book list

I used to list the books I had read at the end of every year. I still do, handwritten, but I haven't posted such lists here in a while.

So, here goes. My 2018 reading list, sotto voce, in ejaculatio praecox form, if you will:

1.  Debriefing: Collected Stories by Susan Sontag, edited by Benjamin Taylor
2. Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow 
3. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
4.  Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
5. A Live Coal in the Sea by Madeleine L'Engle
6. A Legacy of Spies by John le Carre
7. Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey by Stephen Kuusisto
8. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
9. Does It Fart? The Definitive Guide to Animal Flatulence by Nick Caruso and Dani Rabaiotti; illustrated by Ethan Kocak
10. The Informer by Craig Nova
11. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
12. The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth
13. The Fig Eater by Jody Shields
14. My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley
15. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 by Francine Prose
16. This Is It by Alan Watts
17. Haiku: This Other World by Richard Wright
18. The Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser
19. The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carre

... and counting.

hear ye, hear ye

Did town criers really say "hear ye, hear ye"?

And did they ever weep, or did "cry" always refer to voice volume?

As for me?

Read all about it; or rather read all of it.

My latest book.

My ninth: Journey to the End of Love: In Search of Leonard Cohen -- and My Self.

author! author!

Here is authorial click bait: a one-source venue for buying or browsing any or all of my six books.

Or if you prefer something more overt and blatant:

http://amzn.to/1TwAn5o

Thanks for browsing, buying, mulling, sharing, seeking, or any other gerund you want to add.

seeing the signs

Seeing the Signs.

That's the title of my latest book, available at Amazon.com.

It is almost entirely a compilation of stuff written here over several years.

are you sleeping?

I sometimes have this perhaps unhealthy hankering to make money effortlessly while I sleep. Or while awake but still effortlessly. I imagine: you do too. To a degree. So, if you are inclined to aid me in this dream, goal, hankering, vision, fantasy, or reality, these links will help you (no, none of them are spam or malware or anything like that; that's how the clever or amoral or immoral folks make money while they sleep):

http://bit.ly/1dGlbfp

http://amzn.to/1iP9Hd9

http://amzn.to/1fxLyWN

http://amzn.to/R67mQ7

http://amzn.to/SH5yPu 

http://amzn.to/Z3Wse1 

http://amzn.to/YSBIEb 

Thank you.

Pleasant dreams.

 

garage sale: yes, we have no bananas

But we do have books, high-brow, low-brow, no-brow, pulp, pop, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, biography, spiritual, you-name-it. We put some books out for the annual Tipperary Hill Neighborhood Association garage sale. Also put out a few bicycles, a scooter, a hula hoop [should that be capped, as a brand name? Too lazy to look]. Sold the bikes, for $7 and $10 respectively. Sold some books, 10 for 10 bucks hardcover, 50 cents or best offer for paperbacks. (I typically worked out a deal for less. Just want to clear space on my shelves.) One young fella, Yankees fan, from down the street on Tipp Hill, came back to talk to me. I had given him a postcard promoting TIPP HILL LITANIES, my poetry book about Tipp Hill. He was all excited. He said he had heard me on the radio last year, on "Upon Further Review," talking about my baseball book. I happened to have a copy on the step. BASEBALL'S STARRY NIGHT. He bought one. I signed it. Good day.

2012 Book List

It's a tiny bit late, but here is my annual list of books I have read. For no reason other than I've been writing my OWN books, the list is a little shorter this year. I could claim the list is briefer because I have one or two monster-long books, but that wouldn't work. I typically have one or two monster-long books. Here goes:

1. The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century -- Jim Kaplan

2.  Wait Till Next Year -- Doris Kearns Goodwin

3. The Odds: A Love Story -- Stewart O'Nan

4. The Great Leader -- Jim Harrison

5. Just Kids -- Patti Smith

6. The Hunger Games -- Suzanne Collins

7. Cutting for Stone -- Abraham Verghese

8. Ignorance: How It Drives Science -- Stuart Firestein

9. A Pirate for Life -- Steve Blass

10. Canada -- Richard Ford

11. The Juju Rules, or How to Win Ballgames from Your Couch -- Hart Seely

12. You & Me -- Padgett Powell

13. The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger -- Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston

What are you reading?

While Supplies Last

Supplies.

