2012 Reading Challenge (part 2)

Okay, now I can post my 2011 Fifty Books Challenge list!

Fiction  

YA/Juvenile   
Nonfiction  
Memoir
Collections (short stories, essays, etc.)  
Drama  
Poetry 

1.       The Woman Who Walked into Doors—Roddy Doyle
2.       The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Attwood
3.       Sense and Sensibility—Jane Austen
4.       Lolita—Vladimir Nabokov
5.       Reading Lolita in Tehran—Azar Nafisi
6.       Human Chain: Poems—Seamus Heaney
7.       Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
8.       Essex County (Vol. 1-3)—Jeff Lamire
9.       Alice in Wonderland—Lewis Carroll
10.   Through the Looking Glass—Lewis Carroll
11.   The Haunted Bookshop—Christopher Morley
12.   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—L. Frank Baum
13.   V for Vendetta (graphic novel)—Alan Moore
14.   Mushishi (Vol. 2)—Yuki Urushibara
15.   A Circle of Quiet—Madeleine L’engle
16.   Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (audiobook)—Beth Hoffman
17.   Alexander Calder and His Magical Mobiles—Jean Lipman, with Margaret Aspinwall
18.   The Road—Cormac McCarthy
19.   Ender’s Game—Orson Scott Card
20.   The Bird Woman—Kerry Hardie
21.   Superman: The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel—Les Daniels
22.   The Science of Superheroes—Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg
23.   The Táin—trans. by Ciaran Carson
24.   A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (graphic novel)—Will Eisner
25.   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty—Stan Lee
26.   Road to Perdition (graphic novel)—Max Allen Collins
27.   The Tiger Rising—Kate DiCamillo
28.   An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England—Brock Clarke
29.   Surfacing—Judy Gill Milford
30.   The Graveyard Book—Neil Gaiman
31.   Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table—Edited by Amanda Hesser
32.   Sidekicks—Jack D. Ferraiolo
33.   Life of Pi—Yann Martel
34.   The Influencing Machine (graphic novel)—Brooke Gladstone
35.   Stories for the Christian Year—The Chrysostom Society
36.   West with the Night—Beryl Markham
37.   How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One—Stanley Fish
38.   The Help—Kathryn Stockett
39.   Sonnets from the Portuguese—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
40.   Field Work: Poems—Seamus Heaney
41.   The Awakening—Kate Chopin
42.   The Waste Land—T.S. Eliot
43.   Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel—Jeannette Walls
44.   Alice Adams—Booth Tarkington
45.   Lady Windermere’s Fan—Oscar Wilde
46.   The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)—Carol Fisher Saller
47.   Enchanted Irish Tales—Patricia Lynch
48.   A Woman of No Importance—Oscar Wilde
49.   To the North—Elizabeth Bowen
50.   Peter and Wendy—J. M. Barrie

So the total:

23 Fiction (give or take Half Broke Horses)

8  YA/Children's Lit.

7 Nonfiction (though it feels funny to include books about superheroes in this category)

4 Poetry 

3 Collections

2 Plays

2 Memoir/Autobiography

Again, six of these were graphic novels (or collections of graphic novelettes). Seven were on that literature list I like.

Other, shorter things I read included:

Cathleen Ni Houlihan—W.B. Yeats

Deirdre—W.B. Yeats

John Law: Detective—Will Eisner (and several Spirit comics)

This post is already awfully long, so if you're curious about what I thought about a particular book, ask me in the comments. (Hopefully, I'll do a better job discussing the books as I read them this year.)


After reviewing my 2010, 2009, and 2008 lists, I've made some reading resolutions for 2012. I'd like to try to read:

• At least two Pulitzer fiction winners each year
• At least one Nobel prize winning author I haven't read yet each year
• And six poetry volumes (this year, and then I'll reevaluate)

My fiction to nonfiction ratio tends to bounce around depending on what I'm researching, so I'll just let that change naturally over the course of the year. