obviously). Pickwick (Dickens's first novel) is one that I had read several years ago on a summer lark, but it was wonderful to reread this work and "revisit an old friend," as it were.

The "story" tells of Mr. Pickwick, founder of the Pickwick Club, and his entourage of fellow club members -- Mr. Winkle, Mr. Snodgrass, and Mr. Tupman, as well as that masterpiece of comic creation, Sam Weller -- as they participate in adventures and misadventures in and around the English countryside circa 1837.

In terms of Dickensia, this is where it all began: the quirky characters, the festive inns, the wry social commentary, the linguistic perambulations, and the tidily resolved plot and subplots. But one of the things that I absolutely love about this novel is the unabashed fun Dickens was obviously having as he wrote it! If ever there were a book in which you could imagine the author chuckling to himself because of the hilarity of the dialogue or description he'd just written, it is this one. And while there are many books I would count as the funniest I've read (The Catcher in the Rye, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Catch-22, for example), their humor is ultimately eclipsed by a dark and threatening world vision. The world of Pickwick, however, is one of childish delights; nothing bad will ever really befall any of the characters, and somehow we readers know this. Pickwick is innocent fun amid the inns, coach stands, and gaming fields of 19th Century England, and the reader is momentarily transported to an era in which we can all act foolishly amongst friends, and all will be forgiven over sweetmeats and libations!

In some ways, then, this novel is both typical and atypical of Dickens. On the one hand, this novel has all the charm and warmth of a cozy English hearth -- a mood we tend to associate with Dickensian works (especially around the holidays). On the other, it has an unbridled "happiness" to which Dickens would never return (his next novel, in fact, would be the incredibly dark Oliver Twist). This is another reason I especially like Pickwick: it's a pleasant anomaly within the Dickens canon.

This novel is pure fun. Enjoy!