As in ink and paper, and bits and bytes.

http://amzn.to/H4pSof

Digital order-takers digitally standing by.

my eagerly awaited annual list of books read

Books I Read in 2011 *

1. The Convict and Other Stories by James Lee Burke
2. The Turnaround by George Pelecanos
3. The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell
4. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
5. Spring's Third Day by Laura Gross
6. Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
7. Grendel by John Gardner
8. Jesus Freak: feeding/healing/raising the dead by Sara Miles
9. Zombie Haiku by Ryan Mecum
10. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
11. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
12. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
13. A Band of Misfits: tales of the 2010 San Francisco Giants by Andrew Baggarly
14. Music Through the Floor: stories by Eric Puchner

* give or take some hours to allow for Mayan-Gregorian-Julian-Hallmark calendar adjustments

drawing nigh

the end of the year approaches
which means my list of Books Read
white and blue
coming soon to
a theater near you
coo-coo-ca-choo

My Annual Book List

According to his Confessions, which I confess I really have not read, Saint Augustine was converted upon hearing these words chanted: "Tolle lege," or "Take up and read." Of course, the book he picked up and read was the Bible (he randomly read a passage in Romans).

Not so dramatically, in an annual tradition, here are the books I read for 2010:

1. The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner
2. The Humbling, by Philip Roth
3. Scroogenomics, by Joel Waldfogel
4. Halloween Through Twenty Centuries, by Ralph and Adelin Linton
5. The Vanished Hands, by Robert Wilson
6. The Body Artist, by Don DeLillo
7. The Farmer's Daughter, by Jim Harrison
8. Point Omega, by Don DeLillo
9. Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend, by James S. Hirsch
10. Bone Fire, by Mark Spragg
11. The Pregnant Widow, by Martin Amis
12. Homer & Langley, by E.L. Doctorow
13. The Unnamed, by Joshua Ferris
14. Words for Empty and Words for Full, by Bob Hicok
15. Fame, by Daniel Kehlmann
16. Letting Go of the Words: writing web content that works, by Janice (Ginny) Redish
17. Ralph McGill: Reporter, by Harold H. Martin
18. Our Kind of Traitor, by John le Carre

I'm Just Wild About Harry

The New York Times Room for Debate blog asked people about books they'd discard, and books they could not live without. That sort of thing.

Someone who signed his name as "Harry" wrote this:

I Am the Book

There was a time, and it was quite a long time, in which I amassed books. What the wise heads nod are good books, daring books, deep books, great books. I read some, merely read from others. Some entered my bloodstream, others were a bore, but I kept on building my paper empire. Now, the question is not which ones to discard, since I’m the book, complete with spine and gray frontispiece, that will be discarded or remaindered, as the case may be, before very long. (Imagination dead. Imagine.) I once joked to a friend that my goal was to be the best-read skull in the ossuary. To an acquaintance who asked me if I read for pleasure, I replied by asking him if, as a devout Catholic, he prayed for pleasure. Between those extremities I’ve run my course as a reader. Now pious, now insolent; now real, now sham. One day soon, I’ll select the best of my books, and lay them out, for my grave clothes.

— Harry

I was bowled over by this. Knocked me out. In the wake of my own recent posting about books read in 2009, it made me ponder books and self and life and death.

Thanks, Harry. Whoever you are.

2009 Book List

Books that I read in 2009:

1. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
2. Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
3. John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
4. Rabbit Remembered by John Updike*
5. Fool by Christopher Moore
6. Take This Bread by Sara Miles
7. The English Major by Jim Harrison
8. Indignation by Philip Roth
9. A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre
10. Lush Life by Richard Price
11. Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen
12. Stone's Fall by Iain Pears
13. The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great by Ray Bennett, M.D.
14. Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss
15. Suites by Federico Garcia Lorca
16. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
17. This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace
18. Searches & Seizures: Three Novellas by Stanley Elkin
19. Sixty Poems by Charles Simic
20. Good Hearts by Reynolds Price
21. Willie's Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend by John Klima
    

* you might say this is 3.5 because it is from John Updike's Licks of Love collection; wanted to reread portions

About half fiction and half non-fiction this year. Two poetry collections. Some irreverent stuff; some reverent. Some more than 800 pages; some very, very short.

I showed you mine; now show me yours.

'This Is Water'

Bookstores grant me a galvanic pleasure bordering on the manic, or the erotic, or both. I want to draw in the delight of delicious words: by digestion, in morsels or by the mouthful; by injection; by osmosis, by obsessive-compulsive-disorder savant memory; by paper or electronic note taking. I am the kid in the candy shop with eyes as big as donuts.

Tonight I borrowed from the shelves a collection of W.S. Merwin poetry, a collection of poetry by Amber Tamblyn (Bang Ditto), The Complete Works of Michel de Montaigne (Everyman Library edition), and This Is Water: Some Thoughts Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, by the late David Foster Wallace.

I sat down in the cafe and read some of Amber Tamblyn's poems. Very witty. Telling. Scathing. Confessional. I truly enjoyed one poem about hating haiku (not necessarily what you think) (actually, I read that while standing by the shelf, just as I earlier pored over Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity?, an apologia, as we used to say in Latin) as well as Amber Tamlyn's "Hate, A Love Poem," if I remember its title correctly.

