Bias

I finished a book this week, and I got my sewing machine back.

It's been a good week.

The book: Under the Net by Iris Murdoch. Before the Keen Reads project, I'd never heard of this author or the book. Now, I'd highly recommend both.

The narrator is Jack, a self-involved writer with lots of angst about his relationships with friends, women, even the lady who runs the local cafe. In the end, I didn't find him a sympathetic character at all, but much like The Sun Also Rises, his descriptions are supreme. The book is a gorgeous illustration of London and Paris, both places I love and dearly miss. His respect and passion for the cities ring clear.

He is so self-involved though that at times I wonder if Murdoch's narrator is a sociopath. There's no violence in this book; no foul play. But Jack is so consumed with what other people think of him, how it relates to his personal story, and he so direly believes in fate, that he risks his safety and freedom to fulfill what he believes is destiny. Sometimes, Jack can be a little much. He's definitely not someone I'd be friends with, and if he existed in my world, I'd wonder if he's a little looney.

So it's a quick read, with a beautiful sense of place and a intriguing narrator. I liked it enough that I'd want to read more Murdoch... though I must solider on through this list!

ON THE CRAFTY SIDE:

My sewing machine was in the shop for two painful weeks. Painful for me, not the machine. I got it back yesterday and spent the evening learning how to make bias tape. For the record, it isn't easy. Or, the instructions I'm following in this book are not entirely clear. The verdict is still out on that one.

I'll note there's nothing quite like a good novel to distract from a lack of sewing machine.

Foiled again, Kindle!

I finished A Game of Thrones: Song of Ice and Fire, so I spent my lunch break picking through the list for a new book.

I started this project intent on taking books out of the library, only to find that my local library didn't have most of the books on the list.

So I've turned to my handy dandy Kindle, and surprise! Many of the books aren't available there either.

What's the story here? I can buy The Belly Fat Cure  on my Kindle, but not Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer?

So I settled for Iris Murdoch's Under the Net, available on Kindle for $12.99.

With the sewing machine in the shop for the foreseeable future, I have plenty of time to read. More to come on the new book soon!

What Happened?

My friend recently emailed me to ask what happened to my reading project. In short, I moved house, started a new job, and stopped reading altogether. The longer story includes a diversion from the list, reading easier books, like Bossypants by Tina Fey. And, since I got back to Denver, I have been crafting again = highly distracting.

And it's summer, it's gorgeous out, and all I really want to do besides work is be outdoors, BBQ and garden!

So, I don't think I'll completely abandon the reading project. Though I admit I started Game of Thrones, which should keep me occupied for some time. I'll likely pick up the list again in the fall.

In the meantime, I want to use this blog for my multiple hobbies. So sometimes I'll write about reading. Sometimes I'll write about sewing/knitting/embroidery.

Yes, I am a big nerd -- and damned proud of it!

Assumptions

The Moviegoer is one of the books on the list that I had never heard of before jumping into this project. There's some mystique about a book one hasn't ever heard of. I suppose I expected it to be boring or difficult to read. I don't know why I make such negative assumptions, and The Moviegoer has proved me wrong.

It's by Walker Percy, the young man holding his leg up in the photograph; MD-gone-author and National Book Award winner. Randomly, it seems he went to medical school with my grandmother, and they probably lived in the same dorm.

So far, this is my favorite presentation of character. The protagonist and narrator is Jack or Binx, just turning 30 and floating between two families in Mardi Gras'd New Orleans. From my perspective - as a woman who just turned 30 - I find him curious and entirely unsympathetic at the same time. I love the feeling of discomfort that I get from Binx and his descriptions of the other characters in the book.

Now I proved my assumptions wrong, I am starting to wonder why my knowledge of literature is so incomplete. What else did I miss as an English major? It is true, I focused my studies on pre-19th century literature and poetry. But I am simply baffled that I hadn't even heard of this book before, not to mention others on the list that I won't prejudge so hastily. So here's the question: am I at fault, did I just not pay close enough attention or did I skip some good courses? or is there a major gap in what any average middle class American, even English majors, read these days?  

