in 52 Weeks
The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year. It runs from April to March. Below is the 2006/2007 booklist. Other booklists are 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2007/2008, and the current booklist. Read on!
March...
52. Life together: a discussion of Christian fellowship
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich
NY: Harper & Row, 1954
Another reflection on the psalms! Well, and other things, like what Christian community is and isn't. Bonhoeffer points out that the Psalter is, in more than one way, the prayerbook of Jesus, and that only Jesus can safely pray them all. Also that the Body of Christ is not a social utopia, and those who expect such do not desire what Jesus offers. And a great encouragement to pray at night (devotions at night! what a novel idea!).
51. The giver
Lowry, Lois
NY: Bantam, 1993
Newbery award-winning modern children's classic about a future without without any real emotion and so, no pain. One child gets a unique chance to experience both, and wakes to the fact that his former life without danger is actually a kind of slavery. There are few school-age children today who haven't read this. If you have children in your orbit, you might give it a go.
50. Of mice and men
Steinbeck, John, 1902-1968
NY: Penguin, 1993 (1937)
No, I never read this book in high school. Similar to when I finally broke down and listened to OK Computer: for years people said, "this is great," and I never paid much attention. Now I've read it, I see what they mean. There's a lot of power in this story. I'm completely creeped out by what it says about the developmentally delayed, though: that it's just about impossible for them to live in the company of typical folks. "The burden's too heavy, we can't carry it." I pray against this vision of humanity. Really.
49. The year 1000: what life was like at the turn of the first millennium
Lacey, Robert and Danny Danziger
NY: Little, Brown, 1999
A short, sweet little trifle about what life in "Engla-lond" was like in the year 1000. Women had more power than I expected. A little bit of everything in there, from monks to kings, to farmers to warriors, and a lot about how they prayed and how they wrote poetry.
48. Reflections on the Psalms
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples)
NY: Harcourt, (1958)
In which Lewis reflects on the Psalms. So, if you find any stirring of the blood at "Lewis" or at "Psalms," you hardly need my recommendation. Or, if not, let me not commend these to you in advance of your caring. "I address those who already believe [Christ], or those who are ready, while reading, to 'suspend their disbelief.' A man can't always be defending the truth..."
47. The Jesus I never knew
Yancey, Philip
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995
An examination of Jesus as if Yancey were there in Palestine 2000 years ago yields some good insights, especially the passage on the Kingdom of God (tempering views of the Kingdom as an invasion with views of the Kingdom as a willful weakness, like a mustard seed), and Yancey's realization that the Ascension is harder on his faith than the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. This is a good book to revisit every once in a while (this is my first revisitation).
46. Nonviolence: twenty-five lessons from the history of a dangerous idea
Kurlansky, Mark
NY: Modern Library, 2006
With lessons such as "a propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings," and "wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military," this book is really more about being against war than about the history of the idea of nonviolence -- that unique form of protest that combines activism against injustice with a refusal to strike back against reprisals brought against that activism. And really, I sense, it's more about being against the war in Iraq than about being against war. So, it had its moments. It's just not the book I thought I was going to be reading. But listen: nonviolence is a moral argument, and if you don't capitulate to violence, you will always win that argument. And what's more, nonviolence as a form of successful protest rests on the radical idea that truth and justice have power all their own, which cannot be overcome by force. So, that's kinda cool...
February...
45. The unquenchable worshipper: coming back to the heart of worship
Redman, Matt
Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2001
Uneven but still valuable look at the nature of worship from one of the more gifted worship songwriters today. Redman doesn't seem to know if he wants his book to be a guide for worshipers, for worship leaders, or simply a semi-memoir, and he mixes it up in each of ten chapters deliniating another aspect of worship.