But finances and time being what they are, I read David Foster Wallace's "manifesto" in one sitting. Was I borrowing? Or stealing? Rest assured, I felt little guilt. After all, I first encountered reading in a bookstore at City Lights Books, in San Francisco, in 1974. (You lie, Pawlie, or else why would you be writing about such issues?)

This Is Water is adapted from a commencement address David Foster Wallace gave in 2005 to the graduating class at Kenyon College. He never gave another such address, the book-jacket flap says. Someone decided to publish it, handsomely, after his death in 2008.

I had browsed through the book once before; this time I felt an urgent need to read through it. Not sure why.

And I freely confess I was rather floored by its title, This Is Water. [Some versions of this still float around the 'Net, but I felt better about linking you to a site for purchase of the "authentic" version of this pamphlet.]

Was it serendipity or unconscious connection to pick up this book, following on the heels of my last post, on water?

I once met David Foster Wallace very briefly, which is a semi-humorous story in itself for another time.

He died last year, a suicide. I found out about his tragic death after returning from a friend's wedding, in Ithaca, on a day that also happened to be my son's birthday (which is how I remember the exact day).

Many of those who eulogized David Foster Wallace (who happened to have Ithaca connections), this year and last, in The New Yorker, and on a PRI radio feature, spoke achingly of his gentleness and wit and understanding of American culture.

All of those things come through in this little gem of an essay, made all the more haunting and sad by its references to suicide.

I will not dare (or be so rude) to summarize This Is Water. I already feel like a cheapskate in not having bought it. I do not want to cheapen its message, or its delivery. (Not to say I can't buy This Is Water at some point, for myself or someone else or shave my head and give copies to pedestrians on South Salina Street.)

I can, however, report that I am glad I read it tonight, sitting in that cafe. Yes, it made me rueful (hey, if one can be rueful, can one also be rueless?). But it also made me a bit wiser.

Wrong word.

Attentive?

Braver?

Alive?

Aliver?

Booklist

It's not year's end, but we're nearly halfway there. Here's my running list of books read so far this year, in the order of completion (first listed being first completed):

1. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
2. Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
3. John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman
4. Rabbit Remembered by John Updike*
5. Fool by Christopher Moore
6. Take This Bread by Sara Miles
7. The English Major by Jim Harrison
8. Indignation by Philip Roth
9. A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre
10. Lush Life by Richard Price

* you might say this is 3.5 because it is from Updike's Licks of Love collection; wanted to reread portions

I showed you mine; now show me yours.

p.s. This is nothing, nothing at all. I am a literary micro-dwarf compared to my friend Bill S., who reads about 80 books a year. Being a retired engineer, he of course keeps a spreadsheet sortable by author, date, subject, category, etc. He tells me he even grades each completed book.

'Waterproofing Your Child' ?

And the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year is:

"The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais."

I'm slightly disappointed in that if I had known beforehand about this contest I might have wisely (or wickedly unwisely) submitted a title or two or three from the reports that cross my desk (actually, right now, my desk consists of a TV tray table upon which my laptop rests).

The shortlist included:

• "Curbside Consultation of the Colon" (pleasant alliteration, aye?)

• "The Large Sieve and Its Applications"

• "Strip and Knit with Style" (not what you think)

• "Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring"

As I say, my clients can gladly top these any day of the week, with gusto, if they so choose.

Nominees and winners from other years:

• "100 Years of British Retail Catering"
• "50 New Poodle Grooming Styles"
• "Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Nude Mice" (a winner, hands down, or by a tail)
• "Versailles: The View From Sweden" (one of my faves; a past winner; was Sarah Palin the author?)
• "Weeds in a Changing World"
• "Reusing Old Graves"
• "A Pictorial Book of Tongue Coatings"
• "Sex After Death"
• "Waterproofing Your Child"
• "Cheese Problems Solved"
• "People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It" (pardon me?)
  
• "Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers"
• "How to Avoid Huge Ships"

The Times made a big hahaha of several titles, including the last one, which I would find eminently practical were I a sailor on a little sailboat or skiff. A bit condescending of The New York Times, eh?

Carry on.

Laugh. Or...

Else.

Book List, Executive Branch Version

Speaking of book lists (see post of a few days ago), Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal column reveals that he and President Bush have had a yearly book-reading contest since New Year's Eve 2005.

And if Rove is to be believed (one would have healthy reason to be skeptical of anything these guys assert) their reading habits are if not prodigious at least substantial. Rove says he outdid the president each year, with Bush logging 95 books to Rove's 110 in the first year.

You can carp and quibble about their choices (more fiction, please; and some potent poetry, too; but, hey, The Stranger, by Albert Camus?!), and you can argue vehemently with their existential conclusions and lament loudly their decisions, but... but.... you've got to applaud the fact of reading.