Help me pick my next book

Rainy weather is conducive to reading too, and I finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn today. I agree, it is a must-read novel and deserves a place close to the top of my "second fifty" list.

I feel a little odd admitting that I most enjoyed the novel's portrayal of poverty. The Nolans live very poorly but find simple happiness in things like a clean shirt, a cup of coffee, or a library book. The imagery is vivid.

So, on to the next book, and I have to go back to The List. Help me decide what to read next. I have three books on the list in the house now. In no particular order:

Lolita

Catcher in the Rye

The Moviegoer

My thoughts: a) I've avoided Lolita for about a decade and a half now and should probably dive in; b) I've read Catcher in the Rye before, but after A Tree, I would welcome another coming-of-age novel; c) The Moviegoer is very short, and otherwise I know nothing of it.

Outdoor reading

I took this photo today - dressed in flip flops and a t-shirt. I read on the porch while the dogs sunbathed.

Hard to believe it's February!

Procrastination

I can't motivate to read. Even though I love the current book, even though I have time. I constantly wonder why it's so hard to just sit down and open a book. I have plenty of excuses. I tell myself it'll make me tired and I'll just end up falling asleep. I tell myself I won't have enough time to read an entire chapter (and it really irks me to stop mid chapter). Or I want to work on my knitting instead. And the perennial excuse, it is so much easier to just turn on the TV or waste time on the Internet. I don't even have my cable hooked up, and I still manage to watch hours on end of Farscape and Doctor Who... instead of reading.

And I spent 15 minutes just now reading about procrastination on the web. 

I'm about a quarter of the way through A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which is the first friend recommendation I added to the list (thanks JMZ). I love the characters and their voices. The family's poverty communicates essential truths about the complexities of life. The images are so rich - the meat on their table; the clothes on the dapper father; the Williamsburg street life.

I hear that many people read this book in their younger years, and I do recommend picking it up again - or if you're like me, trying it for the first time.

That is, if you can get over your own procrastination traps.

Woolfed-out

I just finished Mrs. Dalloway this past week, and it was a doozy. I am Virginia-Woolfed-out, for the time being (To the Lighthouse is on the list, and I will read it eventually).

Here's what I didn't like about her -- a) the stream-of-consciousness style; b) most of the characters, particularly Septimus; c) how the book managed to sprout 10 new pages for every 10 I read. Remember that feeling you got in high school, reading Watership Down or something similar, and the book just would never end? Well, that's what Mrs. Dalloway did to me.

I've never liked stream-of-consciousness, whether it be Joyce's writing in Ulysees or Kerouac with On the Road (the former is banished from the list because I refuse to read it again; the latter is on the list, and I hope to like it this time). But what bothered me most about Woolf was that her stream-of-consciousness didn't feel genuine. I was not convinced that she understands what a World War I veteran (Septimus) would think on the day he kills himself. I've read too much WWI poetry and current war writings, and this just didn't feel authentic to me. So it irritated me.

I think there's brilliance in the way Woolf constructs the plot and weaves the characters together. I can tell why this is on anyone's "best of" list - though on my "best of," it will sit at last place until I read something that irritates me even more.

Some of you suggested I keep my own tally, as I read through the list. So far, that makes:

1) The Sun Also Rises
50) Mrs. Dalloway

I look forward to filling in the rest. 

PS. This month, I also listened to Water for Elephants on CD, which I would recommend to anyone looking for a page-turner. The CD version was particularly well read.

Really want to give Virginia Woolf some love...

I'm honestly sad that I don't like Mrs. Dalloway. I always wanted to like Virginia Woolf, but nothing she's written has ever appealed to me. It's also disappointing because she's one of the few female authors on my list. And I am vaguely annoyed that she appears twice on the list, so even when this book is through, I'm stuck with the other one. So in some ways, Virginia Woolf is setting a new precedent for the project: I will finish each book even if I dislike it immensely.

