New Year's Resolutions

I've made a short list of New Year's Resolutions:

I. Find a grown-up job. [This is well on its way to completion. Barring disaster, this blog should be live from LA shortly.]

II. Compile list of 52 books to read this year, and read them. [This is silly. I've tried making "MUST READ" booklists before, and I've never managed to keep to them. This is more of a resolution to continue to read more, that I began last fall. Here's the list so far:

1. In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos by Richard Lloyd Parry

Saw this one at Border's last weekend; it looks really interesting. I know next-to nothing about Indonesia.

2. The Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Christmas present to myself. I like Wallace's essays; perhaps I'll like his fiction, too. Though, at around 1000 pages this book may count as two.

3 & 4. The Trial and The Castle by Franz Kafka

I've never read anything by Kafka. Maybe in 2007, I'll finally understand what people mean when they describe something as "Kafka-esque."

5-8. Anthony Trollope's Barchester Novels: Doctor Thorne, Framley Parsonage, Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barset.

I finished The Warden and Barchester Towers shortly before Christmas; I'm looking forward to finishing the series. Trollope is great - he's like a politically-minded Jane Austen, and wonderfully snarky, to boot. The themes that he explores in his novels: the state's role (or lack of a role) in the care of the elderly and infirm, the role of religion in public life, the social and political affects of the disappearance of a political center, are are very relevant to modern life.

9. The People's Act of Love by James Meek

I read a great review of this book on Powell's website (see here). It sounds awesome. Here's the review from Publisher's Weekly:

Starred Review. Set during the waning days of the Russian revolution, Meek's utterly absorbing novel (after The Museum of Doubt) captivates with its depiction of human nature in all its wartime extremes. In 1919, the remote Siberian town of Yazyk contains a strange brew of humanity: the docile members of a mystical Christian sect, whose longing for purity drives them to self-mutilation; a small outfit of Czech troops, marooned by the civil war and led by the mad cocaine-snorting Captain Matula; and "the widow" Anna Petrovna, whose passion for worldly things (e.g., photography and men) isolates her from the devout townspeople. When the charismatic revolutionary, Samarin, trudges into town with a harrowing tale of escape from a distant labor camp and a dangerous philosophy, Yazyk becomes a theater of bloodshed and betrayal as well as heroism and compassion. Using the town as a microcosm of the larger war, Meek illuminates both perverted ideology and irrepressible humanity. With confident prose, layered storytelling and prodigious imagination, he combines scenes of heart-pounding action and jaw-dropping revelations with moments of quiet tension and sly humor. This original, literary page-turner succeeds both with its credible psychological detail and in its grandeur and sweep.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

10. The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips

I started this last July, and got really into it - until I came to the part where Phillips spends 30 pages (not really, probably more like ten) describing the all of the marble in Constantinople. I put it down in favor of Peter Watson's The Modern Mind. (Not much luck there, either.) This year, I'll start over, and if need be, skip the part about the marble.

11. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

Another onanism I need to remedy. I got two hundred pages into this book over spring break last year, and then stopped for midterms. Ostler provides a lot of interesting insight into why some languages have survived for thousands of years (Farsi, Chinese) and most have died out. In the telling, Ostler gives information on a lot of World History that I was not informed about. Writing this, I'm really looking forward to picking this book up again.

12. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner

This is the "Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Reads!" book of the year; my former coworkers at the Shaman Drum have recommended it.

13. The City of God by Saint Augustine of Hippo

I read excerpts of this in History class my Senior year of high school, and once considered attempting the whole book. Now that the Vatican has once again rejected Limbo, I've been moved to try again.

14. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Genji was written in the eleventh century by a lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Japan; it tells the story of a samurai father and son. A friend tells me it is commonly read as a bedtime story for children.

15. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

I'm a little dissappointed in myself that I haven't read this yet.

16. Swann's Way (hopefully to be followed by the rest of In Search of Lost Time) by Marcel Proust

Time to find out what the fuss is all about.

17. Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe

Can't wait to see Cillian Murphy in the movie.

18. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

19. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

Almost finished. I'll be sad when it is over, I'm really enjoying it. (See sidebar.)

20. The Dream of the Red Chamber: The Golden Days by Cao Xueqin

First volume in the Chinese classic. Described in the back-matter as a "novel of manners." Should be interesting to read and compare to Trollope and Austen.

21. Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by Harold Bloom

Professor Bloom has been getting some nasty phone calls over his lastest work. I'm looking forward to finding out why.

The List is a work in progress, and looking at it now, I think a little ambitious, given the number of 1000+ page books, and my gnat-like attention span. ]

III. Start a garden.

I was inspired by this post on the 101Cookbooks forum about container gardens, in which one can grow a myriad of vegetables, fruit, and herbs on a porch, balcony, or in a stairwell. When I move into my own place in a month or so, I'm planning on starting my own porch/balcony vegetable garden. I picked up a book on Amazon, all about growing vegetables and herbs in pots and I'm very excited about the plan - my only problem now is figuring out what I don't want to plant. It is possible to grow everything but corn, watermelon, pumpkins, cabbage, and beefsteak tomatoes.

I'm more excited about this than I am about all of the books that I'm going to read, and almost as excited as I am about my change of scene. I can't wait to write about (and eat) fresh salads and soups straight from the garden, perfect little new potatoes baked in a salt crust, dipped in aioli, and drying herbs - and I'm going to try edible flowers as well.

Happy New Year!!

Brain Food, Part II

More Books:

12/4/05 - The Shadow of the Wind (3.5 stars)

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

What a great find! A customer at Shaman Drum recommended this novel to me maybe a year ago when it came out. I have been meaning to read it for ages. At the end of November, I won The Daily Dose contest at Powell's and used my $40 gift certificate to buy The Shadow of the Wind, The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, The Dream of the Red Chamber: The Golden Days by Cao Xueqin, and The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. I picked up The Shadow of the Wind the day it arrived - I'd been slogging through Peter Watson's The Modern Mind and I was not enjoying it. (Someday, I may finish this book. Someday.)

Set in Madrid shortly after the end of the Spanish Civil War, The Shadow of the Wind tells the story of a young boy whose father, upon learning that the boy has lost the memory of his mother's face (at the novel's beginning, she has been dead four years), takes him to a hidden building that houses Madrid's Cemetary of Lost Books. There, the boy finds a copy of The Shadow of the Wind, a novel by Julian Carax. The boy begins reading as soon as he returns home, adn does not stop until the book is through; it is the best book that he has ever read in his entire life.

Wanting to know more about this mysterious author, the child begins a hunt for more of Carax's books, but none are to be found. A mysterious man has been hunting down and burning the writings of Julian Carax since the end of the Spanish Civil War, and it seems that the copy of The Shadow of the Wind, Carax's last novel, is the only one of his books that still survives. He begins a hunt for Julian Carax himself, hoping to find out why someone would destroy the works of such a gifted author.

The Shadow of the Wind is a mystery and a love story, as well as a tale of the destruction that war can bring. I would give it 4.5 stars if not for the fact that after 400 pages of lose ends in the plot, Zafon brings the novel to a close with a 100 page letter from one of the characters. This was lame. Otherwise, a great read.

12/5/05 - Bee Season (4.0 stars)

by Myla Goldberg

Beautifully written novel about the most painfully dysfunctional family ever. 10-year-old Eliza is in the slow-learner's class, and a source of constant disappointment to her father, Saul. She and her brother Aaron are constantly vying for his attention, having to compete with his spiritual studies. Meanwhile, their inattentive mother Miriam is off in a la-la-land of her own creation, and barely notices her husband or children.

The plot comes to a head when Eliza wins a place at the state spelling bee, and replace saaron as Saul's favorite child. Aaron starts questioning his religion and joins up with a cult, Miriam gets arrested, and Saul can't handle the crisis in his household; it comes down to Eliza to pull her family back together. Great novel. [I've heard the movie wasn't great - I'll probably catch it on DVD.]