Fundevogel's Shelf Rescue Program

I'm more concerned about shelf-creep than shelf-life so I'm not limiting myself to books acquired prior to 2012. What I do want is to do is keep my total from growing and, hopefully, to shrink it a bit.

I'm arbitrarily setting my goal at 10 books, but what really matters is keeping the ratio of books read to books acquired manageable.

Here's to combating my book-hoarding ways.

Progress:




total TBR (1/1/12) : 69
total TBR (10/1/12) : 71 (Daisy Miller and The Amber Spyglass discarded unread)
books read : 22
books acquired : 25

Pre-2012 Inventory:
listing as of 10/5/12 (possibly complete listing? I'll update it if I find something I've missed)

Various Works of Fiction
The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis
Devil on the Cross - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Daisy Miller - Henry James
The Turn of the Screw - Henry James
Our House & All the Things In It - Estella Soto (gift)
Water Music - T. C. Boyle
Bitter Seeds - Ian Tregillis (gift)
The Death of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave
The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Various Works of Non Fiction
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
Danse Macabre - Stephen King (gift)
The Italian Boy - Sarah Wise
Of Wolves and Men - Barry Lopez
Charlatan - Pope Brock
Medieval Marriage - Georges Duby
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown
Freak Show - Robert Bogdan (gift)
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond (gift)
The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta - John R. Ridge
Stuck Up!: 100 Objects Inserted and Ingested in Places They Shouldn't Be - various (gift)
Burton on Burton - Mark Salisbury (gift)

Political
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Gulag Archipelago - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Religion, Myth & Folklore
The Golden Bough - James George Frazer
The Uses of Enchantment - Bruno Bettelheim (gift)
Immodest Acts - Judith C. Brown
In the Devil's Snare - Mary Beth Norton
Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia - Jean Bottero (gift)
Wayward Puritans - Kai T. Erikson (MIA)
The Dead Sea Scrolls - various
The New Annotated Oxford Bible - various
Forests of the Vampire - Charles Phillips

Boxall's Batch
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
The Monk - M. G. Lewis
Story of O - Pauline Reage
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowlings
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller

Children's & YA
The White Deer - James Thurber
The Annotated Huck Finn - Mark Twain (gift)
The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

Theater
The Threepenny Opera - Bertold Brecht
The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare - Doug Stewart
The Prop Builder's Molding & Casting Handbook - Thurston James

Super Old
Beowulf - unknown
Laxdaela Saga - unknown

Biography & Memoir
This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff
When You are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris
Dead Men Do Tell Tales - Byron De Prorok
Life on the Mississippi - Mark Twain

Southern Gothic
All Over but the Shoutin' - Rick Bragg
Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner - William Faulkner
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Losing Battles - Eudora Welty

Technical
Above the Fold - Brian Miller
CSS in Easy Steps
Web Publishing with HTML and XHTML
The Animation Book
DVD Authoring with Adobe Encore
Essential ZBrush

Russian Language
Basic Russian Vocabulary
Nachalo 1
Nachalo 2

Here's to combating my book-hoarding ways.

Books Read:

1. The Uses of Enchantment : the meaning and importance of fairy tales - Bruno Bettelheim 1/19/12
2. Above the Fold : Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design - Brian Miller 1/20/12
3. Our House & All the Things In It - Estella Soto 3/7/12
4. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James 4/5/12
5. Story of O - Pauline Reage 5/27/12
6. The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau 6/4/12
7. Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller 6/4/12
8. The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht 6/16/12
9. Danse Macabre - Stephen King 7/30/12
10. The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis 8/16/12
11. Bitter Seeds - Ian Tregillis 8/20/12
12. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx 8/23/12
13. Medieval Marriage - Georges Duby 9/14/12
14. Of Wolves and Men - Barry Lopez 9/24/12
15. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall 10/1/12
16. The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton 10/2/12
17. Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille 10/3/12
18. The Death of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave 10/21/12
19. Celebration - Harry Crews 11/11/12
20. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 11/26/12
21. Beowulf - unknown, translated by Seamus Heaney 12/5/12
22. The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll 12/6/12

Books Acquired:

1. Macbeth - William Shakespeare 1/5/12
2. Othello - William Shakespeare 1/6/12
3. Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories - Voltaire 1/7/12
4. Tristam Shandy - Laurence Sterne 1/7/12
5. The Thurber Carnival -James Thurber 1/7/12
6. Fanny Hill - John Cleland 1/7/12
7. Plagues and Peoples - William H. McNeill 1/14/12
8. Kingdom Under Glass - Jay Kirk 1/31/12 (gift)
9. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall 1/31/12 (gift)
10. A Bright and Guilty Place - Richard Rayner 2/1/12
11. The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton 2/2/12
12. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams 2/28/12
13. The Ghost Map – Steven Johnson 3/3/12
14. The Knife Man - Wendy Moore 4/12/12
15. Girl Factory - Jim Krusoe 4/16/12
16. The Code Book - Simon Singh 4/18/12
17. Vaccinated - Paul A. Offit 4/24/12
18. Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille 5/29/12
19. Аня в странѣ чудесъ - Lewis Carroll (translated by Vladimir Nabokov) 7/12/12
20. Barron's Russian Verbs - Patricia Anne Davis, Ph. D 7/19/12
21. ты только прислушайся - Phillis Gershator 7/31/12
22. The Cry of the Sloth - Sam Savage 10/12/12
23. Celebration - Harry Crews 11/19/12
24. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 11/21/12
25. The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll 12/5/12 (ER)
26. The Once and Future King - T. H. White 12/18/12
27. Apocalypse Cakes: Recipes for the End - Shannon O'Malley 12/25/12 (gift)
28. King City - Brandon Graham 12/25/12 (gift)

This isn't looking good...Curse you Goodwill! I simply can't walk away from a classic on my to-read list when the original cover price is less than 2 dollars.

fun:

Those are some good books on your list. I think that there is a planned group read for Love in the Time Cholera in the 12 in 12 Challenge.

