The Last 100 Books I've Read

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

A Novel's Misplaced Birds

I'm reading E.L. Doctorow's new novel, Andrew's Brain, and I've found myself distracted by the author's  ignorance of where birds are when and how they behave. In the section I'm reading, Andrew is in Maine, in the winter. He sees, "through the fog, a green heron, out there on the piling."  Later that day, he is down on the beach as "the osprey hovers pulsingly over the sea, and the sanderlings tiptoe along the ocean's foamy edge while the shadowing bluefish waits for the tide to flip them into its razored maw." At the start of the chapter he has a gull smashing into a window, sliding down, leaving a bloody streak.

Hoo boy. Where to start? Gull striking a window hard enough to leave blood? I don't think so. A Green Heron in Maine in winter? No and certainly not hunched over on a piling. They're more secretive than that. Nor would an Osprey be flying around during a Maine winter; it would freeze to death after its first plunge. Sanderlings are all right and it is a good description, but I don't think they have much to fear from bluefish.

Quibbles, but it makes me want to say, "Ed, please, write what you know."

A little later in the book...Okay, now it's getting ridiculous. Andrew relates a story from his childhood in which a Red-tailed Hawk carries off his dachsund (!) to a tree in Washington Square Park and pecks out its eyes. As if.

100 More Books

It took me 14 months to read (or reread) the next 100 books. I can't pick out one reason that the pace of reading has slowed down. Maybe I'm outside more. Maybe it's because I no longer ride the subway.

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. 

Backyard 3/14--Chipping Sparrow

The last couple of days have been warm enough to sit in the backyard and read. If you just sit there a while the birds get used to you and come to the feeder and to pick seeds from the grass. Today, I looked up from the biography of George Orwell and saw my first Chipping Sparrow of the year, another spring arrival.

I don't want to get spoiled. It is only March 14th. Spring doesn't even start for another week. The warm days aren't permanently here. Another cold snap is inevitable, even in this extraordinarily warm winter.

This morning, early, I took a much longer walk than usual in the WMA. Pine Warblers are singing, Tree Swallows are snagging bugs over the fields and the lake, and the four Ring-necked Ducks still patrol the waters.

The combined list--our official backyard and the WMA, which Shari considers our backyard also--was 26 species today.

Canada Goose	1
Mallard	2
Ring-necked Duck	4
Turkey Vulture	1
Mourning Dove	9
Red-bellied Woodpecker	4
Downy Woodpecker	1
Blue Jay	2
American Crow	1
Fish Crow	3
Tree Swallow	8
Carolina Chickadee	25
Tufted Titmouse	15
White-breasted Nuthatch	1
Carolina Wren	1
Eastern Bluebird	4
American Robin	11
Pine Warbler	4
Chipping Sparrow	1
Song Sparrow	5
White-throated Sparrow	2
Dark-eyed Junco	11
Northern Cardinal	3
Common Grackle	14
House Finch	2
American Goldfinch	2