Why do I say more fiction and more poetry? It's hard to explain, but true literature reveals, illuminates, pierces, shreds, unravels, sanctifies, enlightens, and translates reality in more and deeper ways that nonfiction never can.

Think King Lear. Or Hamlet. Or Julius Caesar. Or Macbeth. Or Richard III.

I stand by my list of 22, though.

Book 'em: We Are Listing, But Not Listless

In what has become an annual rite, here is my list of books read in 2008, in the order of my having read them. I know the year is not over, but I won't finish Netherland by Joseph O'Neill until sometime in 2009. You are invited to share lists of your own, publicly or privately.

1. The Lay of the Land. Richard Ford. Fiction. I place it in the top ranks of any year. A journey through the modern American landscape, especially the interior landscape of the older American white male. Yes, he has a soul.

2. The Quick of It. Eamon Grennan. Poetry.

3. Born Standing Up. Steve Martin. Autobiography.

4. Returning to Earth. Jim Harrison. Fiction.

5. A Three Dog Life. Abigail Thomas. Memoir. (Yes, Mark Murphy, I would have added a hyphen to the title.)

6. What the Gospels Meant. Garry Wills. Nonfiction. Erudite and excellent. Readable.

7. Three Days to Never. Tim Powers. Fiction. (Powers is one of son's favorites.)

8. Then We Came to the End. Joshua Ferris. Fiction. Bought in paperback at a fine bookstore in Potsdam, Germany. Catch-22 goes to the office. A book about people losing their jobs, the right book at the right time, for me.

9. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. Adam Nicolson. Nonfiction. Scholarly and hugely entertaining.

10. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Kate Di Camillo. Fiction. It can be rewarding to share reading with your children (which is also true for numbers 7 and 3; or with one's spouse, number 5).

11. The Unknown Terrorist. Richard Flanagan. Fiction.

12. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Roddy Doyle. Fiction. Touching, and unbearably sad.

13. The Hidden Assassins. Robert Wilson. Fiction.

14. Once Upon a Fastball. Bob Mitchell. Fiction. Rewarding.

15. After Dark. Haruki Murakami. Fiction. Murakami. What else to say? (Read first by my daughter, who has become a fan.)

16. Skin Deep. E.M. Crane. Fiction.

17. Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini. Nonfiction.

18. A Step From Death. Larry Woiwode. Memoir.

19. One Good Turn. Kate Atkinson. Fiction.

20. Supreme Courtship. Christopher Buckley. Fiction. I met his dad, William F. Buckley Jr., when "Christo" was around 12, at his home. He surely does not remember.

21. What Jesus Meant. Garry Wills. Again, Wills is so great. Unconventional and intelligent.

22. Holidays on Ice. David Sedaris. Fiction (some say nonfiction, but depends on the piece). Fresh after seeing him and meeting him at the Landmark Theatre, Syracuse. My kind of humor, for the most part.

The Year in Review, Literarily

Well, here's the year in review. Literally.

Or should I say "literarily"? (Yes, I should.) Anyway, what I mean to say is, here's a list of my reading matter (i.e., books) for the year 2006. (Incidentally, do you say "two thousand six" or "twenty-oh-six"? I hear the former, though I wish the latter took hold. I heard "twenty-oh-six" on BBC World Service last night.) The Irish Independent (seen here being perused by an erudite if slightly effeminate-looking Laughorist en route from Malahide to Dublin, last October) doesn't count. Just books.

Do people read actual real books anymore? I fear not too many do. That does not make me better or worse. I'm a slow reader, one who savors a book. Yes, I read magazines and newspapers too -- hard copy -- but I am most faithful to books. I need to read a book before falling asleep (yes, even after THAT). I know, I'm so retro.

Here's my rather short list, unadorned with editorial comment.

1. On Beauty by Zadie Smith (novel)

2. The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster (novel)

3. Attention.Deficit.Disorder by Brad Listi (novel)

4. Blue Angel by Francine Prose (novel)

5. Delights & Shadows by Ted Kooser (poetry; former U.S. Poet Laureate; I shook his hand)

6. McCarthy's Bar by Pete McCarthy (travel; humor)

7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (novel)

8. Born to Be Mild by Dave Armitage (novel)

9. The Beast God Forgot to Invent by Jim Harrison (three novellas)

10. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (novel)

11. The Pornographer by John McGahern (novel)

12. Praying Like Jesus by James Mulholland (spiritual commentary)

13. A Year to Live by Stephen Levine (psychology/meditation)

14. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (novel) (about 40 pages and I'll be done; I promise, I'll finish by December 31 -- Deo volente).

(Addendum: OK. I did finish it, last night, on December 30. Can I start and finish something short in one day? Perhaps Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company?)

Name one of your books of 2006. Just one.

Please?

Thank you.

Happy and peaceful and healthy and blessed 2007. One day at a time.