Thanks! I don't think there will be many duds in the bunch. It's just a matter of finding time for them.

Impressive list. The Golden Bough must be the condensed version. Even at that it is a very dense read that won't go fast if you're taking it in. Amazing work, though. I think that one was a real milestone for me: the world looked different to me after I'd read it.

As a matter of fact, the Bettelheim book was also a mind-opener.

It is a condensed version of the Golden Bough, but it's the restored condensed version...meaning they put the stuff about Christianity back in that made it so scandalous when it was published. I've been wanting to read this for some time and I was super picky about which version I bought when I found out it was near impossible to find (let alone read) the complete work. I don't even remember how many volumes it was. 14 sounds about right. This is the copy I've got. I think Cancer Ward is the fattest book I've read so far, so even with abridgment this one tops it by a few hundred pages. I'm not sure I'll get to it this year...But I'm reading Bruno now!

Oho. Now, that I'd like to read. Even the version I read in the 1970s--the eleventh (1971) printing of the 1950 Macmillan one-volume abridged edition--contained plenty that couldn't have pleased the Christians very much. Can you point me to your edition?

This is the one I have.

Thank you! Adding it to my Amazon "save for later" list right now.

1. The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales - Bruno Bettelheim 1/19/12

This book is really more about psychology and child development than fairy tales, but it turns out fairy tales are a pretty cool means by which to learn about psychoanalysis and such not. Bettelheim makes the case that fairy tales aren't just fun for children, but that they help them face the subconscious fears, conflicts and ambivalence that a child would be otherwise unable to understand or cope with. A lot of his insight to child development and how fairy tales can reflect childhood crises and help children learn how to deal in real life was brilliant. His analysis of specific fairy tales was a lot more hit or miss.

I'm not someone that thinks the fairy tales were written with some intentional deeper meaner. That doesn't mean I don't think they can't have deeper meanings, or even a specific deeper meaning. But when that's the case I expect it's the product of hundreds of years of storytellers and audiences unconsciously editing and re-editing stories to settle on the version that resonated most deeply. And the fact that I do think some fairy tales do seem to have a specific meaning doesn't mean someone that finds another meaning in it is wrong. These are personal things, if someone finds something there that isn't there for me I am not the arbiter of their experience and I certainly can't dismiss their reactions.

That said, a notable chunk of Bettelheim's analysis is more a demonstration of a psychoanalyst's ability to find cock everywhere than it is about what anyone else is going to see. This can be pretty ridiculous and entertaining. It can also get stupid and sexist. I'm not saying everytime Bettelheim offers a sexual interpretation its bullshit. I'm just saying keep your psychoanalysis filters up.

Highlights!

"The magic formula "up stick and at it" suggests phallic associations, as does the fact that only this new acquisition permits Jack to hold his own in relation to his father..."

"Thus the expulsion from the infant paradise begins; it continues with the mother's deriding Jack's belief in the magic power of his seeds. The phallic beanstalk permits Jack to engage in oedipal conflict with the ogre..."

"it does not take much imagination to see the possible sexual connotations in the distaff..."

"So dwarfs are eminently male, but males who are stunted in their development. These "little men" with their stunted bodies and their mining occupation--they skillfully penetrate into dark holes--all suggest phallic connotations."

"A small locked room often stands in dreams for the female sexual organs; turning a key in a lock often symbolizes intercourse."

"She selects him because he appreciates her "dirty" sexual aspects, lovingly accepts her vagina in the form of a slipper, and approves of her desire for a penis, symbolized by her tiny foot fitting within the slipper-vagina."

"The bride stretches out one of her fingers for the groom to slip a ring onto it. Pushing one finger through a circle made out of the thumb and index finger of the hand is a vulgar expression for intercourse...The ring, a symbol for the vagina, is given by the groom to his bride; she offers him in return her outstretched finger, so he may complete the ritual."

"...he will gain a golden vagina, she a temporary penis."

2. Above the Fold : Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design - Brian Miller 1/20/12

This is a book on web design so it's got a very specific audience, but if you're part of that audience I'd recommend it. This isn't a book that teaches html or css or any of that. It is strictly devoted to web design. Graphic design, layout, navigation, functionality, these are the things this book addresses. It's well organized according to topic and includes lots of images to illustrate the concepts it addresses. Many of the images are of websites which is useful to see the breadth of web design, learn how various web developers have solved problems and glean inspiration for your own web design.

I notice a book from Duby in your list. I hope the translation is good because this one wasn't only a good historian but also a very good writer! Getting pleasure from the writing style in historical book is so rare that it's worth mentioning.

Here's hoping. I don't usually read older history books since they're often really dry, but I've had good luck with older anthropology and sociology so I though his book would be worth a go. I'm glad to hear he's an author you think highly of.

