More reasons I should never, ever be allowed in bookstores
Okay, I spend a lot of money on books. Which has made sense, all my life, as I read a lot of books, and the library doesn't have them all, and I like to have my own copies, etc. However, in the past two years I've changed over to doing a great deal of my reading (fictional and otherwise) online, but have continued to acquire books at something near my previous rate. This has left me with a great many unread books. While in the past the list that follows would have been only part of a year's reading, it now poses an embarrasment of literary riches that I really need to take care of before buying any more books. And I will buy more books, no doubt of that. This list does not include my poetry books, which I rarely read cover-to-cover, but rather dip into on long nights, sipping sustenance here and there like some grotesque couch-potato parody of a literary hummingbird. So, the list, and then a plea for advice.
Own but have not read:
Own but have not read:
Godel, Escher, Bach - HofstadterCurrently reading:
Summerland and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
The Fifth Book of Peace - Maxine Hong Kingston
Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids, and Life in a Changing World - Peggy Orenstein
Upside Down - Eduardo Galeano
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Beach - Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker
California Dreamin' - Wilson
American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons - Dow
The Raj Quartet (3 of 4 books) - Paul Scott
Hussein - Patrick O'Brian
Angels Fear To Tread & The Longest Journey - E.M. Forster
The World is Round - Gertrude Stein
Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School - Penelope Eckert
Ashes to Ashes - Richard Kluger
Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs - Peter Carey
Venus in Furs - Sacher-Masoch
Ecotopia - Ernest Callenbach
Sacrament of Lies - Dewberry
Billy Bathgate - E.L. Doctorow
Selling Students Short: Classroom Bargains and Academic Reform in the American High School - Sedlak et. al.
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
The Music Room - McFarland
Conversations About The End of Time - Eco, Gould, etc.
Kim - Rudyard Kipling
The All Of It - Haien
The Female Man and The Zanzibar Cave - Joanna Russ
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - LoewenPartially read but not finished (not including school books that were not assigned in toto):
Too Darn Hot: Writings on Sex Since Kinsey (compilation)
Our Enemies In Blue - Williams
The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley RobinsonSo, see anything I should absolutely just not even bother with? Anything I should move right up to the top of the list and not stop reading until I'm done? Let me know.
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex - Levine
Justine - Lawrence Durrell
India - Shashi Tharoor
The Myth of Monogamy - Barash and Lipton
Bowling Alone - Robert Putnam
From Altar to Chimney-Piece: Selected Stories - Mary Butts
Manufacturing Consent - Herman and Chomsky
Delta of Venus and Little Birds - Anais Nin
Promiscuities - Naomi Wolf
In The Spirit of Happiness - The Monks of New Skete
posted by The Stute Fish at 18:37
2 Comments:
skip ecotopia. not worth it.
gravity's rainbow didn't do much for me. too fucking precious, dense, and difficult all at the same time. i don't mind being challenged when i read, quite the opposite, but when reading becomes hard work and a chore, the book goes down.
Thanks, anne! The funny thing is, of course, that some other people told me the exact opposite...
Neither's at the top of my list, for sure. Maybe I'll take them both an a long trip where there's nothing else to read and they can have, like, a literary cagematch for which one I'll actually get through.
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