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FIFTY_IN_ONE
March 06, 2006
Lunacia of alt.gothic has laid
down a challenge: can you do
fifty books in a year? Of course I can.
But can I do fifty
books worth doing?
Note:
The codes "(rr)" means "re-read".
and "(inc)" means "incomplete"
and "(gn)" means "graphic novel".
Using the calendar year, 2006 (more or less):
1. Tolstoy - "War and Peace" (rr)
TIGHT_PIECES
2. Eric Ambler - "The Mask of Dimitrios" (1939)
(Also titled: "A Coffin for Dimitrios")
3. John Dickson Carr - "The Case of the Constant Suicides" (rr)
4. John Dickson Carr - "Below Suspicion" (1949) (rr)
SUSPECT_BELOW
5. Legs McNeil (ed) - "Please Kill Me"
& Gillian McCain
PLEASE_KILL_ME
6. Victor Bockris & - "Patti Smith (an unauthorized biography)" (1999)
Roberta Bayley
CAMDEN_TOWN
BANG
7. Carter Dickson - "Death in Five Boxes" (rr)
8. John Dickson Carr - "Till Death Do Us Part" (1944) (rr)
9. Rafael Sabatini - "Chivalry" (1932)
SABATINIS_CHIVALRY
10. Ibsen - "Peer Gynt" (1867)
PEER_GYNT
11. John D. MacDonald - "The Deep Blue Good-By" (rr)
DEEP_BLUE
12. Geoffrey Household - "Rogue Justice" (1982)
13. Allen Ginsberg - "Howl" (1956, annotated facsimile edition, 1986)
HOWLERS
14. Cecilia Holland - "The Angel and the Sword" (2000)
BEARDLESS_IN_PARIS
15. Bruce Sterling - "The Zenith Angle" (2004)
ZENITH_ANGLE
16. Jonathan Gash - "The Rich and the Profane" (1998)
MODERN_FORGERS
17. Colin McPhee - "A House in Bali" (1947)
A_HOUSE_IN_BALI
18. Ibsen - "A Doll's House" (1879) Trans. Rolf Fjelde
A_DOLLS_HOUSE
19. Agatha Christie - "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" (1920)
STYLES_OF_CARDBOARD
20. Tacitus - "Dialog on Oratory"
A relatively short work, but if Ibsen
plays count, this might as well also.
I picked this up in a used book store in
Ubud, largely because Montaigne speaks
highly of some other Tacitus works in his
"Art of Conversation"...
I thought it was funny that
this particular work addresses Didn't Montaigne
a subject similar to the famous know of it?
Montaigne essay.
He doesn't
refer to it.
21. Ian Banks - "Dead Air"
DEAD_HARE
22. Iain M. Banks - "Consider Phlebas"
23. Ibsen - "Hedda Gabler"
Unlike "A Doll's House", I thought "Hedda
Gabler" was a pretty good read. The main
character is interesting, and sympathetic, I find it interesting
(albiet not admirable)... though she gets that everyone is so
less sympathetic as the tale progresses. contemptuous of her
husband, who appears
Once again, Ibsen writes of "femininity" to be an inoffensive
with a surprisingly Modern eye. fellow doing respectable
academic study of
Given a choice between "queen bitch" minor topics like
and "suzy homemaker", which would medieval pottery.
*you* go for? It's not at all hard
to feel sympathy for the bitch. The romantic hungers
for the grand sweep
of great ideas, but
the detail workers
often accomplish
more in the long run.
24. Harvey Pekar - "The New American Splendor Anthology" (gn)
25. "Social Anarchism", No.39 2006 "Comments on Chomsky"
(Note: includes an article about Paul Goodman)
26. William Hope Hodgson - "The Carnacki The Ghost-Finder" (1910-?)
27. Damien Conway - "Perl Best Practices" (2005) (rr)
28. Maxwell Grant - "The Living Shadow" (1931) (rr)
SHADOW_OF_THE_ETHER
29. Paul Goodman - "The Empire City" (194x-196x)
EMPIRE_CITY
432 H.G. Wells - "The Outline of History" (1920) (rr)
31. Paul Krugman - "The Great Unraveling"
KRUGMAN_UNRAVELING
32. John Dickson Carr - "Merrivale, March and Murder"
33. William Hope Hodgson - "The House on the Borderland" (1908)
34. Maxwell Grant - "The Red Menace" (1931)
RED_MENACE
35. Steve Freeman, - "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" (2006)
Joel Bleifuss
LAST_EXIT_FOR_DEMOCRACY
A calm, reasonable review of the last two
American presidential elections, with
emphasis on a statistical analysis of the
exit poll discrepancy in 2004.
In summary: the situation is probably worse
than you think. The discrepancy existed, it
was statistically significant, the
explanations proposed to explain it --
reluctant Bush responder theories, and so
on -- don't seem to hold water: the 2004
election was not only stolen, it should have
been obvious that it was.
Or at the very least, it should've been
obvious that the irregularities were so
large that a thorough investigation was
needed.
Instead, the media has done it's best to
shoot the messenger.
36. Daniel Clowes - "Like A Velvet Glove Cast in Iron" (19xx) (gn)
Okay, but not exciting. I didn't like "Eraserhead", either.
37. Alan Moore - "Promethea", Volumes 1-5 (gn)
Not bad, though occasionally stilted and talky in
the manner that didactic fiction is famous for.
This is Alan Moore out-doing Gaiman -- more sandy DIDACTICS
than the Sandman, more magical than Magic...
38. Alan Moore - "Terra Obscura" (2004) (gn)
Another recent Moore, from the "Tom Strong"/"Top 10"
stupor hero line he was (is?) working on. This is
why I held off on reading the Promethea series for
so long.
A few cute touches though: A sinister computerized
law-and-order figure named "The Terror", who
institutes a very popular form of civic fascism.
One gets the sense that Moore is a bit
disenchanted with politics in recent years:
in Promethea the Mayor's ratings go way up He becomes so
when he's possessed by demons. much more
*decisive*...
39. Raymond Chandler - "The Big Sleep" (rr)
Re-read for for no particular reason. Holds up pretty
well, I'd say. I think Joe Brody killed Owen Taylor
myself, though admittedly that seems a little out of
character.
40. The September 1952 issue of "FUTURE Science Fiction"
FUTURE_DECLINE
41. William Hope Hodgson - "The Ghost Pirates" (1909)
Another early effort from Hodgson, read largely on the
strength of the title. Nice ghost story setup, but
the ending is a bit of a fizzle. Impressive command
of nautical jargon, to my lubberly eye.
42. Maxwell Grant - "Silent Seven" (1932)
The most interesting point of this (the seventh in the
series) is multiple assumed identity gambits, one of
them bearing a strong resemblence to the early
maneuver by the Shadow, in which he assumed Lamont
Cranston's identity.
43. C.S. Forrester - "Midshipman Hornblower" (194x) (rr)
A "prequel" covering the early life of Forrester's
famous character -- this has the look of a series of
"Saturday Evening Post" stories. Rousing adventure
fiction: in the first story, the young Hornblower is a
near-suicidal teenager, manipulating a bully into a
duel, because a 50-50 chance of wiping him out is
better than nothing; in the last story Hornblower is
held prisoner in a Spanish jail for two years -- he
becomes so despondent he can't even feel joy at the
news that he'll be released on conditions of a truce.
44. Walt Whitman - "Leaves of Grass" (inc)
Some astounding optimism in the face of some less
than perfect times -- the slavery issue is at large,
the Civil War afoot...
45. Thorne Smith - "The Night Life of the Gods" (1933) (rr)
A lone scientist discovers
techniques to turn
flesh-to-stone and back And just to fill the kitchen
again. He then applies the sink, there's also a "little
stone-to-flesh process on person" who becomes the
the statues of the Greek scientist's lover: she has her
gods in the Metropolitan own magical methods of doing
Museum of art. the stone/flesh transform.
Not quite the But included with the
rollicking good time gods, is Perseus, complete
that I remember it, with head of Medusa, and
but still an yet, the head is never
interesting used to turn men to stone.
historical document. ALCOHOL_COMEDY
Too obvious?
And reading it as an adult
(nominally), I can perceive
a bleak tone to it that
foreshadows the peculiar
ending... "The Last Sigh".
(July 17, 2007)
Ah, what a strange, sad comedy
of this book is...
The great war between the blue
noses and the red noses, where
the reds are fully conscious of PAGAN_DREAMING
the fact that it just can't go
on... they roll onwards towards
a last stand with a fanaticism
worthy of any millenial cult.
Few are killed outright, but many
are wounded, any many are left
turned to stone for eternity, a
fate which is somehow supposed to
seem less horrible than murder --
and yet, underneath it all is the MEANS_WHAT
knowledge of what's really been
done.
At the close of the book:
SPOILERS
The gods return to their pedestals,
worn out by a steady diet of distilled
liquours, and our hero and his partner
begin having sex on the floor of the
Metropolitan Museum of Arts;
freezing themselves into statues.
46. Robert Fisk - "Pity the Nation" (inc)
PITY_THE_NATION
47. Martin F. Krafft - "The Debian System" (inc)
48. Maxwell Grant - "Gray Fist" (1934)
Remarkably bad, even by pulp fictions standards.
Lots of very sloppy language, many corny references
to "evil-doers" and so on. At one point, the Shadow
whips some suction cups out from under his cloak, and
crawls down a *brick* wall.
(The Shadow uses the Lamont Cranston identity in
this one -- the narrator informs us that this is
merely a "mask for his real identity".)
49. Patti Smith -- Auguries of Innocence: Poems (2005)
An oddly stiff book -- lots of archaic references,
perhaps in an attempt at sounding literary?
Some of the pieces are very light on punctuation,
making it hard to get the intonation of the line...
PENNYWORT_AND_DOLLAR_SHORT
But it has it's moments:
AND_WHO_EXISTS
"Birds of Iraq" is a really
good poem, and I really like
"Our Jargon Muffles the Drum"
50. Leslie Turner White - Ladies From Hell
Scottish highlanders sent off to the New World to fight the
French for England. Crazed meandering plot about a young
man who is borderline gentry who over-reaches, and ends up
cast down, an escaped convict. He forgets the high-born
girl he was after, forgets any thoughts of revenge against
the evil gentleman he loses her to, and works his way up in
the ranks in three different services, settling down with
the feisty low-born girl. We are told in passing that his
ex has gotten fat -- that's revenge enough?
51. Jennie Kermode -- The Orpheus Industry (2005)
An alternate world, much like the modern day,
except that the Greek gods are real, and present
on the scene. The main character is a young
singer-guitarist who gets picked up on by
Persephone, and then is stolen away by Apollo.
This *could* be a very silly idea, but the
"conceit takes on weight", as they say, and the
gods have a very believable quality to them --
dangerous, powerful; celebrities with touches of They don't just
incomprehensible magic to them -- perhaps not drink heavily,
unlike the movers and shakers of the modern world? as in the Thorne
Smith.
52. Kenneth Robeson -- Quest of Qui (1935)
DOC_SAVAGE
As of this writing
(December 2006)
I'm working on:
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"
Robert Fisk's "Pity the Nation" PITY_THE_NATION
Martin F. Krafft's "The Debian System"
It's an open question if I'll
finish any of these this year.
And yet, these three books
occupy much of my But they can't be
intellectual life of late -- put in my game bag
until I move my eyes
Not to mention the across the last
endless torrent of word. At which point,
news articles, I will be "finished"
usenet posts, web with them.
pages, and so on.
A pretty silly
business, overall.
The "fifty book" challenge
is a failure as far as CANON_FIRE
creating a shared cultural
matrix is concerned. Which suggests that the
right way to do it is to
The players show little hold a debate about
interest in reading each canon membership.
other's picks, and little
interest in discussing them. The alt.gothic awards?
Though still, it's
interesting having a I've read less "junk"
ghostly crowd looking than usual in the
over one's shoulder, last half-year, and
kibitzing on your it may be that this
choices. is no coincidence.
Though on the other
hand: it could just
Another effect be a quirk of a
of the "fifty" phase I'm in, I read more
test: I've reading more serious books last
done less works, e.g. about year because
"re-reading" political issues. I was working,
than I might and had less
have. 2006: an time.
election year.
I'm conscious My last big FIFTY_MINUS
of the fact project in "junk"
that a lot was reading the This year I've
of the entries complete works of often picked a
are things John Dickson Carr. subject and
I've read spent days
before... It could be that researching it
(12 out of I'm about to start on line.
50). a similar project,
reading "The
But actually Shadow" pulps.
I'm not sure
that's anything Maybe I've delayed the
to apologize onset of that, while I try
about... by to see how many bricks I
the usual can squeeze into my Fifty. Answer: not very many.
reckoning I'm I'll be lucky to manage
around half-way six "difficult" works
through my life. out of the fifty.
It's not a bad By my figuring
time to take I should've
stock, review, been able to
compare where Part of the do twelve.
I am now to trouble is
where I was. I'm doing
some very
careful
reading...
A number of
books I've
essentially (5, 13, 17,
read twice. 27, 31, 35, 46...
at least seven.)
When I was a kid I
used to like to show
off how fast I could
read. Now I prefer
to go for depth...
Continue the game?
NAUGHT_SEVEN
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