A Reading Agenda

Here is my reading agenda for the week:

So Big by Edna Ferber - I was totally captivated with the start of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. The prose and the characters are like nothing I expected. And, I learned on the first page what the title refers to which was unexpected as well. I am only one chapter (25 pages) into the story, which begins in Chicago around the turn of the 20th century, and focuses on the life of Selina Peake.

Drowned Hopes by Donald Westlake - Master (well, sort of) criminal John Dortmunder has his work cut out for him in this his seventh caper. An ex-cell mate has engaged Dortmunder to help him retrieve a coffin he buried in upstate New York that holds $700,000 in cash - the bounty from a job. The only problem is that now the coffin is not only in the ground but also under 50 feet of water - thanks to a newly formed reservoir. I have High Hopes for this one!

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace - This was a recommendation by Kevin Smokler in his book Practical Classics (here). The titular piece, one of seven non-fiction pieces included in the book, takes a look at Wallace's 'fun' traveling aboard a luxury cruise liner. This will be my first experience reading anything by this almost legendary author who is probably most well-known for his fiction.

Practical Classics by Kevin Smokler

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School (2013). Not only because I like reading books about books, but also because author Kevin Smokler is smart, funny, and insightful in his takes on his chosen Fifty.

I will have to say that Mr. Smokler and I went to different high schools together. He graduated in 1991 and some of the books he writes about weren't even published when I graduated some years before that. 

I admit that I don't really remember reading much in high school. It seems that there was A Tale of Two Cities (which I struggled through then but loved when I read it as an adult), Gone With the Wind (which I remember hurriedly trying to finish for class at 3 a.m.), and DuMaurier's Rebecca. I am pretty sure there was a Shakespearean play - I don't know which one - but if I remember correctly we watched the movie in class. 

Not saying much for the school I attended although it was a good one. Maybe it wasn't the school; maybe I just didn't read the books assigned. 

In any case, Mr. Smokler's book introduced me to some 'classics' that I was not aware of. And, reminded me of some books I would like to read or reread. He frequently references and has a great affection for Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan (a favorite of mine), one of the books he used in compiling his own list.

He breaks his Fifty into ten sections that take a look at Youth and Growing Up, Identity, Inner and Outer Worlds, Love and Pain, and on through Working, Family, Violence and Loss, Ideas and Learning  (I especially liked this section), Heroes, and The Future.

He not only writes about the books, but also looks at movies that they may have spawned, references in pop culture, and the influences their authors may or may not have had on other writers.

On the one hand, there were many books that I have no interest in reading - not because Mr. Smokler makes them sound uninteresting - but only because I am just not interested in the subject matter. 

Here, though, is a list of ten books going on my TBR:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
Candide by Voltaire
The Library of Babel (short story) by Jorge Luis Borges
Bartleby the Scrivener (short story) by Herman Melville
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again ( a journalism piece)             by David Foster Wallace
Fahrenheit 451 (reread) by Ray Bradbury
Metamorphosis (novella) by Franz Kafka
The Phantom Tollbooth (already on my list to reread) 
            by Norton Juster
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (reread) by Annie Dillard
The Remains of the Day (reread) by Kazuo Ishiguro

I recommend this book even if it has been a long time since you were in high school. See what classics you might want to add to your own TBR list. But beware: Things have changed!

Visiting Cannery Row with John Steinbeck

One of the classics that Kevin Smokler looks at in his book Practical Classics is John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.  The action of this 1945 novel takes place in Monterey, California. I have actually visited the area and seen the fish canneries (now shops) and had my photo taken under the street sign.

The novel concerns marine biologist Doc and his group of friends: the madam of the local bordello; the grocer; and, a group of itinerant men known as 'the boys' who occasionally work in the canneries.

It is a story of community and, Smokler writes, was Steinbeck's way of reliving his early life in California with his own group of friends. Steinbeck, already wealthy and famous, was in his forties when he wrote this, his twelfth novel. 

Smokler writes:
He wrote Cannery Row out of longing for the place that held part of his youth, now gone. 

...of places where special things happen and memories dwell, of everyone around you knowing and looking after you, of nothing mattering outside your circle of friends. 

I recently picked up a paperback copy of Cannery Row from the library sale table. I think I paid 50 cents for it. It sits here in a stack by my reading chair. It may be time I revisited Doc and his world.

Here is its opening line:
"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."

It is that nostalgia, that dream, that Steinbeck was hungering for.

Books about Books

Kevin Smokler

I love reading books about other books... Clifton Fadiman (The Lifetime Reading Plan), Michael Dirda (anything by him), Nancy Pearl (Book Lust), Anne Fadiman (Ex Libris). 

So it is no surprise that the discovery of a new book, Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven't Touched Since High School, sent me running to the library to check it out. Though it has been a while since I was in high school and I may or may not have read any of the books author Kevin Smokler revisits, I do believe I will enjoy this book. 

Here is a bit from his introduction:

Either we can be the kind of reader that read Invisible Man in high school and never looked at it again, or we can be the kind of nut who reads it once a quarter and gets angry when someone doesn't appreciate it exactly as much as we do.

Those of us who love the simple act of reading, I suspect, are somewhere in between. Practical Classics is my attempt to find a place for this kind of reader, someone who loves to have worlds opened up by books but finds the act of reading as joyous as fainting into a chocolate cake.

Who knew there would be cake!