"I Was Taught to Desire Nothing, to Swallow Other People's Misery, To Eat My Own Bitterness"

So while the snow comes down here in Detroit, it seemed like the perfect day to cuddle on the couch and finally finish  the damn Joy Luck Club. I have absolutely no excuses for why it took me 2 months to read The Joy Luck Club. I really very much enjoyed the interesting stories of all the different women, the dynamics of mothers and daughters, and it was tremendously well written. I just don't know what my deal was for this book. As I mentioned in the previous post, part of it was leaving too much time between picking the book up again. Every time, I would have to go sorting through the previous chapters to figure out which mother went with which daughter, and which story belonged to which woman. Which one was the chess champion, which one was the daughter of the concubine, which one was the one that was married and kept details of every penny she and her husband spent.?Thank goodness there was a match-up of character names before the story even started. I have a feeling that if I read the book straight through, I would be here ranting and raving about what an absolutely brilliant book I thought this was and how much I loved it. So I guess this time around, I spoiled the reading experience for myself. Whatareyougonnado?

The one thing that did very much fascinate me about the book, and where I found myself dog-earing pages, was in the interesting ways the Chinese women (predominantly the mothers) viewed things, in a way that is so very different from the way that I view things, or I think different from how most Westernized individuals view things. How throwing away leftover coffee means you're throwing your blessings away. How having thin ears close to your head means you cannot hear luck calling to you. How opening your bedroom windows at night would hopefully blow a spirit and heart back to you.

I know I can't appreciate, or really even understand many of these similar pieces of Chinese wisdom peppered throughout the book. It really is a foreign way of thinking to me that I can't grasp, probably because I was not raised believing in the same way and it is not a part of my own culture. I'm sure in many ways it is impossible to every really understand someone else's upbringing, their heritage, and how these things contribute to each individual and who they have become as a person. However, where this book seems to transcend any specific cultural norms, is in the basic idea that you are a result of the fabric of your family whether you like it or not. You can embrace a different way of life, or be ashamed of your culture or family, but it's still part of you. Maybe I'm just thinking in terms of my own family and the different twisting, turning paths all of our lives have taken, only to end up smack where we started, with each other's company and love, whether we try to fight it or not. I guess that's the most important thing that I'll take away from this book. And what a lucky girl I am to have all of the memorable, wonderful times with my family that I do. And especially to have the amazing, strong, insightful mother that I do as well. Worth the 2 months trudging through the book to at the very least be able to take that away.

So on I move to a new book. I'm taking a brief pause from my reading lists to a book that one of my co-workers gave to me to read. I know I previously mentioned that I'm not always a fan of taking book suggestions from other people, but I did give this particular co-worker a book to read that I recommended to her, so it doesn't rightly seem fair to not read what she gave to me. Plus, the writer, Davy Rothbart is locally from Ann Arbor, and my good friend Amy is also a big fan and has mentioned what a great book My Heart is an Idiot is. I'm a sucker for autobiographical humorous stories (obsess about David Sedaris and Dave Eggers much, Lisa? Plus, it's kind of strange that all of their names are different variations of the same...), so I suspect this book will be read in no time. Particularly if it keeps snowing the way it is now. Plus it was considered one of Amazon's best books of 2012. And as evidenced by the entire concept of this blog, I'm kinda a fan of book lists, can'tcha tell?

250 books left to go. Enjoy the rest of 2012!

"And Each Week We Could Hope to Be Lucky"

I've been very distracted and not so motivated to read lately. It happens. It comes and goes. Sometimes I'll fly right through books like crazy, and sometimes I just can't even pick up a book, even though it's short and tremendously entertaining. I dug right into The Joy Luck Club, but have stalled. Not for lack of interest, just eh. I don't know. Not getting around to it I guess. Plus, I keep forgetting where I left off and keep confusing the characters, so every time I pick it back up, I have to retrace who is who and what is going on.

But the holidays come around and usually that's all I want to do for 2 weeks straight is read. So I'm sure I'll get back on track then.

Progress: pg 149/288. I'll get it going, I swear.

