2023 50 Book Challenge

[Oswald Cornelius]

February, so far:

5) Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon. I've not read much Pynchon. This one is accessible, though. I also watched the movie last week, and it was a really great evocation of the book-much of it lifted directly from it. If you don't want to read the book the movie is very good.

6) The Man In the Flying Lawn Chair, George Plimpton. Collection of slightly humorous magazine pieces; probably better in context of a larger magazine or what have you. I like Plimpton a lot, but he shines better in his long format stuff, like Paper Lion.

 

[Salad]

4. Pulse, Julian Barnes. A collections of short stories. I've always been a fan of short stories but often, I feel like I'm not getting the point of them. Anyway...on to the next.

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

7) The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown. Great story about the University of Washington's rowing eight and their ultimate domination of Hitler's Olympics in 1936. Solid historical fiction, tying together the build up to WWII in Germany--especially Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films and the boys' collegiate careers and backgrounds prior. Fantastic look at Seattle and the surrounding environs from 90 years ago-- so much has changed yet so much has stayed the same. Meant to read this 10 years ago when it came out--it made a big splash (!) around here but I just got to it. Apparently Clooney is directing a film based on it right now.

 

[blacklight]

Was busy attending to other things but back to it with:

3. Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo

Not super well-known in English but regarded throughout Latin America as the antecedent to Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude. Great foreword by Susan Sontag.

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

8) A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley. Back when I collected books about 20 years ago I bought a mint first edition of this one as I had been hearing how great it was from the time I was in my early twenties, maybe even earlier. Seemed like there was a time in the 80s when it popped up in Esquire and GQ and Playboy regularly, especially in interviews with "important men" when they were asked about favorite books. Ultimately, I realized there's not much percentage in first editions so I sold it and them off. But, I never read it until now.

Sometimes we pass on a book for a long time, maybe even make false starts and put it down, only to come back to it later and wonder, "What was I thinking? This is the best thing I've ever read." This isn't that. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing book. I'm just not sure what the younger me would've made of it. I won't get into a description of the plot or themes, there is plenty on-line you can find if you want to. I'd say most are simple outlines of some of what happens. It wouldn't be possible to do the novel justice without rewriting the entire book. As Geoffrey Wolff's* blurb on the back of my paperback says, "When I urge (it) on a friend who asks what is it about? or what is it like? I say read it, just read it."

*Note to self: Reread The Final Club and The Duke of Deception.

 

[blacklight]

4. Babel: An Arcane History - Rebecca Kuang

A dense dark academia historical fantasy work set at Oxford in the 19th century. Felt like a brilliant linguistics and translation theory lecture grafted onto the skeleton of a fairly boilerplate YA novel. Really well researched with formidable worldbuilding though fell flat for me w/r/t pacing, characterization, dialogue, lack of subtlety, and character interactions. Feel like this was one that had the potential to be phenomenal had she simply taken more time with it instead of pumping them out while in grad school.

 

[Salad]

5. The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel.
6. Stories of your life and Others, Ted Chiang

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

9) The Last Days Of Disco with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterward, Whit Stillman. This is his 'novelization' of his movie. Although it's truly an interesting approach and fun, for some reason I really hit a wall with this thing. That's more about me than the book, I'd say. If you like his movies, especially the trilogy, you'd probably enjoy this. The author/narrator of the book is one of the characters from the movie and writes about the events of the film as if they really happened. He talks about the way something may have varied 'in the movie' with the way it really happened, essentially breaking the fourth wall a bit. Maybe a fiction of a fiction of a fiction then? Sounds like a big idea, but the subject matter is not so it never really gets lofty like it maybe could. It's been years since I've seen the movie and bought the book when it came out but never read it. Planning to rewatch the trilogy and wanted to read it first. Onward and upward.

