12/31/05
Good books not limited to one year
Two years ago, I responded to The New York Times list of the most notable books of 2003 by offering my own reading list to compensate for feeling "out of it." I had read only one book on the notable list and had not even heard of the vast majority of them. I apparently wasn’t "with it" when it came to following the new releases. It’s no different this year, except that I haven’t read any of the books on the list. The trouble is that there are so many books on my own shelves I want to read, I have to schedule them a year in advance and try to force anything new or spontaneous into the mix. That occurred with a few titles during the past year, but apparently The Times’ reviewers didn’t think highly of them. Actually, it could be that I’m just a bit slow getting to the new releases because I think a few of my selections this year made the notable list last year. The list I compiled two years ago of the best books I had read in 2003 attracted at least one fan. I got a few phone calls from a gentleman who had a few questions for me as he made his way down the list. I think he was doing OK until he got to the LSD trip of the protagonist in John Hersey’s "Too Far To Walk." Maybe he had a flashback or something.
Someone else called to borrow one of the books, and yet another suggested I publicize my reading list in advance, since I’m so strange about planning ahead. I don’t know. Here’s this past year’s, in no meaningful order or ranking.
"Chronicles" by Bob Dylan (2004) is called Vol. 1 presumably because there are more volumes coming. Maybe the structure of the musician’s autobiography will make more sense in the future.
Vol. 1 jumps from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, then to the late 1980s before heading back to the early ’60s. You learn a lot about the former folk singer’s personality, but you don’t always find you like it.
"The Tortilla Curtain" by T.C. Boyle (1995) is fiction about the struggles of illegal immigrants from Mexico in Southern California and of liberals trying to come to terms with the immigration problem. And neither does very well. Recommended.
"Villages" by John Updike (2004) is about the affairs of a computer programmer who with a old buddy launches a company in a small Connecticut village. The liaisons pile up to a tragic conclusion. This is typical Updike, and only a fan could enjoy it.
"Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis (1922) was one of my few vintage selections for the year. It was fun but at the same time sad reading about the middle class ladder-climber George F. Babbitt finding more and more emptiness in his life as he reached each ascending rung.
The attitudes and behavior associated with the laws granting women the right to vote and making alcoholic beverages illegal were interesting — as were the changes sweeping the bold and rebellious youth.
"The Darling" by Russell Banks (2004) was an odd book, especially if you don’t like flashback (there’s that word again). Told by a woman in her 50s who has settled on an organic farm along the au Sable, the story recounts her years as a radical in the Weather Underground, her flight to Africa and marriage to a Liberian government leader.
There, she gets caught up in a different revolution. Her husband is beheaded, her traumatized children flee and she ends up in the North Country.
Banks may have had his eye on another movie screenplay. There’s enough violence.
"Old School" by Tobias Wolff (2003) is the first novel by a writer known for a series of memoirs about his life from boyhood to Vietnam. This stimulating book, too, likely is autobiographical to some extent as it details the literary challenges of a teenager at a New England prep school in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The climax is unexpected because it seems so unnecessary — as do so many events in life. Recommended.
"Afternoon in the Jungle," selected stories by Albert Maltz, offers a compelling cross-section of short fiction from the 1930s, through his post-war blacklist years as a Hollywood 10 screenwriter to the 1960s.
A highlight is "The Happiest Man on Earth" (1938), which deals with the desperation of finding work and dignity during the Depression.
And, of course, I must not fail to mention making it through three more pages of "Finnegan’s Wake." Maybe next year I’ll try for five pages.
I’m still working on my list for 2006, but you can be sure the titles will range from the 1920s to the 21st century. And it’s likely they will not have been best sellers and not made any notable list.
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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.