Happy Sunday!

"The Horror! The Horror!"

You may think it in the Halloween spirit that the title of the post includes the word "horror", but it's actually one of the more iconic phrases in Heart of Darkness. Reflecting the realization of the narrator of the dispicable, awful ways Kurtz, a Belgian colonist gone mad, exploited and slaughtered natives in what is now known as the Congo. Nothing light-hearted (as perhaps the title might imply) or Halloween-y festive about it.

So to back up, the book I read actually contained 4 of Joseph Conrad's short stories: Youth, Heart of Darkness (which was a little over 100 pages, certainly not full-blown novel length), Amy Foster, and The Secret Sharer. Of those, I actually liked The Secret Sharer the best, mostly because it had kind of this surreal feeling to the story, from the plot to the writing. I actually questioned a few times whether the story was being told as actually occurring (a sailor who murdered another sailor on his own ship swims multiple miles to a nearby ship only to be concealed by the captain, who refers to the castaway as 'his second self') or if I was to believe that the castaway murderer was a figment of the captain's imagination/lunacy. There were so many things that seem implausible and odd. I just kind of enjoyed reading this story best.

But then for Heart of Darkness. I didn't really know anything about how European colonists exploited and decimated African cultures during colonization, although I don't know why I should expect it would be all that different than the same that occurred to Native Americans here. While I don't imgaine that forcefully claiming lands and peoples as part of your own country would happen peacefully, with all bunny rabbits and roses, I certainly didn't know about the horrific things that occurred. Particularly with Belgium and the Congo. Human heads on stakes? Check. Cutting off hands of those who didn't produce what was expected? Check.

I think that this kind of story should be required reading, lest we forget the evilness that can inhabit once good people in the pursuit of financial gains and power. While it happened a long time ago, it certainly doesn't feel like it couldn't happen today (or that it isn't currently happening today...I can't admit to being knowledgable about cultures and conflicts of the world).

Up next, a shift in focus to Amy Tan's, The Joy Luck Club. I need a serious break from books about ships, and sailing, and evil, and the sea. Between Moby Dick and these short stories by Joseph Conrad, I've spent like 8 months of this year reading about ships, so much that I'm pretty sure I could hop aboard a schooner and be a skipper for sure.

Progress: 251 books left to read.

"I Had Turned Loose Into The World Depraved Wretch Whose Delight was in Carnage and Misery"

I read Frankenstein about 3 or 4 years ago, and was astonished the entire time I was reading it at how the common story that we think we know about Frankenstein is not even close to the novel. No creepy mountainside castle. No lightning bolts. No bolts in the neck, no flat head or clunky shoes, no grunting. In fact, in the novel, Frankenstein was a highly intelligent being who thought, felt, and had very insightful monologues about human behavior. And Victor Frankenstein never actually said the phrase "It's Alive!" in the novel. The novel is so much more about abomination for people who are different and hideous and the warnings about trying to play God. It really isn't a horror novel at all.

So this morning, we caught part of the 1931 version of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, and it seems as though a lot of the misconceptions of the Frankenstein story stemmed from this version. The makeup artist on the film, Jack P. Pierce, actually came up with many of the now iconic features and characteristics (as a neat trivia tidbit, the monster's make-up design is under copyright to Universal until 2026). But that story, altered initially the first time, perpetuated, with the real story being lost somewhere in pop culture.

It definitely made me wonder how many books that are turned into movies really get the storyline that different that it suddenly becomes another story altogether. Of course Hollywood is a different beast and artistic license must often be used to make an often multiple-hundred page book work appropriately in a 110 minute film (what can we say? Our attention spans leave a little something to be desired). But when does it get it so off, and when does a movie become so popular, that one truth replaces another?

I'll be curious to see how this stacks up with reading Heart of Darkness and then watching Apocalypse Now. Again, I've heard that Apocalypse Now is "based" on Heart of Darkness but applied to a different setting. So I wonder how many people might hear that, then see the movie and just kind of gloss over it, and then assume that Heart of Darkness is a novel about a US army crew traveling into the jungle of Cambodia during the Vietnam war to retrieve an insane Green Beret? And how does a movie like Tropic Thunder feed into the misconceptions even more - a movie within a movie, based on the actual making of another movie based on a book? How do you even know what the real story is after a while? Should be interesting to tease out...

Progress on Heart of Darkness: slow. I'm only a few pages into the first short story, "Youth". But I have some more quality airplane time in the upcoming weeks that should help with moving things along. It is 2 days after my 33rd birthday in fact.

"As Poverty Brought Me In, So Avarice Kept Me In"

Reading Moll Flanders made me very glad that I live in the time that I do for 2 main reasons: 1) I have the ability to work, provide for myself, and live independently without relying on marrying, and 2) birth control.

So Moll Flanders was written by Daniel Defoe in 1722, but Moll herself indicates that the she wrote the narrative of her life in 1683, meaning the actual storyline was intended to occur from roughly 1620 to 1683, given the age Moll indicates she is toward the end of the book. However, nearly the entire time I was reading the book, I thought it took place in the mid-1800s, and kind of kept thinking, "Mmmmeh, having multiple husbands and a little whoring around couldn't have been that big of a deal in the mid-1800s. It wasn't that long ago." But when I actually got to the end and realized when it was set, I figured, "Ok, I suppose that's a little more scandalous than I thought."

I think reading this book in 2012 was an interesting exercise, particularly reading some of the scholarly commentary that accompanied the book at the time it was written that seemed to imply that this was a morally reprehensive novel, due to its descriptions (glorification?) of wickedness, dishonestly, and thievery. And probably because Moll is generally a pitiable character (and even kind of likeable, at least in my eyes) that it kind of makes the things she does seem acceptable, or at the very least forgivable given her circumstances.

And while her actions certainly weren't acceptable in the 1600s or even now, it's so very clear that the moral barometer has shifted quite significantly since then. Premarital sex? Affairs with a married man? It seems like these are common place these days. I kind of had to keep reminding myself what a huge deal it was for a woman to carry on and behave the way Moll did in the time it was set. And I'm sure that while the moralistic individuals who read the book in the 1700 and 1800s may have wanted to see Moll get the punishments she deserved, I was secretly rooting for her the whole time. But I won't reveal to you who would have been satisfied with how the book ended, the morally responsible individuals, or Lisa, the heathen.

So overall, I absolutely loved Moll Flanders. And not because of its progressive views towards women, but because it's just a good story, and told in a way that lures you in, and feels very real. I think Defoe was known for doing this very well - making fictional stories seem true. I'll see how true that is when I get around to Robinson Crusoe.  

In the meantime, it's on to Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. The book I bought was the Barnes and Nobel Classics version which actually includes a few other short fiction stories by Conrad. And because I'm weird like that, I have to read the damn thing cover to cover, including these other stories, the introduction, the timeline of Conrad's life, the commentary at the end, the discussion questions, the footnotes, all of it. I know, I'm strange. But I'm already looking forward to this book even though I'm only in the Introduction. And I'll be required to watch Apocolypse Now after I'm done reading it too (which I've never seen - **insert shocked, indignant gasp here**). Did you know it was based on Heart of Darkness? Because I didn't.

Lists have been updated. 252 books to go. And 10 days until my 33rd birthday. Have a rainy Tuesday.

"The Smoky Arrangement of a Set of Rumors"

So I've had 4 cross-country flights in the last 2 weeks which  has allowed me a lot of quality time to focus on reading while tuning out the bromance relationship therapy session going on in row 24 behind me or the increasingly intoxicated (and increasingly chatty) lady in seat 23E next to me. I flew through the rest of Tinkers and made it a good portion of the way through Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe. Positive progress!

I'm not one who usually takes book suggestions from people (I apologize to my sister Amy who gave me The Help like a year ago and it has been sitting on my bookshelf since then...great movie though). There's something pleasant to me about going into a bookstore with no idea in mind and rummaging around the tables and shelves, looking at covers, jackets, titles, reading the backs of books. There's something that feels organic about this process, like I'm finding something unique (I won't however, go into exploring the billion dollar industry behind crafting the covers and titles that contribute to me picking that book leading me to believe I found it all on my little own).

I'm thinking however, that I should probably start taking people's advice, because my own methods have not been leading me in the best direction, particularly to books with a very strong, and often disturbing, theme of death. Even when I don't really know what the book is about, or when I don't think the idea of death as written in the book will affect me as dramatically as it does. The last 4 non-list books that I've read (Tinkers, A Spot of Bother, The Unnamed, and The Road) have all left me reeling. The Road messed me up so much I've become a hoarder of canned goods and the option of building an underground bunker somewhere so I don't get eaten is still very much on the table.  

In my defense, when I bought Tinkers, there was actually no description of the storyline on the back or inside of the book, so it was a pretty blind purchase. The woman who rang me up actually asked me what the book was about and if it was supposed to be any good. "I don't know" felt like kind of a dumb answer. But the story of Tinkers centers around a man who is in his last few days of life, and while he is in hospice care in the living room of his own home with his family nearby, he remembers stories of his father (as well as some brilliantly written hallucinations).

It was the details of the last few days of his life in his home that were the punch in the gut, only because they hit close to home. And reading the details written by someone else that are so very similar to my experiences (particularly the pink lollipop sponges and just wanting him to drink water thinking that was the remedy) reminds me that so very many people have had such similar experiences with loved ones passing away. Which somehow makes my own experiences feel cliched and typical, and reminds me that so many of us will meet our ends in the exact same way.

While I'm not one to shy away from reading books that make me uncomfortable or that challenge me to face things that I may not always want to think about, I think I need to just take a little break from my overdose on heavy duty topics in the books I'm choosing to read. Smaller doses would be sufficient I think. So bring on the lighthearted, breezy ("Now she sounded breezy!") book recommendations please! I think I need them (but if you recommend 50 Shades of Grey I'm going to block you!).

I have 6 whole days off next week going up north, where the sole mission for the week is to do as little as humanly possible except for eating, drinking, reading, sitting in the sun, or any combination of the 4 (I see drinking + reading + sitting in the sun being a popular combination). So hopefully I'll finish Moll Flanders and move on (I think Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad will be up after that). Ciao.

Dog Days of Summer Olympics

I'll admit it. I've been horribly distracted by the Olympics. Those sneaky mofos at NBC have figured out the best algorithm for ensuring that you're tethered to your television from the entire hours of 8 pm to midnight. Lure you in, have some good stuff mixed in with the lesser known sports, hold off for the final showdowns until late in the evening, and before you now it, the whole night is blown. So unfortunately, reading has taken a backseat to sitting on the couch watching people kicking ass in sports (yes, instead of being out there actually kicking ass at doing sports).

Progress: pg 113/191 on Tinkers. Hope to have it done by the end of the weekend. If I can prevent getting roped into track and field. But that damn steeplechase will lure me in every time! I'll keep my fingers crossed and my tv off.

"Towards Thee I Roll, Thou All-Destroying But Unconquering Whale"

It took me over 6 months to read Moby Dick. And I spent a good portion of that time while not reading Moby Dick, complaining about reading Moby Dick (public apology to those of you on the receiving end of that. That couldn’t have been fun for you). I suppose one approach to writing a novel is to learn everything there is to possibly know about one specific subject (say for example….ooohhh, I don’t know, maybe….whales?) and then write 589 pages all about what you’ve learned about said subject. But back in my day these were called textbooks. Or, maybe you can write 569 pages all about your new favorite subject and then squeeze in 20 pages of storyline and call it a novel. But alas, Herman Melville beat me to the punch on this wickedly brilliant idea for how to write a book.

But that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the book. I loved the obsessive, monomaniacal Ahab and his crazy monologues, and how all the other sailors on the Pequod just jumped on board with the pact to kill the white whale in a frenzied mob mentality, dooming themselves to a decision they couldn’t go back on. And I loved the singular evilness of the enigmatic Moby Dick. For as little as you saw him in the actual book, by the time you get to his first actual appearance on page 562, he’s already cemented in your mind as one bad mamajama. And Queequeg is such a strange, badass character, that I just dug him right off the bat, sharpened cannibal teeth and all.

