Only a few hours away from the end of the year now. Tough year for me, and I think for most people generally. Perhaps not the best year to start blogging about one's mundane reading habits, especially since it took this one so long to actually finish a book. And, truth be told, I only completed reading 24 books. Still, that was an improvement over the previous year, so I have made some headway. I started the year with A. S. Byatt's Possession and ended with Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which makes me seem like some cozy Victoriana nerd, but the year also had some Philip K. Dick (A Scanner Darkly), David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and Justin Cronin's vampire apocalypse epic The Passage. I also read some Richard Yates, J. D. Salinger, and a lesser Dumas work. Jumping all around, as is my usual.
If all works out, my first book of 2011 will be Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and it seems to be a good read so far. I've managed to get about 60 pages in in roughly a day, so I am hoping to capitalize on that momentum. I have fond memories of the time when getting 100 pages from the end of a book meant that there is a good chance I would finish it that night, but that was in the carefree days before I had much internet access. And no podcasts, either, which tend to occupy my train rides.
So, what is the book-related resolution for my 2011? I could tackle one of the 1000+ page doorstops in my possession: Infinite Jest, A Suitable Boy, A Glastonbury Romance, or second stabs at War and Peace, and Les Miserables (actually, that would be third stabs, on both). Maybe I should just try to work in an extra book a month, and shoot for 36 over this year's 24. Maybe it should be page related-get a certain page count per day.
Maybe I should make decisions like this before I post...
Anyway, see you in 2011. It will be better than 2010, I know it will.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Seasonal Read-Fall Edition
The following was a post that actually began early in the month of October, before all hell broke loose. I decided to finish it belatedly to prove that I actually did have something planned, and also, hey, it was almost done, and deleting it didn't seem the thing. Maybe it will do some good here. Otherwise, consider it housecleaning.
For the longest time, I used to celebrate Halloween by reading a horror or suspense novel. I do have a few on my shelf that might fill the necessity, but I'm wondering if I am even into the holiday that much anymore. It does have the advantage of happening in the middle of my favorite season, but my real enthusiasm for the holiday has waned, I guess. I will probably take my son out for some trick or treating, since we are in a good neighborhood for it, but he's not that into it yet, doesn't really get the significance of it other than the candy, so my chances of living vicariously through him are a bit slight. Maybe someday, that will change, but not just yet.
The obvious impulse has always in the past been to read a horror novel, or dark fantasy. I remember going through a good portion of The Stories of Ray Bradbury when that collection was first published, and Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Peter Straub books have filled the coveted Halloween slot in the past. I have a few stray books on the shelf that might fit, if I were to go that way this year, but the mojo isn't quite there as it once was.
I still will read a horror book on occasion. This summer, I read Justin Cronin's The Passage, mostly to see if a writer with 'literary cred" (U of Iowa Creative Writing Program, acclaimed mainstream work, shortlisted for PEN awards, stuff like that) could really add something to the genre, and the answer was, not really, at least in this case. It was entertaining enough, but it was just another genre fiction, neither better or worse than the average tale written by a journeyman horror writer. The insights were no deeper, the deaths no more poignant, the situations no more existential. Maybe the prose was slightly better than the norm, and maybe it was a bit more tasteful than the normal horror book, but then, taste is not necessarily a positive in the genre. It's rather like being the most polite wrestler.
For the longest time, I used to celebrate Halloween by reading a horror or suspense novel. I do have a few on my shelf that might fill the necessity, but I'm wondering if I am even into the holiday that much anymore. It does have the advantage of happening in the middle of my favorite season, but my real enthusiasm for the holiday has waned, I guess. I will probably take my son out for some trick or treating, since we are in a good neighborhood for it, but he's not that into it yet, doesn't really get the significance of it other than the candy, so my chances of living vicariously through him are a bit slight. Maybe someday, that will change, but not just yet.
The obvious impulse has always in the past been to read a horror novel, or dark fantasy. I remember going through a good portion of The Stories of Ray Bradbury when that collection was first published, and Stephen King, Dan Simmons, and Peter Straub books have filled the coveted Halloween slot in the past. I have a few stray books on the shelf that might fit, if I were to go that way this year, but the mojo isn't quite there as it once was.
I still will read a horror book on occasion. This summer, I read Justin Cronin's The Passage, mostly to see if a writer with 'literary cred" (U of Iowa Creative Writing Program, acclaimed mainstream work, shortlisted for PEN awards, stuff like that) could really add something to the genre, and the answer was, not really, at least in this case. It was entertaining enough, but it was just another genre fiction, neither better or worse than the average tale written by a journeyman horror writer. The insights were no deeper, the deaths no more poignant, the situations no more existential. Maybe the prose was slightly better than the norm, and maybe it was a bit more tasteful than the normal horror book, but then, taste is not necessarily a positive in the genre. It's rather like being the most polite wrestler.
In anticipation of the Coen Brothers' "True Grit"
I've never read True Grit. Of course, growing up as a child in the 70's, the image of a craggy, eye-patched John Wayne was a fairly identifiable piece of pop-culture iconography. I grew up with tv and movie westerns, Gunsmoke, the Big Valley, Bonanza, the John Ford/Wayne canon, spaghetti westerns, all pretty much until Star Wars and Close Encounters in 1977 knocked me headlong into science fiction and fantasy worship.
Perhaps it's my age (likely). Perhaps it's some growing conservatism (less likely), but more likely, it is a response to my decade of living in New York City and the pace, and perhaps the lack of an identifiable horizon. I think I'm longing for a time where you got somewhere when you got there, and the rides, though they be long, held the promise of a boarding house to get cleaned up, a saloon to take a drink, and maybe a town to save from a black hatted gunslinger. I'm not fooling myself that the times were any simpler or less problematic than our own, but I revel in the escapism, and the western is the closest we in the US come to having our own Illiad and Odyssey.
Perhaps it's my age (likely). Perhaps it's some growing conservatism (less likely), but more likely, it is a response to my decade of living in New York City and the pace, and perhaps the lack of an identifiable horizon. I think I'm longing for a time where you got somewhere when you got there, and the rides, though they be long, held the promise of a boarding house to get cleaned up, a saloon to take a drink, and maybe a town to save from a black hatted gunslinger. I'm not fooling myself that the times were any simpler or less problematic than our own, but I revel in the escapism, and the western is the closest we in the US come to having our own Illiad and Odyssey.
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