Back in April I wrote a post about how I wasn’t doing as much reading as I would like to be doing, especially because I didn’t have a job to go to and had so much “free” time. It was pointed out to me at the time that I was probably depressed which made a lot of sense. But it turns out I’ve done a lot of reading this year after all: 22 books to be exact. That’s pretty good, even though it’s about the amount of books I read when I have a job. It’s certainly a lot more than many of the smrt (typo intentional) people I know. So, arranged by categories that are totally arbitrary, are the books I read this year:
BIG BOOKS: 600-page biographies of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln by David Herbert Donald) and Paul McCartney (Paul McCartney – Many Years From Now by Barry Miles).
LITTLE BOOKS: Two plays — Antony and Cleopatra and The Importance of Being Earnest — and The Actual, a novella by Saul Bellow. I’m a big fan of Bellow — his Humboldt’s Gift is one of my favorite books — and I didn’t even know this novella existed.
FICTION: Books by Margaret Atwood, Michael Cunningham, and William Gibson.
NON-FICTION: Books about Ernest Shackleton (his unsuccessful attempt to walk across Antarctica), XTC, Squeeze, Jack Kirby, and the history of the movies.
THEMES: In addition to the Lincoln biography, I also read Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Gettysburg by Garry Wills, and bits of Lincoln on Democracy edited and introduced by Mario M. Cuomo and Harold Holzer (for the times when the big biography didn’t contain enough of Lincoln’s important speeches). I also read (and reread) books about the Beatles (for reasons why see my post “They Never Let Me Down”): The Day John Met Paul, Shout!, The Beatles’ Second Album (if you want to know why American fans didn’t hear the group’s albums the way they were released in England), and The Longest Cocktail Party. The McCartney bio, even though it’s 600 pages, only includes his life up until the end of the Beatles.
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: In a tie with the Lincoln biography is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The author of the Lincoln biography accomplished the amazing feat of making the Civil War boring. Lincoln’s early life was interesting, especially when it overturned by impressions of Lincoln as slow-moving and not very driven; the exact opposite is true. And Lincoln’s second term, at least the part he was able to accomplish before he was killed, is fast-moving. But the middle part was a chore. As for the Dragon Tattoo, I read the book because it’s been out for a while and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about and an English version of the movie has just been released. I still don’t know. Except for being an easy, fast read (which is no small thing because it’s a translation), I thought it was two books that had been mashed together — one with the journalist that takes up most of the book and the other with the goth hacker and I wasn’t very interested in the hacker part (I found William Gibson’s first two books in the Blue Ant trilogy more enjoyable, the first of which predated the Dragon Tattoo book.) I was also incredibly disappointed in the end of the book — the solution to the mystery is a big letdown and then it goes on for another 50 or so pages to wrap up a story line that initially seemed like just a device to get the journalist out of town at the beginning of the book.
FAVORITE NON-FICTION: John Jeremiah Sullivan has written for the New York Times, The Paris Review, and Harper’s Magazine, and other publications. Pulphead is a collection of essays that include a visit to a Christian rock festival, appreciations of Michael Jackson and Axl Rose (I don’t agree with either but I can understand his passion about music and musicians), the popularity of The Real World franchise, the 18th-century eccentric botanist Constantine Rafinesque, and caves in the Eastern United States containing cave paintings that rival the cave paintings in France (see Werner Herzog’s documentary “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”.) The writing is good throughout this book and Sullivan finds ways to draw you in no matter the subject.
FAVORITE FICTION: I picked up an inexpensive copy of Pride and Prejudice to read on my trip to Georgia last summer. I’ve never read Austen, not in high school and not in college, and I think that was a good thing. I read this book because I wanted to and I really enjoyed it. For a novel that’s over 200 years old, it was still funny and romantic and surprising. And Elizabeth Bennet is still a main character that women and, I truly believe, men can identify with. Her mother is still both funny and annoying and her father can still be considered the sane one in the family. One of my favorite parts in the book is when Elizabeth tells her mother that she has declined a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins and is forced by her mother to tell her father. Mr. Bennet replies: “From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.” I also enjoyed the way Elizabeth came around to being in love with Mr. Darcy.
WHAT”S NEXT: More Lincoln (Justin Kaplan’s Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer and Gore Vidal’s nearly 700-page historical novel Lincoln, which I think all of this is leading up to; his historical fiction is great, especially Burr), more Beatles (finishing the mammoth Mammoth Book of the Beatles and long-time Beatle-watcher Allan Kozinn’s The Beatles), more Margaret Atwood, hopefully a lot more poetry (I’ve just read a little here and there this year), and enough books piled on my bedroom floor to fill at least another bookshelf. Happy New Year and happy reading!
Which books by Margaret Atwood did you read?
Pulphead is going on my 2012 To Be Read list.