Infinite Jest

I spent the weekend in Ohio, celebrating my cousin's wedding. I also got very behind in email and RSS. So it wasn't until Monday that I learned of David Foster Wallace's suicide, and the news derailed me a little bit. In full disclosure -- I have never read a single one of his books. I've read some of his essays and a few of his stories and even fewer of his journalism pieces, but I have felt, since first meeting him, that he belonged to me. This is something that I am sure would have bothered him in some way. I realize he is not a thing to be consumed. But I met him, not literally, in Prague, and he became, quite by accident, a character in a screenplay I was working on for a class there, and since then, I've considered him a dear friend who I don't keep up with as well as I should.

That he was one of our most brilliant minds and that he left too soon is without contention. I think it is also fair to say that he left us at a time when we needed him the most. I cannot help thinking about his last days on earth, and the loneliness I imagine he felt before he hanged himself. And when I get to that image -- the starkness of his suicide -- I get physically ill, as I am now.

When I was 25 I bought Infinite Jest and I read something like 33 pages of it. I had never heard of it before. And no one had ever recommended it to me. Rather, I came across it the old fashioned way, in one of the few independent bookstores still open in this country. It was a 10th anniversary reissue with a forward by Dave Eggers. Eggers and Wallace (along with Franzen and Lethem and others) belong to a group of writers affectionately called The Maximalists. And I like every one of them. But Wallace has always been a favorite, despite what little of his work I've read.

So. Jest has been sitting on a bookshelf for over two years. I look at its spine nearly every day, and think loving thoughts about it, and mean to start it again, and don't. But I feel that right now, this very day in fact, there is not a more sensible thing I could do than to climb into bed with it once more.

The book is, in the most general sense, about addiction and entertainment. It's a really big book, about really big ideas, and we are living in what I quite seriously consider perilous days. This election has me, at best, flummoxed. I often feel like I live with aliens, here in my Red state. I wonder if we, as a nation, are really as unserious and cruel and stupid a people as our media and their polls are making us out to be. Ever since John McCain chose Caribou Barbie as his running mate, I have been considering rereading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. But then Wallace died. And left me feeling so alone, that it seems, as I've said, the only thing left to do is pray, get some sleep, continue to register voters, and read Infinite Jest. So, that is what I plan to do. If you need another reason to read this book, here is some of what Eggers had to say in the Forward:

"And yet the time spent in this book, in this world of language, is absolutely rewarded. When you exit these pages after that month of reading, you are a better person. It's insane, but also hard to deny. Your brain is stronger because it's been given a monthlong workout, and more importantly, your heart is sturdier, for there has scarcely been written a more moving account of desperation, depression, addiction, generational stasis and yearning, or the obsession with human expectations, with artistic and athletic and intellectual possibility. The themes here are big, and the emotions (guarded as they are) are very real, and the cumulative effect of the book is, you could say, seismic."

And, later:

"And now, unfortunately, we're back to the impression that this book is daunting. Which it isn't, really. It's long, but there are pleasures everywhere. There is humor everywhere. There is also a very quiet but very sturdy and constant tragic undercurrent that concerns a people who are completely lost, who are lost within their families and lost within their nation, and lost within their time, and who only want some sort of direction or purpose or sense of community or love. Which is, after all and conveniently enough for the end of this introduction, what an author is seeking when he sets out to write a book -- any book, but particularly a book like this, a book that gives so much, that required such sacrifice and dedication. Who would do such a thing if not for want of connection and thus of love?

"Last thing: In attempting to persuade you to buy this book, or check it out of your library, it's useful to tell you that the author is a normal person. Dave Wallace -- and he is commonly known as such -- keeps big sloppy dogs and has never dressed them in taffeta or made them wear raincoats. He has complained often about sweating too much when he gives public readings, so much so that he wears a bandana to keep the perspiration from soaking the pages below him. He was once a nationally ranked tennis player, and he cares about good government. He is from the Midwest -- east-central Illinois, to be specific, which is an intensely normal part of the country (not far, in fact, from a city, no joke, named Normal). So he is normal, and regular, and ordinary, and this is his extraordinary, and irregular, and not-normal achievement, a thing that will outlast him and you and me, but will help future people understand us -- how we felt, how we lived, what we gave to each other and why."

If this had been the first book I'd ever read, I'd have never read another

I own exactly one book whose cover bears Oprah's golden seal of approval. I own this book because its author caused an uproar by politely declining his invitation into her sorority, was later snubbed by the Pulitzer and finally awarded the National Book Award. Thousands of covers had already been printed before he made his announcement, and I found them remaindered and couldn't bear to see them that way, so I bought one. I'm not a hater -- I love every single thing that Oprah has done for reading in America, save defacing perfectly good covers. And yes, I've read many of her selections, both before and after she chose them. But I've never read a one whose cover bore her name.

I had to explain this to the good folks at Borders the Saturday before last: that I needed a copy of The Pillars of the Earth but that if the only ones they had were Oprah's, they could go ahead and forget about it.

Here is how I came to read this book: I was dragging my feet in finishing Brideshead and freaking out about what would come next. There was this real sense of urgency (not uncommon for me) in needing to know what I would console myself with once Brideshead was done. As I said before, it was Saturday, and naturally, I was watching non-stop coverage of the Olympics, like any other legitimate American. The men's road race was on at the time, and as I watched the peloton slowly climb into the mountains above Beijing, nearing the Great Wall, I was overcome with the desire to read a huge novel that dealt with people who were swept up in something larger than life. And because I don't know of anything off the top of my head that's about the Great Wall itself, and it seemed like too much effort to google or wiki anything, I settled on Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. It had a very pretty cover and a lovely title and was about something that strikes me as infinitely fascinating -- building a medieval cathedral. Plus, I was under the impression that it was a really good book and had been wanting to read it for a longish time.

So, off I went. The prologue held my attention. I felt, if not affection, a certain interest in the initial characters. It wasn't great writing by any means, but it was simple and it was solid, and I thought, maybe the writing will begin to take shape with the cathedral itself.

My rule is that before I allow myself to abandon them, I give troublesome books 100 pages.

And I would have really appreciated it if Pillars's editor would have given me the same courtesy. But if there ever was an editor, it seems they didn't make it out of the gate. I am trying so hard to like this monster, but right now, I'm galled by it.

For starters (and this was my first clue) it had like three (three!) endorsements in the opening pages. Three. The book was published almost a decade ago and was (even before Oprah's magic wand) Ken Follett's best-selling work, and they could only come up with three endorsements? Secondly, the book opens with the Prologue and then Part One followed by Chapter 1 (as in the number). Chapter 1 the number is followed by II, as in the Roman numeral. Which is then followed by III, IV and V. These are followed by Chapter 2. Which is then followed by II and III and so on. Am I missing something? Is this some literary device I'm ignorant of? Is it really so hard to stick with one or the other?

One reviewer I'd read had commented on the novel's gratuitous sex and how it was slightly off putting. I rarely find sex gratuitous and think mostly, what we need is more of it in fiction. (Or in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Please?) But the first sex scene in this book is so cringe-awful that I will not even dignify it with a spoiler alert. Don't ask me what Ken Follett was thinking when he had a woman semi rape a starving, half-dead-with-grief man in a clearing in the forest, while his recently motherless children slept nearby. And let's not forget that this man is still covered in his dead wife's blood, that she isn't 12 hours in the ground, that he's just committed infanticide and likely hasn't showered in months or brushed his teeth in, I don't know, ever? It doesn't matter how barking horny you are, or how the security of the rest of your life depends on seducing this one man, no one, not even a two dimensional stock character, does this.

It gets worse.

After this grotesque coupling, Follett commits the cardinal sin. Exposition, exposition, exposition. He has a chance here to make another play for me, the reader, by showing and not telling. We've been told for the past 100 pages. All's I want is to be shown a little bit. Instead, Follett writes: "Tom was no less bemused. Life was moving too fast for him to take in all the changes. It was like being on the back of a runaway horse: everything happened so quickly that there was no time to react to events, and all he could do was hold on tightly and try to stay sane." After this little gem, where he's stated the same thing multiple times, Follett then gives us a play-by-play of all the changes that have just happened so fast to poor Tom. Because, presumably, we weren't paying attention when we were told the first time.

And then! Then we find out that the baby has really lived. Zing! It didn't die in the forest on its mother's grave after all! Previously, before the baby is left to die, it is twice described as having dark luxurious hair, like its dead mother's. Two or three pages later, the baby is bald. Look, I don't care if the kid has flying squirrels growing out of it's skull, just be consistent. If you make a point to tell us something about a character, stick with it.