 

[feliks]

1. Seth Godin- This is Marketing
2. Thomas Hardy- Woodlanders
3. MFK Fisher- As They Were
4. Jeffrey Meikle- 20th Century Limited: Industrial Design In America 1925-1939
5. Tolstoy- The Cossacks
6. The Arabian Nights (Haddawy trans.)
7. Thuycides- Peloponessian War
8. James Clear- Atomic Habits
9. Boussuet- Lent Meditations
10. Thomas Aquinas- Lent Meditations
11. Eleanor Clark- The Oysters of Locmariaquer
12. Herodotus- Histories
13. Ishiguro- Remains of the Day
14. Aeschylus- Oresteia
15. Tacitus- Annals

Currently reading Kawabata's Master of Go

 

[PhilKenSebben]

I have 39 or so books read this year. I owe you guys a list. Sigh

 

[feliks]

16. Robert Johnson- Inner Work
17. Kawabata- Master of Go

Currently reading Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, Jesse Byock's Medieval Iceland, and Jon Kabat-Zinn's Everywhere You Go, There You Are

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

10) Straight Man, Richard Russo. I'd never read it and was motivated to see what was there after watching some of Odenkirk's new "Lucky Hank." It's cliche but no less true that 'the book is better than the movie' in this case. What was interesting was to see how they 'woke' the college faculty up for the show compared to the novel, where it seems all the characters are white men with a couple of white women in the mix. A more timely show might be that aspect of college today.

11) Monsters, A Fan's Dilemma. Claire Dederer. An much-expanded Paris Review essay; essentially a masturbatory meditation on divorcing the art from the artist. Pro tip: Just divorce the art from the artist; enjoy (whatever that means to you) Picasso, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski. Or not. If you can't-- then don't.

12X) A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara. DNF (Did not finish.) From the "what are you reading" topic:
I feel like I've been reading for a month--I'm only 300 pages in and have nearly 500 to go. Nothing has happened yet, it doesn't seem as though anything compelling COULD happen at this point. My daughter said "There's no shame in quitting." Why do I feel so dirty?

I marked my spot and gave up. I may come back to it to see what all the fuss was about--but it's not compelling to me in the least so probably not.

12) Inside Story, Martin Amis. What can I say? He's one of my favorite authors for a number of reasons. This 'novel' is an interesting mash-up of fiction and memoir. The parts about Hitchens and their friendship are more touching than I can describe and are, as one reviewer noted, alone worth the price of admission.

 

[pasadena man]

1. Seth Godin- This is Marketing
2. Thomas Hardy- Woodlanders
3. MFK Fisher- As They Were
4. Jeffrey Meikle- 20th Century Limited: Industrial Design In America 1925-1939
5. Tolstoy- The Cossacks
6. The Arabian Nights (Haddawy trans.)
7. Thuycides- Peloponessian War
8. James Clear- Atomic Habits
9. Boussuet- Lent Meditations
10. Thomas Aquinas- Lent Meditations
11. Eleanor Clark- The Oysters of Locmariaquer
12. Herodotus- Histories
13. Ishiguro- Remains of the Day
14. Aeschylus- Oresteia
15. Tacitus- Annals

Currently reading Kawabata's Master of Go

That is a heady reading list. How do you reconcile reading those books with being on SF? (Just kidding).

Are you starting with the Greek historians (Herodotus, Thucydides) and working your way forward through time?

 

[Oswald Cornelius]

13) The Guest, Emma Cline. The young author has been getting a lot of buzz and apparently she felt the need to make hay-- in the opinion of this reviewer, she didn't. A blessedly fast read, even for me, I cannot recommend this book. Reads like a longish short story that goes nowhere (like a lot of short stories.) I imagine it will be a mediocre movie inside of two years.

A lot of my reading is going to be lighter (for lack of a better word) literary fiction that I've either already read or that I should have already read but have not. I used to read a ton, then along came kids and unfortunately, the internet. Both broke what had been a many-years-long habit of reading. My youngest daughter just graduated from a good (expensive, anyway) college and we spend a lot of our time kicking around books and movies. It's fun and she helped to reignite my passion for novels. So, sometimes I'll grab something that I think may interest her. This one is now on its way to Manhattan where--I hope--she'll enjoy it more than I did.

 

[feliks]

@pasadena man
Thanks and nah I've been bouncing around ancient Greece and Rome at random the past few years (Petronius and Apuleius are the GOATs). I got Catullus, Euripedes, Plutarch and a few others on the reading list for this year so def not going in chronological order