>12 fundevogel:: I like your review.

Thank you :)

3. Our House & All the Things In It - Estella Soto 3/7/12

A friend and I did a thesis exchange last year and this is hers. It is brilliant, poetic, thoughtful, grotesque, beautiful, heartbreaking and the best thing I've read this year. I am unlikely to find it's equal in the next nine months either. This is the sort of writing you savor, like Borges or Joan Didion. It is prose crafted as poetry. For Stella it isn't enough to just tell a good story. Every sentence and each word is woven with grace a beauty, and yet, it never feels forced. It's as if her words are chosen by some sort of natural selection that organically culls all but the most fit and graceful beasts.

Of course all the eloquence in the world wouldn't mean much if there wasn't a story to tell. That isn't a problem Stella has either. Her thesis collects several short stories and a novella in progress. All deal with intimate relationships, particularly the transformations that occur in them and to the people that form them. These transformations can be beautiful or grotesque and are often both. Where do I end and where do you begin? How can you know me so well without understanding? What are we becoming?

It's wonderful to have such talented friends.

4. The Turn of the Screw - Henry James 4/5/12

It's been I while since I hated a classic. But this I hated. Hated the convoluted sentences. Hated the stupid characters who couldn't seem to help wildly vacillating between eye-gougingly saccharine and comicly sinister. Hated the innocent sexism James demonstrated in concocting such brick-headed women and serpentine children.

Hate myself a little for granting it that if you look at it in social terms regarding the uneven power distribution between upper class children and the adult help that's meant to be looking after them it is kinda creepy and thoughtful despite it's overbearing condescension towards and ignorance of childcare and caregivers.

Does not bode well for the other James story on my shelf.

5. Story of O - Pauline Reage 5/27/12

This book is brutal.

It is purported to be a work of erotic fiction focused on BDSM…but from what I know of the the BDSM community it doesn't represent them at all. Maybe things were different in the scene when this was written but it's my understanding that people in the scene today regard it as play. They layout their rules beforehand, respect eachother's limits and know there's a right way and a wrong way to use a riding crop. It's my understanding that modern members of the BDSM community enjoy playing with power dynamics, the characters in Story of O are destroyed by them.

The story is about a woman known only as O, a designation that simultaneously denies her personhood and mirrors her various orifices and thus identifies her as a thing to be penetrated. At the start of the book she is taken without explanation by her lover to a mysterious chateau where she is taught to be a sex slave. She is denied any control over her body or her actions, abused physically, mentally and sexually all in the name of training her, of making her into something else. Training that she knows her lover wants her to suffer and be transformed by. And because he wants it, because he loves her when she is debased and she loves him (god knows why) she eventually loses her own will and becomes a slave to his will and to anyone one that can recognize the signs of her enslavement.

The most graphic violence and disturbing sex is mostly in the first half of the book, but I honestly find her complete loss of self and fierce compliance with anything her "master" asked of her the most disturbing thing. She was literally stripped of any of her own feelings or thoughts and became and empty vessel to be filled with whatever most pleased her master. Occasionally a character in the book made mention that she was a slave by choice and she could end it whenever she wanted...except that she didn't choose to be a slave and she was never offered a choice about it until after her brains were scraped out of her skull, scrambled and returned to her skull a substance suitable only to be an ingredient for the sort of culinary delights we can't stomach in America. I have never been more repulsed by a book in my life. And yet, I didn't hate it.

For me at least it was a rewarding read. Horrifying yes, but also well crafted and thought provoking. I think that was what made it so worthwhile for me. I could not identify with any of the characters (they were all bats as far as I was concerned) and the point of view presented (O's) was so twisted I couldn't accept O's interpretation of and justification for her situation. As such none of the explanation of character motivation or behavior given within in the book was trustworthy. I mean, would you trust the word of a woman that thinks that the thing to do is help her master force a young woman into the same sex-slave boot camp she was brain-raped at so that this other young girl can be pleasing to her master? I think not. Chick's got chowder in her head. That sort of nuts puts an unbridgeable distance between me and the story that meant this wasn't a passive read. I read this book with my brains turning like I was reading mostly backward but still noteworthy classical philosophy. If classical philosophy was rife with anal sex and caning.

Whatever. It's a repulsive story but it's well written and it made me think. Whether or not I came even remotely close to getting what the author intended out of this (I really don't know about the author, I'm afraid she might've drunk the kool-aid) I'm glad I read it and it was still vastly more readable than the The Turn of the Screw.

Excellent review, fundevogel. That book enjoyed a vogue of sorts in the liberated sixties, when all sorts of taboos were being broken. The people I knew who talked about it may or may not have read it themselves, but they were never very specific about its contents in my hearing other than to say that it was about perverse sexual acts. Although I didn't feel drawn to reading it myself, I've always kind of wondered about it.

Your punch line made me laugh--and to feel better about my sense of defeat in attempting to read Henry James.

Thanks! For me it wasn't the sex that was problematic, but knowing people that is almost certainly what made it taboo. It's weird. You've got to be at least a little liberal to get past the sexual taboos to read it, but chances are anyone open-minded enough to not care about the taboo will be completely turned off by how dehumanizing it is. I imagine the number of people that are able to genuinely enjoy the book must be limited to folk with a really specific kink. I can understand why the people you spoke to about it wouldn't go into detail. It doesn't make for nice conversation. I wouldn't discourage people from reading it, but I wouldn't encourage it either. I think its the sort of thing that has to be undertaken with the expectation of having your comfort zone violated.