44. Brunelleschi's dome: how a renaissance genius reinvented architecture
King, Ross
NY: Penguin Books, 2000
This is the first book in my "sprint to the finish," which I lifted from my mom's bookcase strictly based on its attractive cover and its slim size. Turns out it's an enjoyable little description of the design and construction of the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral in Florence in the early 1400s, at the cusp of the Renaissance. Brunelleschi's advances in architecture resulted in the elevation of the art in the popular mind, as well as this dome, the largest of its kind ever constructed (before or since). As a concentrated depiction of a specific project, it recalled Cork boat (from year one) in my mind, though I liked this one far better than that self-centered little volume.
43. Parting the waters: America in the King years 1954-1963
Branch, Taylor
NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988
First in a three-part history of the civil rights era. I wouldn't hesitate to say this book is essential reading if you're white and you were born after 1970. I certainly needed it: a narrative description of the racial attitudes prevalent just 40 years ago. It's mindblowing. And its feeling for King and what made him tick, and the passions and lives of those on the front lines of the civil rights movement, comes across with such clarity -- it brought me to tears, numerous times. Thrilling, devestating.
42. The ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories
Clarke, Susanna
NY: Bloomsbury, 2006
Another book of magical short stories, this time by the author of note-perfect debut Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Quite simply put, these are nothing more than fairytales, written with strict deference to established style, tone and content traditions. They remind me of the feelings I had reading similar stories as a child (Russian folk-tales in particular), and I'm always astounded when writers successfully adopt the voice of a bygone era (Clarke only stumbles once or twice in this effort). Pleasant, peculiar and eerie, and if you're into this sort of thing you shouldn't miss it.
41. St. Lucy's home for girls raised by wolves
Russell, Karen
NY: Knopf, 2006
Quote-unquote "Magical realism," but you won't feel the magic so much as the realism. This is a book of short stories with some dazzling surprises and some amazing writing. Each has a conceit, some slightly askew fundamental detail treated as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world -- that lycanthropy skips a generation, for instance (of course it does!), or that if you, say, married a minotaur and it were the 1800s, he'd pull the wagon when you headed West. I've already put you off this book, I can tell, but believe me this: you won't be sorry you read St. Lucy's. It's definitely top five for me, this year.
40. Forgetfulness
Just, Ward
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006
A painter loses his wife to terrorists, and struggles with his life in the aftermath. Except that this tells you nothing about the tone, pace, even the plot, really, of the book. This is the kind of subtle character study where I'm sure I've missed acres of meaning but I'm not sure where or how to find it. It did manage to be compelling even while very little actually happened. I'm not sure I'm doing much service to the book in this encapsulation. I bet you'd like it.
January...
39. The book of Samson
Maine, David
NY: St. Martins, 2006
I really look forward to a Maine novel. Here he reliably fleshes out the story of Samson and Delilah, conveying a sense of Samson's zealotry and hypocrisy, and God's faithfulness. Somehow, God both stays faithful to his promises to Samson and to his own righteousness at the same time, no mean feat. This is the least of his three novels, but you could do a lot worse.
December...
38. Survival in Auschwitz
Levi, Primo
NY: Touchstone, 1996 (1956)
Levi, an Italian Jew, was deported to Auschwitz in the last year of the war. This is (one of) his memoir(s) of his dehumanizing imprisonment. He's a master of the austere, well-crafted sentence. The world he describes: I have to keep reminding myself that it's real, because it has a quality of being so extreme as to seem like a novel. Though he survived, and reclaimed his humanity, the Nazi atrocity succeeded in destroying him: he committed suicide in 1987.
37. Team of rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln
Goodwin, Doris Kearns
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005
In which Lincoln, by strength of character, wins over his political and even his ideological enemies and makes them his strongest allies. What a great man; what a great book.
36. The Pilgrim's progress from this world to that which is to come
Bunyan, John
Dailylit.com, 2006 (1678)
I read this in installments, sent to my email daily by dailylit.com. It's an allegory of the journey of one Christian to the Heavenly Gates. I found parts of it encouraging, and parts of it resonated with what I know or intuit is true. And other parts suffered from the cultural distance of centuries, especially where strict morality seemed to overrule grace. But a classic, and I'm glad to have read it, and I could see myself reading it again in a few years.
November...
35. Motherless Brooklyn
Lethem, Jonathan
NY: Vintage, 1999
The Tourettic small-time underling of a small-time gangster sets out to find his boss's killer. More about life with Tourettes than life in the mob, with a great Zen vs. tourettes strain running throughout. A pleasant, short, very-interesting read -- groundbreaking? perhaps? but unfortunately I read Haddam's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time first, so I'd tasted this fruit before (both are worth a bite).
October...
34. Single and Single
Le Carré, John
NY: Scribner, 1999
I'm so taken with the idea that I may have finally become a genre reader. It's my ticket to enjoying popular fiction! So I'm trying Le Carré, and I chose this at random. Some report that this is the best of his recent fiction. I was slightly disappointed (some of the creative narrative prose muddied the book for me), but the story/character aspect was very strong and he's got an appealingly British voice. And, again, the spy stuff was great. A good leisure read.
33. Cloudsplitter
Banks, Russell
NY: HarperCollins, 1998
This one took all of September and more to read. Come out the other side feeling like I've participated in something important. Fictional account of the life of John Brown, told by his only surviving son, who has grown up morally and emotionally stunted in the massive, dark shadow of his father's religious fervor and abolitionist fury. Can't do it justice in a paragraph, but on top of the pleasure of story, there's the sense of it being a true writer's accomplishment, something of which Banks is probably justly proud.
32. The crying of lot 49
Pynchon, Thomas
NY: Harper & Row (Perennial Library), 1990 (1965)
DFW is often compared favorably to Pynchon, and this is his shortest (though the hardcore types stand by National Book Award winner Gravity's Rainbow). Erudite and wandering, every sentence contains new information, the prose requires effort but offers more-than-sufficient rewards. The plot concerns a thick plot, and is thick, in a good way. "Anti-confluential," if you know what that means. I intend to read more.
September...
31. A Christmas memory; One Christmas; and, The Thanksgiving visitor
Capote, Truman
NY: Random House (Modern Library), 1996 (1956, 1982, 1967)
Touching short stories, these should hardly count as a book, the volume is so slim. My first Capote: in which Capote learns the lessons of grace from his cousin Miss Sook. Like Oscar Wilde: I get an icky feeling from him, but his stories are often really sweet. "Heavy as forty fat pirates," that's a sample of the prose. Oh, and one of my homebound patrons loaned this to me because she likes Capote, so it's a case of reverse librarianship, the Librarian borrowing from the Patron. Not much more to say about it.
30. The year of magical thinking
Didion, Joan
NY: Knopf, 2005
The year in consideration follows her husband's death, after 40 earlier years of marriage. The magical thinking in which she engages has to do with believing that she can bring him back by doing certain things and avoiding doing certain other things. It's good, to have a talented writer turn her eye on death and tell us, thoughtfully, what she sees. Didion sees, with some courage, that she is naked, fragile and incomplete without her husband and that this is unlikely to change in the forseeable future. She sees no answers: at one point she comments to a close friend, a doctor, that she "just can't see the upside in this." He later explains that this amused him, since he understood that she meant "the light at the end of the tunnel," but he recognized her mental and emotional state and why it might cause her to say the other. She confides to us, "I had meant pretty much exactly what I said: I couldn't see the upside in this." And yet she has the presence of mind to provide an upside for you, for me, the reader: a preview of the inevitable for many of us, to lose loved ones, even husbands or wives. Hopefully I'll recognize that state in myself, magical thinking, if it happens, if I ever get there.
29. To own a dragon: reflections on growing up without a father
Miller, Don and John MacMurray
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2006
Well, Don is hilarious and very very easy to read, and this is a subject close to where I live. Plus he has a disarming way of slipping some insight into God's person and character into his otherwise unassuming memoir material.
