in 52 Weeks
The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year. It runs from April to March (this year was a travesty). Below is the 2007/2008 booklist. Other booklists are 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2006/2007, and the current booklist. Read on!
March...
38. The terror
Simmons, Dan
NY: Back Bay Books (Little, Brown and Co.), 2007
My father-in-law suggested this half-historical/half-horror novel from a Hugo award-winner. It reimagines the failed late-1800s Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage as a trespass on the far-north preserve of an evil Inuit spirit bear. Too long, with a too pat ending, but the cold was almost real, and there were some good set pieces in there, too.
January...
37. Musicophilia: tales of music and the brain
Sacks, Oliver
NY: Knopf, 2007
Mostly clinical reflections on neurology and music. Interesting, though, with a couple of fascinating pieces, like the Englishman who can't remember anything for longer than a second, except when playing or conducting music, or the peculiar musical genius of people with Williams Syndrome. Apparently, music involves such diffuse structures in the brain that it's almost impossible to kill our appreciation of and involvement with it, no matter injuries we sustain to our brains.
36. Hinds feet on high places
Hurnard, Hannah
Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1986 (1975)
A devotional allegory, which I appreciated more now than when I first read it a number of years ago. I wouldn't recommend this, though, unless you already love Jesus. I could be wrong.
35. Very Far North
Murphy, Timothy
London: The Waywiser Press, 2002
Poems from a farmer in the north-midwest. The first half is beautiful; the last bit, subtitled 'The Visitant,' is marred by searching, the poet struggling with and finally failing to free himself from obsessive self-infatuation. So, 3/5ths recommended, and especially the poem (not printed here) I noted at song from me.
December...
34. Tree of Smoke
Johnson, Denis
NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
Fantasmagoria of the Vietnam war, with such a mix of inner and outer devestation related in such pristine language I couldn't help agreeing with Chris Offutt on the dustcover: "Tree of Smoke is a masterpiece."
November...
33. Bridge of sighs
Russo, Richard
NY: Knopf, 2007
One of the drawbacks of keeping a reading diary is that I usually barely know what I think about a book when I have to write about it. This sprawling novel-slash-character study is about: poison, choosing love over passion, fooling yourself, forgiving yourself, art vs. artifice, race/class. It's a change of tone for Russo, and I think that while it's a step up from Empire Falls, he's still not nailed the synthesis of that book's more adult reach and his earlier unimpeachable comic tone. Or maybe I'm just older and I'm misremembering the greatness of his earlier books. But I don't think so.
32. My freshman year: what a professor learned by becoming a student
Nathan, Rebekah (pseud.)
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005
Reading this for a book discussion by a faculty fellow this December. An anthropology professor at an unnamed State University uses her sabbatical to do fieldwork at her own University, becoming a freshman for a year. Interesting parallels with Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice, regarding students' and administrations avowed commitment to community vs. their expectation of choice-as-means-of-individuality. Nice work if you can afford it.
31. The sportswriter
Ford, Richard
NY: Vintage, 1986
The first of a trilogy, ending with last (this?) years' The Lay of the Land. Independence Day, the middle child, won the Pulitzer. My godfather has been prodding me to read this, and Independence Day, for years. Concerns sportswriter Frank Bascombe's efforts to hold onto his sense of inner peace over a trying Easter weekend, after his son's death and his divorce. I'm working over and over this book in my mind -- it's like Ward Just's Forgetfulness in that I'm pretty sure it's great literature but it might be just slightly out of my reach.
October...
30. The shipping news
Proulx, E. Annie
NY: Scribner, 1993
A really good novel, teetering on the edge of sensational but landing firmly on the side of emotionally satisfying. A misfit in the modern United States learns how to be a whole person once he moves back to his ancestral home in a backwards fishing town in northern Canada. Some of the better "natural voice" dialog I've read; won the Pulitzer. Plus: wow, three female authors in two months! Maybe I've broken out of the old boys' club...
September...
29. An American childhood
Dillard, Annie
NY: Harper & Row, 1987
I appreciate the difficulty of the task -- remember your childhood, what your interior life was like, and be honest. The remembering is hard enough, but putting it into words? This is a rewarding memoir; she gives insights into her formation as a naturalist and a writer, and she doesn't coat it with sugar. Great POV here: what it's like to look out at the adult world from inside a child's head.
28. Perelandra
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples)
NY: Macmillan, 1968 (1944)
It's the Summer of Lewis. Read this if for nothing other than the monologue of praise that closes the book. Contained horrors that approached what I felt with The Road, and the supposition that Adam must have looked just like Jesus, which just sounds true (like so many of Lewis's suppositions -- I have to work hard to remember they're fiction).
27. Till we have faces: a myth retold
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples)
NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980 (1956)
Zena's favorite book. I've read it twice before, but I'm a dull sort, and it really took me until this time round to really get the full impact of the story. There's something powerful in Lewis's way with bringing every story into the One story, as I wrote last month. I think the coda was a little breathless, but I'm beginning more and more to admire Lewis as a writer of fiction.
26. Away
Bloom, Amy
NY: Random House, 2007
A review (can't recall which) pinned the protagonist, Lillian Leyb, as a completely new kind of woman in fiction -- something about her self-awareness, determinism, the way she launched on her quest... i don't remember, to be honest, because it didn't turn out to be true. But this is a glorious road novel, with great characters (and far too much sex). Lillian, immigrant survivor of a Russian pogrom, is doing what she can to survive New York in the 20s when she learns her 3-year-old daughter may also have survived and escaped to Siberia. Then the book starts cooking, as Lillian does whatever it takes to make it all the way north. Not for the squeamish, but it has its rewards.
August...
25. The paradox of choice: why more is less: how the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction
Schwartz, Barry
NY: HarperCollins, 2004
Lots of science about how and why we make decisions, and the counterintuitive findings about whether or not we'll be satisfied with our choices. Essentially, Schwartz argues it's better to make a good-enough choice than to push for the absolute best option, because while 'best' choice-makers get objectively better results, their subjective value is often much lower than that of the 'good enough' choice-makers. And subjective value translates into whether or not you're happy with your decision. Schwartz suggests a) making your decisions final -- no chance to back out, b) limiting your number of choices, and c) practicing gratitude for the things you already have. Which doesn't sound like a bad way to be.
24. The road
McCarthy, Cormac
NY: Knopf, 2006
I don't know how to do justice to this book. It's a meditation on the apocalypse that goes so deep I feared for Mr. McCarthy's state of mind. It's a horror novel so horrifying you won't sleep. He so completely imagines a world without hope of future life that it became real, even for days after I'd finished the novel. But populated with a pair of travelers bent on the future of their lives. So, a paradox. A really powerful book, especially in some of the details, like how man's depravity is magnified at the end of all things. Read this book, carefully.
23. Letter from Point Clear
McFarland, Dennis
NY: Henry Holt, 2007
The talent evidenced in The Music Room was no fluke - McFarland is the real deal. This moves slowly but surely towards "redemption" (as the book jacket promises), but not the way I expected, or wanted, exactly. Seems to concern the process of appreciating for the integrity of their personhood those you completely disagree with. Again, the dream sequences are the best in contemporary fiction, at least as I've read. Prince Edward is next.
22. Out of the silent planet
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples)
NY: Scribner Classics, 1996 (1943)
Tried to start a paperback copy of this book earlier this summer, but the dense text and dry first chapter did me in. This handsome, roomier edition, found on a friend's shelf, did the trick. Amazing that Lewis created not one but two entirely different and totally faithful mythologies of the one true story -- Narnia and Malacandra. I'm excited for Perelandra, which my friend Seth says is the best of the trilogy.
21. Freedom riders: 1961 and the struggle for racial justice
Arsenault, Raymond
NY: Oxford University Press, 2006
A break from Branch, for an in-depth look at one of the most compelling episodes from Parting the waters. Arsenault argues that the Freedom Rides were instrumental in drawing the federal government into enforcement of anti-segregation laws in the deep South. I still need to read At Canaan's edge, but this book points me to David Halberstam's chronicle of the Nashville student movement, The Children. Which should I read first?
July...
20. Ghostwritten
Mitchell, David
NY: Random House, 1999
Mitchell's debut is a vicious circle of character sketches that muses on the nature of sentience, the burden of responsibility towards your gods and other people, and the inter-connectedness of things. And if that sounds sticky, well let me say its a cracking-good adventure/suspense/sci-fi novel, too. With feeling.
19. Harry Potter and the deathly hallows
Rowling, J. K.
NY: Arthur A. Levine, 2007
This last book was both immensely satisfying, and too little, at the same time. It really felt like a culmination: pieces of every previous book played a crucial role in this one (along with more than one deus ex machina, but those have figured in Potter's story all along). My memory is dull, but I'm pretty certain all has been revealed. And there is a strong Christian allegory here, if you have eyes for it (ask me to talk about this after you've read it). You can safely recommend this series to generations to come -- it ends with a Return of the King, not a Phantom Menace.
18. The worst hard time: the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl
Egan, Timothy
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006
Nonfiction, audiobook, American history with which I was unfamiliar. The soil conservation program started at the end of this "greatest ecological disaster of the 20th century" is the only grassroots New Deal program still intact. But, I'm not sure I can do another nonfiction audiobook -- I think this would have been better for me if I hadn't had to listen to it.
17. Who is my enemy?: welcoming people the church rejects
Nathan, Rich
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002
The title is unfortunate, but Rich (senior pastor at a Columbus, Ohio church we love) aims his considerable rhetorical guns at us-and-them thinking in the church. He challenges Christians to rethink our positions and responsibilities toward (specifically) postmodernists, feminists, homosexuals, New Agers and liberals. In-or-out models are out (because nobody responds to being 'out'); centered-set thinking is in. A worthwhile read.
16. The prisoner of Guantánamo
Fesperman, Dan
NY: Knopf, 2006
A procedural, political thriller and spy novel rolled into one. Kind of run-of-the-mill.
15. Morning spy, evening spy
MacKinnon, Colin
NY: St. Martin's, 2006
You get two points for every spy novel in this year's Summer Reading Program. This saved its punch for the end, when the plot resolved into a lament for the worthless self-involved efforts of our intelligence community in the months leading up to 9/11. The details made this feel real, as if I were reading notes from the field and not a novel. You gotta hold on for the end, though.
June...
14. The third man
Greene, Graham
NY: Penguin Books, 1999 (1949)
I read this novella in order to write a book discussion guide for the Library. It probably worked better as the movie it was intended to be. There's some good descriptive writing in there, and some bad.
13. Soon I will be invincible
Grossman, Austin
NY: Pantheon Books, 2007
Come on, how can you resist that title? This has been done before (think Watchmen), but this one focuses on the supervillain: "When your laboratory explodes, lacing your body with a supercharged elixr, what do you do? You don't just lie there. You crawl out of the rubble, hideously scarred... you keep going. You keep trying to take over the world." Tries to put real human motivation behind the corny comic book lines, which makes it strangely touching.
12. Bulletproof AJAX
Keith, Jeremy
Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2007
This is a great primer from New Riders, with a standards-focused angle. Covers the basics, gives pointers for going further (Prototype.js, etc.). Stresses updating through the element.child model rather than innerHTML. Plus, its slim - no fat.
11. Absolute friends
Le Carré, John
NY: Little, Brown, 2003
A spy novel with a twist ending, and my second Le Carré. An ordinary Englishman falls into espionage for the camaraderie and ends up getting pwned. A little over-the-top, theory-wise, at the end... or is it? Good entertainment.
10. Falling man
DeLillo, Don
NY: Scribner, 2007
The buzz on this was that it's the first literary treatment of 9/11 to rise to the level of art, and DeLillo doesn't disappoint. The conceit -- that a survivor of the towers becomes, psychologically, a falling man -- seems too easy, but the execution is almost literally flawless. This is a great book, maybe a Great book.
9. Pillar of fire: America in the King years, 1963 - 65
Branch, Taylor
NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998
Part two of Branch's three part history, this brings in the stories of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, LBJ' presidency and the Civil Rights Bill, Bob Moses's breakdown, and culminates just before the Selma-to-Montgomery march. There's so much I didn't know...
May...
8. The plot against America
Roth, Philip
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004
Adult fiction about a past semi-fascist America where Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the Presidency and begins to implement arguably antisemitic programs to the detriment of young Philip Roth's family. The sustained tension is palpable, but the greatness of the book is in its many, many grace notes -- little moments of observation about life in these United States through the eyes of a Jewish 9-year-old. (Side note: this is the first book I've ever listened to on CD).
7. Rash
Hautman, Pete
NY: Simon and Schuster, 2006
YA ("Young Adult") fiction about a future semi-facist America where safety is the #1 concern to the detriment of free will or just being human (a la The Giver), and what happens to folks who can't control their tempers. Lots of prescient stuff and sophisticated touches, and Hautman never talks down to his audience. Good stuff - recommend this to reluctant-teen-boy-readers.
6. The reluctant fundamentalist
Hamid, Mohsin
Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2007
In which a Pakistani Princeton grad slowly comes to hate the America he loves, post-9/11. I don't know if Hamid's explanation for how the world comes to hate America is unique, but it makes for a good read. Extremely stylized voice (first person conversational narrative, reader plays the part of the unspeaking characer), lots of tension built out of atmosphere and anticipation, without any overt threat until the very end.
April...
5. Overclocked: stories of the future present
Doctorow, Cory
NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007
Infopunk sci-fi short stories. A diversion.
4. The astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation: Vol. 1: The pox party
Anderson, M. T.
Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006
Action packt! Astonishing! Detailing the madness of white men's attitudes towards their African slaves. With (fictionalized) firsthand accounts of the Revolutionary War. And the writing is exquisite! This is a fantastic novel -- and it's a serial! Can't wait for volume two...
3. A separate peace
Knowles, John
NY: Scribner, 2003 (1959)
The first time I started this, I thought it was pretentiously wordy and put it down. The second time, I wondered how I could have thought this! This is a devestating and tender book, and you'll probably recognize some aspect of your own twisted insides in the relationship between its main characters.
2. Letter to a Christian nation
Harris, Sam
NY: Knopf, 2006
I don't have a reasonable response to this book, except to say that Harris makes some fair criticisms of the crimes of Christians, and that I believe that Jesus is alive.
1. The stolen child
Donohue, Keith
NY: Nan A. Talese, 2006
It's about changelings, a meditative imaginition on how a the whole thing might really work and what it would really mean for both communities, hobgoblin and human. Hopefully I've satisfied my interest in fairytales for a while, because this was an overhyped debut.