Ha! Henry James haters unite! Reading The Turn of the Screw was an endeavor in simultaneous boredom and feminist rage. There was plenty of feminist rage to be had with Story of O, but I was never bored.

6. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 6/4/12

Oh Rousseau. I spent so long reading this book that it is difficult to hold a complete enough picture of it in my head to respond to. I think I'll pass on writing a proper review because of this. Suffice it to say the dude was passionate about democracy...sometimes to the point of naivete. The guy couldn't fathom the possibility that in a true and proper democracy a majority would ever trample that rights of the minority. He also had a pretty extreme nationalistic streak. He really didn't think you had any business being a citizen if the thought of avoiding the opportunity to die for king and country ever crossed your mind. The end good really weird when he started debating the effectiveness of religion in molding good citizens. Nevermind if you were an an atheist. Clearly there isn't a civil bone in your body.

The beginning was more thoughtful and politically relevant, but I read it way too long ago to comment without a refresher.

7. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller 6/4/12

Book number whatever on the "fundevogel can't resist a banned book" binge. It's good! It was banned in the US until the 60's for it's sexual content (though it's not erotica) and was the book responsible for changing censorship laws in America. Yay! Personally I loved it. There's no real plot, just a roughly chronological collection of stories and musings from the author's time slumming in Paris. The writing is absolutely beautiful, with a flow and nuance I found sensual which is a wonderful contrast to the crazy shit going down.

Seriously. Miller doesn't exactly portray himself and his comrades in a favorable light. Miller floats from one borrowed bunk to another, mooching off his friends, casual acquaintances and people he only tolerates for the meals or francs he knows he can get out of them. In fact the book basically breaks down into just a few things:

• Chasing tail (mostly prostitutes)


• getting by (mooching food, money and a place to crash)


• Listening to other people talk long enough to get food, money or a place to crash out of them


• pining over women


• musing/ranting about art and the world

It seems pretty superficial, and in a way it is, but that's sorta what's great about it. Miller doesn't present a clean sparkling face to the world. He lays it all out and that's that. And while he and his friends do plenty of shitty things, apparently without remorse, I do admire that as difficult and amoral the life depicted was it was a conscious and enthusiastic choice to live that way. He faced down how the world would have him live, and rejected it. Rejected the morality others would impose on him and the steady job and reliable pay so that he could live life outside of the mold. That's really what it was about to me, being the author of your own destiny and damn the consequences.

8. The Threepenny Opera - Bertolt Brecht 6/16/12

I never really got into this one but I'm not sure I'm ready to dismiss it as a play. I was initially familiar with the play from the music. I love Mack the Knife, Pirate Jenny and What Keeps Mankind Alive? They're fantastic songs. Unfortunately there isn't much zing in reading song lyrics off the page without Kurt Weill's music to go along. Then there's the fact that I've never actually seen the play. Ouch. Of course I haven't seen Death of Salesman or The Crucible either and that didn't interfere with enjoying the text.

The issue here is that Brecht's intent and style is intentionally off putting. Brecht creates a spectacle and he's driven by his political positions. In this case he spins a yarns about vile underworld criminals and the simpering women they use. On the page the lead character, MacHeath (Mack the Knife) is impossible to like. He heads up a small but successful criminal empire robbing people, but is just as known for flippant acts of rape and murder. And yet somehow people can't seem to get enough of him. The way women claw at his trousers is a combination of absurd and grotesque. There certainly are moments of black comedy in the script, and I could see a talented cast bringing humor to a lot of what is just repulsive on the page. Sadly I couldn't benefit from that.

What that left me with was a pack of characters for whom I felt indifferent to at best and disgusted by at worst and an overwhelming awareness of just how hard Brecht was pummeling with his political message. The Threepenny Opera is meant to show the dregs of the criminal underworld and, pointing a finger at corporations, bankers, the bourgeoisie and so on, say they are just as corrupt and vile, see how they profit from the misery of others. And knowing Brecht that's the experience he wanted me to have, sorta. It probably would have worked better to see it staged.

I read the first few pages of Daisy Miller the other night and between my loathing of The Turn of the Screw and complete disinterest in what was on those pages I've decided to jettison the book without any further attention. Now that I know Henry James makes me gnash my teeth and mutter like Muttley I have no desire to go there.

I'm striking it from my list, but obviously not adding it to "books read" count. I'm making progress on Danse Macabre though.

I read Danse Macabre decades ago and still remember some of King's key points. I really liked his explanations of what makes horror stories work and how he approaches the genre. They gave me a better understanding not only of a major category of fiction but of an important aspect of our culture, especially in its reaction to difficult times.

It's definitely interesting and in an odd way feels well paired with the Bettelheim I read earlier in the year.

9. Danse Macabre - Stephen King 7/30/12

I have mixed feelings about this book, which I'm partially going to blame on the hype. This is THE BOOK that is always recommended when conversations about the nature of horror as a genre is discussed. Fair enough, King's book is nothing if not thorough and his analysis of the psychological appeal and function of the genre is spot on. But it will hardly be news to fans of the genre that have ever put any thought into what draws them to horror. In this sense I think this book is less for horror fans than it is an attempt to demystify and humanize the appeal of horror to genre outsiders. Possibly for the sort of people that think being entertained by violent and bloody stories is clearly a sign of a diseased and dangerous mind. I rather doubt many of them will bother reading this book.

