75 books: when I should be at home depot, buying a space heater
paperhaus October 14th, 2006
it’s unfortunate that all the parts-of-books I’m reading for my film noir class don’t add up to a hill of beans in the 75 books in ‘06 race. I didn’t know it was a race, but since Dan’s already finished, it was and I have not won. Yet like any marathoner, I’m plugging along….
#35 - The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Funny, I read O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone in high school and it did nothing for me. This felt like an entirely different author. Or perhaps, this many years later, I am an entirely different reader. Which is to say, a well-told story, sneakily elegant.
#36 - Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I was supposed to be reading something else instead of this, probably film noir homework. It was a treat, if a smaller story that I was expecting from him after Cloud Atlas. But it proves that I will be enchanted by anything David Mitchell puts on the page.
#37 - The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. Sadly, this wasn’t my film noir homework. It was my dumb idea to read the book again before seeing the film. Conclusion? Book, good. Film, bad. Yeah, I have a high tolerance for Ellroy. Wanna make something of it?
#38 - Among the Missing by Dan Chaon. Short stories. Liked ‘em. Had to write a paper about the book’s structure, though, and it sucked. Not the book’s fault, but it stressed me out.
#39 - You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon. A novel. Hit many of the same themes as the stories but unfolded in a way that I found totally engaging. A complicated structure that was a lot easier for me to write about; hopefully this paper didn’t suck.
#40 - Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers. Wow! The Pygmalion story redone with artificial intelligence and a version of the author in the text. Just brilliant, so thinky and smart and sciency but with heart, too. Wow.
#41 - The Echo Maker by Richard Powers. By gum, it’s up for a National Book Award, and I think deservedly so. Ed gets all the credit for putting me on the Richard Powers tip. More about that next week.
#42 - The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. Everyone and their mother (literally) has read this, but I was freaking about structure in my work and someone said it might help. It’s not much of a guide, but it sure is a nice distracting read.
#43 - Pastoralia by George Saunders. He’s funny and smart. He just got a MacArthur genius grant. And I’m the last indie bookstore shopper on the planet to have read him.
#44 - The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain. So I can’t fly to Brazil for a restaurant tour, I haven’t eaten Vietnamese in Vietnam, and I’ll have to sell a kidney to be able to drop $500 on sushi. It’s ok. Reading Bourdain is food and lifestyle porn that will tide me over until I don’t have to be a voyeur.
(Head hangs in shame while typing) Since you read Pastoralia, you no longer quality as the last indie-store buyer to read Saunders. I have Pastoralia here somewhere. Civilwarland too. I even have that novella he wrote and the story collection from earlier this year too. Number of Saunders stories read??? Maybe one, but I don’t think I’m even up that high.
Suggestion (you know, since you have so much free time on your hands
) - Michael Ruhlman. The Making of a Chef (pb availability), The Soul of a Chef (pb availability), and The Reach of a Chef (not in pb yet but it too has a section on Masa).