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)

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

. . . will be tomorrow.

Today I am turning in my term paper for English 678, returning my NIU library books, and attending the last class session of my Master's degree.

Today is Jack's last day at Theresa's house, the babysitter who has watched him since he was four weeks old.

In a couple of weeks I will begin to teach 8th American History for the first time.

On that same day, I will begin to teach college Composition as an adjunct instructor for the first time.

In a couple of weeks, my three-year-old will start at a new babysitter's house.

At the end of this month, he will begin attending preschool, where he will have his first cubby, his first nametag, his first teacher.

I am leaving behind the known world. Here goes nothin'.