(no subject)

[proximoception]

Trying to finish reading fifty books this year, since I noticed in recent years I've been averaging an appalling twenty, twenty-five. The conditions of my existence haven't actually changed, so this has meant (lamely) sticking to very short books. I count about 40 so far:


Novels: Explosion in a Cathedral, Suttree, Blood Meridian, Norwegian Wood, Notes from Underground, Watcher/Smog/Argentine Ant, Miss Lonelyhearts, Rasselas, L'ingenu

Story collections: This Is Not a Story, Universal History of Infamy, Ficciones, The Aleph (US), Dr Brodie's Report, Book of Sand, Extraordinary Tales, Invisible Cities, Cosmicomics, t zero, Mr Palomar

Poetry collections: The Maker, In Praise of Darkness, Gold of the Tigers

Plays: The Cherry Orchard, An Oresteia, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, Lysistrata, The Misanthrope, The Cid/The Liar

Non-fiction: Letters Concerning the English Nation, Phaedrus, Gorgias, Evaristo Carriego, Book of Imaginary Beings, Borges on Writing, Seven Nights, This Craft of Verse, Other Inquisitions, Borges' Selected Non-Fictions, River Out of Eden, The Greatest Show on Earth


As I age I turn a bit, I guess inevitably, toward rereading and toward non-fiction, both once aversions of mine.

Can't beat Borges and Calvino for sheer number of great, short volumes. Read a lot else by them, too, scattered across their collections. In fact--books I didn't read through but remember reading some significant amount of/around in (mostly in the last few months, since before that I blank):


Novels: Pamela (grueling 60pp so far), Persian Letters (c. 60), Rameau's Nephew (30), Gravity's Rainbow (150 in blue one), Inherent Vice (50), All the Pretty Horses (50), Moby-Dick (30)

Story collections: Selected Stories of Kafka (several, tr. Michael Hofmann), Kafka's Parables (I think all), Cronopios and Famas (almost half), Numbers in the Dark (several), Difficult Loves (a couple), Marcovaldo (several), Selected Stories of Voltaire (several, tr. Frame), The Complete Cosmicomics (all but one of the eleven new ones), Difficult Loves (2 or 3), and everything in Labyrinths, the Borges Reader, and A Personal Anthology not included elsewhere

Poetry collections: Bishop's Collected Poems (most), Palm at the End of the Mind (some, incl. the 3 long late ones), Preambles (most), Borges' Selected Poems (both versions, many), Another Republic (maybe 1/2), Merwin's Purgatorio (to Canto 7 I think), Merwin's Translations '48-'68 (maybe half), Frost's Collected (some), Dickinson's Collected (some unknown number as always), most of Seidel's first volume (don't know what to make of him)

Plays: Hamlet (most, back and forth in it to teach), Glass Menagerie (same)

Non-fiction: Walden (around incessantly for Masters, still probably missed over half), The Maine Woods (around but much less so), Fuller's Summer on the Lakes (skim-read), Conversations with Joyce (same), Crowley's In Other Words (several essays), The Selfish Gene (several chapters), The Enlightenment (overview and anthology, most of it), American Transcendentalists (anthology, many pieces), Philosophical Dictionary (bunch of entries), The Social Contract (20 pages), Conversations with Borges (much), 8 Conversations with Borges (same), 24 Conversations with Borges (same), The Uses of Literature (several essays), A Hermit in Paris (skim-read), Hume's Human Nature Enquiry (several chapters), Aristotle's Rhetoric (skim-read), Emerson (several essays & also around), Hazlitt (same), Thoreau's essays (same), Kafka's Diaries (as always)


As usual I don't count literary criticism or theory. That isn't reading. Except Bloom, but I don't keep track with him.

Recommendations for final ten welcome. Well, final several--I'm going to have to read Hamlet and Glass Menagerie in order to grade fairly, and several class texts look exciting enough to not skim, or central enough to not avoid writing on: Caleb Williams, Paine's Crisis, Jefferson's Autobiography, Bartram's Travels.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

For many many years The Argentine Ant was my favorite story, and I wanted so badly to be able to write stories just like it. My recommendation for your final ten if you haven't already read it it John Irwin's Mystery to a Solution about Borges and Poe.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I love Argentine Ant, about as much as the best Invisible Cities or best stories from Labyrinths. I bought and glanced around in the Irwin, also his Faulkner book, but haven't done a read-through yet. I imagine it'll have me going back for even more Borges...

I wonder if I've even read all of Poe's mystery stories.

My wife loved Fiskadoro so that may be next instead.