The Final Tally

Obviously, due to the drop-off in number of items added to the list and of postings posted over the last three months, life has been busy. Teaching is a job to love for the holidays and summers off, but it is a relentless beast during the actual working days. Even though it's break, I spent the last two days grading papers. I do, however, have a couple of books to add to the List, therefore completing it for 2011.

Books I've read this year

1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
2. White Noise by Don DeLillo
3. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
4. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
5. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson
6. Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney
7. Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
8. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
9. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
10. Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
11. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
12. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
13. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
14. The Story of Avis by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
15. Austenland by Shannon Hale
16. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares
17. Daisy Miller by Henry James
18. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
19. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
20. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
21. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
22. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
23. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
24. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
25. Bossypants by Tina Fey
26. The Group by Mary McCarthy
27. Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile McCoy
28. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
29. The House of Silk: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by Anthony Horowitz

So, I guess the grand total has to be 29. I was hoping for 40, but maybe in 2012!

Just for fun, a few of the YA books I read (though I can't say I honestly remember if this was all of them)

1. Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn
2. Peeled by Joan Bauer
3. One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies by Sonya Sones
4. Heist Society by Ally Carter

And, a preview of my to-read list for 2012:

1. The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (reading now)
2. His Last Bow by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Wildwood by Colin Meloy
4. Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
5. The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

Happy New Year!

My thoughts on religion

Keeping track, part three

I'm well on my way to thirty-plus books this year; actually, if you count the re-reads, I'm already at 29. Maybe I can make 40 books this year! That's not even counting the textbook I've had to read for the Composition class I teach, nor the numerous YA novels that I end up snacking on throughout the school year. 

Books I've read this year

1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
2. White Noise by Don DeLillo
3. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
4. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
5. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson
6. Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney
7. Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
8. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
9. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
10. Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
11. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
12. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
13. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
14. The Story of Avis by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
15. Austenland by Shannon Hale
16. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares
17. Daisy Miller by Henry James
18. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
19. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
20. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
21. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
22. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
23. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
24. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
25. Bossypants by Tina Fey
26. The Group by Mary McCarthy

Books I've re-read:

1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
2. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
3. The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Chestnutt

Updating the List

I don't have time right now to write a complete book review of the last three books I've read, but I so want to share.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Amusing, wry, and sometimes bittersweet look at the lives of international journalists, editors, and others who work at a newspaper in Rome. Interconnected vignette-style novel. Smart, enjoyable, but not particularly memorable.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Do not read this alone at Noodles and Co. if you don't want to laugh so hard that you spit Japanese Udon Noodles out through your nose onto your Kindle. That is all.

The Group by Mary McCarthy

Eight Vassar graduates in the early 1930's figure out life and love in New York. Unflinching, honest, daring portrayal of women's inner lives before we all over-shared on Facebook. Functions almost as a sociological text. First published in 1963. A fast read for how thick it is; also another interconnected-vignette style novel (that makes three within the last two months: Let the Great World Spin; The Imperfectionists; The Group. I guess this is my style!)

Three great quotes from The Group:

"In private, they often discussed her, like toys discussing their owner, and concluded that she was awfully inhuman."

"'Who was it said,' she added, twinkling, 'that his wife had a whim of iron? My father always quotes that when he has to give in to Mother.'"

"'I felt sure he'd been invited and was staying away on purpose and that everybody there knew that and was watching me out of the corner of their eye.'"

"'Your grammar, Dottie!' chided her mother, absently; her sky-blue eyes had clouded over."

Currently reading:

Though I may have to pause and pick it back up later - it's through inter-library loan, it's been renewed twice and is now overdue, and I've only read one of the stories in it. 

Axe Cop

This is a brilliant idea. This 29-year-old started writing down and illustrating the crazy stories his 5-year-old brother told. Like most brilliant ideas, simple. The result is hilarious.

http://axecop.com/index.php/achome/index/

Keeping track, updated

Books I've read this year

1. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
2. White Noise by Don DeLillo
3. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
4. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
5. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson
6. Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney
7. Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
8. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
9. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
10. Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
11. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
12. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
13. The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
14. The Story of Avis by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
15. Austenland by Shannon Hale
16. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares
17. Daisy Miller by Henry James
18. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
19. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
20. The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
21. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
22. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
23. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Books I've re-read:

1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
2. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
3. The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Chestnutt

Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin

title: Let the Great World Spin
author: Colum McCann
genre: novel
published: 2010 (paperback)
source: Kankakee Public Library (interlibrary loan), at the long-ago suggestion of my friend Jo
first line: "Those who saw him hushed."
rating: 5/5 stars



This book is remarkable. It's hard to write an original review of a National Book Award-winning book that has been critically lauded by the New York Times Book Review, Dave Eggers, and Frank McCourt, among others. What can I bring to the table, two years after its original release? So this is just my attempt to collect my thoughts. 


First of all, I've never read a novel by Colum McCann before. I think he's a genius. He wrote a post-9/11 novel that is set in 1974. Amazing. So many of the lines in the novel, especially descriptions of the Twin Towers, resonate in a haunting way, even without heavy-handed foreshadowing. Instead, McCann reminds us what New York is, was, and can be in the face of beauty and tragedy.


The organization of the novel is a mosaic of characters, moving through vignettes that eventually all connect. (Strangely, the novel I started immediately after this one, The Imperfectionists, functions in almost the same way.) Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3 are each composed of three stories each, set in 1974, punctuated between books by descriptions of the tightrope walker Phillippe Petit. Book 4 is the only one set after 9/11, and this is the book in which all the characters' stories intertwine. Though the characters range from an Irish monk to Bronx prostitutes to an upper-east side WASP, none of them ring false. McCann brings raw honesty and authenticity to all his characters, and even women narrators read true (something rare in men's writing, in my opinion). 


I unhesitatingly recommend this book to anyone. 


Some notable quotes:


"I gave them all of the truth and none of the honesty." (p. 303)


"Recklessness and freedom--how did they become a cocktail?" (p. 263)


"Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter--it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for." (p. 145)