What I'm Reading Now

"Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, struck a chord with readers. They responded to the intensely introspective nature of the books, and to their lively narrative styles and biting humor. One critic called Wally Lamb a "modern-day Dostoyevsky," whose characters struggle not only with their respective pasts, but with a "mocking, sadistic God" in whom they don't believe but to whom they turn, nevertheless, in times of trouble (New York Times).

In his new novel, The Hour I First Believed, Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work and embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity."

My Latest Listen

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Publisher: Recorded Books
Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins

"Sarah Waters, whose works set in Victorian England have awards and acclaim and have reinvigorated the genres of both historical and lesbian fiction, returns with a novel that marks a departure from nineteenth century and a spectacular leap forward in the career of this masterful storyteller. Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit liasons, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch tells the story of Londoners; three women and a young man with a past--whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in ways that are surprising and not always known to them. In wartime London, the women work--as ambulance drivers, ministry clerks, and building inspectors. There are feats of heroism, epic and quotidian, and tragedies both enormous and personal, but the emotional interiors of her characters Waters captures with absolute clarity and intimacy. Waters describes with perfect knowingness the taut composure of a rescue worker in the aftermath of a bombing, the idle longing of a young woman for her soldier lover, the peculiar thrill of a convict watching the sky ignite through the bars on his window, the hunger of a woman stalking the streets for encounter, and the panic of another who sees her love affair coming end. At the same time, Waters is in absolute control of a narrative that offers up subtle surprises and exquisite twists, even as it depicts the impact of grand historical events on individual lives."

Booking It--Illustrated

How do you feel about illustrations in your books? Graphs? Photos? Sketches?

Well, it depends. Illustrations in children's books are often the best part. And I'm not against illustrations in the fiction I read; however, they seem unnecessary--I already "see" the characters, the places, the events, in my head. My imagination is enough for me. In fact, sometimes an illustration is unsettling. I've read books before and then later run across an illustrated edition only to be quite disturbed because the illustrations didn't match the pictures in my mind.

As far as non-fiction goes, sometimes graphs, charts, and photos can help me conceptualize the author's ideas, but I've never bought a book on the basis of whether or not it's illustrated.

What Women (Should) Read?

These are the top 100 Books Every Woman Should Read, at least according to More.com. See what you think.

Kate Chopin's The Awakening is #1. Pride and Prejudice doesn't show up until #4. Something must be wrong here.

Your Vote Counts

Want to help choose The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction winner? You can place your vote HERE and enter your email address to win two tickets to the National Book Awards ceremony on Nov. 18.

And the nominees are . . .

The Stories of John Cheever

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Collected Stories of William Faulkner

The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

I voted. But I don't vote and tell.

Fragmenting the Narrative World: Losing the Effectiveness of Story

Here's my paper proposal for the CSC:

Before the Enlightenment, the worldview of western civilization was fairly consistent, yet after the Age of Reason, it split into a Christian worldview and a naturalistic one, which further fragmented into existentialism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and so on. This fracturing is amply evident in the literature produced from the 18^th century onward. Most narratives are an attempt to tell the truth, or at least to explore some facet of it, but if western culture has removed God and ultimate truth as a unifying force, how else can one approach “story” but from fragmented identities—race, gender, ethnicity, or some other type of self-defined category? There must be some kind of drive, unifying force, or “truth” behind the narrative: Women are oppressed; African-Americans are oppressed; British imperialists commandeered our culture; God is dead.

Of course, not everyone abandoned a Christian worldview, and some only compromised. Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer calls this compromise the top story/bottom story dichotomy. Compromisers buy into a naturalistic worldview based on logic and reason for everyday life (the bottom story), and take a “leap” into the upper story when they want to practice their “faith.” Many believers are so conditioned by society that they are not even aware of the fragmentation, and non-believers are not threatened as long as believers leave faith in the upper story and don’t try to incorporate it into “real life.”

This paper will explore the effects of a dichotomized worldview on narrative—both how it shapes the narrative we choose to tell and how effectively we are able to tell it. Does a fragmented worldview cause us to move from a comprehensive approach to narrative to a fragmentary one? Does the existence of “Christian Fiction” as a genre mean that some have bought into this dichotomy as it applies to literature? Is there a bottom story—Fiction, and a top story—Christian Fiction? Does a synthesized worldview, whether consciously or unconsciously held, lead to writing Christian Fiction to compete in the multicultural marketplace of Chick Lit, African American Lit, Post-colonial Lit, Gay and Lesbian Lit, ad infinitum? Instead of “all truth being God’s truth,” a belief resulting in stories of real people grappling with real issues in a real world, do some Christians today feel they have to tell “Christian stories,” which are often sanitized and unrealistic? If we truly have a Christian worldview, will we choose to tell stories that incorporate all of life—spiritual and physical, good and evil, victory and defeat—in realistic ways?

And how does this fragmenting of narrative affect the role of literature as an exploration of truth, a pathway to God? Many authors of “Christian Fiction” look at their work as a form of personal evangelism, but is choosing to tell stories from this platform really effective? Is it not just preaching to the choir and reinforcing the idea of faith as separate from real life?

