Laura Miller throws down an interesting challenge over at Salon: this year, read a book that you think you'll hate. Not out of some sense of civic duty (if the book is considered a 'classic') or masochism, but rather out of an intentional step outside your literary comfort zone. She writes:
Champions of the book like to think that reading broadens the mind and expands the sensibility. It can't do that, though, if the reading lists we choose from are too narrow. So this year, I'd like to ... (invite) Salon's readers to make and share resolutions that will nudge them into new literary territory. ... For myself, I resolve to try at least one contemporary French novel (another phobia) and at least three works of nonfiction on science, which I tend to skip out of sheer laziness. (I'm still drawing the line at stage magicians, though.) How will you widen your own reading horizon in 2010?
Like Miller, I've found that tracking my reading is an extraordinary way to discover my own patterns, my blind spots, biases, and points of exhilaration ... hence my habit of keeping a bibliography of books I read and dutifully logging titles on Goodreads. But a mere catalog isn't useful unless you take the time to crunch the numbers and use them as a catalyst for future literary explorations.
A year ago, I set out my reading intentions for 2009: to read a lot of translated literature (especially from languages and traditions that I've never encountered); to read classic monster and adventure books; and to read pivotal nonfiction--that is, groundbreaking texts that incited change, demanded attention, and made the world in fact and on the page different. These intentions weren't meant to limit my reading--god knows I read plenty that didn't fall into any of these categories--but to guide it, give it shape.
I'm carrying over those same three sets of intentions into this next year; I've only whetted my appetite for each of them. So consider this a mid-point review of books I've fallen in love with along the way:
Intention One: Literature in Translation
Read: My Bird, by Fariba Vafi (from Persian); Brecht at Night, by Mati Unt (from Estonian); Death with Interruptions, by José Saramago (from Portuguese); Nazi Literature in the Americas, by Roberto Bolaño (from Spanish); Chronicle in Stone, by Ismail Kadare (from Albanian); Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino (from Italian)
Numbers: Six total; three from literary traditions that are new to me. All of them are authors I'd never read before. Two of them led to video book reviews for The Collagist--Brecht at Night and, coming in a few days, My Bird. Only one of them was by a female author. Two are by South American authors; three by European authors (two from east Europe); one by an Arabic author. Three of the authors are still alive and (presumably) writing.
Favorites: Nazi Literature in the Americas and Death with Interruptions.
Highly Anticipated: To Siberia, by Per Petterson (from Norwegian); Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi wa'Thiong'o (from Gikuyu); Best European Fiction 2010, edited by Aleksander Hemon; S. by Slavenka Drakulic (from Croatian); Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, by Dubravka Ugresic (from Croatian).
Intention Two: Classic Monster and Adventure Books
Read: Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson; Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville; The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H.G. Wells
Numbers: A meager three titles total wasn't nearly as much as I'd intended. But the enjoyment made up for quantity. All three were written in English by white men from the second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps it's time to branch out from that?
Favorites: Moby-Dick.
Highly Anticipated: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley; Dracula, by Bram Stoker; The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson; The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula Le Guin; The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux; Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle; Kindred, by Octavia Butler.
Intention Three: Pivotal Nonfiction
Read: The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan; Maus, by Art Spiegelman; In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote; Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin; Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, by Barbara Ehrenreich
Numbers: Five total. Four are twentieth-century books, the earliest one being published in 1955. One was published in 2001. There's decent diversity of medium: one is a graphic novel, one is a collection of essays, one is a "nonfiction novel," and two are more traditional long-form, idea-based nonfiction. Three of the titles were "pivotal" in the sense of catalyzing a broad-based change of ideas; two were "pivotal" in transforming the genre of nonfiction. Four of the authors are white, one is African-American; three are Jewish.
Favorites: Tough to pick: I had more universal love for the titles read in this category than any of the others. If pushed, I'll highlight The Feminine Mystique and Notes of a Native Son as the most provocative and memorable titles.
Highly Anticipated: Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson; Roots, by Alex Haley; All the President's Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, by Randy Shilts; Ain't I a Woman, by bell hooks; The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs.
Intention Four: Don't Let First Three Intentions Limit Me From Exploring Other Books That Seem Amazing
Read: Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen; All My Sons, by Arthur Miller; As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner; State Street, by Katie Bowler; Cook Food, by Lisa Jervis; the Scott Pilgrim books; Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace; A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce; The Art of Subtext, by Charles Baxter; Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters ...
Numbers: About thirty. Most are novels, with nonfiction in second place and short story collections in third. A few are plays; quite a few more are graphic novels; two are poetry collections; one is a recipe book (or "manualfesto"); a handful are young adult books. No straight-up philosophy texts. Most books were published in the twentieth-century, though I've noticed I've been reading more very contemporary literature than usual this year (in part provoked by doing reviews for The Collagist). The earliest book I read was published in 1817; the most recent one was published in 2009.
Not great diversity: most authors I read are white people from the U.S. or Europe, and while there is a strong showing by African-American authors on my reading list, I read zero authors of other races (not including books I read in translation, though even then the diversity is fairly meager). The gender split is pretty even, if anything tilting towards more women.
Favorites: The Means of Reproduction, by Michelle Goldberg; Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf; After the Fall, by Arthur Miller; Stitches, by David Small; The Bigness of the World, by Lori Ostlund; Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier; What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, by Adrienne Rich ...
Highly Anticipated: Besides finishing the books I'm in the midst of right now, I'm looking forward to settling into these reads: Big Machine, by Victor LaValle; Sula, by Toni Morrison; The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, by Solomon Volkov; The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler; Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko; and Delicate Edible Birds, by Lauren Groff.
Reflection
- In this coming year, it couldn't hurt to stay a little more closely aligned with my first three reading intentions. I got rather off track ... and while it was an enjoyable track to be off on, I still see the worth in keeping closer to my path of origin.
- One of my biggest gaps? I only read two complete poetry collections. Why? I love poetry. And yet, there it is, proven in my reading patterns -- I don't seem to be turning to it very often at all. Time for a little affirmative action ...
- I like Miller's idea of reaching for a book that I think I won't like, and I want to include that in this next year's worth of reading. The most likely contenders include Philip Roth books -- I've never read him and have dragged my heels on it for years. I've also had a bit of a phobia of Kathy Acker. In the name of boundary stretching, might I reach for these writers this year?
- I know I'm getting to the point where I can barely pack any more on the reading queue, but for some time now I've wanted to devote a month of each year to re-reading. I don't all that often read books I've read before cover to cover, and there are so many that I'd like to visit once again, especially Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov. I'm going to leave this one up to mood. If I can't ignore the itch, then I'll be heading back to titles that I've already loved.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons (Jasoon)
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