Looking over the list I see that I reread a lot of McPhee, De Lillo, and Hammett. This year I may start rereading Philip Roth, now that he's announced his retirement.
I read, or reread a lot of poetry these last months. Even if the books are slim, reading poetry takes a long time if you want to read it properly. First you have to read it for "sense." Then you have to read it for how it's built. Then you have to reread it to see how the sense and structure fit together.
In the guilty pleasures category, I've started reading a series of English murder mysteries by an American mother and son team writing under the name of Charles Todd. I allow myself one a month.
There's a funny little run of books with Wittgenstein's name in the title--one led to another and the original impetus was from the book "Why Does the World Exist?" (By the way, the answer is, "No good reason.")
So, for those of you who love lists as much as I do, here they are, with occasional comments:
1)
9/26: Recovery® --Berryman
2)
9/27: Life Studies & For the Union Dead®--Lowell
3)
10/ 7: The Strangest Man
4)
10/11: The Elements of Style®
5)
10/13: The Anthologist--Baker
6)
10/17: The Thin Man®--Hammett
7)
10/20: Collected Poems, Philip Larkin®
8)
10/26: What a Baseball Manager Does
9)
10/27: The Ballad and the Source--Lehmann
10) 10/29: The World of Marcel Duchamp
11) 10/31: The Sense of an Ending--Barnes
12) 11/1: Point Omega—DeLillo
13) 11/6: Flaubert’s Parrot--Barnes
14) 11/7: The Jersey Devil
15) 11/15: A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters--Barnes
16) 11/17: The Nick Adams Stories—Hemingway
17) 11/22: The Angel Esmeralda—DeLillo
18) 11/28:
U and I® --Baker
19) 12/2:
Self-Consciousness—Updike
20) 12/5: Modernism: A Very Short Introduction
21) 12/10: An Object of Beauty—Martin
22) 12/13: The Survival of the Bark Canoe®--McPhee
23) 12/14: Soap®--Ponge ®Thought
it was boring 35 years ago, still think it’s boring today.
24) 12/15:
Mrs. Dalloway’s Party—Woolf
25) 12/17:
The Glass Key®--Hammett
26) 12/20: The Hours®--Cunningham
27) 12/23: Mrs. Dalloway®--Woolf ®Not
nearly as interesting as I remembered it
28) 12/25: The Greatest Stories Never Told
29) 1/2/12: Virginia Woolf’s Nose
30) 1/10: Keepers of the Flame—Hamilton
31) 1/11: English As She Is Spoke
32) 1/14: The Lüneburg Variation®--Maurensig
33) 1/16: Dada: Art and Anti-art—Richter
34) 1/19: Running in the Family®—Ondaatje
35) 1/22: The Savage God®--Alvarez
36) 1/26:
A Universe From Nothing
37) 1/31: Old New York®--Wharton
38) 2/7: The Custom of the Country—Wharton
39) 2/11: All Art is Propaganda—Orwell
40) 2/14: Selected Poems, Delmore Schwartz
41) 2/23: Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon
Kees
42) 2/23: Collected Poems of Weldon Kees®
43) 2/23:
Threads—Schrader
44) 2/24: Night of Pure Breathing—Fleming
45) 2/25: The Continental Op®--Hammett
46) 3/1: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man®—Joyce
® Some
famous lines.
47) 3/2:
Betrayal—Pinter
48) 3/6: The Art of Bird Finding—Dunne
49) 3/7: In the Money®--WCW
50) 3/12:
Facing Unpleasant Facts—Orwell
51) 3/22:
George Orwell: A Life®
52) 3/22:
Animal Farm®--Orwell
53) 3/23: Beautiful & Pointless—Orr ® No & yes.
54) 3/27:
The Lost Continent—Bryson
55) 3/31:
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union—Chabon
56) 4/1:
Death of a Salesman®--Miller
57) 4/5:
Mother Tongue®--Bryson
58) 4/22:
Ghost Towns and Other Quirky Places in the New Jersey Pine Barrens
59) 4/25: As
They See ‘Em
60) 5/8: A
Pine Barrens Odyssey
61) 5/9: The Curious Builder—Violi
62) 5/10: Making Certain it Goes On—Hugo
63) 5/15: Prague Fatale—Kerr
64) 5/24: What We Talk About When We Talk About
Anne Frank—Englander
65) 6/5: The Great War and Modern Memory®—Fussell
66) 6/15: About Schmidt—Begley
67) 6/16: Train Dreams—Johnson
68) 6/22: Istanbul Passage—Kanon
69) 6/26: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back
70) 7/2: Schmidt Delivered—Begley
71) 7/4: Looking For A Ship®—McPhee
72) 7/5: Spring and All®--WCW
73) 7/6: On Bullshit®--Frankfurt
74) 7/10: Schmidt Steps Back—Begley
75) 7/18: Bird Sense
76) 7/20: A Test of Wills—Todd
77) 7/25: The Theory of the Leisure Class--Veblen®Gave up after reading ¾ of the
book—why say in 10 words what you can say in a 100?
78) 7/30: To
Forgive Design—Petroski
79) 7/30: Outliers—Gladwell
80) 8/3: Priceless®--Poundstone
81) 8/9: The
Meinertzhagen Mystery®Bio of
a fraud.
82) 8/13:
Wings of Fire—Todd
83) 8/15: Trudy Hopedale—Frank
84) 8/28: A Man Called Intrepid
85) 9/6: Why Does The World Exist?
86) 9/12: Wittgenstein’s Poker®
87) 9/18:
The Evolution of Useful Things—Petroski
88) 9/24: Wittgenstein’s Nephew—Bernhard
89) 9/30: Wittgenstein’s Vienna
90) 10/3: The Loser—Bernhard
91) 10/18: The Color Revolution
92) 10/24: Search the Dark—Todd
93) 10/29: Night Games—Schnitzler
94) 10/31: Roy Lichtenstein: Mural with Blue
Brushstroke®
95) 11/2: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf—Albee
96) 11/4: Nabokov’s Butterfly®
97) 11/6: Borders: A Very Short Introduction
98) 11/14: The World of Yesterday—Zweig
99) 11/20: Legacy of the Dead—Todd ® Too
many coincidences.
100) 11/25: The Sealed Train
The little ® indicates a book I reread--which looks to be 25% for this tranche.
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