Now, all I have to do is write the thing! Any ideas to contribute? Suggestions will be duly considered, and if used, full credit will be given. :-D

Booking It--Like the Very First Time

What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?

What a great question! The problem is, I want to answer "Every book I've ever read and really loved." I'm definitely a re-reader. Great literature is so rich, so deep, so layered, that there's no way I can fully appreciate it with only one reading. But no matter how many times I re-read a great book, I never again get to experience the same wonderful sense of discovery that I felt during the first reading. I'm never again shocked by a plot twist, breathless at a new revelation, or blown away by an ending I never saw coming.

I think Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible is one. And Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. And Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. And Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. And Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. And Anita Shreve's The Weight of Water. And . . . You see the problem.

I can think of a lot of movies I'd love to see again for the first time, too.

First Lines, Final Installment

Here's the last 25 of the 100 Best First Lines:

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. � Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. � Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. � L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. � Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

80. Justice? You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. � William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. � J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. � Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." � Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. � John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. � James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. � William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. � Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. � Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

89. I am an American, Chicago born--Chicago, that somber city--and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. � Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. � Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. � John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. � Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. � Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. � Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person--a shy young man about of 19 years old--who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle--a journalist, fluent in five languages--who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man--a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school--that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen.--Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. � Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

97. He--for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it--was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. � Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. � David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. � Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. � Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Of course, you're wondering . . .

I know, I left you in suspense. “What book did she take with her?” is the question that kept you distracted at work yesterday. It robbed you of all sleep last night.

The answer? Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. It was his first novel and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1962 along with Catch-22 and The Moviegoer.

It received critical claim at publication, and the New York Times reviewed it as "beautifully crafted... a remarkable and deeply troubling book."

In 2005 the novel was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present.

William Styron, who once gave a reading of the novel's opening chapter at Boston University, called Revolutionary Road "a deft, ironic, beautiful novel that deserves to be a classic."

Kurt Vonnegut called it "The Great Gatsby of my time... one of the best books by a member of my generation."

Tennessee Williams also praised the book: "Here is more than fine writing; here is what, added to fine writing, makes a book come immediately, intensely and brilliantly alive. If more is needed to make a masterpiece in modern American fiction, I am sure I don't know what it is."

I’ll let you know what I think after I’ve finished it.

Going Global

Here are the top 20 global bestselling authors:

1. Khaled Hosseini

2. Stieg Larsson

3. Ken Follett

4. Stephenie Meyer

5. Muriel Barbery

6. Carlos Ruiz Zafón

7. Anna Gavalda

8. John Grisham

9. J K Rowling

10. Henning Mankell

11. Alan Bennett

12. Jodi Picoult

13. Christopher Paolini

14. David Baldacci

15. Nicholas Sparks

16. Elizabeth George

17. Lauren Weisberger

18. Michael Connelly

19. Patricia D. Cornwell

20. Paulo Coelho

A couple of these authors—Hosseini and Cornwell-- are favorites of mine. I’ve read works by Grisham, Baldacci, Sparks, and George, there’s a Jodi Picoult novel on my nightstand, and as I mentioned on an earlier post, I plan on reading a series this summer. Perhaps it will be Meyers’ or Rowling’s. Ken Follett’s on my “must-read” list, but I have no plans for the rest of those guys. Maybe later?

Disagreeing with Dr. Johnson

I admire Samuel Johnson. I really do. A man who can compile a Dictionary of the English Language in seven years with exacting precision is hardly to be argued with. But I am today.

Dr. Johnson wrote:

Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are few, and being few are universally known; but few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself. All that verse can do is to help the memory, and delight the ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it supplies nothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple for fiction, and too majestick for ornament; to recommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere.

I don’t claim to have the analytical powers of Dr. Johnson, but I do have a few things to say in rebuttal: John Donne. George Herbert. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Christina Rosetti.

Have anything to add to the argument?

Booking It--Highlights

It’s an old question, but a good one . . . What were your favorite books this year?

List as many as you like … fiction, non-fiction, mystery, romance, science-fiction, business, travel, cookbooks … whatever the category. But, really, we’re all dying to know. What books were the highlight of your reading year in 2008?

Here are mine, in no particular order:

Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns
Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees
Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth
Mary Ann Schaeffer and Annie Barrow’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
Naomi Shihab Nye’s Fuel
Sarah Waters’ Affinity
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones
Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Ranier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet
Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water
Charlotte Brontë’s Villette
Jane Spencer’s The Rise of the Woman Novelist from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen
Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women
Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel

If you read a book this year that you’d like to recommend, please share it here. Maybe it’ll make my Highlights list in 2009.

Gleanings from My Readings

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
---Jane Austen, in Persuasion

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“Few of us have the temperament of monks. Most of us draw sustenance from the human drama. We might recognize the tremulous signals emanating from some invisible inner universe, but most of us see no choice but to live in the world, to engage in commerce, to seek delight in people and things around us. Perhaps when we knock wood to preserve our luck, what we’re really doing is convincing ourselves of the solidity of the present, distinguishing the actual from the wishful.”
---Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette columnist

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Actual title of new workout video: Bollywood Booty. I’m not kidding. Not only will this video help you “stay fit and get firm,” it will also “help you release your inhibitions.” Isn’t that what everyone looks for in a workout?

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“To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. I don’t remember what I was like before I learned my ABC’s, but for as long as I can remember I have made them with my fingers and felt them in my bones.”

“I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies, and every time you write very unique, or “We will hire whomever is more qualified,” thousands of literate people lose yet another smidgen of hope. And please promise me you will never lose your grip on the subjunctive.”

---Ray Blount, Jr., in the Introduction to Alphabet Juice

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“The problem with God—or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God—is that He or She rarely answers right away. It can take days, weeks. Some people seem to understand this—that life and change take time. . . . I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.”
---Anne Lamott, from Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

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John Donne’s “A Hymn to God the Father” (1633):

I.
WILT Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sins their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallow'd in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done;

For I have more.


III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by Thyself that at my death Thy Son

Shall shine as He shines now and heretofore:

And having done that, Thou hast done;

I fear no more.

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Happy Reading!

Feel the Shame

I’m in a group of intelligent people, enjoying the conversation, the banter, the witty repartee, when suddenly it happens. Someone in the group mentions one of THOSE BOOKS. You know, one of THE ONES I SHOULD HAVE READ. I grow quiet. It takes only a few seconds to discover that EVERYONE ELSE in the group has read THIS BOOK. My chest tightens, my stomach begins to ache, I feel my face begin to flush.

I’m at work. Colleagues gather in the hall, talking, laughing. Suddenly the conversation is about one of THOSE BOOKS. I cringe inwardly.

A colleague stops by my office. We begin to chat, to talk about something a student said, a class, a current project. “You’ve read THAT BOOK, right?” I’m asked. “No,” I’m forced to admit. I feel the shame.

Now I’m not talking about the latest best seller or some obscure book that one reads because it’s in her concentration area but no one else would be expected to be familiar with. I’m not talking about eighteenth century philosophy texts or the latest book on deconstruction theory. I’m talking about one of THOSE BOOKS—a literary classic that I should have read, wished I’d read, meant to have read, don’t know why I haven’t read, am embarrassed I haven’t read, even though I’ve been reading all my life.

I have no idea how these particular novels have slipped through the cracks. For really long ones, I think it’s because it’s hard to find a big enough chunk of time to devote exclusively to it. But whatever the reason, I’ve been whittling away slowly on my list. Last summer, I read Les Miserables (yes, the unabridged version). The summer before, I read Nobokov’s Lolita. This summer, I read Tom Jones and Tristram Shandy. Surely they count, even if they were on my comps list.

Here’s a list of some of the books I feel I should have read but haven’t yet:

1. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
2. George Eliot’s Middlemarch
3. William Faulkner’s Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying
4. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange
5. Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged
6. James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
7. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses
8. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov
9. Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie
10. Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
11. Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago
12. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
13. Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
14. Willa Cather’s My Antonia
15. Joseph Heller’s Catch 22

Prior to this, my list has existed pretty much only in my head, so I’m sure that after pushing that magical “Post” button I’ll think of some I wish I’d included.

Okay. Time to ‘fess up. What are you embarrassed that you haven’t read?

Aren't Yours?

McCarthy-ism

I read. A lot. Reading is my job; it’s my homework; and it’s my hobby. And I read widely—fiction and nonfiction, classic literature and best sellers, crime fiction and books of poetry, memoirs and essay collections. That much reading translates into a pretty long list of books read. So how can this happen?

Every year Kane Webb, a columnist for the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, writes an article I eagerly anticipate—a “Best Books of 20??” column. He chooses people he knows who are “reading addicts with interesting taste” and asks them this question:

“What was the best book you read [this year]? And why? It doesn’t have to be new, just new to you. Re-readings don’t count—unless you can make a great case.”

The column was long. It took up good-sized chunks of two pages and the whole back page of the Perspective section. And you know how many of the selected books I’d read? Two. Only two.

That’s depressing.

Of course, the brighter side is that I now have several books to add to my “must read” list. And one of those in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Two people selected it as their Best Novel and it popped up on quite a few of the “Also Recommended” lists. One reader, who’s also an English Professor, declared that this “relentless” novel caused him to “have to re-write his lectures on plot structure,” and the other said that, as soon as he finished the novel, he wanted to reread it. In fact, he says he often picks the book up just to reread the first sentence. That sounds like a book worth reading to me.

Booking It--Wish List

This week’s book questions are especially appropriate for the holiday shopping season. Post your answers, and maybe someone will take the subtle hint.

1. What’s on your book/reading wish list?
2. What books are you giving this year?

#1—I’d seem greedy if I listed all the books I actually wanted, so here are a few:
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (You’ll hear why tomorrow)
Billy Collins’ Ballistics
Stephen King’s Just After Sunset
Maya Angelou’s Letter to My Daughter
Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food

#2—I’m not telling! Everybody I’d buy a book for reads this blog.

Sunday Funnies