My TBR Lite List, completely crossed off:
1. A.R. Ammons, Garbage

2. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

3. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools

4. John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

5. Mary Roach, Stiff

6. Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

I finished Garbage by A.R. Ammons on October 12. It’s a book-length poem, all written in couplets. It’s about literal garbage (what goes into the landfill) but also about the author’s aging, and more broadly about what at first we value in adulthood and then don’t value anymore as we get older. (Things that are not valued any longer are: garbage.)

The book is short but it too me a loooong time to read. The couplet style, and also the author’s strange punctuation (nary a period in sight, colons sprinkled liberally throughout, the overall effect being that every chapter was one long run-on sentence) were always getting in the way, for me.