Nabokov (#99 on this list) wrote that you can't read a book; you can only reread one. By that notion, I haven't read about 2/3 of this list. The books I did reread these last 16 month tended to be novels. Philip Roth, who announced his retirement during this period, is heavily represented. Since there weren't going to be any more Zuckermans, Kepeshes, or fictionalized Roths coming from him, I went back and immersed myself in his work for a couple of weeks at a time.
I reread Richard Ford's Bascombe trilogy; now that I live in New Jersey, some of the descriptive writing resonated more strongly with me, especially in the third novel which is set in an area very much like where we live now. The philosophical maunderings I found much less compelling than the first time, if I even remember how I felt the first time I read them.
I read a book on the history of the toothpick. It was written by the author who wrote a book on the history of the pencil. I read books that on Big Data and Prescriptive Analytics that I thought were just BS. I read books on birds, of course. I read some poetry, though not as much as I used to.
Looking back on the list I can see that there are books that already have faded from memory. A mild panic comes over me--should I start rereading them or just let them sit on the shelf?
Without checking, it feels like it took me a lot longer to read 100 books than it has in the past. Something else always seems to beckon. I know that's a 21st century complaint, but it isn't always a digital distraction. Birds outside the window, the urge to take a walk in the woods, these take me away from turning pages too. Plus, I don't ride the subway anymore.
The list:
®=reread.
1.
11/27:
Sweet Tooth—McEwan
2.
11/30:
The Professor of Desire®--Roth
3.
11/30:
The Prague Orgy®--Roth
4.
12/4:
The Counterlife®--Roth
5.
12/18:
Watchers of Time—Todd
6.
12/19:
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This—Holt
7.
12/20: The Holy or the Broken—Light
8.
12/20:
Goldfish and Rose—Hershon
9.
12/22:
Joseph Cornell’s Manual of Marvels
10. 12/22: Dime Store Alchemy®—Simic
11. 12/26: Six Armies in Normandy®--Keegan
12. 12/29: Hello Goodbye Hello—Brown
13. 12/29: Seize the Day—Bellow
14. 12/30: 100 Diagrams That Changed the World
15. 1/7: A Fearsome Doubt—Todd
16. 1/10: Providence of a Sparrow—Chester
17. 1/23: Bright Earth—Ball
18. 1/24: Tenth of December—Saunders
19. 1/25: Chromophobia—Batchelor
20. 1/26: Flatland®—Abbot | I guess
this was big yuks in the 1880’s
21. 1/28: Heart of Darkness®—Conrad
22. 1/29: Writers Writing Dying—C.K. Williams
23. 1/31: The Sights Along the Harbor®—Shapiro
24. 2/2: A Possible Life—Faulks
25. 2/2: The Tablets I-XV®—Schwerner | Don’t
actually remember reading it
26. 2/8: Naked Statistics—Wheelan
27. 2/11: Encounters with the Archdruid®—McPhee
28. 2/13: Plutonium—Bernstein
29. 2/17: Twice Told Tales®—Stern
30. 2/20: Twice Upon a Time®—Stern
31. 2/21: The House of Barnes—Rudenstine
32. 3/1: The Aztec Treasure House®--Connell | Compilation of
2 previous books
33. 3/7: The Toothpick—Petroski
34. 3/16: The Idea Factory—Gertner
35. 3/28: Sabbath’s Theatre—Roth
36. 3/28: Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon
Interviews—Tomkins
37. 4/9: Predictive Analytics—Siegel | Cheerleading
38. 5/2: The Accursed—Oates | Long
Book
39. 5/4: Woodrow Wilson®—Auchincloss
40. 5/14: Spy Dust—Mendez
41. 5/20: The Great Gatsby®--Fitzgerald
42. 5/26: A Man Without Breath—Kerr
43. 6/3: The Battle of Bretton Woods—Steil
44. 6/7: Tubes-Blum
45. 6/11: How to Lie with Maps—Monmonier
46. 6/21: Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for
Thinking—Dennett
47. 6/27: Labyrinths®--Borges
48. 7/4: The Disappearing Spoon—Kean
49. 7/11: Jewels--Finlay
50. 7/13: Marcel Duchamp: 1: La Chute D`Eau—Banz
51. 7/16: Speedboat—Adler
52. 7/18: Sleepless Nights®—Hardwick
53. 7/22: Pitch Dark—Adler
54. 7/24: Gone—Adler
55. 7/28: The New York Stories of Elizabeth
Hardwick
56. 8/8: The Theory That Would Not Die—McGrayne
57. 8/14: Thinking in Numbers—Tammet
58. 8/15: My Face for the World to See—Hayes
59. 8/22: The Plot Against America®--Roth
60. 8/27: Young Man with a Horn—Baker
61. 8/30: New Jersey Noir
62. 9/4: Ravelstein®--Bellow
63. 9/5: Betrayal®--Pinter
64. 9/6: Picasso/Duchamp: “He was wrong”
65. 9/10: You Gotta Have Wa®--Whiting
66. 9/16: Notes on a Cowardly Lion—Lahr
67. 9/16: Waiting For Godot®--Beckett
68. 9/23: The Lay of the Land®--Ford
69. 9/27: The Sportswriter®--Ford
70. 10/3: The Quest for Corvo—Symons
71. 10/11: Revolutionary Road—Yates
72. 10/23: Independence Day®—Ford
73. 10/25: On the Beach®--Shute
74. 11/1: Roth Unbound—Pierpont
75. 11/5: Exit Ghost®--Roth
76. 11/6: The Ghost Writer®--Roth
77. 11/8: Everyman®--Roth
78. 11/12: Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell
You—Munro
79. 11/14: City of Glass®--Auster
80. 11/15: Ghosts®--Auster
81. 11/22: On the Map—Garfield
82. 11/22: The “Alabama Insert”—Dawkins
83. 11/24: What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned—Alexie
84. 11/24: A Mathematician’s Apology®--Hardy
85. 12/3: God: A Biography®--Miles
86. 12/6: ROY G. BIV—Stewart
87. 12/22: Saul Steinberg: A Biography—Bair
88. 12/22: Saul Steinberg®—Rosenberg
89. 12/29:
Renoir, My Father—Renoir
90. 1/2/14: More Than Birds—Shushkewich
91. 1/4/14: Duveen—Behrman
92. 1/6: The Birds of New Jersey—Boyle
93. 1/7:
The Lost Weekend—Jackson
94. 1/13: On Such A Full Sea—Lee
95. 1/21: Farther & Wilder—Bailey
96. 1/23: Andrew’s Brain—Doctorow
97. 1/27: Ghosty Men®--Lidz
98. 2/1: BUtterfield 8—O’Hara
99. 2/5: Pnin®--Nabokov
100. 2/12:
Naomi--Tanizaki