So I did enjoy all that. But allllllll of the other stuff in between….well, let’s just say I did my best. But while I was cuddled in bed under the covers, and supposed to be reading about the most accurate depictions of whales in wood-carvings, or the physicality of a sperm whale’s skin, I would find my drifting thoughts along the lines of, “I wonder if my avocados will still be good enough to put in my salad tomorrow”, or “Wow, I really need to dust my nightstand.” And I’m sure that Herman Melville tackled his beloved topic with vim and vigor and loved writing every painfully long chapter. But alas, I didn't necessarily love reading every chapter. But I can at least appreciate the function of all the chapters as a whole and how every possible discipline was examined to try to understand whales.

So while I wouldn't necessarily give the book to raving, crazy thumbs up, it's worth the read to understand the infamous story of the great white whale. I do however, have the 1956 version of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck in my sites to watch in the near future to compare notes. Somehow I think I'm going to dig the movie more than reading about whale anatomy for 6 months. I'm just guessing.

At Home With My Excel Spreadsheet and a Calculator

So I realize that at first glance, you might be thinking, how hard can it be to read a bunch of books in a few years? You may wonder why I'm making such a big deal about this. Well, get you calculator out kids, flex your inner mathlete and let's do some calculations, shall we??

You may not have noticed, but there are 4 links on the righthand side of the page that include my 4 book lists, with which books in each list I've read so far crossed out in red. And while, yes, there are 4 lists, there are not actually 400 books to read. There are some books that appear on multiple lists (and if I was smart I would do those first to maximize my mileage out of each book, right??), so technically across the 4 lists, there are 326 unique books. So far, I've read 38, 32, 20, and 18 books across the 4 lists, but that actually only represents 73 unique books. Meaning, drum roll please....I have 253 books left to read. So that's roughly 36 books per year, so about 3 books per month.

AND, because some writers are so gosh darn sneaky, there are a few entries on each list that actually represent multiple books. Yeah, I'm talking to you John Dos Passos with your triology or YOU Anthony Powell with your 12 (!!!) book series.

So it is looking like a daunting task, yes? And again, for my own sanity's sake, I have to mix up  reading classic stuff with current fiction, so I can have some time away to actually want to pick up a lit classic again. So maybe I'm being a bit ambitious. Or maybe I'm condeming my eyesight to hell for the next 7 years. Or maybe it's the crack. But either way, I should probably be getting my nose back in the book rather than making trying to count books in Excel spreadsheets. So off I go.

BTW, I have also added a link on the right for the book I'm currently reading. Right now, it's the Pulitzer Prize winner from 2010, Tinkers, by Paul Harding. Should be a quick read...only 195 pages. And they're little-ish pages. With kinda big font. I'm encouraged. To work I go.

"How Many a Man has Dated a New Era in His Life from the Reading of a Book"

In 2002, it started as a heated discussion with friends about why women are never typically acknowledged as being “the best” in their respective fields, with the discussion initially focusing on music and movies, and centering around “Best Of” lists. Lists like the American Film Institute, Rolling Stone 100 greatest artistsof all time etc, are always gender-centric (2 women in the top 40? Fo' real??). We eventually moved on to books and we had pulled out some examples from the web to support this hypothesis.

Gender issues however, are totally and completely not the point of this blog. While I could blather on here about my feelings about gender inequality, I’m the first to admit that I’m neither qualified nor well-versed enough to do the discussion justice. But the direction that initial conversation took me that has changed my life has to do with books and reading. And book lists. Ahh, the book list.

