The layoff also helped alleviate that panicky feeling I often have when I look at my bookshelves and can't seem to remember anything about a book I've read. Nabokov said you can never read a book; you can only reread it. Rereading constitutes 55% of the list (the little ® indicates a reread) and some of them had completely left my memory, so that it was like reading a new book. Others were better than I remembered them. Many were worse.
I can also see skeins of somewhat related titles: an Updike jag, a sudden urge to reread all the David Carkeet books I own, reacquainting myself with the poetry of Philip Levine, picking up old John McPhee books off the shelf, and recently an inexplicable interest in reading plays.
There's a fair of amount of history on the list, one science fiction book which was the worst piece of writing I've read possibly in a decade, one mystery by Tony Hillerman which taught me that if I were stuck in a summer rental with only a history of hockey or Tony Hillerman books I'd delve into the hockey book.
Some of these books I ripped through, some of these books I slogged through; the list doesn't include the few that I started and couldn't finish. A book has to be abysmal before I'll ditch it. And so, here they are 101 books of which I'd recommend probably 95%.
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1) 6/29: The Crying of Lot 49 ®
2) 7/6: The Defining Moment
3) 7/9: The Great Comedians
4) 7/18: Hiding Man. (& parts of: Come Back, Dr. Caligari; Guilty Pleasures; City Life; Sadness; Not-Knowing ®)
5) 7/21: Decoding the Universe
6) 7/27: The Island at the Center of the World.
7) 7/30: Lenya
8) 8/11: Stephen Crane by John Berryman®
9) 8/13: The Greatest Slump of All Time®
10) 8/14: Cosmopolis ® (may as well have been the first time I read it)
11) 8/16: Lives of the Poets by E.L. Doctorow®: ditto
12) 8/17: A Streetcar Named Desire
13) 8/22: Moses
14) 8/28: True History of the Kelly Gang
15) 9/1: Paper Lion®
16) 9/7: Reflections on a New Work by Marcel Duchamp®
17) 9/9: Étant Donnés
18) 9/10: The Unteleported Man (absolute incomprehensible LSD drivel)
19) 9/11: The White Album
20) 9/22: In Patagonia® (not as good as I remembered it.)
21) 9/24: The Essential Groucho® (tedious)
22) 9/28: Tender is the Night® (this was on my shelf, so I suppose I read it previously, but I have absolutely no memory of it.)
23) 9/28: Living Well is the Best Revenge®
24) 10/1: Written Lives®
25) 10/4: The Bread of Time®
26) 10/4: Not this Pig® (eh)
27) 10/5: 7 Years From Somewhere® (eh)
28) 10/7: A Long Desire®
29) 10/7: A Walk With Tom Jefferson® (a little better)
30) 10/15: The White Lantern®
31) 10/17: Great Jones Street®
32) 10/19: Portnoy’s Complaint®
33) 10/26: Anja the Liar
34) 10/27: An Artist of the Floating World®
35) 10/29: A Pale View of Hills® (didn’t really remember anything about either of the last two)
36) 11/1: The Humbling
37) 11/4: Invisible
38) 11/8: The Telephone Booth Indian®
39) 11/11: The Years with Ross®
40) 11/12: The Sun also Rises®
41) 11/14: The Zimmerman Telegram®
42) 11/17: Licks of Love®
43) 11/20: Rabbit, Run®
44) 11/21: Of the Farm®
45) 11/23: The Manner Music®
46) 11/25: Rabbit Is Rich®
47) 11/29: The Music School®
48) 12/3: Alone®
49) 12/4: La Place de la Concorde Suisse®
50) 12/17: The Culture of Counter-Culture by Alan Watts (what a bunch of hooey)
51) 12/21: My Century by Günter Grass
52) 12/26: The Man Who Loved Only Numbers®
53) 12/26: Waterbirds
54) 1/02/10: In Harm’s Way
55) 1/05: The Design of Everyday Things (Peters out at the end; sold the book)
56) 1/13: The Maples Stories
57) 1/13: Things I Didn’t Know I Loved—Nazim Hikmet
58) 1/18: A Roomful of Hovings®
59) 1/21: Proofs by George Steiner®
60) 1/25: Thank God for the Atom Bomb®
61) 1/27: People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman
62) 2/1: Memoirs of Hecate County® (Remembered one scene from the entire book)
63) 2/2: Levels of the Game®
64) 2/4: Irons in the Fire®
65) 2/8: When Science Goes Wrong®
66) 2/8: Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen®
67) 2/10: Lonely Avenue
68) 2/13: The Full Catastrophe®
69) 2/17: The Error of Our Ways®
70) 2/19: Players
71) 2/23: Double Negative®
72) 2/23: Home Truths®
73) 2/25: The Mechanic Muse®
74) 2/25: The Post Office by Charles Olson®
75) 2/26: Krapp’s Last Tape®
76) 3/1: Legs®
77) 3/4/: No Exit®
78) 3/11: When Nietzsche Wept®
79) 3/11: Nietzsche®
80) 3/12: Woman in the Dark
81) 3/16: The Real McCoy
82) 3/22: How the States Got Their Shapes.
83) 3/26: Silk Parachute
84) 3/29: From Away
85) 4/2: Of A Feather
86) 4/6: Picture
87) 4/9: Wonder Boys
88) 4/12: The Armchair Birder
89) 4/15: Next
90) 4/20: Solar
91) 5/3: The Surrendered
92) 5/6: The Baseball Codes
93) 5/11: The Man with No Endorphins
94) 5/14: Blackeyes
95) 5/24: The Seven Year Itch
96) 5/24: The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
97) 5/25: Come Back, Little Sheba
98) 5/26: Death of a Salesman®
99) 5/26: Voyage (The Coast of Utopia part 1)
100) 5/26: Shipwreck (The Coast of Utopia part 2)
101) 5/27: Salvage (The Coast of Utopia part 3)
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