Also, within the first 164 pages the phrase "hot body" appears. Twice. Just to be clear: the phrase "hot body" has no place in historical fiction.

And yet, I think I could get over all of this. The abysmal writing. The weird chapter numbering. The creepy sex. I could look past it if the characters were in any way engaging or compelling. If they weren't dull as hell. The other cardinal rule of writing? Never bore the reader. Derrick Jensen has told his writing students that they ought to aim to write things that are so good he'd rather read them than make love. Well. I would rather engage in the kind of horrifying sex act I just described than read another page of this beast.

OMG, I'm so depressed at how much I don't like this book. And I have over 900 pages to go.

At least I have Michael Phelps.

Ed. Note: there were four endorsements, not three as I had remembered. BFD.

Twilight, twilight, in the end

This week has been rough. One of the lesser loved weeks in my grand 2008. It began with a death in the family and seems now to have ended with a death in the family (of sorts). I've been maintaining level with Hem, and actually, have finished. The True Post continues to gather strength in my head, but until then, I give you:

"Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer

(read in the hours of 11am and 12:30am, dates August 9 -10)

If you're looking for candy, I've got the hard stuff right here. Check out my 13 hour reading marathon, in which I watched Michael Phelps torpedo his way to win after win after win, and supplemented the repeat commercial interruptions with intense, racing reading of this young adult angst fest.

Now, if you know me, you know that i love, LOVE, the YA Fiction. Can't get enough of it. When it's done well, it gives you a nice clear picture of life and the hard choices we all have to make at some point. And even when it's done poorly, you've probably only spent a weekend reading and so don't feel as though you've wasted much time.

Twilight falls somewhere in between. I didn't spend long on the 300+ pages, and so I feel like I've come out on top. A bit of a belly ache however, as the teenage love drama was so intense at times, I texted Jones about midway through, "I feel as though I'm actively reliving my 16 year old romance to my first love, the painter/musician." Regardless, Twilight was everything I was looking for in a novel that lazy and emotionally wrung Saturday afternoon.

We meet Bella, short for Isabella, early in the novel as an awkward yet engaging 17 yr old who is moving to the Pacific Northwest, land of green and moist and unsurprisingly, vampires. We follow her to high school, listen half heartedly to all of the troubles that attend a new student, and then, speaking as a female who cannot get enough of the star crossed lovers, engage rapturously when she falls in love with the brilliant and dynamic Edward Cullen, a 17 year old with dazzling topaz eyes and burnished golden hair.

The novel moves slowly through their romance, then speeds up into the necessary difficulties of teenage love, and finally, in a whirlwind climax, hurls you through a cataclysmic ending with the promise of more to come. Three more books to come, in fact, as well as a Major Motion Picture.

I'll be interested to see who plays Edward, seeing as Ms. Meyers has written him in the exact form and character as Adonis. Until then, I will probably go pick up the next three books in the quad-rilogy, and suggest that if you have a lazy emotional Saturday coming up, you do the same.

Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh

Two weeks ago, I first saw the sumptuous trailer for Brideshead Revisited and thought, Mother of Pearl, I'm gonna have to read that beast in the next six days. This, not one day after I'd bought 5 other books that were lounging on my bedside table, waiting to be read, in addition to the 4 I'm currently reading. But I've been meaning to read Brideshead for about a decade, and I can't see the film before I do, and I want to see the film ASAP. So there you have it.

Brideshead is one of those books that's been shelved in a mental library alongside other titles that have been recommended to me by Readers -- those whose own literary tastes and conquests I both admire and envy. I seemed to remember a relative of mine (the one who is a somewhat renowned Joycean scholar) encouraging me to read Brideshead, but when I pulled up the email, what she'd actually said was that the novel, "finally, isn't all that good." Now, on this, we disagree. Mightily. For what I felt, in the handful of hours that it took me to barrel through this book, was rapture.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps.

But I honestly had no clue what to expect from this book, and feared that I too would find it not all that good. Rather, I was almost giddy to discover Charles Ryder. I haven't fallen so hard for a narrator since Nick Carraway.

