Doug Bruns

Posts Tagged ‘Reading’

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The Year in Reading – 2011

In Books, Literature, Writers, Writing on December 3, 2011 at 3:03 pm

Two years ago I wrote a piece for The Millions called Literature is a Manner of Completing Ourselves–A Reader’s Year. The title is a quote from Susan Sontag. (If you’re a reader you should bookmark The Millions. It’s perhaps the best of the general lit blogs out there.) I came to write that essay because I had for the first time taken note of the books I’d read that year. It–the reading list–was nothing more than a simple spreadsheet, a record, the transcript of a twelve month journey turning pages. (Yes, all the reading was analogue, real paper pages.)

I have below pasted the reading list for 2012. It is interesting to compare the years. This year I read twenty-seven books, not counting the current book which I will finish before year’s end. In comparison to last year, 27 is less by a full 16%. And last year included one thousand page beast, Infinite Jest. No thousand pagers this year.  The really interesting comparison is to 2009, the list I wrote about in The Millions. This year by comparison is less 2009 by 27%. That is to say that in three years my reading pace has dropped by 25%. (Too, that year included two books over a thousand pages, Bolaño’s 2666 and Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.) A quick calculation brings me to the conclusion that at this pace in about five years I will have stopped reading altogether.

Speaking of reading lists. Are you aware of Art Garfunkle’s? He’s a serious reader who has been keeping tally of books read since the 1960s. Here’s a link. To really drive it home, he goes another step to list his favorite books. Browsing through his list is almost as good as studying the library of a dinner host. (Which beats looking into their medicine cabinet any day.)

Here’s my list of books read in 2011. (I’ve linked the books I reviewed.)

  • Jan 7    Bound to Last, 30 Writers on their Most Cherished Book — Sean Manning, Ed.
  • Jan 8   The Maine Woods — H.D. Thoreau
  • Jan 24   A Widow’s Tale — Joyce Carol Oats
  • Feb 19   Portrait of a Marriage — Sándor Márai
  • Feb 28   The Foremost Good Fortune — Susan Conley
  • Mar 5    Moby Dick — Herman Melville (This was a third reading.)
  • Mar 21   The Sweet Relief of Missing Children — Sarah Braunstein
  • Mar 28   Tinkers — Paul Harding
  •  Apr 5    Seeds — Richard Horan
  • Apr 25   Fire Season — Phillip Connors
  • Apr 30   The Pale King — David Foster Wallace
  • May 7    The Mind’s Eye, Writings on Photography and Photographers — H. Cartier-Bresson
  • May 15   The Ongoing Moment — Geoff Dyer
  • May 30  The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore — Benjamin Hale
  • Jun 15    Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself — David Lipsky
  • Jun 21    The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas  — Gertrude Stein
  • Jul 10     The Tao of Travel — Paul Theroux
  • Aug 3     Feathers — Thor Hanson
  • Aug 15   The Surf Guru — Doug Dorst
  • Aug 20  The Story of Charlotte’s Web — Michael Sims
  • Oct 1      Disaster was my God — Bruce Duffy
  • Oct 20   The Great Leader — Jim Harrison
  • Nov 3     Blue Nights — Joan Didion
  • Nov 9     Beautiful & Pointless — David Orr
  • Nov 19   Swimming to Antarctica — Lynne Cox
  • Nov 29  The Triggering Town — Richard Hugo

Two last notes, should lists be your thing. Here are two that I’ve studied for years. The first is the reading list of St. Johns College in Annapolis, MD. St. Johns is better known as the Great Books School. The entire college education at St. Johns is based on the readings of original texts. Here is the undergrad reading list. It’s heavy duty. A little lighter and less intimidating is the Modern Library list of 100 best: Nonfiction & Fiction. One could do worse than read a few of these.

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The Millions: A Harbored Notion

In Books, Reading, Writing on August 4, 2010 at 1:31 pm

“I have long harbored the notion, no doubt foolishly, that incarceration wouldn’t be all that particularly bad. To the contrary. It would give me time to catch up on my reading. In this fanciful scenario I place myself in a minimum security facility. Anything other than that and the advantages quickly disappear.”

Please visit The Millions to read this complete essay. Thanks!

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…the meaning of doing a thing seriously…

In Creativity, Literature, Music, Photographers, Photography, Thinkers, Writers, Writing on May 16, 2010 at 5:26 am

I was considering an application to grad school last week. I’m 54 and too old (or disinterested?) for school. Maybe. I dropped out of graduate school three times. That was many years ago, when the kids were younger. I think, really, I used them–the kids–as an excuse. Actually, I’m not very good at taking direction. I like to do what I want to do. I’m spoiled that way. And I have authority issues. Graduate school was too confining. But as I was explaining to a friend recently, I’m scattered, I’m all over the place and think some focus would serve me well. He took issue with my logic. He’s a recently retired academic, so he has some perspective. He argued that there are not enough people who simply are curious and pursue their curiosities, wherever they may lead. Academia is good at giving people direction, sometimes too good, he suggested. He has a point. I am a genius at self-imposed discipline. But I am a rebel at other-imposed discipline. I am curious and want to chase my curiosities down the rabbit hole. As I confessed, I’m spoiled that way.

I was saying, I was considering an application for a graduate program and one of the questions asked that I list my influences, intellectual and scholarly influences specifically. It was a good question. It gave me pause. I read a lot and always have. But, as I said, I’m all over the place. As an essayist, I’d have to list Montaigne, E.B. White and Guy Davenport, as influences. Thinkers include Nietzsche and Thoreau. I’m a photographer too, and in that discipline I consider Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and Eugene Smith as top drawer influences. Years ago, I studied classical music and counted Villa-Lobos, Sor and Segovia as influences. No matter the activity, I’ve attempted to recognize who has gone before me and learn from them.

Aside from the list making, the question gives one a chance to think about the meaning of doing a thing seriously–to write, or read, compete, compose, study, invent, discover–and how to measure that activity. If history is a progressive continuum, we are all subject to being measured against it. Has history made itself known personally? If you’re a photographer, whether you realize it or not, you take pictures with an established image-making knowledge. You’re a landscape photographer: Ansel Adams. A journalist: Cartier-Bresson, And so forth for all the disciplines. The application made me take notice of the voices whispering through the fog of the past.

For me, books are the most visual reminder of history’s influences. When I look at my shelves, the names and titles comfort me, like a friend’s hand on my shoulder. Above I used the phrase,  if history is a progressive continuum. When I see books on a shelf, or listen to a Beethoven sonata, history becomes the present, the wafer becomes the body and the wine the blood. If history is a continuum, I am, in these moments, one with it, one with the river in which I am wading. That is the nature of art. That is what makes a thing lasting and the opposite of the ephemeral. The influences of history, when we recognize and manifest them, cease to be passed. They become present. When we embody them, they are the end of history.

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Reading list: 2009

In Books, Literature, Reading on January 10, 2010 at 10:19 am

Here’s what I read last year:

  1. Nothing to be Frightened of, Julian Barnes (Jan 3)
  2. Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates (Jan 10)
  3. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Zen Living (Jan 12)
  4. The English Major, Jim Harrison (Jan 15)
  5. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Paul Theroux (Feb 22)
  6. The Reader, Bernard Schlink (Mar 5)
  7. The Soloist, Steve Lopez (Mar 12)
  8. Atmospheric Disturbances, Rivka Galcheon (Mar 22)
  9. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (Mar 31)
  10. Digging to America, Anne Tyler (April 9)
  11. Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouck (April 11)
  12. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery  (April 23)
  13. The Writing Life, Anne Dillard (May 17)
  14. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didon (May 26)
  15. The White Album, Joan Didon (May 31)
  16. 2666, Roberto Bolano, (June 26)
  17. Shadow Country, Peter Matthisen (July 13)
  18. Snakeskin Road, James Braziel (July 18)
  19. Self’s Murder, Bernhard Schlink (July 22)
  20. Heroic Measures, Jill Ciment (July 27)
  21. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer (Aug 4)
  22. An Underachiever’s Diary, Benjamin Anustos (Aug 6)
  23. Homer and Langley, E.L. Doctorow (Aug 9)
  24. Under This Unbroken Sky, Benjamin Anustas (Sept 2)
  25. Last Night in Twisted River, John Irving (Sept 21)
  26. This is Water, David Foster Wallace (Sept 25)
  27. The Boy Next Door, Irene Sabatini (Sept 30)
  28. Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon (Oct 13)
  29. After the Fire, A Still Small Voice, Evie Wyld (Oct 20)
  30. Supreme Courtship, Christopher Buckley (Oct 28)
  31. Johnny Future, Steve Abee (Nov 3)
  32. The Convalescent, Jessica Anthony (Nov 15)
  33. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon (Dec 9)
  34. Noah’s Compass, Anne Tyler (Dec 19)

The list is shorter than 2008 when I paced myself at about a book a week. But last year I had a couple of BIG ones on the list, 2666 and Shadow County, both weighing in at over 900 pages. So, I’ll use that excuse. One book I tackled, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, didn’t make the list, not from lack of effort. It is massive and dense and, by all accounts, brilliant. But I couldn’t wade through it, giving up after a couple hundred pages. But it sits on the shelf, as if knowing I will come back for another pass.

It was good to read Joyce again. I read Portrait while traveling in Nepal. It was, I think, the third time and is remains a contender for my favorite book (of fiction). Favorite living authors, Jim Harrison and Paul Thoreux both had postings on my list last year. If asked, I would say that This is Water was my favorite read of 2009, though I don’t consider it a book, but an essay. The DFW industry is alive and well, not, sadly, the man himself. It was industry that turned a brilliant short talk into a “book.” 2666 was probably the most rewarding artistic read of last year, not counting Joyce, of course. The biggest suprise was The Convalescent by local Maine writer, Jessica Anthony. It is brilliant.

Much of what I read last year can be found at MostyFiction dot com, the web site for book reviews, including a few of mine. It’s a good gig. I get my books for free and get to write about them. It does, I admit though, sometimes feel like work. But that is whining, isn’t it?

And 2010? I’m off to slow start. I’m not sure why, exactly. There are a lot of distractions, it seems, starting out. But, maybe I’m just catching my breath, setting a pace. There are some writers I want to get to this year, and they are all dead. Last year was all fiction. I love fiction, good literature, a story well told, big thick books, bubbling stories. But this year calls for some philosophy (Camus, in particular). Yes, philosophy. I’m 54, what can I say? Stay tuned.