28. The great omission: reclaiming Jesus's essential teachings on discipleship
Willard, Dallas
San Franscisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006
Dallas gathers some twenty or so different pieces, speeches, essays, etc. from his recent work to say, relentlessly and efficiently, that discipleship to Jesus is not (as most Christians believe today) optional, nor is it out of reach for the everyday follower of Jesus. Go do what he taught you to do. Be his disciple, and then teach others to be his disciples. Learn from Jesus how to live your life as he would live it if he were you.
27. The quiet American
Greene, Graham
NY: Random House (Modern Library Ed.), 1992 (1955)
McCarry's bookjackets named Greene as the only better writer in the genre. This actually transcends the genre: not a spy novel in the fantastic, extravagant sense. Rougher, more believable, grounded entirely in the real world and its history. Maybe not a spy novel at all, but a powerful allegory about American and British imperial/colonial relations with Vietnam and our ways of seeing, claiming, abusing and abandoning her. With some lovely moments and some regrettably misogynistic and underdeveloped female characterizations. Still and all...
26. The tears of Autumn
McCarry, Charles
Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2005 (1974)
Can't stop. Not only do I really like this guy, I find myself thinking, "I wonder what John Le Carré is like?" This could be the first genre - literate spy novels - I've ever fallen for. McCarry does this thing where he introduces situations and characters without any preamble, so that you're set off balance and need to work to figure out who double-crossed who. Lots of fun! Plus, the book-jacket testimonials are off the hook ("There is no better American spy novelist," Lev Grossman in Time magazine), and Tears of Autumn is supposed to be his best novel (it deals with the Kennedy assassination). (PS - While I was finding out who killed Kennedy, Zena was finishing Doris Goodwin's Team of Rivals, reading about Abe Lincoln's assassination. Coincidence?)
25. Terrorist
Updike, John
NY: Knopf, 2006
So I've read the manly-men now: Mailer, Wolfe, Roth, Updike. This was a page-turner with a compelling failure of an ending, tense and metallic. But David Foster Wallace (in an essay in Consider the Lobster, an aborted read from earlier this year which concentrated with a little too much verité on the depravity of pornography), who really likes Updike, warns that he's afflicted with literary priapism, and on the strength of this one read, he is. Which is a count against him: it's like forcing yourself to listen politely to an old lech. And, too, I had the running sense of the MA Oldboy underneath the Islamic Fundamentalist Teen, or rather, the MAOB trying to tell me what the IFT would think or do or say, and probably the MAOB's POV and an actual terrorist's POV are wildly different. I have no way of answering the question, "Are Updike's powers of imagination and his ethic of research strong enough to trust in his vision of the interior life of his Arab American character?" Should have read Rabbit, Run.
August...
24. Ella Minnow Pea
Dunn, Mark
San Francisco, CA: MacAdam/Cage, 2001
This is a cute cautionary tale about the dangers of... something. Take your pick: religious fanatacism, facism disguised as theocracy, censorship, absolute power corrupting absolutely. All worthy of caution. Not my favorite book ever.
23. The prop
Hautman, Pete
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006
This was a page-turner of a mystery, set in the world of Native American casino poker. Maybe a little violent for my taste, but enjoyable. Hautman has an ear for dialogue and a heart for characters.
22. The last supper
McCarry, Charles
Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2006 (1983)
Another cracking good spy story featuring the super-human Paul Christopher. Better (by a hair) than Old Boys, the follow-up from 2004 that brought McCarry out of retirement.
21. Oscar and Lucinda
Carey, Peter
NY: Harper & Row, 1988
Eight tenths of this book is an exquisite character study, pitting our better and baser natures against each other in the person of a gambling-addicted priest. Twenty percent is a plot-driven race (literally) to the finish. Everything I've read by this author is worth it, and this is no exception.
July...
20. The orchid thief
Orlean, Susan
NY: Ballantine, 1998
Did you see Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper in Adaptation? I am persuaded of that movie's genius after reading this book. Orlean approaches a complex exploration of a man and an orchid theft and the orchid world by writing (at times beautifully) about her own exploration of that world and her reactions to it. And then Charlie Kaufman writes a movie about the book and takes exactly the same tack: the movie is about himself and his own exploration of the world of the book and his reactions to it and to the story in it.
Anyway, that's the thing. It's a fascinating story, but the hook is that Orlean is really writing about herself, so there's this metacommentary aspect to it that is maybe even more fascinating. You're fascinated by Orlean's fascination with (and her fascinating personal reactions to and observations about) this fascinating story. Its, uh, fascinating -- you could finish it in a week. Why don't you?
19. The music room
McFarland, Dennis
NY: Picador, 1990
It was the combination of jacket blurbs that made me pick this up. NYTBR said "a novel of almost organic integrity" on the cover, while Eudora Welty and Walker Percy contributed accolades to the back. Let me take a quick look down the list... yes, this is the best book I've read so far this year. The first-person narrative is so natural as to seem almost uncreated, like it just existed and McFarland found it and wrote his name on it. The treatment of his themes, of personal woundedness and redemption, is unclichéd. The details, dozens of them -- he throws away details that other writers would spend weeks conceiving. The best dream sequences I've read in I can't remember how long. Unreservedly recommended.
18. Branded: the buying and selling of teenagers
Quart, Alissa
Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2003
It occurred to me too late that the book I'd intended to find and read was Naomi Klein's No Logo, but no matter. This was a marginally engaging exploration of teen life in the new millennium, arguing that kids self-image and identity are essentially at the mercy of corporate branding: no brand, no currency in the new social economy. Quart's examples are a little expansive -- in her view, even anti-branded teens are essentially imprisoned by the branding architecture. And the book fell apart a little at the end. But it's a compelling proposition, and one that you already know in your gut is essentially true. Poor kids.
17. Seven lies
Lasdun, James
NY: W. W. Norton, 2005
Reviews said this was masterful. It presents like a thriller, but the real kick here is Lasdun's eagle eye for the truth inside a self-deceiving liar, and his "compulsively readable" prose (he's easily among the better practitioners). You could do a lot worse for a one-week read.
16. Salt: a world history
Kurlansky, Mark
NY: Penguin, 2003 (c.2002)
The history of the world... of salt. Also, mainly, fish. Very interesting read, goes down easy. Plus, I learned two things I've actively wondered about but never investigated: what exactly is a salt? (a: the stable compound formed when a base, which is missing an electron in its outer valence, meets an acid and shares the acid's extra electron); and what is a caper? (a: the pickled bud of the Capparis spinosa, or cat's claw).
15. A taxonomy of Barnacles
Niederhoffer, Galt
NY: St. Martin's Press, 2006
A snappy character study, comedy of manners, love letter to New York, romance (ultimately). Kind of like Salinger meets Oscar Wilde meets Woody Allen and they all decide to write offbeat chick lit together. It took on too many topics for its own good, but that didn't make it exactly bad. Fun but flawed, maybe.
June...
14. I am legend
Matheson, Richard
Garden City, NY: Nelson Doubleday, 1954
Horror vampire classic. I picked it up serendipitously while weeding the Ms. Eh.
13. Atticus
Hansen, Ron
NY: HarperCollins, 1996
This is a masterful character study, mystery and redemption story about a wayward son and his grief-stricken father that brought tears to my eyes. Those kinds of stories often do, but this one did it with style and an extra depth of grace. I highly recommend it.
12. The book thief
Zusak, Markus
NY: Knopf, 2006
Playful language, cynical tone, set in Germany in the time leading up to and including WWII. About a girl whose discovery of reading carries her through the peculiar horrors of being a German with a conscience during Nazi hysteria. This one has a certain kind of inventive language that's interesting, but not exactly rigorous craft, which makes it a little disappointing. But Zusak does beautifully with allowing his characters to dictate the story, which I get the impression is hard to do well. Narrated by a particularly well-and-newly-imagined Death.
