Books consumed

Not sure why, but for some reason, I figured I wanted a list of non-academic books I've read over the past few years, you know, just to remind myself that I still read them.

bbc indicates that we read it in Lisa's bookclub. Read with us.

• 2008 April (started 1993) -- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
  Hated it in high school. Loved it fifteen years later. Things change.
• 2006 June -- Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
  Simply excellent. Maybe don't read it, like I did, while trying to sort out travel difficulties though. Will make you wish you had a machete also...
• 2006 May -- The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
  Somehow managed to get through high school, college, graduate school, etc., without reading it. Can see why it's required high school reading (though still great later), but who dates like this?
• 2005 Apr -- "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", Richard Feynman
  Lisa thinks I liked the book because of all the flings and drinks that Feynman has, but really it's because he's a sort of a role model in his curiousness. Well, okay, the flings wouldn't be too bad.
• 2005 Apr -- Moby Dick, Hermann Melville
  Mr. Gustafson assigned it in High School (1993), but after reading (and liking) 80 pages or so, I faked it with the Cliff Notes. Finally in 2003 I picked it back up and liked it again. Then I lost my copy on an Italian train. So I bought another copy and fell in love with it.
• 2004 Jun -- A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
• 2004 Apr -- Baudolino, Umberto Eco (bbc)
• 2004 Feb -- Three Men on a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog, Jerome K. Jerome (bbc)
• 2003 Dec -- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Charbon (bbc)
• 2003 Sep -- Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
  Eh... Like Lolita but the object is a boy and it's completely chaste; not that that's bad, but where's the irony? (plus, have you been to Venice lately? one moribund city. "Death in Venice" is redundant)
• 2003 Jul -- The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
  This summer's Faustus. Kept me occupied on many a long train ride.

Ulysses-o-meter ossia, Getting to Yes

• 2003 Jun -- Snow Country, Kawabata Yasunari
  Recommended by Merav.
• 2003 Jun -- Moneyball, Michael Lewis
  No, it's not great literature, or even fiction; but it's not academic, so I figure, it belongs.
• 2003 Jun -- The World According to Garp, John Irving (bbc)
• 2003 May -- The Color Purple, Alice Walker (bbc)
• 2003 Apr -- Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole (bbc)
• 2003 Mar -- Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
  Ah, a book that reads like my dissertation. Er, as my dissertation must to anyone who doesn't know the topic.
• 2003 Feb -- Cat and Mouse, Günther Grass (bbc)
• 2003 Jan -- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (bbc)
• 2002 August -- The Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahri
• 2002 August -- On Mozart: A Paean for Wolfgang, Anthony Burgess
• 2002 Spring/Summer -- Doctor Faustus, Thomas Mann
  After finally finishing Faustus, the Lahri and Burgess were each a one day read. Death in Venice picked up at the same time, was a long-term TBD.
• 2002 Feb -- Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (bbc)
• 2001 June -- Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Jose Saramago (bbc)

And what I'm still reading. Or have put down with the intention of finishing soon. Or are about to start. Email me (cuthbert at post.harvard.edu) and by reading together you can finally give me the incentive to finish.

• from 2001 -- Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
• from 1997 -- Ulysses, James Joyce
  At 40 pages a year, will be done by my 15th college reunion.