The “Best Of” book lists that we landed on during the course of the discussion:

• The100 Greatest Works of Literature by Inteliquest seemed to be the benchmark that we initially found. The greatest, most incredible words ever put to paper throughout all time, whether they be the world’s most celebrated playwrights, novelists, deep thinkers, or even one from an unknown author (think bad Angelia Jolie movie). These are the benchmarks that have stood the test of time as the most stunning examples of literature.
• TheModern Library’s list of 100 Best Novels, all primarily from the 20th century (focusing on the board’s list, because seeing “Atlas Shrugged”, “Fountainhead”, and “Battlefield Earth” at the top of the reader’s list already told me that there weren’t necessarily sound, legit reasons for the selection of the list contents). As much as I loved the old school (like really old school) stuff, I kind of wanted a barometer for more recent literature. And mostly wanted to see some titles that I actually recognized and could relate to the content.
• And for comparison to another list based on 20th century modern literature, we pulled the Radcliffe List, which apparently the Radcliffe Publishing Course compiled at the request of the Modern Library editorial board.
• And then for good measure, we of course had to see if anything existed focusing exclusively on female works, which led us to Feminista!'s list of the 100 Great 20th Century Works by Women. This list was apparently assembled in response to the Modern Library list and the lack of the century's most celebrated writers (who happened to be women). This list is not ranked and only includes 1 work by each author.

I have no idea where in the world of book experts these lists fall. Any lit scholar would probably scoff at my choices and say “Ha, you should go with list Blahbitty Blah because that is clearly the standard of determining fine literature.” (This would certainly be said with an overly haughty voice by a bearded man, likely while smoking a pipe. Or waving said pipe about in the air with a superior air of knowing more than I do about the realm of literature). And there is inherent subjectivity in any “Best of” list. While I’m sure that VH1 is certainly knowledgeable enough to come up with the 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s, the fact that there are many artists on the list that had way more than one hit (c'mon, XTC alone has like, 3 I can name off the top of my head) shows that any list can be flawed and open to criticism.

But somehow these were the lists that made it to my awareness and that were stamped into my sphere of consciousness. And these somehow were the lists that I printed 10 years ago and have diligently saved in a turquoise plastic, see-through file folder for 10 years of my life. These are the lists that I check, and re-check every time I go to the bookstore. The lists that are worn with being flipped through so many times. I have kept these lists and nearly all of my reading decisions and books that now adorn my bookshelves over the last 10 years have been based on these.

And so a bit about me. I have zero formal literature education, aside from 2 classes I took as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. One was a 20th century literature class and one was a class about psychologically-compelling novels (including Kafka, Madame Bovary, and Oedipus, with a little Freud thrown in for good measure). I always grew up loving to read. When I was little, my mom would take me and my sister to the Troy Library where we were a part of their “Cool Cats” reading program for kids. And I think I did once win coupons to Pizza Hut for having read a certain number of books. And maybe incentivizing reading wasn’t a good way to get a child to read (sometimes when I finish a book, I often find myself craving pizza…), but it did cement the joy of exploring books into the firmament of who I am. So while no one gave me a diploma saying that I am an expert in literature, I almost prefer it that way. I like to think that I can read things with a slightly intellectual slant while still just enjoying it for what it is and not getting all smarty pants on it.

So then what is the goal of this blog?? Throughout the years, I have been slowly making my way through reading all of the books on my 4 collective book lists. I’d like to re-emphasize the word slowly. And not slowly because of time limitations, but because I just can’t read old school books exclusively without wanting to speak in old English, or start wearing petticoats, or in general feel caught in a time warp that makes me start to loathe reading. So I’ve generally rotated between the classic literature on my lists and current literature. Which effectively doubles the time it takes to read all of the books. So my goal (saying it out loud, here in print to now be held accountable) is to read all the remaining books by the time I’m 40 (t-minus 7 years and 2 months). So this blog will be an odyssey of me plodding through all of these books and documenting my progress, thoughts on the individual books, and any other random related thoughts (I can see the movie remake of many of these books to feature prominently as a topic as well).

So feel free to stay tuned if you have any interest in tracking my progress or hearing the ramblings about books (I promise it won’t be book-clubby rants!).

Coming tomorrow: exactly how much crack have I been smoking to think I can finish these all in 7 years.