Ground Rules

Since I will be chronicling my reading here over the next couple of years, I think it's necessary for me to mention a couple of things.

First, there are several books on the list that I have already read. Whether or not I read them again is dependent on how long it's been since I read them, how well I remember them, and whether or not I enjoyed them the first time around. I'm really just gonna play it by ear, so bear with me. I'm not sure I can justify reading Lord of the Rings yet again, as I pretty much have the damn thing memorized. I read Snow Crash fairly recently (and was actually very pleasantly surprised to see it on the list; I think Neal Stephenson is super), but since I'm doing these (mostly) alphabetically and it'll probably be a good long while before I get to it, it might be worth it to read through it again at that point in time.

Second, if I severely dislike what I am reading, I will put it aside and forget it ever existed. I've tried to read Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground five or six times now, and about twenty pages in, I get so irrationally depressed that I momentarily consider burning my book collection and gouging my eyes out with the tab from an aluminum beverage can. I will never finish that book. This may happen with one or more of the books on this list.

Third, I will copy sections of text as examples of things I like or dislike from these books, and while I will fully acknowledge the authors, I will copy as much as I damn well please unless a publisher contacts me to shut me down.

Fourth, I will do my best not to read any reviews or allow anybody else's opinion to color my own about the books. I want to read these things with as fresh and objective a perspective as I can. Feel free to tell me I will like or dislike some book on the list before I get to it. Try not to tell me why.

Finally, just to clarify, this will not be a purely literary blog. I will post about whatever is on my mind. I will not, however, regardless of my opinion or the importance of the situation, ever, ever, ever post about politics. Ever.

Alright. First impressions.

I picked up All the King's Men last night, because the bookstore I went to didn't have Augie March. Half a hundred pages in, I'm really enjoying the narrative style, but am constantly finding myself a little shocked by, well, the racial norms of the time. I fear that this is something that will come up again and again for me when I read things from 70 or 80 years ago, and in truth I know I really should not be as surprised as I am by it, but it's still strange to me to see the utter differences in race relations between then and now. I mean, the book won the Pulitzer in 1947, and tells a story set in the 20's and 30's, and I am well aware of how minorities were treated back then, but it's still mildly shocking when I'm actually confronted with it.

Even for that, however, I'm quite enjoying what I've read so far. Warren has a very vivid way of describing scenes, images, and emotions.

I mean,

"For this is the country where the age of the internal combustion engine has come into its own. Where every boy is Barney Oldfield, and the girls wear organdy and batiste and eyelet embroidery and no panties on account of the climate and have smooth little faces to break your heart and when the wind of the car's speed lifts up their hair at the temples you see the little sweat beads of perspiration nestling there, and they sit low in the seat with their little spines crooked and their bent knees high toward the dashboard and not too close together for the cool, if you could call it that, from the hood ventilator. Where the smell of gasoline and burning brake bands and red-eye is sweeter than myrrh. Where the eight-cylinder jobs come roaring around the curves in the red hills and scatter the gravel like spray, and when they ever get down in the flat country and hit the new slab, God have mercy on the mariner."

Just to describe the feel, the atmosphere of driving down this stretch of country highway. I like this book so far. Let's see where the character of Willie Stark goes.