once a month, read one of the books I have acquired, but never gotten around to reading.

I wrapped up 2008 with about 20 pounds that has been crowding my shelves for gosh knows how long. This book is hefty; I am considering keeping it beside my bed permanently in case someone breaks in—I am almost sure it would be a lethal weapon if launched at someone’s head. As far as literature, it is a lethal weapon, as well. Not mind-bending by 21st century standards, although I am sure it bent a few minds 200 years ago, but still, it stands the test of time. It did not feel like a more-than-800-pages-long book. Very readable.

So I was only partially successful with this goal in 2008, but that’s OK. I’m all set for 2009!

This didn’t take long to read. It’s OK. I enjoyed Dracula better.

Great book. It has been sitting around for about a year and a half. I put off reading it because I really don’t like vampire stories. Of course, this is a classic and every cliche we take for granted about vampires probably entered the common knowledge base through this book. So I am glad I read it.

MUCH more satisfying than P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, which – since I didn’t finishP.S. Your Cat Is Dead due to its rampant insipidity and exasperativeness – isn’t saying a whole lot, I’ll admit, but this book was enjoyable. A little flat in terms of characters with some way mawkish dialogue in places, but at least finishing the thing didn’t feel like the emotional equivalent of sticking needles into my eyes.

Well, this poor little tome has been sitting around so long it is brittle. But I think I picked it up at Half Price Books awhile back and it might have been a wee bit brittle when I bought it. It is, after all, from 1972 and things from that far back do tend to be showing their age a bit. Including me. But I digress.

I didn’t finish this book. I am not sure if I failed for purposes of this goal because the goal only requires I READ it, not necessarily FINISH it. At least I hope so because I have read as much as I can stand.

“Funny” my great Aunt Bertha’s garter strings! Except for one fairly hilarious incident of fruit-throwing, funny simply isn’t an accurate description of this book. Nor is “Superbly done.” – Tennessee Williams, “Absolutely fascinating” – Nora Ephron, “Zany, moving, surprising, altogether wonderful story, told by an expert” – James Leo Herlihy. What were these people smoking? It must have been some of the heavy-duty pot he mentions in this book because that stuff will make you giggle at pavement cracks. The only faintly accurate description included on the cover is “A gratifying book” – Rex Reed, but that isn’t accurate in quite the way Rex Reed intended; I was mainly gratified to give up on it and move onto something better.

For the background about my long-term love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with Faulkner and his so-called literature, read August #1. For lo so many years, I dreaded a second encounter with the man after my first encounter with his Civil-war-ravished and hygienically challenged characters at a young and oh-so-impressionable age. I even went so far as to claim I read two or three of his books because – quite frankly – the effort it took me to read even one of them felt like reading two or three. Also, to be honest, I couldn’t remember exactly which one it was I HAD read and, to continue in this vein of honesty, to this day I still do not know.

What I do know is that it was not Light in August, which I have wrapped up today. (I read Light in August as one of my August books. I found a certain symmetry in that. Or maybe just a sad geeky-kind of satisfaction.)

Good Lord! Does William Faulkner write about ANYBODY who is not stuck living in their past or their ancestors’ pasts long after those pasts are dead and gone? But I guess non-neurotic, well-balanced psyches don’t make for very interesting literature.

There’s just one thing I don’t get. The cover of my book shows a noose. Now, while there were several people who ended up getting killed or otherwise deceased in this book, of all the methods whereby they met their demise, including childbirth, shooting, throat-cutting, war, and old-age, not one is hanged. There is a grandfather who tries to rouse a whole bunch of townfolks in two separate towns into lynching his grandson (a mission at which he does not succeed), but no one is actually hanged. But I guess since it is an empty noose, it is merely one of those enigmatic symbols intended to illustrate some illusive something or other. Or maybe because this is a novel about the post-Civil-War south, people just naturally associate that era and area of the country with lynching.

Nevertheless, if you buy this book or if you too have a copy of this book sitting around waiting to be read and your copy or the copy you buy also happens to have a picture of a noose on the front, do not read this book looking for a description of lynching or a treatise on lynching or an idiot’s guide to lynching or anything like that because, while there are certainly a few characters you might secretly hope get lynched (including that reprehensible grandfather who seems to have mistaken himself for the Angel of Death), you will not satisfy one whit of your curiosity in this respect. Consider yourself forewarned.

I have four Faulkner books that have been sitting around at least since 1986. 1986! I bought them in September; they are older than my 21-year-old college-student daughter. So to say these books have been following me around begging to be read is something of an understatement.

The problem is I DID read Faulkner in high school and, even now, I cannot remember what I read. Something about the Snopes family and Mississippi, I’m pretty sure. The only things I really remember about the book were that the people in it didn’t wash very much, that Faulkner didn’t have much of a handle on punctuation or the idea that a sentence should end before or at the same time as a paragraph and not continue on into the next paragraph, and that the book seemed to go on forever, so it is no wonder that that one book felt like I was reading about five or six and that those

five or six would probably last for most of the rest of my natural life (Unfortunately, Faulkner’s utter lack of disregard for punctuation and the sanctity of paragraph and sentence structure was contagious and totally unappreciated by the teacher who made me read the darned thing to begin with!)

So now you have the crux of why these four books have been reproaching me with their presence for the past nearly 22 years (and why oh why did I ever buy them in the first place you may wonder as I myself have these past two decades!)

WELL, I have done it! I have taken the plunge, broken the drought, actually laid my hand upon and subdued the dreaded beast Faulkner staring at me from the bookshelf. Hallelujah! I decided to read them in the order in which they were published, so I started with The Hamlet. I have discovered that what I remember about Faulkner (even though The Hamlet was not that mysterious first Faulkner to sully my Faulkner-virgin eyes) is that – yes indeedy! – these characters are just as unwashed and outrageous and Faulkner has just as little grasp of punctuation and sentence and paragraph structure as I remember. But – and this is where age might be a benefit – this book did not seem interminable. In fact, it seemed a fairly quick read and, despite a certain underfeeling of griminess from some of his descriptions, rather enjoyable.

I’m starting to see why he won that Nobel Prize and not, as I once suspected, because his work could be used for make-shift sleeping aids to aid the terminally-bored.

Well, this has been around for awhile, as well, but I guess that is the point of this goal. I took this on vacation recently and didn’t even open it, but started reading it when I got back and finished the books I did start on the trip. (My daughter asked me why I took NINE books with me and had to haul them in my luggage up a five-story winding stone staircase. Ah! the trials of a book lover…)

Maybe it was feeling guilty over abusing this rather old book so unnecessarily, but I did start reading it on Tuesday night and could not put it down. It was 1:40 in the morning, which was not good for someone who has to get up early the next day for work. But that is an indication of what a wild ride this book is! It is very different from the movie, but well worth reading. Don’t know why I took so long to get started. Now I have to go find the other two books in the trilogy just to find out if he ever does finish the purpose for which he was recruited. (I hope I don’t leave them sitting on my shelf as long as this one did.)

To be honest, I didn’t read the ACTUAL copy of David Copperfield that has been sitting on my shelf for the past umpteen years and months because that one got stowed away someplace and I cannot find it, so I actually read a copy I bought last month for $1 at Half Price Books, but I am still counting it toward this goal because A copy of this masterpiece has been with me for a long time, waiting to be read.

I am not successful about working on this goal every month, but I guess it is well that I am doing it.

I loved David Copperfield—all 800+ pages of it. Dickens is one of those writers I put off reading eternally, the way some put off their least favorite task. Which is very odd and very sad to me because I absolutely love him whenever I read his books and I get so caught up in them that I can’t put them down and before I know it, it is already 2 a.m. and I am facing the prospect of being worn out and bleary at work the next day. That is how much I love reading Dickens. Yet, as perverse as I am, the next time I am faced with the prospect of reading Dickens (Bleak House and Oliver Twist still await me), I am pretty sure I am going to try to avoid them, dreading delving into a dry work full of archaic language, which is never the case. How perverse is my mind sometimes!

This is another one I haven’t had THAT long compared to others that have been collecting dust, but it has been hanging around six months or more, so I am reading this as my January #2 book.