Here is as much as I can tell you: the novel takes place in England (with jaunts to Venice and Paris and Morocco) in between the two World Wars. Charles Ryder, a middle-class, aspiring artist, comes to Oxford to read history. There, he meets and (presumably) falls in love with Lord Sebastian Flyte, the charming but haunted youngest son of a fading English dynasty. Sebastian's attempts to keep Charles away from his family ultimately fail, and if you want to get overly simplistic, you could say that once Charles's path crosses with the rest of the Flyte family, the wheels of their downfall are set in motion. Only, Waugh doesn't ultimately believe in downfall (at least not for the the main characters), and seeks to suffuse everyone's experience ultimately with grace. Whether you find Waugh's version of grace in line with your own (I don't), or even in line with what you'd like to see happen to these characters is beside the point. The point is that Waugh is a damn fine writer.

Here:

Charles's decision to go and formally meet Sebastian: I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground and there was a tiny, priggish, warning voice in my ear which in the tones of Collins told me it was seemly to hold back. But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

Or this, shortly after Ryder's acquaintance with the Flytes: But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm; or, rather, I was touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did not yet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palm of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the golden slope that had never known the print of a boot there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary and tourist -- only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain, and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.

Do not let me misrepresent Charles Ryder, he is not all soliloquy. I jotted down the page numbers of dozens of these passages and phrases (and as I flip through them now, I am compelled to turn off the Olympics and begin the whole brilliant mess again) but if I don't rein myself in now, it'll be too late.

Three things that were evident nearly immediately in this book: that I would miss it sorely when it was finished. That it would be finished too soon. And that (even now, after a few days to think it over) I would be hard pressed to come up with another author whose panoply of characters are so alive. There is a largish cast here. And it seems the secondaries were never let in on their second-class status. Waugh has written each one so completely and effortlessly and lovingly that I should nearly expect to bump into them were I to find myself in London or Paris or Venice or Morocco during those in between years.

It's hard to speak in any more real detail about this book without spoiling it. It is a tragicomedy. And a love story. And then a second love story. There is a moral imperative, which I find neither moral nor imperative, but am perfectly satisfied with nonetheless. It was a delight to read.

As soon as I finished it, I sent a text to Martin that said: Just finished Brideshead. Right now, at this very moment, the thought of ever reading another book again feels like adultery.

I don't have much higher praise than that.

Still reading list-less

A few years ago, I lived on a farm. In a barn. And it was great. Greater than great. I don't know that I've ever been happier anywhere else. I shared the barn with a world-class roommate, my two mutts and, towards the end, the man I was seeing at the time. One of the dogs, the larger and more neurotic one, had for years up until the arrival of the boyfriend, always slept either underneath my bed, or right beside me on the floor. But I wasn't the only one who had fallen in love. Simply put, that dog positively adored my boyfriend. He took to him in a way he's never taken to anyone else in my life. He not only began sleeping on the boyfriend's side of the bed, but he'd wait up for him. Patiently seated before the front door until our little family was all home, refusing to be settled in for the night until his new master was tucked in as well.

Eventually, the boyfriend and I parted ways over several irreconcilable differences. And he soon moved out of the barn, the city, the state, this region of the country.

His absence was made all the more palpable by how badly my dog took this turn of events. He was unmoored. Confused. Frustrated with me. He trotted back and forth from my bedroom to the front door, wearing a path. He refused to come to bed. He wined incessantly, he barked at the door. He would come back to the room to investigate, surmise the boyfriend was still gone, and go back to the door for the night, settling down in front of it and letting out the weariest of sighs. It was weeks before he would sleep in the bedroom again, and months before he finally let go, and moved back to my side of the bed.

Sometime later, I thought to myself, This must be what I'm like to live with, immediately after I finish a really spectacular book. Moody, anxious, sad, unsure what to do next.

This was how I reacted after I finished The Kite Runner. I hadn't slept for three nights, sitting up in the TV room, listening to the Brokeback Mountain score and reading it. My roommate came home the last night to find me crying so hard I couldn't breathe, the music cranked, and me pacing around the apartment in mad little circles. She immediately thought someone had died, and was more than slightly amused that it was "just a book." (A book that she would soon have a similar reaction to.) The days following the end of Kite Runner, I didn't know what to do with myself. I couldn't read, I couldn't sleep very well, I was full of a beautiful sadness, that colored every moment of the days. This kind of intensity passes. No one, not even dogs, can hold on to this kind of emotion for very long.

But each time, I am thankful for it. I am thankful for the books that have made me feel so broken and also so alive. I don't want to read only these kinds of books. It'd be too exhausting. But each time, I despair that it will be the last time.

I have come nowhere close to drawing up a reading list that I'm happy with. But I do so hope that one or two or three of the titles will turn out to be the right kind of magic, and leave me utterly bereft and tired and satisfied in their wake.

Waiting for the Feast...

As the title suggests, much like Jones and Tweed (hello Tweed), "A Moveable Feast" remains elusive. I'm a little farther along today than I was yesterday, and plan to finish it probably tonight. But because of the hype, and since the title of this little blog is dedicated to Hem, I feel as though I should put off the True First, and begin with a warm up blog piece. Therefore, I give you:

"No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy

(Date Read - July 18 thru 22, primarily in bed before sleep)

Here is what I found after reading my first Cormac. (I love that name. Cormac. I'll read his books just so I can say his name out loud. "I'm reading a Cormac." Anyway.) Maybe it's because I'm reading Hemingway, but I noticed Cormac's style of writing much quicker than I caught onto the plot. It's so spare, so terse, so devoid of Author (in fact, it's SO devoid of Author, you almost can't help but be overcome by Cormac's presence) that I had a hard time getting ahold of the story.

When I first approached the book, I thought I'd be reading a heavy weight, an author's author full of DeLillo-ish phrases and drawn out back country descriptions. And to some extent, that is there. But it's not in your face, and it's not obnoxious.

When Cormac writes Sherriff Bell bemoaning the loss of a generation of kindness and gentleness, I remembered the words of Hem in the chapter, "Une Generation Perdue." Cormac writes of the generation of the 1980s as those who have lost their way, and points to his earlier comrades in the WWII era as being all grace and eloquence. But the term was popularized by Hemingway, quoting Gertrude Stein, who referenced it towards the youth of WWI.

Perhaps the line most fitting for thinking about loss is this one given by Bell after seeing the carnage in the desert. "I just have this feelin we're looking at something we really aint never even seen before." It's not so much that Bell is looking at the scenes unfolding around him and mourning the generation he just left. No, he has his own mixed emotions about his time as a boy soldier. It's that he knows the world is moving forward and is leaving him behind. He's not sorry to be left behind. He's sorry that the world has come to this.

The title of No Country comes from a poem by William Butler Yeats. The first stanza goes something like this:

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

It's an interesting poem for Cormac to choose, for such a title, and with such a storyline. Yeats seems to be reacting to the plenty and youth of a rich era, saying that this is no place to be old and frail. You must have movement in a lush country. You must have vigor and stamina and be able to enjoy the abundance of the earth.

Cormac's country is about as far from Byzantium as Yeats can get. It is nearly lawless, spare and desert-like, full of violence and bloodshed and acts of rationalized psychopathetic lunacy. It is not a country for old men, not because of the need for vigor and vitality to enjoy, but rather because it is only the loss of something that enables the youth to survive within it. Old men have died off in this country because they cannot stand the loss. Young men die off in this country, because they cannot live with the loss. Bell will die soon and leave Chigurh as one of the sole survivors, he is who is the most empty. It is a doomed place.

...

I loved "No Country." I thought it was a frenetic, bloody story told by a kind hearted man sitting in a rocking chair. It was a story that was gritty to read all the way through, and it made that rough, spare voice that much more compelling. I love a story that makes me pause and think and wonder about the way of things. And more than anything, I love a story that sings.

Prologue: Martin

It’s not so much that we’re lazy, or that we’re disaffected or disinclined or dis-anything really, it’s that there so much else to do in the world, and that spending 45 minutes of an hour long book club listening to other women compare the heroines of Tolstoy to the nurturing role of a homemaker, well, let’s just say that I’d have a better time clipping my toenails. Not that I dislike clipping my toenails. I quite enjoy it really. Only I’ve recently mislaid my large clippers, and it’s a pain and a half searching for an object of that size, when it could be anywhere within 1200 square feet.

Excuse. Let me begin again.

So, as Jones says, we’re reading books and talking about them. Only, we do so in the manner in which we see fit. Much the way we live our lives, against the grain. No coffee shop reserved tables for us. No Mr. Darcy (a fine hero) nor Oprah’s seal of approval (a 50% chance of a good read), we’re choosing the books which suit us in our present travels, in our current needs. Often book clubs are begun with the honest intent of reading more, and reading within a community. Some sense of accountability which imposes a sense of guilt on the reader should they not finish their allotted 7 chapters by next meeting. This is a worthy treatment of a club, until the third meeting or so, when you discover that Hilda over there with the head scarf is not an interesting Eastern block refugee, but is rather a throwback to 60s era women’s lib and finds nothing more satisfying than pointing out unremarkable and aggravating gender and sexual theory critiques. Or that Ramon is deeply conflicted with his life as a gay bartender and instead reads all male roles as aggressors and pursuers, even the above mentioned Darcy, which I think we can all agree is the epitome of well wrought hero.

Anyway.

I believe the HBC, as it was so aptly and judiciously named, will bring out the best of all worlds. The sense of community is just a digi-type away, and the allowance of impunity and independence will foster greater removes from normal book club fodder and conversation. Because why do we read? For education, yes, but mostly, for enjoyment. And the best education happens when you enjoy what you are learning. Hopefully with our little HBC, Jones and I (and others as they come) will learn to read for ourselves, and then to translate that into a enjoyment and an education for others. It should not be a reporting on what the book was about, but rather, what did we learn from it? What do we take away from it? How has it changed us, and how can we use that to impact and change those around us? In that sense, I believe our HBC will forge new heights. Because just like the beloved sonnet, we are first given strict parameters and then full fledged freedom.

To begin with an about me: I have a Bachelor’s degree in English Lit, won from the prestigious university of the church of Christ, also known as David Lipscomb U. There’s a novel in there somewhere, but it’ll take a more disciplined wit than I to pour it all out. Post graduate work was done first in the workforce for a small publishing company, and second in the graduate force, in a small classical graduate program. This allowed me to gain a Master’s degree, although as you can see, it did nothing to break me from a bad habit of writing in the passive voice. Post graduate work will soon follow the Master’s, as in August I will begin a PhD program studying Latin American history.

This last sentence may seem trivial, but let me assure you, it is not. Three years of application, two of GRE study, countless hours writing lists of myself, my family, my background, and my future, and to show for it, a 700 word apology on who I am and what I want. I challenge anyone to do that and escape unscathed. At the end of the day, I cannot and will not be able to leave the rubrics of my future in a box. The HBC will be a house for my journey through the cultural and historical significance of slavery, revolution and rebellion. It will also be a burial ground.

I look forward to the coming August. And you should too. Jones and I plan on being here in full glory and with full hearts.

Vive la libertad!

The Harvard Hundred

So. Now that I've run my mouth about refusing to read anything I don't want to, I'm trying to narrow down what I actually do want to read. Googling "reading lists" turned up some fun results, including the Top 100 Picks from the Harvard Book Store staff.

Word.

And because I really should be studying A&P, but am not because of a headache, and am instead watching The Last King of Scotland for the third time and blogging, I decided, what the heck?, I'll grade myself against the Harvard Hundred while I'm at it. Points awarded as follows:

1 point for each book on the list I've read.
.5 points for each book I've begun but abandoned.
.25 points for each book I own but haven't begun.

90 points and up is always an A in my book.

I will not come close to an A. Here we go:

1. A People's History of the United States Zinn: 0
2. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle Murakami: 1
3. The New York Trilogy Auster: 0
4. The Crying of Lot 49 Pynchon: 0
5. The Lord of the Rings Tolkien: .5
6. Jane Eyre Bronte: .5
7. Lolita Nabokov: 1
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell: 1
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez: .5
10. The Catcher in the Rye Salinger: 0
    
11. Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky: .25
    
12. On the Road Kerouac: 1
    
13. Alice in Wonderland Carrol: 1
    
14. Brothers Karamozov Dostoevsky: 1
    
15. The Age of Innocence Wharton: 0
    
16. Don Quixote Cervantes: 0
    
17. Perfume Suskind: 0
    
18. Ulysses Joyce: .25
    
19. Anna Karenina Tolstoy: 1
    
20. Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor: .5
    
21. Cry the Beloved Country Paton: 0
    
22. Dracula Stoker: 1
    
23. The Eagles Die Marek: 0
    
24. Emotionally Weird Atkinson: 0
    
25. The Handmaid’s Tale Atwood: 0
    
26. Infinite Jest Wallace: .5
    
27. Kitchen Yoshimoto: 0
    
28. London Fields Amis: 0
    
29. Moise and the World of Reason Williams: 0
    
30. Movie Wars Rosenbaum: 0
    
31. Paradise Lost Milton: 1
    
32. Persuasion Austen: 0
    
33. Tortilla Curtain Boyle: 0
    
34. Visions of Excess Bataille: 0
    
35. Where the Wild Things Are Sendak: 1
    
36. Wild Sheep Chase Murakami: 0
    
37. Beloved Morrison: 1
    
38. Counterfeiters Gide: 0
    
39. The Bell Jar Plath: 1
    
40. Blind Owl Hedayat: 0
    
41. Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe: .5
    
42. The Count of Monte Cristo Dumas: .25
    
43. Dealing With Dragons Wrede: 0
    
44. The Earthsea Trilogy Le Guin: 0
    
45. The Ecology of Fear Davis: 0
    
46. Franny and Zooey Salinger: 0
    
47. History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides: .5
    
48. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents Alvarez: 0
    
49. Kabuki: Circle of Blood Mack & Jiang: 0
    
50. Of Human Bondage Maugham: 0
    
51. The Satanic Verses Rushdie: 0
    
52. The Sheltering Sky Bowles: 0
    
53. Tristam Shandy Sterne: 0
    
54. Well of Loneliness Hall: 0
    
55. Wicked Pavilion Powell: 0
    
56. Collected Stories of V.S. Pritchett: 0
    
57. War and Peace Tolstoy: .5
    
58. Babel 17 Delany: 0
    
59. Dora Freud: 0
    
60. Empire Falls Russo: .5
    
61. For Whom the Bell Tolls Hemingway: .5
    
62. Girl in Landscape Letham: 0
    
63. Goodbye to All That Graves: 0
    
64. Ham on Rye Bukowski: 0
    
65. Life Like Moore: 0
    
66. Mao II DeLillo: 0
    
67. Random Family Leblanc: 0
    
68. Revolutionary Road Yates: 0
    
69. The Stranger Camus: 0
    
70. Humboldt’s Gift Bellow: 0
    
71. White Noise DeLillo: 1
    
72. Atlas Shrugged Rand: .5
    
73. Bastard Out of Carolina Allison: 0
    
74. Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Bukowski: 0
    
75. Delta of Venus Nin: 0
    
76. Fast Food Nation Schlosser: 1
    
77. Ficciones Borges: 0
    
78. Go Ask Alice Anonymous: 1
    
79. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Adams: .5
    
80. Iliad Homer: 1
    
81. On Photography Sontag: 0
    
82. Republic Plato: .5
    
83. Shockproof Sydney Skate Meaker: 0
    
84. Society of the Spectacle Debord: 0
    
85. Strangers in Paradise Moore: 0
    
86. The Sun Also Rises Hemingway: 1
    
87. A Wrinkle In Time L’Engle: 1
    
88. Dubliners Joyce: .25
    
89. The Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut: 0
    
90. No Logo Klein: 1
    
91. Aeneid Virgil: .5
    
92. Ariel Plath: 0
    
93. Charlotte’s Web White: 1
    
94. Curious George Learns the Alphabet Rey: 1
    
95. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute Paley: 0
    
96. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter McCullers: .5
    
97. Henry VIII Shakespeare: 1
    
98. I, Claudius Graves: 0
    
99. The Lost Continent Bryson: 0
    
100. Master and Margarita Bulgakov: 0
     

Grade: 29.25, assuming I can add.

Ed. Note: I am a complete tool. I can't believe how much of this I haven't read.

Ed. Note the Second: Whatevs. It doesn't matter because either way, James McAvoy's Scottish accent is banging sexy. And you don't have to know how to read to know that.

Prologue: Jones

So here you have it. Bored on gchat one afternoon, and not very much inclined to do the things our employers pay us to do, Martin & I cooked up the idea for another blog. Both compulsive readers who have on occasion read the same things, and who know others who do as well, we have nonetheless ever been able to get a real live book club up off the ground. The kind where you get together once a month and eat dainty little foodstuffs and drink wine and gab on about this and that.

On the one hand, the discipline it requires is alluring. Having a list! Being held accountable for finishing on time! Knowing where you're going from month to month! All of it, I dig it. But also, you might have to read something you don't want to. I worked in Christian publishing for a few years, and feel I've done my time. If I'm going to read something that is spectacularly crappy, I want to have no one but myself to blame. There's also this: I could, if left to my own devices, come up with more than enough titles to keep me occupied for the rest of my life. And while suggestions from other readers I admire are always taken to heart, I don't, right now, want to spend a year reading things that other people want to read when there is so so much I haven't gotten to myself.

So here's how this gig works: we are going to read the first title together, and then split from there, and we might not ever meet back up again, except for here. If you haven't already figured it out, the first title we'll read is Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. And yes, I'm a little ashamed that I haven't read it yet. Seeing as how I adore him and have a litcrush on him and think he's one of the finest authors ever and want to retrace his every Parisian step and to spend just one evening next to him at a bar, would be too good for this world.

We're not actually going to kick this baby off until August. Why? Because that's when the fall semester starts. And because I'm waiting on an auction to close on a first edition copy of the above and, should I win it, it will have to be shipped from Zimbabwe, which takes a little while. And because it will also take a little while for each of us to come up with a working list of our own. Drafts of which, I'm sure, will appear here.

About me: I have a Bachelor's degree in English Literature & Anthropology, two disciplines I'm sure I'll always consider myself an amateur student of. I entered college as pre-med, interested in, at the ripe age of 17, epidemiology. And while I still find infectious diseases super interesting, I was quickly weeded out of the pre-med flock by organic chem, and fled to the liberal arts. I spent my last semester of college in Prague, studying scriptwriting, creative nonfiction and the literature of the Holocaust. It was equal parts terrible and miraculous.

That was five years ago.

Since college, I've considered master's programs in (wait for it) Literature and Anthropology, as well as creative writing (what does that even mean?), comparative literature, social work and education.

Now, I work for the state in which I live, as an advocate for the elderly, the disabled, military veterans and the low income population (which sadly but typically includes the first three). It's exhausting, heartbreaking, infuriating work. It is also oftentimes unspeakably rewarding. In writing classes (at least in the 7 I sat through in college), an inordinate amount of time is spent talking about finding your voice. It's kind of a shopworn concept. And still, I'm not entirely sure what it means. I wouldn't presume to say I've quote found my own voice yet. Which is or is not interesting in light of what I do these days. As an advocate, I spend my work week being a voice for people who are too sick or too poor or too old or too non-white to have any voice of their own. They get a hold of me somehow, and pull me into the center of their lives, tell me their stories, and then I go forth and I speak for them. To the government, to the pharmaceutical companies, to the insurance industry, to the media. To anyone who will listen and give us half a chance. Sometimes, I am able to secure for them things they need, or demand justice for them, or improve the quality of their lives in some small way. When this happens, they see me as a magician, a miracle worker. They cry and they pray over me and they tell me they love me. And it makes me cry, too. But these small mercies do not happen as frequently as any of us would like. And it's physically painful to have to tell people again and again that there is nothing I can do. That there is nothing anyone can do.

What this has to do with reading is this: I find that I need books more than ever these days. I need the escapism, desperately. I need worlds where there are unlikely and hesitant heroes and terrifyingly powerful adversaries, where everything could be lost, where so much is at stake, but where these plucky little characters make it out alright in the end. I need authors, too, who are kind enough or crazy enough to have written characters who I can relate to. Who are like me in enough but not too many ways. Who can say things that maybe I don't know how to say or am afraid to say. I need authors who can teach me lessons when I'm too proud or too tired to take advice from anyone else.

Put another way, the American philosopher Kenneth Burke once asserted that "stories are equipment for living" and I believe him.

They are also, lest I get too melodramatic or reflective, a great deal of fun.

At the end of the day, I read for pleasure, after all.

And this is where I hope I am able to make a bit of order out of it all. To dress up as a serious, disciplined reader, all that. Or to simply be another person, who in the howling, perverse, indulgent madness and delight that is the blogosphere, fancies she has something to write about things that have already been written.