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.

listing

1 metaphysical suit of armour

39 gold-plated begonias

2.5 human appendages, warm, to go

7.902336 trillion maple leaves

1 shallow lie

VII wives of Henry VIII

0.4487457 raindrops

3 bruised clementimes

144 gross misjudgments

26.4 alphabets

8.1 gazillion purple memories

3 sheets to the wind

124,567 BLTs, to go, cold, extra crispy bacon

4.9999 Beatles

1 cinematic, dramatic, climactic, climatic contretemps

0.5 tete-a-tetes

2 breaths

1 endless, needle-stuck-in-the-groove note

1 firework

0 cable news shows

108 mala or rosary beads or stitches on a baseball

49 miles from Nowhere

1/2 step from Somewhere

16 MLB teams

154 games

3 World Series rings

24 Willie Mays rookie Topps cards

333 litanies

12 Parisian pissoirs

1 list

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.

Twenty Names

Sure, you're beginning to think of me as a Twenty Something HAHAHAHAHAHAAHA.

Today, let's try Twenty Names. I'm a bit of a name dropper (more than a bit; and does it not give evidence of a certain character flaw, an obsequiousness built on flimsy moorings?).

I will be linear this time and limit myself to those I have met or have seen in person, even en passant, say, on a Manhattan street, or in an elevator, or have somehow corresponded with. (I have tried not to include those I saw or heard merely as an audience member.)

Joseph Heller, Theodor Seuss Geisel, Willie Mays, John Updike, Telly Savalas, Hans Conried, Victor Borge, Bert Parks, Mona Simpson, Madeleine L'Engle, Suzanne Farrell, Jerry Jeff Walker, Jerry Garcia, Regis Philbin, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Suzanne Vega, William F. Buckley Jr., Woody Allen, Sara Miles (the author), J. Walter Kennedy, Marc Brown, Henry Roth, Richard Ford, David Grambs, Bob Hicok, Peter DeVries, Ed Bradley, Meryl Streep, Andre the Giant, Tom Wolfe, William Maxwell, Peter Ustinov, Isaac Asimov, Beverly Cleary, Bob Mitchell, Dan Valenti, Jonathan Miles, Gordon Lish, Elliott Gould, Bobby Murcer.

Yeah, I know, it's more than Twenty Names. I got carried away.

Twenty Questions

. . . but not the usual, of course.

1. Why do square bullets introduce each question even though a number shows up on my screen as I create each interrogatory?
2. Why twenty, anyway -- is it related to 10 fingers and 10 toes?
3. Why the sloppiness of style, not paying a copyeditor's (or copy editor's) attention to consistency regarding words versus numerals?
4. Huh?
5. Would you make it "healthcare" or "health care" as a noun?
6. Does it bother you that the majority of Americans could not diagram a sentence on the blackboard or whiteboard or greenboard?
7. When?
8. What is my fixation with Soren Kierkegaard?
9. When was the first time?
10. When was the last time?
11. Why do many readers immediately assume that questions 9 and 10 are latently associated with sex?
12. Why is twelve, or 12, so rich in connotation, ranging from Apostles to months to inches to Steps to lists?
13. When was your last act of not only random but anonymous kindness?
14. Or mine?
15. Why is it so hard to pronounce "anonymous"?
16. What is 20 times 20 times 20, which would be 20 cubed, or does the cube melt in the dog days of August?
17. Why don't they teach Latin in public schools?
18. Who is "they"?
19. Isn't it truly difficult to change ingrained habits?
20. Are you relieved this is over?

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.

9 Things I Learned in 2008

2008. Already it is so yesterday. Before I close the portals of the last year, I offer you an inevitable year-end tally (though you will see no inevitable resolutions for the new year in this space), an accounting rooted in things personal, more or less, less or more.

1. Yes, we can; yes, we did.

2. One can reinvent one's work life, given the grace of talent, opportunity, and others' graciousness and generosity -- all critically important givens.

3. Loss happens. Sometimes it's surprising, sometimes it's unfathomable, sometimes it rewarding. It is always inevitable.

4. The 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. scenario, give or take a few hours, is something I may never return to.

5. I like my MacBook; had hated laptops; never owned a laptop until my newly formed business called for one.

6. My office can extend to anywhere I am. This is not news, but it is something I understood empirically in 2008.

7. Follow-up, even of the most mundane prior minutiae, is one of my most daunting challenges each day.

8. It's all on paper, but is it real?

9. Words like "socialism" and "capitalism" either mean nothing or mean things we never were taught.

Labels Majora and Labels Minora

In looking over Blogger.com's options to "customize" my blog, I noticed an option labeled, Labels.

Presto! I clicked a few times and soon surveyed one of the longest lists in Christendom (second only to the list of remembered resentments of a particular ethnic group [hint: my wife's, whose ancestral lands we visited without resentments before or after last October], or possibly second only to the list of things to sort and dispose of at home and office).

Sheesh! Talk about a laundry list! Or talk about airing your laundry in public!!

Or exclaim about about excessive exclamation points!!

I dare say my list redefines the word eclectic.

Or obsessive. Or some other word.

Listing Listfully and Listlessly

My life is cluttered, and lists are part of the clutter. Lists reside on tiny pieces of paper that I carry in my pockets, with the left side used more than the right. Lists abound on my desk on sticky Post-its of neon colors. I have even taken lately to drawing up a list at the start of the workday. It's an exhaustive list inventorying all the anticipated tasks of the day: responses to calls, e-mails, queries, comments, asides, requests, deadlines, and stated or implicit demands of disparate pieces of paper on my glass desk, a desk as transparent as my orderly attempts to rein in my rampant disorder. (I am ending this paragraph right here in homage to Lenny Cohen.)

Then I numerically rank each task, perhaps stopping at ten. Then I cross off each completed task.

This list-ordered tasking seems to settle me down and focus my efforts. It works until intrusions of yet other tasks.

Or does it work at all? And will it last?

List last.

Last list.

Lost lust.

Lust lost list last.

List lost lust last.

I just love the lilt of those four words.

Et cetera. Inter alia. Age quod agis.

Where was I?

If am without lists, does that make me listless?

Or do the lists themselves make me listless, tricking me into thinking listing equals doing?

In consulting my Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, I am thrilled to find the deep and criss-crossed layers of listing and its variants and associated forms. (Yes, such a finding thrills me, and I make no apologies for it.) The word list offers a rich playground for any list maker.

(But I will be brief. I need to pack for Berlin -- and alas I have for now successfully avoided lapsing into all kinds of blatant Wall metaphors, analogies, and paradigms.)

My OED tells me that list in some associated form or other (to say nothing of Franz Liszt!) refers to:

hearing,
the ear,
a border,
a hem (as in [ahem!] a silken piece of ooh-la-la! cloth you know where),
an earlobe,
part of a head of hair, such as a beard,
a scar,
a ring around the foot of a column,
a place of combat,
a staked enclosure (plural = the starting point of a race),
joy,
delight,
appetite,
craving,
lust (you knew it would come to that),
the careening of a ship (such as the ship of state embarking on certain courses of action),
a roll or catalog of words (such as This parade of nouns),
to please,
to care for,
to listen (I've barely begun to touch the verb forms)

insert ellipsis points here

This is just for starters. (Does that make it UNjust for finishers? hahahar!)

The list goes on.

Or could,

But I am getting listless.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

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.