[PREV - TABS] [TOP]
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".
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"
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)
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"
21. Ian Banks - "Dead Air"
DEAD_AIR
22. Ibsen - "Hedda Gabler"
23. Iain M. Banks - "Consider Phlebas"
24. Harvey Pekar - "The New American Splendor Anthology"
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)
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)
Okay, but not exciting. I didn't like "Eraserhead", either.
37. Alan Moore - "Promethea", Volumes 1-5
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 than the Sandman, more magical
than Magic...
38. Alan Moore - "Terra Obscura" (2004)
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" (rr) (inc)
A mad scientist works on techniques to turn flesh-to-stone
and back again. He then applies the stone-to-flesh process
to the statues of the Greek gods in the Metropolitan Museum
of art.
Not quite the rollicking good time
that I remember it, but still an ALCOHOL_COMEDY
interesting historical document.
And reading it as an adult, I can perceive a bleak tone
to it that foreshadows the peculiar ending...
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) (inc)
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...
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
young 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 -- revenge enough?
51. Jennie Kermode -- The Orpheus Industry -- (inc)
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
concept, 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 incomprehensible magic to
them -- perhaps not unlike the movers and shakers of the modern
world? It'll be interesting to see where this is going...
52. Kenneth Robeson -- Quest of Qui (1935)
A "Doc Savage" novel (originally from the July 1935
issue). There isn't anything much to like about the
Doc Savage series, though it's an interesting link
in the chain of the history of adventure fiction.
Doc Savage is a genius in an absurdly wide range of
fields, much like Flint or Buckaroo Banzai.
Like Buckaroo Banzai, Doc Savage has an entourage of
henchmen, a team of "colorful characters" who are
supposed to have their own specialties... but,
unlike the Hong-Kong Cavaliers, Savage's Men never
seem to be good for all that much, and their
colorful characteristics are a bunch of tedious
"funny hats". The humorous rivalry between Monk and
Ham in particular is a long-running drag.
They don't even function very well as Watson's,
because Doc doesn't really talk to them about
anything.
This particular book is distinguished by some
physical action that's unusually engaging --
e.g. a man on a snow-covered coastline is
attacked by machine-gun fire from an
airplane, and burrows down into the snow to
hide from them. It makes me wonder if this
is one of the ones that was ghosted.
Trivia: John D. MacDonald was once invited to write some
Doc Savage stories. He read a few of them and turned the DEEP_BLUE
job down, saying he didn't think he could deal with the
cardboard characters.
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 CANNON_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 cannon 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. time.
I'm conscious My last big project in "junk" FIFTY_MINUS
of the fact was reading the complete works
that a lot of John Dickson Carr.
of the entries
are things It could be that I'm about to
I've read start a similar project,
before... reading "The Shadow" pulps.
(12 out of
50). Maybe I've delayed the onset of
that a bit, while I try to see Answer: not very
But actually how many bricks I can squeeze many. I'll be
I'm not sure into my Fifty. lucky to manage
that's anything six "difficult"
to apologize works out of the
about... by fifty.
the usual
reckoning I'm By my figuring
around half-way I should've
through my life. been able to
do twelve.
It's not a bad
time to take
stock, review,
compare where
I am now to
where I was.
--------
[NEXT - HOWLERS]