So I didn't really learn very much about the genre that I didn't already know. In a book as massive as this one that's rather disappointing. Of course, this should hardly be taken as an indicator of my expertise on the field, just that King didn't use all those pages to go much deeper than the idle musings of a young, reasonably educated horror fan. In all fairness I suppose he was a young, reasonably educated horror fan when he wrote this. Instead the page count is filled out with personal anecdotes, discussions of specific examples of horror from various media and the occasional anti-academical guff that sits poorly on a man writing a 400 page tome of literary criticism.

Ultimately what I liked best about it was his discussion of horror in movies and television. In these sections it was nice to hear his thoughts and analysis of specific works and while I will never in a million years 'get' all the love for Rosemary's Baby I kind have to see The Stepford Wives after reading what King had to say about it. The television section was particularly interesting because television has changed so radically since the book was published (in the early 80's I think). It's King's stance in the book that television, because of the restrictions on its content, has never been and never will be able to produce viable horror. Sure the odd Twilight Zone might send a chill down your spine, but these will be rare as the medium, according to King, is a fundamentally hostile environment to horror. Nuts to that. As far as I'm concerned one of the best shows on tv last year was the brilliantly written, wonderfully acted and joyously bloody American Horror Story. You can not tell me horror can't work on tv.

As for the bit I was less into? I was put off by King's coverage of horror on radio. This was because he only covered radio from the 50's and later. I get that that's all that fell in his self imposed timeframe but it's still bullshit. Radio shows were withering on on the vine by the 50's. It's an incredible disservice to the medium to discuss horror on radio, but only during it's decline. Believe me. I may have been many many years not born at the time, but I've put a lot of hours in listing to horror and mystery shows from the 30's and 40's. I'm not saying it was all good, lord knows they lifted their content from other sources like looters in riot, but there was a lot of enthusiasm for the genre and they weren't afraid to go to some pretty gruesome places on occasion. But does King talk about that? Barely.

I wasn't terribly into Kings segment on modern horror novels either, but that's squarely an issue of personal taste. King dedicated large swathes of chapters to discussing individual novels I'd never heard of let alone read and King's discussion did nothing to generate interest in reading them for me. Clearly King thought he had interesting things to say about them, but with the amount of paper he dedicated to them I think it could really only appeal to others that had already read the books and had a similar level of enthusiasm about them as King did. On the plus side, reading this made me realize I'm not actually a big fan of horror novels. I prefer the genre when coupled with the splanchnic images and (hopefully) strong performances of film and television.

Ultimately I guess the book was a patchwork. Some of it I found valuable, other bits not so much.

10. The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel - Don Marquis 8/16/12

I'm going to do like I did with The Threepenny Opera and say this didn't really work for me, but give a bit of free pass since I read it in a format radically different than it was originally presented and intended. The book collects an irregular column published in the Evening Sun 1916-1922. It was ostensibly authored by "Archy", a cockroach purported to type each piece letter by letter by hurling himself head first into the proper typewriter key. Because of the restraints of this sort of typing Archy's pieces never included punctuation or capitalization. You see, it would simply be impossible for a cockroach to use the shift key while hurling himself at another. He was also a vers libre poet in his last life.

Sadly the writing never really lives up to it's conceit, nor does the anthology live up to its name. Marquis doesn't seem to have ever really had the time to come up with interesting or particularly crafted pieces for the Archy segments so what is there often seems repetitive, vapid or twee. But it may not have felt so within it's original context along side the news of the day. There at least it may have served as a pleasant bit of fluff between extolling the virtues of sobriety and ridiculing the kaiser.

On top of that, whatever might have been learned from the relationship between the Archy column, the Evening Sun and their era you won't find it here. I had been excited to lay my hands on this book specifically because I had been interested at stealing a glance at history by way a literary cockroach. Didn't really happen though. First off this book uses end notes rather than footnotes. I hate end notes. In a way the fact that there isn't really anything interesting or insightful there is a good thing. It meant I could give up hunting around for the proper end note once I realized half of the notes were telling me things I already knew--believe it or not, I didn't need a special note to tell me what a "speakeasy" is-- and 100% of the notes were far to limited to give any real insight to the time or the column.

So what did I get from this? A lot of bitching from Archy about how he wasn't getting paid enough for his writing (which, in all fairness probably did reflect a very real problem for Marquis) and my current boundary for the bottom of the barrel when it comes to free verse poetry. Allen Ginsberg Archy is not.

And that's ten. I'm going to keep going as I still have a good ways to go to relieve the burden on my shelves.

12. The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and that other guy Frederick Engel 8/23/12

Honestly, I expected better. I already know the basic problems with communism going into the book, but I didn't expect they'd be so obvious in the text. Maybe that's the privilege of hindsight, but I did find the goals defined in the book incredibly naive. Rather than set goals that could improve the lives of the working class the book ostensibly sets it sights on taking the power from the bourgeoisie and giving it to the the workers. Except there really isn't a plan to empower the worker, just a wide-eyed scheme to find equality with the elimination of private property. If there is any equality to be found here it is in misery as there was no actual plan described that would actually raise the quality of life for the worker.

I suppose communism might work on a small scale in a commune setting were al involved opted in. But not as a government enforced economy. At the most basic level communism is based on some pretty austere philosophical principles and regardless of how well any given person may do with them, it will never do to have a government force such a philosophy and it's implementation on it's citizens.

