Nothing Revolutionary....

But how cool if we could find our WAY to one.

Friday, January 8, 2010

A Glimpse at a Decade of Great Reads

When I initially thought of doing an arbitrary Best of List I thought it would be small and contained. Then I started going through my mind of what I had read during these years and the list grew quite unwieldy. I am never sure how to encapsulate a few texts as the best of anything, much less a year or a decade, had thought would put together a list of books and write interesting little blurbs on each one, the significance the text had on me, this was until I started to put the list together. And a strong suit is not cutting things off, especially a text read that caused impact. I have trimmed a bit; mostly current fiction has hit the floor (As I was both an undergrad and grad student during most of this time. My hours were consumed with reading books for class or from my own desire to pursue something further, very rarely did that include current fiction).

This then primarily had become a list of books that I have read from 2000 – 2009. The order is arbitrary. As is the criteria for picking them. Could I have cut some more? Sure—but did not want to.

Infinite Jest from David Foster Wallace
My greatest accomplishment in 2009 was reading this book. Since I have read I have not been able to escape the text or the force of David Foster Wallace. Remarkable.

Nature
and American Scholar from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Desert Solitaire from Ed Abbey
Abbey was the first author of what would be called “Green Literature” that I read, he shook my world.

The Practice of the Wild from Gary Snyder

On The Beautiful and Sublime from Immanuel Kant

Daisy Miller from Henry James
Not since F. Scott Fitzgerald was there an author I wanted to bury myself in the canon of. This novella in the spring of 2000 may have been the most meaningful text that I read in the decade.

Where I’m Calling From and Short Cuts from Raymond Carver

Moby Dick, Typee, and Benito Cerino from Herman Melville
Major author class at work. My first experience with Melville and it was daunting but amazing. Have since read Moby Dick (sadly for another class not at my own prompting) but I did read Typee without it being dictated to me by a syllabus.

Melville: A Biography from Laurie Robertson-Lorant

The Tempest from Shakespeare

The Hitch Hiking Game from Milan Kundera

Lolita
from Vladamir Nabakov
My first reading of this text was badly placed. I should have read prior to the class. The second, third, and fourth readings however have made up for my error in placing the text in a syllabus that was focused more on the adaptation of the text than the text itself.

Rear Window from Cornell Woolrich

Invisible Cities from Italo Calvino

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and What Is An Author? from Michel Foucault
Discipline and Punish was the text for me in Critical Theory.

Walden from Henry David Thoreau
Monumental in shaping how I conceive society/culture. Read every year since my first read in the spring of 2001. I was late to this text.

Invisible Man from Ralph Ellison

Fight Club from Chuck Palahnuik

End of Nature from Bill McKibben

The Twilight of American Culture from Morris Berman

Little Children from Tom Perrotta

Fargo and Big Lebowski screenplays by The Coen Brothers

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy from Laurence Sterne
When first read, I had to double check to see when it was written. Then I thought how did they publish a book with a completely black page? Quite the read.

Ceremony from Leslie Marmon Silko

Possession and Angels and Insects from A.S. Byatt

Passing
from Nella Larsen

A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius
from Dave Eggers

Absalom! Absalom! From William Faulkner
I had read As I Lay Dying a few years prior to Absalom! Absalom! and was prepared to dislike the book. Instead I was just drawn in by the structure of the text and Faulkner’s skill at an author to seduce me.

The Dead
from James Joyce

Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories from Sandra Cisneros

Underworld from Don DeLillo

Pale Fire from Vladimir Nabakov

Crime and Punishment from Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mumbo Jumbo from Ishmael Reed

Harry Potter Series from J.K. Rowling
New Years weekend in 2002 I sat and read the first four books, barely slept so captivated by the story unfolding.

Leaves of Grass from Walt Whitman

On Beauty and Being Just
from Elaine Scarry

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screenplays from Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy

Ill Nature from Joy Williams

Walking
and Faith In a Seed from Henry David Thoreau

Love Walked In from Marisa de los Santos

The Post Birthday World from Lionel Shriver

The Corrections from Jonathan Franzen

The Thirteenth Tale from Diane Setterfield

Birth of a Nation from Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin, and Kyle Baker

The Frog King
from Adam Davies

I Love You, Beth Cooper from Larry Doyle
Rollicking reading ride that took me back to all those amazing ‘80’s movies I grew up on.

Lady Audley’s Secret from Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Dead Souls from Nikolai Gogol

Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse from Alexander Pushkin

Tender Is the Night from F. Scott Fitzgerald
Have only read this book twice but something about it, still working to pinpoint exactly what makes me think it is a superior text to The Great Gatsby (which I read every year).

Anna Karenina from Leo Tolstoy

Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Don’t Float from Sarah Schmelling
Romping good read.

Almost Famous screenplay from Cameron Crowe

Wings of the Dove from Henry James
Contains one of my favorite passages in literature.

Swann’s Way from Marcel Proust

Father and Sons from Ivan Turgenev

Undoing Aesthetics from Wolfgang Welsch
Challenged and helped form my arguments on Aesthetics.

Loose Canons: Notes on Culture Wars from Henry Louis Gates

The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages and Map of Misreading from Harold Bloom

Culture
from Stephen Greenblatt

The Figure in the Carpet, The Beast In the Jungle, In the Cage, and The Lesson of the Master from Henry James

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto from Chuck Klosterman

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung from Lester Bangs

Corrine, Or Italy from Germaine De Stael


I could go on….

Friday, December 25, 2009

One of My Favorite Things: Charlie Brown Christmas

I am apathetic to the holiday season this year. This does not mean though that I do not want to ignore one those touch stone texts in my life: A Charlie Brown Christmas. I missed the viewings of it on the TV. I have it on VHS somewhere but have not taken the time to look for it. Thankfully, because of the beauty of books, I still get to revisit those memories:



Has a making of the cartoon, sheet music (if only I could perform it), and a fully illustrated script. I remember when I was a kid standing in the living room after the freshly cut (we cut our own each year) tree, the smell, the cold coming off the branches, the crackle sound as the branches settle, and the beauty of the tree before it was loaded with lights, garland, ornaments, and tinsel--at these moments I always thought of Charlie Brown and would "sing" "Oh Christmas Tree."



Made for an enjoyable read this morning. No "good grief" being uttered here.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Making Eyes At Texts

I'll be brief. Text to read right now is Raymond Carver's "Why Don't You Dance?" It is a monumental short story from his collection Where I'm Calling From. Really read the entire collection. But think of starting with "Why Don't You Dance?" Will not say more on it, but within the next few days, look for a close read of the text to appear.

When HotSexyBookLove tells you to read, don't you think you should? ;)

For daily reading suggestions, interesting links regarding read and writing, follow me on Twitter @HotSexyBookLove.

Why I Came To Appreciate The Power of the Graphic Text

Aaron McGruder.

Is there really anything else to say?

Today I read an amazing article about the importance of Huey Freeman and I was reminded, a much needed reminder, of why I became enamoured with the graphic novel. The Boondocks is the first time in graphic form that I noticed a powerful voice working at drawing attention to social issues and to shake the reader out of their rut. During the 2004 election McGruder was a fantastic read everyday. The door to my office was one Boondock strip after another, I wanted to show this art form off and challenge the person bored enough to read my door. I saved all of these clippings, every once in a while I will go through them, and the argument/ideas that McGruder puts forth the reader are still relevant.

The first graphic novel I read was a collaboration that McGruder did with Reginald Hudlin, and Kyle Baker: Birth of A Nation. If you can find a copy of the book, it is both a visually stunning read and biting commentary of the times.



Until you can locate that, or one of the many The Boondocks books, here is one of my favorite The Boondocks pieces:

Monday, December 7, 2009

Few of My Favorite Things: The Kevin Smith Edition

Clerks will be a favorite film for life. Don't do rankings, so won't say it's Top Ten or some such thing. But it is one of the touchstones that I will always go back to to find that connection with.

Kevin Smith with his first film made him one of the top authors for my generation. The film had a huge influence on me. I was 20, in love with the indie film movement that was starting to grow, and I connected to the characters and their struggles. In some respects I was Dante.

Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and Dogma all lived up the the author that I viewed Kevin Smith as. Since then, well, since then, there have been some bumps along the road. With every new project I hear about though I get excited at the thought of returning to my love of the films of Kevin Smith, soon, the next one, this is what I say. One day this will be true.

I've sat on the stoop from Chasing Amy. I have visited his comic book store in Red Bank, New Jersey, Secret Stash, these are fun memories (all completed with my best friend Mary).

Outside of the VHS tapes of his films, the DVD's, and the memories, I have some other treasures that I hold close.

A few of his screenplays. I have two versions of Dogma yes. One was released in the UK, I had to see what the difference is, a pursuit I should revisit.



Then there are the comic books. I love these. It is about the time of year to read The Holiday Clerks.




But one of my favorite things (and not just Kevin Smith related) is the Buddy Christ.




"Snoochie Boochies."

Learning As I Go Along

My posting last night was lacking and faulty (I am sure I can come up with excuses, but not going to go down that road). I will fine tune the approach I take to this thing called blogging. One thing I will be full of specifics. You might end up drowning in them.

Last night I was off the cuff---in the moment. And perhaps with another topic it would have been okay, but for the direction I was taking, well, it did not work.

And lack of specifics that would have helped with clear points in a few crucial areas I now see led to perhaps a misinterpretation of my authorial intent. A lesson learned.

It was about my personal Canon and getting my readers (what all 2 of you) to think about what your Canon would be.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A Canon of My Own

Today I spent some time studying my bookshelves. I have many new additions that need homes on the shelves and off from my dining room table, so I had to look to see where they could go. The answer, I need a new shelf. And I just got one in August. Of problems to have, I embrace this one.

My shelves are highly organized. I am developing quite the library and in order to find things, well, I find it quite imperative to have genres/styles/time periods/authors (size of book also factored into arrangement) in mind when looking for a particular book. The system is flawed as I had thought I'd lost a book only to find on an unexpected shelf. I realize by looking at the size of the book and that it was a hardcover it explained the placement, but still, flawed. And then there are the books that I realized I had forgotten all about. But that is another topic.

As I was looking through my stacks I came to the conclusion that with the exception of 1 bookcase, I have determined my own "personal" Canon that appears in bits in pieces on my shelves. Whether it be in current fiction (my book shelf or hardcovers and book shelf of paperback) or my theory bookcase (yes, I have enough books on Aesthetics, Literary Theory, Cultural Theory that they have a bookcase unto themselves, a rather large one). But this really shows up where literature scholars would view I have The Canon shelved (1 of 2 such cases, but this one is purely focused on this type of literature). But I have made it my own, kind of, influenced of course by the actual Canon without doubt. My Canon is influenced by the type of literature I am drawn too, texts that challenge me and make me think, I am not a big reader of "pulp fiction" these books just do not motivate me to read (what they do is for another time). I will say it is not perfect space creates the imperfection, but does not detract from my point.

On the top shelf (oh, I built this bookcase at 12) we have the top of my Canon:



For me Henry James is my main man. And he has the place of honor on this shelf. Tucked next to him his contemporary and competition Edith Wharton, then there is James Joyce. These are not literary lightweights. And both James and Joyce rarely taught. The Canon thinks that they are too difficult and rarely make it to students. Shameful (they are not too difficult to teach, this must be overcome), but they make my top tier Canon placement.

The Middle Shelf, still weighty but not Henry:



Being a Modernist girl at heart, this would be my literary time period (Henry James and Herman Melville are both early Modernists, but this is another topic), no surprise to find Fitzgerald, Ellison, Waugh, and Chandler located there. All powerful and important authors, but in my opinion not up with James. Hence their placement on the second shelf.


Lastly the bottom shelf, the dregs (not really), the might as well be pulp (just kidding) it's barely literature literature (again I kid) aka they're no Fitzgerald:




Smattering of authors, Kundera, Camus, random Modernists texts, and others round out this shelf. All great texts by great authors (except for the Hemingway), but not Henry James of F. Scott Fitzgerald to me. In my canon, it seems I have ranked them third tier, at least in this little microcosm. If the shelves were larger and fit more, these would be the books buried at the bottom of the others, because the likely hood of my wanting to pull off at random times is low.

Do we all in some way create a Canon of our own? I say yes. I doubt though that everyone displays it in the same manner which I unconsciously did, or do you?