I have to admit, too, that I did not read anything off the list during the bulk of my vacation. I brought Mrs. Dalloway and The Moviegoer (thanks to Johanna for lending them), but I couldn't push myself to do it. I did, however, manage to watch the Doctor Who Christmas Special, twice; muscle through almost all of Torchwood; listen to Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon & The Fifth Horseman by James Patterson.

Oh, and I finally saw Serenity and liked it, even though I can't get into Firefly. But tomorrow it's back to work, so too, back to the project!

Tight

New idiom from The Sun Also Rises: "tight," as in "I can't just stay tight all the time," says the irresistible Lady Ashley or "Brett." It means drunk, which is what Brett, Jake and the other "chaps" in this book are just about all the time. Beware: I may try to reintroduce the word "tight," and it's unlikely to make sense most anywhere, especially considering that tight means something completely different idiomatically now.

My initial impression from this book was that Hemingway dislikes women or generally thinks they're up to no good. It reminds me a lot of the same tone Fitzgerald takes with Daisy in The Great Gatsby (which shouldn't be surprising, since Fitzgerald apparently edited Hemingway). There is one dynamic female character, she is adored by all and screws up everything. I don't hate Brett as a character though, and I don't dislike Hemingway for his portrayal of her, so in general she is tolerable to read.

The characters' anti-semitism is more difficult to read. I am not quite through the book, but I am still unclear why it was necessary for Hemingway to make his most unlikable character, the most abused by his friends, also a Jew. Given more time and resources, I'd look into the theme. Though, I'm about to write about how Hemingway seems to describe things simply for the sake of... describing them. And perhaps that's what he's doing with the anti-semitic remarks, too - perhaps he is describing racism as plain as day, as he saw it in society.

This book's greatness is in the richness of description. The imagery is so vivid; I would love to take the book and travel to Spain on the very same path. The characters go fishing for trout in a lusciously hot part of the country, dipping into the stream water to cool off and sober up. There are lengthy descriptions of bullfighting, sometimes hard to read. Perhaps I have been so carried away reading such ridiculous and delicious things like the Twilight Saga or the Harry Potter series, but I forgot how some authors write rich description just for the sake of ... describing things richly. It is rare (maybe unlikely altogether) to read that from a contemporary or popular author like Stephanie Meyer or JK Rowling. For example, nothing in a Harry Potter book gets described by accident; all of it is somehow weaved into the plot. That's not the case with Hemingway. He describes people and places just for the sake of pure poetic imagery.

Again, not quite done with The Sun Also Rises, but in all, I've enjoyed it. It's been an easy read, and I think it will stick with me much the same as The Great Gatsby. At some point, when I've read more of the books on this list, I'll stick this Hemingway in a list of my own rankings... and we'll see how it stacks up.

Next, I read Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

My Very Own Keen Reading List

I took the TIME 100, the Modern Library and The Guardian's 100, cross-referenced them in Excel and made my own list (as some of you suggested). Miraculously, it resulted in 50 books. All either appear on two or all three of the lists. 

A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess
A Dance to the Music of Time	Anthony Powell
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter	Carson McCullers
Things Fall Apart	Chinua Achebe
Sons and Lovers	DH Lawrence
The Golden Notebook	Doris Lessing
Ragtime	E.L. Doctorow
A Passage to India	E.M. Forster
The Sun Also Rises	Ernest Hemingway
Brideshead Revisited	Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust	Evelyn Waugh
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald
Animal Farm	George Orwell
1984	George Orwell
The Heart of the Matter	Graham Greene
Loving	Henry Green
Tropic of Cancer	Henry Miller
Under the Net	Iris Murdoch
The Catcher in the Rye	J.D. Salinger
On the Road	Jack Kerouac
Go Tell it on the Mountain	James Baldwin
Deliverance	James Dickey
Wide Sargasso Sea	Jean Rhys
Appointment in Samarra	John O'Hara
The Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck
Nostromo	Joseph Conrad
Catch-22	Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse Five	Kurt Vonnegut
Under the Volcano	Malcolm Lowry
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie	Muriel Spark
The Day of the Locust	Nathanael West
The Sheltering Sky	Paul Bowles
Invisible Man	Ralph Ellison
Native Son	Richard Wright
I, Claudius	Robert Graves
All the King's Men	Robert Penn Warren
Midnight's Children	Salman Rushdie
The Adventures of Augie March	Saul Bellow
An American Tragedy	Theodore Dreiser
The Bridge of San Luis Rey	Thornton Wilder
Beloved	Toni Morrison
A House for Mr. Biswas	V.S. Naipaul
To the Lighthouse	Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway	Virginia Woolf
Lolita	Vladimir Nabokov
Pale Fire	Vladimir Nabokov
The Moviegoer	Walker Percy
Death Comes for the Archbishop	Willa Cather
The Sound and the Fury	William Faulkner
Lord of the Flies	William Golding

The books that appear on all three lists are: Orwell's 1984; Ellison's The Invisible Man; Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie,Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse; Nabokov, Lolita; and The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.

I sadly admit that out of these six, I have only read one, and out of the 50, I've read seven. And all of those readings happened more than 10 years ago, with the exception of The Great Gatsby, which I read last year (for the first time, if you can believe it!). 

I also want to note that Joyce's Ulysses appears on two of the lists, but I've read it once, and once is more than enough. Nor will I acknowledge its place on this list. This is, after all, my list now -- and I say Ulysses doesn't get to be on it.

As for the other 50 books, I really liked Molly's suggestion of taking recommendations from friends about a book that changed their lives. Fair warning: I will probably nix anything I've already read for the latter 50. For example, I know someone will say Pride and Prejudice is a must-read, for example. It is one of my favorite books of all time, but I have read it too many times already.

One more fairly significant thing: I want to read all or most of these by borrowing from the library. I already learned the O'Hara novel isn't even in the Garfield County Library System, which sort of shocks me. The county can order it from Denver, but I am going to talk to the librarian and see if I can purchase & donate whatever books are missing.

This week, I'll write about my love of old library books, also about The Sun Also Rises, which I'm halfway through already.

The Sun Also Rises

I am not a morning person. Yet I am drinking a cup of Waitrose Earl Grey tea at 6:30 am on a Saturday morning. Mushu, my pug, is trying to wedge his head between my lap and the laptop. The dogs and I are all wondering why we are up so early. And to be totally honest, I'm not sure. Something feels unsettled inside me, though. I haven't been able to sleep. You know the feeling.

So I decided this morning, while hopelessly keeping my eyes closed in bed, that I would give myself a project for distraction. I'm going to read 100 of "the best books," whatever that means. There are so many lists out there that I'm not sure which one I will use - and that is what this first post is about. I'll blog as I read because ever since I left college, I've missed writing about books. As some of you know, I have very little patience for a book that bores me, so though I will keep on reading, I also promise to frankly share my feelings about the books right here.

I realize this is a somewhat meaningless project for anyone but myself, but I have enough book-loving friends that I doubt I'll have trouble finding some moral support in the endeavor. And, like many bloggers before me who keep navel-gazing diaries online, I feel restless right now and need some psudo-intellectual centering.

It shouldn't surprise me that there are so many "top 100" lists online, but I am a bit baffled. The lists come from odd sources, also respected ones, and all of them are varied. Amazon.com readers don't hesitate to share their opinions on the best books. The whole concept of "Important Thing You Need to Do Before You Die" has never appealed to me though.

So here are the lists up for consideration. My initial idea was to read classics - which would mean re-reading some and picking up others for the first time (perhaps embarassingly for an English major). But I sort of love the Time list and NPR's oddball beachreads appeals to me too. I'm really just undertaking the project to help me focus - and as an amusing distraction. I'm not very good at distracting myself for very long unless I have a real "project" and a goal. So here are the lists up for consideration:

TIME's best English-language novels from 1923 to the present

Modern Library's 100 best novels, parallel to the site's readers' list of the 100 best

The Guardian's top 100 books of all time

NPR's Audience Picks: 100 best beach books ever