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.

spin cycle

Doing my laundry at Colonial Laundromat, I was taken aback, a little, seeing a young couple, in their early twenties or younger, come in with a little girl. It was around 8:30 p.m. I get annoyed and dismayed when I see parents or guardians out and about with their kids when, in my view, it is bedtime. Worst is seeing a whole family traipsing through Wegmans or Tops at 11 p.m. of a school night. Inexcusable, in my old-world view. This wasn't that late, yet I did muse to myself, "Now? You have to do your laundry now?" But as I extracted my clothes from the dryer, I noticed the father presenting reading flash cards to the girl. He was patiently helping her sound out words or try to decipher sight words. The woman looked on, not saying a word or joining in. My head had a lot of questions about these roles, but I seized on positive aspects of this observation, and I did not want the moment to pass.

I approached the young man. "I applaud you for doing that. For reading with your daughter. Good for you. It's important."

"Nobody did that for me," he said. "I don't want her to be like me. They had to read the questions to me when I took an exam. I'm trying to help her."

"Well, good for you. It's never too early. How old is she?"

"Six," the girl interjected.

"You like to read?"

She scrunched her face up.

"You will. You'll get to like it. I read every day."

I'm not going to lie. I was lifted by this simple act.

And then I was deflated. Shortly after our little conversation, another guy walked in, with two girls, presumably his daughters, maybe slightly older than the six-year-old who was working on her reading. These girls might have been twins. It was now closer to 9 p.m. No books. No flash cards. Just laundry. No bedtime story, from a book or from memory. Not in the laundromat. Not tonight.

what are you reading?

I am reading

ALL THAT IS

by

James Salter

plus, I read YOUR TRUE HOME

by

Thich Nhat Hanh

for daily meditation.

Other than that, I typically don't have more than one book going. Usually, The New Yorker or NY Times provides some breakfast reading.

luscious . . .

. . . le Carre

yes, John le Carre's latest is a gem, every syllable, every twist and turn, every reflection and refraction, every crackling bit of interrogatory dialogue.

I venture to say it is among his best, but make that pronouncement prematurely, only residing on page 116.

Buy it.

Our Kind of Traitor.

Tell us if you agree.

Or not.

reading matter

I've asked before, I'll ask now:

What are you reading?

Last night I started The Vanished Hands, by Robert Wilson.

I've read The Hidden Assassins, The Company of Strangers, The Blind Man of Seville, and A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson.

I recommend his work: intelligent, readable, captivating, imaginative, literary. Worth a try. Although he might be classified as a crime writer, I'd say he goes beyond the genre.

Plus, I've always got an issue of The New Yorker magazine, new or old, by the bed.

conversation starters

My friend Win T. (now, there's a winning combination!) tells me of his friend who refuses to engage in the typical conversational gambit of "what do you do?" as in, what is your work, your job.

Won't do it.

Win's friend, I'm told, says: "What are you reading?"

I like that, and not just because I myself am an avid or at least an ardent reader, though not as voracious a reader as is Bill S., who logged something like 87 books last year. (As an engineer, he of course has a spreadsheet and grades and categorizes his reading.)

I like "what are you reading?" as a conversational opener because a) yes, it plays to something I enjoy b) it tells you much more than someone's quotidian [mea culpa, forgive insertion of Latinate word] job and c) it is almost certain to be, well, conversational.

For the record, I am reading scroogenomics and the January 4, 2010, edition of The New Yorker magazine.

What are you reading?

Lush Life

The other night (more accurately, morning) a strange addiction took hold of me, something called reading, but not just any ol' bedstand reading, because the cliche "a real page-turner" took hold of me, became incarnate, as I kept helplessly fighting the common-sense and body-demanding notion of cease and desist, turn off the light and sink deeper into the pillow, into the wee hours, sometime around 5 a.m., the birds not yet on speaking terms, and me afraid to know how bright it might really be on the other side of the bedroom shades, even figuring that I'm going to feel dreadfully bad if I go to sleep now and wake up at 6:20 when my daughter jauntily answers her alarm (I didn't; felt okay but jet-lagged).

What book would keep you riveted like that, you ask?

Lush Life by Richard Price (a requested birthday or Christmas book I am just getting round to; each book in its rightful time).

Yes, a real tribute to an author, that he or she could have such sway and magnetic force.

Either that or the coffee I drank before the Vestry meeting had mega-doses of Caffeine Plus.

Or just something weird going on in me and my brain (I love reading the latest stuff on neurology, realizing we are pretty darn hard-wired in compelling but just-beginning-to-understand ways).

Tip of my San Francisco Giants' baseball cap to Richard Price and Lush Life anyway.