September 2010

I’ve read fewer books this month than I have in the last eighteen months–ever since keeping a list of books read.  Here’s the tally:

1. Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy.  I read this for my McCarthy class, of course, and in keeping with the difficult subject matter of his work, this one contained incest, infanticide, and cannibalism.
2. Run by Ann Patchett.  To counteract the negativity, I reread one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors to cheer myself up.  As usual, this homage to family cheered me considerably.
3. Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.  Considering that this book deals with necrophilia, the warm glow of Ann Patchett was just enough to get me through the worst parts.
4. Transition by Iain M. Banks.  Again for the purposes of mental bolstering, I turned to the new book by an author I knew I would like.  No one delivers multiple perspectives and delightfully unusual scenarios more engagingly than Banks.
5. Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (80%).  This book was required reading for my philosophy of composition class, and I only read eighty percent because that was all that was on the syllabus.  It was about curriculum design and was exactly as dry as it sounds.
6. Suttree by Cormac McCarthy.  Yes, another McCarthy book, this one treating alcoholism, abandonment, misogyny, and solipsistic narcissism.  I’m sorry if this doesn’t make you want to read McCarthy.  Many people truly love his work, but I do not belong among them.
7. Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro.  This short story collection published by a single author within the last ten years was reading for my fiction class.  I’m still drafting the required book review.
8. Cheek by Jowl by Ursula K. Le Guin.  And, sensing that the end of the month was approaching, I read the last forty pages of this collection of essays about the importance of fantasy.

On the other hand, I’m halfway through five other books, so I’ll certainly have more, if not likely to be more interesting, reading in October.  This list, of course, does not represent the twenty-odd scholarly articles I’ve read this month, nor the ten or more short stories, nor the works-in-progress I’ve read as part of my workshop.

All the same, it feels like a poor showing.  Perhaps it will be better next time.

September 26

I have to write a book review for class, and thought I would compose my rough draft here.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s short story collection Nocturnes is neither Remains of the Day nor Never Let Me Go, the other two of his books that I read and greatly enjoyed.  But what these five long stories lack is the additional hundred or two hundred pages that would be necessary to do them adequate justice.

In Ishiguro’s other work that I’m familiar with, the narrator has a secret or a memory from the past that he or she wants to avoid thinking about.  Now, gradually throughout the novel, the reader becomes aware that the narrator is growing less reliable page-by-page.  When their secret fears or true selves are finally revealed, the uncovering is as fascinating and surprising as pulling the curtains back from a masterpiece.  However, in these five stories, the great reveal requires more time and space to build up emotional significance.  When the final poignant moment arrives, it doesn’t feel especially poignant or final.

Nocturne‘s subtitle is “Five Stories of Music and Nightfall.”  Each of the main characters has some overt connection to music–one is a guitarist in a Venetian piazza, another is known among his friends for his sensitive taste–but the theme of nightfall is less clear.  One of the stories takes place at dusk, and another during the night, but I found “nightfall” to be less literal, more symbolic of the characters’ stages of life, whether it be career, emotion, or age.  For the most part, these stories tell of characters who have reached the end of their (usually musical) potential, and that fact imbues the storytelling with a bit of melancholy as the characters variously realize that they might really be firmly past their prime.

**spoilers**

September 16

It happened.  I’m finally busy again.

It’s the kind of busy where every hour of every day must be scrutinized and accounted for.  The line between work and school has all but disappeared, and I have lost the meaning of free time.

This to say: Don’t feel neglected, blog, if I neglect you.

I just think we need to spend some time apart for a while.

It isn’t you, it’s me.

Short Story Collection Lists

Thanks to Sarah for asking me to recommend short story collections.  I have made a list of ten classic and ten contemporary short story collections by single authors.  Behold:

10 Contemporary Collections

1. Drown by Junot Diaz.  It’s sad to start out with a collection I haven’t read completely, but the two and a half stories I’ve read about Yunior (who returns in The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao) are iconic.
2. Love & Obstacles by Aleksandar Hemon.  Many of these stories are about a Bosnian writer in America, rather like the author himself.
3. Brief Encounters with Che Guevara by Ben Fountain.  These are some of the most different, most spectacularly crafted stories I’ve ever read.  Plus I got the author’s autograph.
4. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.  This first-published book won the Pulitzer for a reason.
5. Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.  And I will put UKL on any list I possibly can; this is my favorite collection of hers.
6. Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link.  Some say magical realism, some say fantasy for adults, but there’s always a sense of delight in this collection.
7. Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser.  If you like mind-bending fables and eerie, unexpected suspense, Millhauser is for you.
8. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.  These loosely connected stories follow the Harouni family, Pakistani landowners, and the lives they alter.
9. The Collected Stories by Grace Paley.  I’ve only read the stories from The Little Disturbances of Man, but I wish I had them all.
10. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell.  Brilliant title story, with others of well-written interest.

10 Classic Collections

1. Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and Poems by John Beecroft (2 vols, Doubleday).  If you’ve never read “Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi” aloud, you have not yet lived.
2. Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Penguin Classics).  If you don’t want to buy all of the stories, at least buy Labyrinths.
3. Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov (Bantam).  As much as I hate to admit the merit a Russian writer, there’s no other way to learn the craft than by reading Chekhov.
4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (Dover).  See UKL, above.
5. The Short Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner).  “The Offshore Pirate” and “Babylon Revisited” are favorites.
6. The Short Stories by Ernest Hemingway (Scribner).  I like many of his short stories better than his novels.
7. The Best Short Stories of O. Henry by O. Henry (Modern Library).  These might feel redundant after a while, so read sparingly over a long period of time; but still, “The Gift of the Magi.”
8. Katherine Mansfield’s Selected Stories by Katherine Mansfield (Norton).  Mansfield is a personal favorite, and her New Zealand Stories edited by Vincent O’Sullivan is another good version.
9. Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe (The Library of America).  For “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
10. The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter (HBJ).  For “Old Mortality,” which might be one of my ten favorite stories of all time.

September 9

It’s only a few days until the birthday of yours truly.  What type of thing do I want in the way of gifts?

Look here.

September 6

1.  Stargate Atlantis.  Have I really watched ten episodes in the last three days?  Bad Kelly.

2.  Long Books.  What is it with you authors?  Or are we, the readers, merely enablers for your addition to writing long books?  Just because I staggered through the first four hundred pages doesn’t necessarily mean I’m looking forward to the next three hundred and fifty.  …So unbeknownst to me, a book I signed up to lead discussion about also happens to be the longest book on the syllabus, clocking in at, yes, 75o pages.  Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks will be almost as epic as The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye.  Stay tuned.

3.  Squash and Mushroom Spaghetti.  It’s what’s for dinner.  You saute the squash and mushrooms with plenty of garlic salt, butter, and pepper, and then you toss it in the spaghetti with a drop or two of olive oil.  Best thing ever.

4.  Work Hard, Sleep Hard.  I’ve barely been awake for twelve hours, but I’m already exhausted.  Must have been from watching so much Stargate.  The city almost sunk, people!  Situations like these can be so stressful.

September 5

I reread Ann Patchett’s Run today.  It was still as beautiful and elegant as I remember, a picture of family that leaps over class, race, religion, and politics.  At the end, everyone is simply together, physically and in memory, and I find that lovely.  I can’t think of anything that would be better to say about the book than that.