Future Poltergeist

List found here . I'm trying to figure out if I can resist this or not. I've already read nine of the books. It wouldn't hurt me to read the other 15. Hmmm, will have to think about this... The list, for those who don't click through: The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald Moby Dick - Melville To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee Huckleberry Finn - Twain Mason & Dixon - Pynchon American Psycho - Ellis Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck Underworld - Delillo Lolita - Nabakov U.S.A. - Dos Passos Invisible Man - Ellison Blood Meridian - McCarthy Light in August - Faulkner Absalom! Absalom! - Faulkner Rabbit, Run - Updike Infinite Jest - DFW Adventures of Augie March - Bellow  Gentlemen Prefer Blonds - Loos Beloved - Morrison Kavalier and Clay - Chabon Freedom - Franzen Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz These Dreams of You - Erickson The Flamethrowers - Kushner My, my, that's a tempting list.

Another book list!  Yes, these are like catnip to me.  This one features ten books that you may have read in high school that you should reread as an adult.  The list (with comments): Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald - The first part of this list I read recently as part of the great American novel project lo so many years ago.  I've been thinking of rereading this lately and will probably do so before the movie version comes out this year. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain - I simply loved this when I read it a few years back.  This is something that my kids will read while in their teens.  The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton - I didn't really care for this one.  It's a picture of its age but it didn't grip me.  I haven't thought of it much since I read it. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee - A great book, one of the best I've ever read.  I think it is best reread every few years.  For some reason, I think of reading it ...

Ever since I finished the Great American Novel project a few months ago, I've been a bit at odds. October was spent reading 'His Dark Materials' and 'Anathem'. Last month was spent writing for NaNoWriMo and also reading 'Midnight's Children' for a book club. But I knew that I'd need some kind of focus going forward. (No, I don't know why I need to do these projects. I didn't do this back in school, as my high school mates can attest. I didn't do this when I lived alone and had enormous amounts of time. I just don't know.) I tinkered with a few different ideas on what to do next. I've been reading some Man Booker Prize winners and enjoying them. Time magazine's top 100 novels is intriguing. Even toyed with reading biographies of all of our past Presidents. But I'm going a different direction. Instead, I'm going to read all of the Hugo Award Winners . The Hugo is given out each year to the top Sci-Fi or Fant...

Back in 2006 I started working my way through a list of Great American Novels . Last month I finished the list and I wanted to summarize. I'm very glad that I did this, it introduced some great novels, some I never would have picked up otherwise. I thought these five were great: Huckleberry Finn - Twain The Long Goodbye - Chandler Moby Dick - Melville To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee Pale Fire - Nabokov 'Mockingbird' wasn't a surprise as I'd read it many times and originally voted for it as the best American novel. 'Huckleberry Finn' and 'Moby Dick' are often mentioned as top novels and I completely agree. 'The Long Goodbye' was a surprise to me. It's hard-boiled detective work and it's crazy good. I'd never heard of 'Pale Fire' and it was the one of the books I'll read again soon. Very good: Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald Catch 22 - Heller 'Gatsby' is fairly deep. It catches something unique about the American ex...

'Lolita' has a pretty firm place in our cultural mindset. It's the story of an older man, Humbert Humbert, who seduces a teenager. He works things so that she actually crosses the line but he's obviously the one at fault. After the seduction they go on the lam. The biggest surprise for me is that this is actually an 'open road' book. The book is interesting in that it doesn't sympathize with Humbert. He explains what he feels but he doesn't ask the reader to follow along with him. He is interesting, almost poetic in a way. He's also creepy and one of the most manipulative characters that I've ever read. You can't trust his narration, must always be reading between the lines. It's a great book and well worth the read. The theme is obviously adult though not graphically so. Nabakov is a very interesting author. I enjoyed this a bit more than ' Pale Fire ' but both of them were great.

Way back when I started this project , I voted for 'Mockingbird' as the greatest American novel. First read it all the way back in sixth grade and probably reread it a dozen times since. Each time I've loved it more than the previous time. This book is a serious part of our cultural tapestry and if you haven't read it, you should. 'Mockingbird' is probably the most universally praised book of this century. It suffered some small criticism when it came out as being more of a children's book. Of course, it's young protagonist is part of it's charm. We follow Scout as she grows up and learns about the actions and beliefs of her community. An adult would have been too hardened and cynical to have the same impact. We needed to hear an honest attempt to understand why some folks are quality and others are dirt. That type of lesson is learned young or not at all. There are many themes in 'Mockingbird' that call your attention, the trial of ...

Couldn't get into this one either. The story is about a boy in a poor family that makes his way through the world in an interesting manner. The problem is that the plot jumped constantly and it was tough to keep any story in mind. Not for me.

Ah, the classic tale of revenge. Or obsession. Actually, it's a book about whales. I'm not kidding about that, fully half of the book is a scientific look at whales. Categorizing them and then separate chapters on each part of the whales physiology. This makes the job of cutting the book down for abridged versions very easy. The story itself is quite interesting, if so well known that there are few surprises. The narrator (let's call him Ishmael) wants to go whaling. He meets a south Pacific islander named Queequeg and they become great, if unlikely, friends. They sign on to a ship commanded by Captain Ahab. After they get out to sea, he informs the crew that he's searching for a white whale, Moby Dick, who cost him a leg on his previous journey. The ship makes a regular whaling trip, asking every other whaler that they find if they've seen the famous Moby Dick. Finally they track him down and a battle to the death ensues. I really enjoyed this book. Mel...

This makes the third novel that I just couldn't get through. It started with a very similar feel to a Jane Austen novel. Unfortunately, there was even less plot. Just pages and pages of descriptions of the characters inner feelings. Nothing real to hang on to. Can't really recommend this one to anyone. Only three books left on the Great American Novel list. I'd like to finish those up in the next few months and then add on a few that I thought could have been considered. The schedule (in case anyone else wants to follow along): July - Moby Dick August - The Adventures of Auggie March September - To Kill a Mockingbird

At first glance this is a book about a corrupt politician who finally gets his just desserts. The pol (Willie Stark) must be based at least in part on Huey Long . He's a populist in it's purest form, promising the 'little people' that he'll battle those special interests that are keeping them down. He starts from the best of motives and soon is seduced by the power until it becomes it's own goal. The book is told from the standpoint of Jack Burden, a son of privilege who became a newspaper man and then an assistant to Stark. He is a deeply cynical man who doesn't care that he's turned his back on his upbringing. His mother is on her own while his father has left to lead an almost hermitlike life. One of Burden's most important relationships with Judge Irwin, a very close friend of the family and something of a surrogate father. You might remember that the movie came out a few years back and it was terrible. Now that I've read the book I c...

More 19th century literature but this one was much more enjoyable to read. It's written in almost allegorical style and it's written for sheer persuasion. President Lincoln referred to it as a cause of the Civil War. It's hard to overstate its importance. The book details a household of slaves. They start with a very good and caring owner who has fallen into debt. To discharge that debt he agrees to sell a pair of slaves, one of which is a young boy. The boy's mother can't bear the thought of being split up so she runs away with him, up north to freedom. Meanwhile the other slave, Uncle Tom, is sold and eventually sold again to Simon Legree. Uncle Tom refuses to whip a fellow slave and is savagely beaten. His faith in God wavers but a deathbed vision renews that faith. This book is an argument and it hammers that argument home. Stowe especially argues that slavery is destroying black families. She argues that slaves are people with their own dignity and de...

This is the second one of the Great Novel list that I've given up on. I gave it a good hundred pages but that's all. I know it's highly regarded but I'm not going to waste any more time untying sentences that average eight clauses. Life is too short. Maybe someday I'll rent the movie and watch the Demi Moore trio.

A young man used to be a basketball star in high school. He was fast and nicknamed 'Rabbit'. One night he goes home to his wife, far gone with their second child. He finds her disgusting, or worse, boring. She wants him to go out and pick up their son. When he gets in his car he decides to hit the open road instead. He listens to the radio and heads south. He has had enough of this life and he wants to see the rest of the world. He stops and ponders his map and decides to head back north. (This is where the novel lost me.) He doesn't go home. Instead, he shacks up with a woman he meets. He makes contact with his wife's minister, but no one else from their families. The minister plays it soft, deciding that the couple should make contact on their own time. The time comes when his wife gives birth. They get back together and for a time, everything is good. That fades as Rabbit's selfishness gets the better of him. The consequences are very harsh. Rabbit...

Philip Marlowe chances to meet a drunk guy outside of a bar and gets him home in a fit of sympathy. The two strike up a friendship where Marlowe finds out about his unhappy marriage. A few weeks later the guy shows up one morning. His wife is dead and he needs help getting to Tijuana. Soon after he's found dead. This is how the story begins. A small time PI has trouble believing that a friend of his could have been a murderer. This embroils him in a far reaching web with unexpected connections and unknown dangers. A man who can't stop from knowing the big picture can cause a lot of trouble. I loved this book. The story was interesting as it went in several unexpected directions. But the style was the thing. It's written in first person from Marlowe's viewpoint. He mixes short brutal statements with unexpected poetic insights. I couldn't get Humphrey Bogart's narration out of my head the whole time. This was the first thing of Raymond Chandler's t...

So a respected poet writes a poem. The following day he is killed quite suddenly. His neighbor, a fellow professor, takes it upon himself to write the commentary for the poem. This commentary is shaded with bitterness because the subject of the poem is mostly autobiographical instead of a celebration of the neighbor's homeland, Zembla. We learn through the commentary that the neighbor had a poorly hidden secret and that the poet paid the price for it. Or do we? Is the neighbor in his right mind? Was he nearby a terrible incident and his fantasy life seized him and won't let go? Does Zembla even exist? Was the killing completely unrelated to anything having to do with the poet? Alternately, did the poet make up the neighbor and write his own commentary? These are the questions left by 'Pale Fire', an utterly unique book. There are other possible stories behind these, all hinting at themselves but no true answers are given. Does it work? There were things I rea...

It's New York City in the 1870's. A member of one of the leading families is on the verge of announcing his engagement with a young lady from another leading family when he meets someone new. He meets the cousin of his fiance, a woman who is under a cloud of disgrace because of a broken marriage. No matter how much he tries to deny it, he has fallen for her. The rules of his tribe are certain and strict. His soon to be beloved and his actual love must be treated in certain ways and no matter what he does, society gets in the way. What should he do and what use will it be? That's what this book was about. This was the Pulitzer winner of 1921. It's interesting as a look at pre-electricity New York. Wharton turns a nice phrase now and again and the book poses interesting questions about marriage and love and what happens when they almost intersect. But, man, I found this book dull. If you get bored hearing about the latest pairings and break-ups in Hollywood, ski...

Ellison's book is about a man who believes that he has become invisible. Invisible to the people around him and especially to the society at large. This invisiblity is tied into a loss of identity so deep that the narrartor never even names himself. The novel is a history of a black man from the south. The first chapter (very powerfully) tells of a speech that he gave at his graduation dealing with 'humility'. The speech was so well received that the local (white) businessmen invite him to reprise it at a function of theirs. Before the talk he's invited to join a 'battle royal' where a number of black men are made to fight each other blindfolded in a ring. After this savagry he gives his speech and is rewareded with a scholarship to a black college. That's only the beginning of his lifetime education as he encounters betrayal after betrayal. People he respects see him only as a tool and try to use him for their own purposes. He's not seen as a man ...

Quick review: Story follows a man in a future society where people have rejected books entirely and now spend their lives with radios in their ears or with large room sized interactive TV units. The job of 'fireman' has been changed to putting out fires to burning any books that are found. He secretly steals some books instead of burning them and has a breakdown in which he rejects his society and becomes a criminal. Read this back in high school but not since. Remembered enjoying it, but wasn't overly thrilled about reading it again. There are segments of our society that think we're inches away from becoming a book burning fascist society and frankly I'm tired of them. ( Related .) I was ready to point out that I can go to a couple of dozen bookstores in the metro area and buy just about anything I want to without fear of censorship or reprisal. That the only real censorship battles in this country have to do with school mandated book lists and/or age appr...

When I was putting together the list, I marked this book as one that I'd read before. As soon as I opened it, I realized that wasn't the case. Plenty of other Twain, but not this one. Or these ones, since my copy had both Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. A quick word about 'Tom Sawyer', plenty of fun and a great read. Creates a window into 1830's Missouri and more importantly a window into the world of a boy. Adventure and hi jinks galore. The original American bad boy and a direct descendant of Bart Simpson. 'Huck Finn' is a little different. The title character doesn't come from a loving family. In fact the book opens with a dispute as his drunken no-good father tries to take money from him and ends up kidnapping him. Huck escapes and meets up with a runaway slave named Jim. They run away from their lives by rafting down the Mississippi. Huck wrestles with his conscience as everything he's ever been taught about slaves tells him that the man h...

(By request.) Here's the list of the best American Novels . I've marked the ones I already own and link the ones I've already reviewed. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (OWN) Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin James, Portrait of a Lady Cather, My Antonia Wharton, The Age of Innocence Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury Warren, All the King's Men Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March Ellison, Invisible Man (OWN) Chandler, The Long Goodbye Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (OWN) Updike, Rabbit, Run Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor Heller, Catch-22 Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird (OWN) Nabokov, Pale Fire Roth, The Great American Novel Melville, Moby-Dick (OWN) Twain, Huckleberry Finn (OWN) Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (OWN) Heinlein, Starship Troopers (OWN) Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon