<<Brushes the dust off. A lot of dust>>
Been a long time. Nearly four years since the last entry. For the record I read a few books in 2017, 2018 and 2019, but life intervened. It still does and will always do so. I suppose more than anything I do these lists for my own pleasure, as it gives me perspective into my habits and dedication. Nevertheless, I find it's nice to share, even if only a handful of friends visit. If this particular list might lead anyone else into reading Halldor Laxness' incredible novel, Independent People, then this effort in mild vanity will be worthwhile.
Because 2020 was a catastrophic year for the planet I found myself rubbernecking the first six months, finally swearing off the news for the first two to three hours in the morning, when I tend to read for an hour straight with my morning coffee, something I endeavored in most of my twenties. And if I'm still awake after putting my son to sleep, I'll read for another thirty to sixty minutes. There are days, days of marvelous indulgence, in which I take time off from everything and read for six or seven hours straight, though those days are rare enough to be treasured.
I'm pretty sure that over the past few years I'm only averaging 25-30 books a year. This year, it was only 26 books (though nearly two months of it was taken up by Anna Karina). Because I like breaking lists down, of the 26 books read, thirteen of them were novels, three were story collections, nine were non-fiction, and one was a book of poetry (I read about half of Carl Sandburg's Harvest Poems but did not finish it). There were nine books reread (marked by a +). Just three books were read on a kindle marked by a *). Kindle is extremely convenient of course, but I find reading actual paper books so much more pleasurable. It's more sensory, the feel, smell, and sound of crackling paper. I love how paper books fill out a shelf. They beckon so much more than digital files do.
Some wonderful rereads were Bowles' The Sheltering Sky and John O'Hara's Appointment in Samara. Both deal with self-destruction, characters knowingly ruining their lives because they descend past a point of no return in their destructive behavior. I know it's not for everyone, but to me, this is what makes literature so fascinating. We all have our bad habits that we keep in check or don't. Literature gives us characters who are cautionary tales with dramatic consequences.
The deterioration of my esteem of Hemingway continued in rereading For Whom the Bell Tolls, which I rather liked 23 years ago (rereading The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast the past few years and finding them mawkish dreck has also also been disappointing). I loved Franzen's The Corrections almost twenty years ago, and found Purity occasionally brilliant and very readable, but that Franzen was also somewhat indelicate and corny in his prose. I liked John Fowles' Magus, but at the same time found its premise of this manufactured theater of love on a remote Greek island a bit ridiculous and highly improbable.
Some wonderful surprises that I rather adored were Rittenhouse's oral history of early twentieth century Major League Baseball, mostly told by players from the Deadball era; and James Crumbley's private dick road novel, The Last Good Kiss, which should be a lot more famous than it is. Keefe's history of the Troubles in Ireland reads like an action film and cleared up a lot of confusion I had for the era. And Van Reybrouk's history of Congo is like reading about a country that has been living a 2020-style crisis existence for sixty years.
Last really pleasant surprise was rereading Bukowski and thoroughly enjoying him. Hank Chianski was something of a hero for me coming of age, but I disowned him for a long time because all his poems seemed to be about intoxication, hangovers, easy women with nasty habits, and being drunk in the afternoon. And it's true, most of his poems are about this, but the ones that aren't touch quite lyrically on the precarious life of the artist. And the ones that do have that Bukowski signature, vulgar and sophomoric as they may be, are often quite funny. Maybe because that life of a wanton romantic is such a distant memory now, there's a certain nostalgic charm in his misadventures with drink and women.
Charles Bukowski
I read War and Peace ten years ago in a reading group that deep-dived Tolstoy's story and his intentions and would have enjoyed doing that again. Anna Karina is a parlor piece drama about the habits, mores, and relationships in late 19th century Russian high society. It climaxes with a vivid account of a nervous breakdown of the book's heroine. The novel enables Tolstoy to critique hypocrisy in the bourgeois, exalt in the simplicity of the Russian peasant as a counterpoint, and explore spirituality (rather than religion) as integral for a meaningful life. He does this without pedantry or too much obviousness, but beautifully through his characters.
As mentioned, Laxness's Independent People was perhaps my favorite discovery. It's about the decades-long travails of a late 19th century Icelandic sheep farmer suffering bad luck on a remote rock of crummy soil. That might not sound very engaging, but the main hero, Bjartur of Summerhouse, is quite a personality. Not only does Bjatpur have an incredible penchant for misfortunate folly, screwing up at nearly every major life turning point, he is stubborn about every single issue dear to his heart, inflexible in will and judgmental to the end. He's flawed, funny, a regular Job on the rocks, who when he's in deep trouble turns to epic Norse poetry. The book is absolutely marvelous.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was read aloud to my son over a period of several months. It's the first long book I've read to him. It's not an easy book to read to a five-year-old, as it's full of nonsense that can be difficult to explain. But it's a fun book and he was there to the end. We started Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island-- I have an edition from 1915!-- and I've been reading it to him in a rather bad imitation of a Scottish brogue. But it sounds so much better this way.
Probably the most consequential book read this year was probably Amy Hempel's Collected Stories, because reading Hempel's wonderful pieces about the companionability of dogs, I decided to get one myself. I had a Belgian Shepherd-collie mix as a boy, but I hadn't taken care of him very well and felt that my karma with dogs suffered. I reckoned that adopting a dog would take some effort, but the timing of my decision coincided with a friend of my wife's having the exact breed of dog I desired (a Kai Ken). His name is Monk, after Thelonious, and he's a beautiful, gentle creature that goes with me nearly everywhere. Books really can change your life.
Here's the list for 2020:
1) Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind (+)
2) My Struggle: Book 2 by Karl Ove Knausgaard (*)
3) Say Nothing: A History of the Irish Troubles by Patrick Radden Keefe (*)
4) The Magus by John Fowles
5) The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (*)
6) Congo: The Epic History of a People by David Van Reybrouk
7) A Personal Matter by Kenzuboro Oe (+)
8) A Lateral View by Donald Ritchie
9) Love Is A Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski
10) Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth
11) Purity by Jonathan Franzen
12) For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (+)
13) Collected Stories by Amy Hempel
14) Airships by Barry Hannah
15) Easy Riders Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind (+)
16) Appointment in Samara by John O'Hara (+)
17) Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
18) The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles (+)
19) Independent People by Haldor Laxness
20) The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter
21) Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murukami (+)
22) The Last Good Kiss by James Crumbley
23) Anna Karina by Leo Tolstoy
24) Ways of Seeing by John Berger
25) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
26) Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck
