read 29 books this year

It let me update this from 25 to 30 without losing all my entries, and then readjust it to what I meant all along. 29, plus some extra Flannery O’Connor short stories, about half of a book about Latin, and almost 200 pages (or 1%) of Kavalier and Clay. I only put 29 in the title though.

28 “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” Flannery O’Connor
29 “Everything That Rises Must Converge” Flannery O’Connor

I also read “The Geranium” and the few remaining Flannery short stories so I picked up the National Book Award winner. If I finish one more book this year, I won’t have to count that to mark this as done.

“Kavalier and Clay” is a massive book, although actually I got a bit put off by the vocabulary and had to take a break. I can’t really blame my 30 books failure on the length of “K&C”. I’ve been reading the complete Flannery O’Connor collection and if you divide it up into separate books I’ve already read one more (the short story colllection “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”) But that just makes 28. In about four hours I’m driving up to NH to see my family, and on the 26th my best friend flies in to see me, and then she’ll be here until New Year’s so I’m not sure if this goal will be complete. Either way, it’s almost the new year so I can soon clear this goal off the list/replace it with a better goal.

Even if I do end up “failing,” I’m not going to be too disappointed. I’ve read quite a bit this year and earlier this fall I upped my challenge from 25 to 30, so if I don’t make it just means I over estimated a little. But last year I read 26 books (total of 7793 pages) and they were overwhelmingly skewed towards the beginning of the year (ie, while barely employed in Portland and during the summer before I started teaching). With a week and a half to go, this year I’ve read 28 books (counting “AGMIHTF”) with a total of 8803 pages. Plus I’m getting a lot better at making reading a part of my life year-round, and balancing it with work and my other interests. I feel like a Reader again for the first time in years. That’s definitely something to be proud of.

27 Spartina by John Casey, Nov. 26th

This is an excellent book, by far the best I’ve read this year. It’s about a Rhode Island man building his dream boat, the Spartina. At one point, I was unable to leave the apartment to go grocery shopping because I was so concerned for the characters and absolutely had to finish the chapter to make sure everything worked out okay. When I finished it, I was sincerely moved – I can’t remember the last time a book moved me that much. I don’t wanto to write a review: just read it.

This book was a total surprise. I had never even heard of it until I picked it up randomly in the faculty lounge. In the five minutes I sat there reading, two teachers walked through and said “Educating Esme? Oh my god, that book is great!” And they were right. It’s a diary of Esme’s first year teaching 5th graders at a public school in Chicago. I just finished my first year of teaching, though it’s not an urban public school, so I was thrilled to come across this.

A fast and entertaining read by a very passionate teacher. Her passion is infectious and I feel like I’ve been in a better mood towards my students since I picked up the book. At times, Esme’s creativity and passion made me feel overwhelmed – I don’t construct gorgeous bulletin boards like that! But I hope that I am being as creative and passionate about my subject, even if I am not as artsy as she is. My Latin students love derivative bingo and Jeopardy and are absurdly fond of doing grammar drills while tossing around a bean bag.

(add this to your list later – 202 pgs)

It’s over! Unfortunately, that’s my first response to finishing this book. I’ve read and liked many of Sontag’s essays, and “Regarding the Pain of Others,” but I just never got that into “In America.” Sontag is definitely brilliant and a talented writer, but something about this novel just kept me at arm’s length. Often when I finish a book I have mixed feelings about, I like to check out Barnes & Noble or Powell’s to read editorial and customer reviews, hoping that someone else’s opinion will help clarify mine. This time, I came away feeling that I definitely understand what Sontag’s trying to do – it just didn’t touch me the same way it touched the critics who gushed on the book cover and gave her the National Book Award. A famous Polish actress decides to abandon the stage and emigrate to America with her family and friends to live a simpler life. But after she arrives, she decides to return to the stage and begins a triumphant American career. It’s about identity (personal and national) and transformation and idealism and the role the theatre plays in all of these things. It burrows deep into the characters’ heads – internal monologues, letters, one-sided conversations.

When I describe it like this, it sounds pretty good. Unfortunately I got annoyed with, not charmed by, Sontag’s style in the very first chapter and spent the rest of the book trying to recover. I think once you start getting frustrated with a novel this unusual and ambitious, it’s hard to change your mind and start seeing it as genius. I only got as far as “not as bad as it was.” I don’t want to poison anyone else’s opinion, but this book just never connected with me. But it’s another NBA winner and a step closer to my 30 books goal.

Up next: Spartina, fresh from the library.

(Note: my copy looks nothing like this – it’s a stodgy library version, gothic type on a black background. Classy.)

I’m still plugging through “In America” but I had to take a break and read something lighter. I spent most of Saturday in bed reading this instead. It’s a “shocking” behind-the-scenes-look at life in a small town – “shocking” is in quotes because this was written the 1950s and fairly tame by modern standards.

What I liked about this book is mostly external. The book was an immediate best-seller and sold 60,000 copies in ten days. The author, Grace Metalious, is from Gilmanton, NH and her novel is set in an imaginary New Hampshire town that’s a hodge-podge of Gilmanton, Belmont, and Laconia (where my dad grew up and, according to Wikipedia, where Grace drank). These locals got really angry at Grace for writing this book and started gossiping about her – including the rumor that she went grocery shopping wearing only a fur coat and nothing underneath. Everyone outside of New Hampshire tried to wheedle Grace into admitting it was based on her life. My favorite (wikipedia) story about this is when the screenwriter for the movie asked her if it was an autobiography, and Grace asked him to repeat the question and then dumped her drink on him.

I guess it was also entertaining enough. But man, I can’t believe the glowing reviews I read on Barnes and Noble while stealing the image for this post. This is dated, cheesy, fairly predictable, and while the characters are well-drawn I don’t find them as realistic as the dust jacket told me they were. I am definitely not going to read the sequel or see the movie. It makes sense that they turned it into a soap opera because it definitely is. And not in the good way.

If you want a good behind-the-facade-look at small-town New England, read “Empire Falls” instead. If you want a good soap opera novel, read “The Serial” instead. That’s based in my best friend’s hometown, not mine, but it’s a lot funnier than “Peyton Place” (probably because 70s California is funnier than 30s New Hampshire). I guess this novel is a cultural touchstone, but not for me. If this wasn’t written by a New Hanpshire girl and set in New Hampshire, I would have abandoned it after 60 pages (like I almost did anyway).

23 Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, Oct. 21st

When I picked this book up at the library (along with “Peyton Place”), the librarian made fun of me for checking out such old books. I took it home and opened it up, and pages 60-130 fell out in one chunk. I think it’s their problem that I’m checking out old books, not mine. Anyway, I’ve read some Ellis before (“American Psycho” and “Glamorama”) and it was interesting to read his debut novel, to see the themes of nihilism, drugs and money, empty search for meaning, and promiscuous sex in their original form. There’s less violence and rape than in his other books, but I’m sure this was shocking when it first came out. I always enjoy Ellis and this was no exception, though I bet I would have liked it more if it was the first book by Ellis that I read.

Plus, since the young Ellis attended Bennington College in Vermont while writing this book, he decides to adapt this for his character Clay by making him attend college in… New Hampshire! So when he goes back to L.A. and everyone tells him how pale he looks, he gets to blame it on my favorite state. Hey, everybody there is pale.

22 Troy, Adele Geras

A number of my students read this over the summer as an optional summer reading book. They loved it, and I enjoyed it as well. It’s the Trojan War as told through the eyes of Helen’s maid, Andromache’s maid, a stable boy, and the court singer’s granddaughter. They encounter all the major heroes and gods, but it’s much more relatable than the Iliad. A good read, and great for the target age.

I joined the library and I’ve started In America by Susan Sontag. I’m waiting on other books on inter-branch loan as well.

21. Dale Loves Sophie to Death, Robb Forman Dew

I read this book while camping in the wilderness with my students and I wished it was longer. It won the First Novel Award and it is a beautifully written novel. A woman rents a summer house in her childhood home in Ohio with her children, and leaves her husband editing a literary review at home in Massachusetts. First of all, who would leave Massachusetts in the summer? Even the Berkshires must be kinda nice. But although the writing and emotions are perfectly captured, it is after all a novel. So the story concerns itself with children, childhood friends, brother, and parents.

Neither Dale nor Sophie are characters in the novel. And Robb Forman Dew is a woman. So already, it’s nothing like you expect.