Reading log: July 2010
Books acquired: Too many to list.
Books read: "The Loved One," Evelyn Waugh; "Let Me Count the Ways," Peter DeVries; "City Lights," Dan Barry; "The Lurking Fear," H.P. Lovecraft.
Notice anything about my list this month? I mean besides that I bought 12 books and can't be bothered to list them. All the books I read have an L in the title. Yes, on purpose. It was an oddball experiment to trick myself into reading a few books from my shelves I might not have gotten to otherwise.
Either my reading has taken a playful turn, or I'm so overwhelmed that I've abandoned all principle. I'm hoping it's the former.
"The Loved One" is a British satire on America's obsession with grand funerals for pets and people alike. Funny, albeit not as funny as I'd hoped. "City Lights" is a collection of New York Times columns on people and places in the city, all gracefully written. The two winners this month were "Let Me Count the Ways," a comic novel (disgracefully out of print) about a couple with diametrically opposed views and their confusing effect on their son, and "The Lurking Fear," a collection of cosmic horror stories by the revered pulp writer, who is not for every taste, certainly, but who was for mine. It's the first Lovecraft I've read, but not the last. Ditto with DeVries.
For those who like to know where/when the books came into my hands (hi Doug!): I bought "The Loved One" in 2008 at the late, lamented Second Story Books in Claremont. "City Lights" was purchased at the NYT shop at LaGuardia before my flight home in 2009. "Let Me" was bought at Powell's in Portland in 2007, as was "The Lurking Fear." I felt better about revisiting Powell's a week ago after reading two more of my unread purchases from that trip. In fact, I read the last half of "Fear" on this vacation.
As for August, I'm trying to bear down on a couple of Twain collections I've been reading since May, with hopes of finishing one, or both. Not doing the one-letter thing this time, although I'll probably come back to that in some future month.
What are you folks reading, and have any of you read any of the above?
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A journalist for more than two decades, David Allen has been writing a column for the Daily Bulletin since 1997 and blogging since 2007.He lives in Claremont.
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You lucked out choosing "The Lurking Fear" collection for your first encounter with Lovecraft. It's one of his best. HPL's stories vary quite a bit in levels of interest and invention, although stylistically he remains pretty consistent. Definitely an acquired taste, but great fun in a retro-gothic sort of way.
[Nice to hear. And in "retro-gothic," you've turned a good phrase. -- DA]
After finishing "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest" (the last of the Millennium Trilogy that started with "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"), I went to a "summer read" of Sue Grafton's "J is for Judgment." Then I read Tana French's second book, "Likeness." French is an Irish writer who writes police mysteries located in quaint Irish countrysides. I managed to finish it on a plane trip returning from New York. I've now decided to skip ahead a few letters and am currently reading "Sue Grafton's U is for Undertow."
[I await a protest from the letters K through T. In the meantime, thanks for the book report, John. -- DA]
David, if you get a chance, see the movie "The Loved One." One of the better black humor movies, with Jonathan Winters, Robert Morse, and...of course...John Gielgud playing the title role.
[That's a good cast. -- DA]
That's one "L" of a list you've got there, David. [Ha! You see what I did with that there? I crack myself up!]
But seriously, folks ...
July was a four-book month for me:
* The Girl w/ The Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson)
* Walk Me to Midnight (Jane St. Clair)
* Winner Takes All (Christina Brinkley)
* The Cold Six Thousand (James Ellroy)
This brings my yearly total to 22 -- not quite an Allen-ian accomplishment, but it puts me in position to hit my goal for the year (25) by the end of August. At the moment, I'm working on "Crime Wave" (collection of James Ellroy essays & fiction that originally appeared in GQ) and "Noah's Compass" by Anne Tyler.
I apologize for not having your annual tally at hand (though I'm sure some reader out there has a detailed spreadsheet of DA readings in his iPad -- hey, Doug!), so I hafta ask: How, with five months left in the year, are you standing re: your 50-book objective for 2010?
[Hugh, I'm at 34 books as of the end of July and hope to finish another four in August. Fifty shouldn't be a problem. If you meet your goal by August, don't stop reading! Oh, and your "one L of a list" line is a winner. -- DA]
Hey, two shout-outs in the blog! (If you count Hugh's comment... and Hugh's comments are to be counted.)
Enjoyed the reading update as always, although it's kind of an odd feeling for me to realize that I not only haven't read any of those books, I haven't read anything by any of those authors... the New York stories book is probably for a specific audience, but I feel like, as an English Lit major, I should have read some Evelyn Waugh, and as a geek, I should have read some Lovecraft. I'll add them to my list of authors-to-read... putting them after the 300* or so unread books lying around the house.
Thanks to my book club, I've just finished reading "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton, which is probably a book I would never have picked up on my own, but which I really enjoyed. It's a re-telling of Beowulf... and, speaking of books I've never read but should have, reading "Eaters" reminded me that I've never read Beowulf, which is something I've really felt guilty about. So that's what I'm doing now! Reading Beowulf for the first time ever, switching back and forth between a prose version I have and the Seamus Heaney poem translation that came out about ten years ago and won all kinds of awards and whatnot. Beowulf = good story! In case the literary world is sitting around on pins and needles waiting for my opinion of the book.
In other Doug-centered news... "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is one of the books I've downloaded onto my (cough) iPad. Haven't read it yet, but I sure hear a lot about it. What did you think, Hugh?
I noticed August's Reading Log was a few days late... but that just means September's will come that much sooner, right? (And, to be fair, we got a Powell's Bookstore update halfway through the month. :-) )
*Maybe an exaggeration**.
**Though actually maybe not.
[Literary world: "Finally, we can get up off these pins and needles. They're so uncomfortable." And Doug, I"m mildly surprised you haven't read any Lovecraft. But then, I'm mildly surprised I hadn't read any Lovecraft. -- DA]