11. Black Swan Green
Mitchell, David
NY: Random House, 2006
It's just the story of a boy in England in the 80's, trying to make it from 12 to 14 with his reputation intact, and weathering the crumbling of his parents' marriage. But it's also one of the most genuinely engaging, thought-provoking and pleasant bildungsromans I've read: better than The shadow of the wind, better than The highest tide, better than Small town odds, Extremely loud..., The ha-ha, all those finely plotted stories about boys growing up you've read, this is better. (But not better than Housekeeping. But that was girls growing up).
May...
10. The irresistible revolution: living as an ordinary radical
Claiborne, Shane
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006
Claiborne does one of the better jobs recently of transmitting the excitement of a vision of Christian living that's more than the status quo. You might get a taste by visiting http://www.thesimpleway.org/, but I'd read the book, too.
9. Oblivion
Wallace, David Foster
NY: Little, Brown, 2004
DFW nails it every time, the human condition, in this collection of short stories. By nails, I mean he's dead on target, and by it, I mean the absolute necessity and infinite difficulty of expressing the interior life so that one might be truly known in this world. That the human condition is also, in many ways, the human tragedy.
8. Everyman
Roth, Philip
NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2006
In which an existentialist lives into his seventies and then dies (the death being the point of the novel), having made little of his ordinary life and taking little pleasure in that which he has made. Roth's achingly precise characterization puts the lie to his fellow being Everyman, excepting that we all die. Crystal (crystal!) clear writing, but what a downer.
7. Theft: a love story
Carey, Peter
NY: Knopf, 2006
Two nobodies steal the exclusivity of art away from the upper class. If that sounds a little too much like an idea and not enough like a story, well, you need to read Peter Carey. He sure has his way with words, and his characters are fully realized in an economy of space that makes the feat seem like magic. Don't let the pedestrian cover (by Chip Kidd!) scare you away.
6. The great influenza: the epic story of the deadliest plague in history
Barry, John M.
NY: Viking, 2004
After Myla Goldberg's Wickett's Remedy, I was curious to know more about the influenza epidemic of 1918. This is a solid history, with some fascinating explorations of the lives of medical scientists and the work they did during the epidemic (no one cured or even really alleviated influenza, but they did identify it, and one scientist's work on pneumonia led to the discovery of DNA). As a read, it's a little disjointed, and Barry's labors to create tension ring a little false. But the subject itself is interesting enough to keep the book afloat, and an epilogue addressing the current influenza fears brings the whole thing to a (scary) point.
April...
5. The life all around me by Ellen Foster
Gibbons, Kaye
Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006
The continuing adventures of Ellen Foster. If you liked Ellen -- and how could you not? that voice! -- you'd be hard put to dislike her triumph over adversity here. The scene with her schoolmates is worth the whole (slim) volume.
4. The right stuff
Wolfe, Tom
NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983 (1979)
Okay, this is more like it. Fascinating exposition on the Mercury program and its seven astronauts, and what made them -- and the rest of the test pilots of the era -- tick (hint: not the wrong stuff). All in a hyperactive vernacular that makes it impossible to put down. John Glenn, by his mere presence, makes a stroke-felled Joe Kennedy weep uncontrollably from his one good eye. Wow.
3. The gospel of the kingdom: popular expositions on the kingdom of God
Ladd, George Eldon
Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978 (1959)
This is (part of) the theology that drives the church of which I am a part. The basic idea: read "kingdom of god" as "the rule of god; god's effective rule or reign," rather than "a specific place, a geography; the country of god." astounding.
2. I am Charlotte Simmons
Wolfe, Tom
NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004
I'd always intended to read Tom Wolfe. I struggled through this morass on the strength of his cult of personality. Ugh. I'm going to give him one more try (The Right Stuff), but please, don't (bother to) read this book. That's all I'm going to say.
1. The darling
Banks, Russell
NY: HarperCollins, 2004
Banks creates an American "darling," the privileged daughter of New England elite, and inserts her into the story of Liberia's bloody descent into madness, tying her and her children integrally into the lives of the major players. This is an interesting alternate window into recent African history, and worth an afternoon or two.