"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.