13. Medieval Marriage - Georges Duby 9/14/2012

Meh. The focus was much narrower than I anticipated and not one I was particularly interested in. It really was just a book about:

• which 12th century French noble married which lady (the oldest son to the richest/most powerful family girl that could be arranged)
  
• who arranged the whole thing (the patriarch of the family)
  
• who bitched about it (the church when it didn't suit them, the husband when he wanted a new wife)
  
• if said lady had babies in the quantity and gender desired (sometimes)
  
• what was done when someone wanted to terminate a marriage (claim adultery or say "oops she's my cousin"--she was of course, but so was the lady he married next).
  
• the purpose of this whole marriage thing (secure power, allegiances, money and consolidate family wealth via incest)
  

Frankly, I pretty much knew all that from my women's studies class in college which was a lot more interesting and wasn't afraid to call rape rape, inside or out of marriage. Duby's, language is so detached when he talks of abducting women to the marriage bed you wonder if, like Fezzik, you should pipe up "I don't think that word means what you think".

Woo hoo! Traditional marriage!

*delurking* I noticed your username is a story by the Brother's Grimm, may I assume that you like fairy tales?

It's true, you caught me :)

Nice - and it's definately a cute story. :) Same here, I collect fairy tales.

14. Of Wolves and Men - Barry Lopez 9/24/12

Does what it says on the tin. It covers wolves, or rather what we know about wolves and their relationship with people from every angle imaginable (though some are covered more thoroughly than others). It starts off with what was know about wolf life and behavior and then lept into human wolf relations. It was at it's most hippy when discussing Alaskan and Canadian Indians' understanding of and respect for wolves, but it still stayed pretty even handed. There was an awful lot of brutal chapters on wolf hunting in North America, both for sport and profit. Honestly, though I hadn't heard of it before it sounds like it was up there with the buffalo hunting. They were taken to the brink of extinction, largely because farmers and cattlemen saw them as a threat to their business. There's some on folklore and myth as well as little bits on wolf-children, werewolves and the hazards of keeping wolves as pets.

It's certainly not a bad choice if you're looking to learn about the history of men and wolves.

15. The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall 10/1/12

The cover bears the quote:

"The bastard love child of the Matrix, Jaws and The Da Vinci Code. Very entertaining."
--Mark Haddon

That's not what I would have said about it though. It's more Nolan than Wachowski and infinitely more Borges than Brown. There is a huge fucking shark though.

A conceptual shark.

It starts with a man regaining consciousness. He doesn't know who he is or where he is...but there's a letter on the table for him, Eric Sanderson, from the first Eric Sanderson. This is the first of many of letters from the first of Eric Sanderson, usually signed "with regret and also hope". Initially Eric ignores his former self's correspondence as advised by his psychologist. It will just set back his recovery she says. But as things get stranger and a new threat appears Eric turns to his collection of unopened letters for answers.

It seems, according to the letters, Eric's condition is not the simple dis-associative state he's been told. No, Eric Sanderson was preyed upon by a conceptual fish. A beast not of flesh and bones but of ideas. A beast that hungered not for his flesh, but his Eric-ness, and ate until there was nothing left.

I'd like to say more, but it's not the sort of book about which you can say much with certainty. Hall plays deftly with the surreal while grounding it in the real. After all, what is more tenacious than and idea? More dangerous than a doubt? Is there any parasite more damaging than our own misplaced fixations and errant convictions?

I'm also undecided on how I actually interpret Eric's journey. Did the first Eric pull off an amazing feat of surrealistic heroism, or was he simply a tragic figure driven to madness by his own pain? Is this a man surviving against all odds in mad world or a mad man quietly slipping out of a real world he can no longer cope with? There are no easy answers here.

I'm probably going to have to read it again.

37: Whatever led you to read it in the first place? It sounds strange enough that I'm just curious to know how you came across it and how it was represented to you.

It also prompts me to wonder what would make a prospective author say to himself: "I know! I'm going to write a novel about a man who was preyed upon by a conceptual fish while writing letters to his future self..."

It was a gift! I gave the giver Sharp Teeth about a bit back and I think now there's an unspoken challenge to dig up weirder and weirder literature for the other.

Hmm, interesting variation on potlatch. I've read some pretty weird ones. Here are two that stand out in memory:

The Colour of a Dog Running Away
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

But maybe these wouldn't even make the first cut for weirdness, now that I think of them from an absolute weirdness point of view.

Oh man, the summary on that last one is delicious. I'll definitely have to look into that.

16. The Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton 10/2/12

I tend to roll my eyes at self-help books and relationship books. It probably isn't my best attribute, but it's true. This one I ate up. This was almost certainly because we live in a society so knotted up about sexuality and traditional monogamy that there really isn't much discussion of, let alone positive role modeling of healthy non-monogamous relationships out in the open. Lately I have become more and more aware that a lot of perfectly lovely people have been cutting their own path when it comes to structuring their intimate relationships. Couple that with my own disinterest in the traditional institution of marriage and this seemed like the book for me.

It was.

The book starts off beautifully from the simple premise: Sex is fun and pleasure is good for you. The authors proudly dismiss the idea that the number of partners a person has has any bearing on their value as a person or their moral fiber. This, they point out, is a hold over from our culture's long tradition of commodifying sex, or, more specifically, commodifying women according to the exclusivity of their bodies. There is of course nothing wrong with monogamy if it is what works for a couple, however the authors are quick to point out that love and sex need not go hand in hand, and if love is dependent on complete sexual possession of your partner's body you might be confusing your lover with your property. You love a person for who they are, not who they do.

These are of course things that need to be sorted out by the individuals involved and nowhere in the book do the authors imply one sort of relationship to be superior to another. They do however point out that what's best for one person is not necessarily best for another and what is best for a person can change over a lifetime. Or several times. They dig into the ethics and strategies of non-monogamy and here it really opens up. Frankly, with the possibly exception of the chapter on how to negotiate sex parties, this section really ought to apply to anyone. Communication and emotional honesty are emphasized above all else. Using this basic foundation the authors detail how to sort out what boundaries you need in your relationship and how to deal with the difficulties and problems that will arise in a non-monogamous relationship. Not because non-monogamy is inherently more fragile than monogamy, but because every relationship faces challenges.

I still don't know how exactly I would like to structure my romantic relationships, but now I'm a lot more knowledgeable about the options out there and feel more secure knowing my relationships don't need fit any expectations or structure other than those imposed by the people involved. Yay!

17. Story of the Eye - Georges Bastaille 10/3/12

So after I finished this I was looking through my bookshelves trying to figure out what to read. I just couldn't settle on the next one and I got to thinking about my reading this year. Often as a year progresses I find certain commonalities in a chunk of the books I've been reading. Let's be real. This year it's been sex. Weird Freudian sexuality in The Uses of Enchantment, horrifying sex in Story of O, sexy debauchery in Tropic of Cancer, healthy sexperts in The Ethical Slut and now I can add Story of the Eye to that list.

Honestly, you might want to strike me from your contacts list after I say this but I thought this book was ridiculous. It is essentially a collection of increasingly twisted and violent sexual exploits of two teenage lovers narrated with restrained enthusiasm by the male of the pair. They piss and cum with abandon all over each other an most of the pages of the book as they engage in exhibitionism and violent sex. Their overwhelming sexual aggression drives a pious girl they have fetishized to madness and suicide, gains them the support of an older pervert that likes to watch them fuck shit up and masturbate from a discreet distance and ultimately concludes in a brilliantly fucked up scene with a priest. It's not pretty...

It is literally a collection of the most horrifying and disgusting sexual scenarios the author could imagine. It's the Aristocrats played straight. And that's why rather than being emotionally beat like I was after reading Story of O I found this amusing and ridiculous. This isn't about believable characters exacting their terrible fantasies on hapless bystanders. This is the porn equivalent of a child banging two dolls together to simulate a bloodthirsty battle. It's enthusiastic, and satisfying to the child, but one thing it will never be mistaken for is the real thing.

Now, you could certainly get upset about what fantasies these represent, and that's valid, but unlike Story of O I think the sexual appeal here is less about the actions of the characters and more about the appeal of dreaming up the extreme and shocking. Bastaille would have grown up with all the Victorian sexual oppression we're told about, and frankly, this book is strike back. Is it so odd that in a culture that demonized sex the embrace of sexuality could result in a kink that conflates sex and other socially maligned activities?

Also there is some surrealistic/Freudian thing with the fetishization of eggs and eyeballs. It made me imagine what it would be like if this story was filmed with the style and technology of Un Chien Andalou. I really think that would be the way to go if you were to adapt it to screen.

PS This is also notable for being the third book I read this year to use the word "lugubrious". Seriously, I'd never encountered this word before in my life, now it's everywhere.

18. The Death of Bunny Munro - Nick Cave 10/21/12

Ok. So apparently I slid into this book looking for some abuse. True masochism. I know this is the case because before it became clear just how effed up this was I started thinking, "This is nice...but I could really do with some Harry Crews."

This is, as far as I can tell, about the worst father in world and the son that loves him. It's hard to say exactly what is wrong with the titular figure. He doesn't seem to have malicious motives, but he is capable of vicious acts of spite when something comes between him and whatever selfish desire he's currently chasing. He pisses all over a woman's bathroom and steals an old blind woman's wedding rings. I guess it may be that what's most fundamentally wrong with him is that he is a child. A middle-aged man that will say and do anything to get what he wants. It's not even that he isn't concerned with the consequences, he genuinely doesn't seem to understand that there are consequences. It's staggering the things one can do when one refuses to take responsibility for anything.

The story opens with Bunny blowing off his hysterical wife for a quickie at a hotel. By and by he makes his way home where he finds the place a mess, his 11 year old son alone and his wife hanging in bedroom. Completely ignorant of what to do Bunny runs back to what he knows: door to door sales and door to door fucks. He drag his son out of school to teach him his tricks, though the boy really just gets left alone in the car as his father attempts to charms his way into his would be customers' purses and panties. The trip only lasts three days, but over the course of it Bunny completely unravels (an amazing feat considering how messed up he is from the beginning) and his son not only learns that sunshine does not pour out of his fathers' ass, but that his father can't be saved.

The Death of Bunny Munro is about the total destruction of a person, but it's also about a boy that survives it.

I'm thinking I might have to read a Crews book next. I requested Celebration from my library which sounds very good and, well, Crews died earlier this year and I'd like to honor him with a little more of my attention.

19. Celebration - Harry Crews 11/11/12

So. This was one of the best books I read this year...and I'm having trouble figuring out what to say about it. I'll start start with the one word I am sure about.

Bacchanalian - (adj.) of or relating to the orgiastic rites associated with Bacchus

The story starts an indeterminate time after a young woman known only as Too Much has settled into the senior citizen trailer park Forever and Ever. Or, more specifically, she has settled into the bed of it's owner Stump. It's really a toss up as to which of the two is meant to be the protagonist and which the antagonist as is it soon becomes apparent that while neither can be pinned down as "good" or "bad" it is certain that if they share territory for any significant time one will destroy the other.

Too Much, called so because she is "too fucking much", is chasing something she calls "the chance of ultimate possibility". From the moment she set eyes on Forever and Ever she set too work to bring such possibility to the community. She is effervescent and energetic with the residents and soon gains the affection and friendship of much of the park. In fact, her acceptance by the old residents is probably best illustrated in their eventual acceptance and adoption of her crude and unapologetic habit of scratching her crotch whenever she feels like it, "because it feels good".

Stump on the other hand wants nothing more than to live out his days in the sort of peace afforded by living in the midst of a bunch of strangers shuffling off this mortal coil. He is a veteran of the Korean War, though the stump he gets his name from was the result of a farm accident that led to the financial windfall that allowed him to buy Forever and Ever and go on living comfortably with his Wild Turkey, without really paying attention to if his tenants were paying their rent.

When Too Much proclaims her plans to throw a May Day celebration for the residents of Forever and Ever life at the park takes a turn Stump doesn't like, but is completely unprepared to oppose. With the whole park mobilized with Too Much, either enthralled by her charms or cowed by her vicious coercive talents, Stump finds himself the villain of his own trailer park. For to oppose Too Much and her followers is to be and enemy of joy and celebration. And there isn't much Too Much and her crew of electrified oldsters won't do to make sure the party goes on.

At the most basic level I would contend that Too Much and her crew is emblematic of life. It's furies, joys, fits, violence and passion. There is love and hate in epic proportions all intermingled. She is life cranked up to eleven. Stump on the other hand is emblematic of death. His body survived the war, but it's obvious his interest in living did not. He is a man with no energy of his own. While Too Much revels in the life's "chance of ultimate possibility" to Stump life is just the time that creeps by until his body joins his soul in the ground.

I absolutely loved this book, but it is explicit in ways that make me reluctant to recommend it to friends and family. There is some pretty kinky stuff going down at Forever and Ever and I just don't know who in my circle is up for a book that includes the fetishization of an amputated arm, loose dentures and the sort of violence whose brutality is only matched by its weirdness.

Ah, Harry Crews. You were one of a kind.

20. The Road - Cormac McCarthy 11/26/12

lazy review!

I had my doubts that this could actually live up to the hype but it did. It's beautifully written. I loved the way the world is painted so clearly with such simplicity and the clear separation between the father and son. The father belonging to the old world and the son knowing nothing but the new wasteland it's become. I appreciated the lack of chapter breaks as it helped maintain the feeling of the endless road rather than compartmentalize it. I'm looking forward to checking out the movie.

21. Beowulf - unknown, translated by Seamus Heaney 12/5/12

I read this imagining it being read aloud (or recited) over a series of nights in a Medieval mead hall. In my brain it was a Nordic hall with a borderline viking audience, but I hope you'll forgive me as the story is super Nordic in flavor. I think it makes more sense like that. The way it's organized, the dynamic action, the repetition of stuff we've already heard in great detail....It seems made for a listening audience, divided up into self contained story units for many nights of consecutive storytelling. That or it was compiled from several pre-existing stories mashed together. Probably both.

As such it definitely doesn't have the level of story craft we expect from modern literature. You will never, ever find a character retelling in exact detail the events he has just lived through that you just read a few pages back in a modern book. But there it is in Beowulf. There are also some continuity errors. While eulogizing Beowulf it is claimed that swords always failed Beowulf because his strength was such that they always broke on the first swing....except earlier the author had gone on at length about how fantastic this ancient sword was and it wasn't until Beowulf found this fantastic ancient sword that he could defeat Grendel's mother. Also, stop talking about your father in heaven. Really. Invoking Christian mythology in the middle of a monster-fighting action scene isn't badass, it's just weird. Clearly I'm not a 12th century Saxon.

That said I can see why this is important historically and artistically. Heaney's translation is vibrant and dynamic as I imagine the original must have been to Old English folk. And while the structure and style is almost certainly lifted for older Nordic skaldic poetry (oh the kennings!) there is a maturity and thoughtfulness to it that you don't often see in old heroic tales. As much as Beowulf is about super-human heroics it is just as much about mortality and the inevitability of even the greatest man's downfall. It adds a level of humanity to the story that isn't often seen in mythic tales.

On the other hand it's not nearly as mad and funny as its Nordic kin. Not one goat-testicle tug of war if you can believe it.

22. The Hunting of the Snark - Lewis Carroll 12/6/12 (ER)

This was a fun read and beautifully illustrated but it isn't as fun as the other nonsense poems I know by Carroll. You know, The Jabberwocky, The Walrus and the Carpenter and You Are Old Father William. I suppose the issue is this poem is much longer than any of that bunch and as such feels less punchy and more aimless (perhaps an inevitability when "the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes"). Even so it is an edifying if meandering verse. I quite liked the course of the relationship between the Beaver and the Butcher and believe you me, I'll be giving Boojums wide birth for the foreseeable future.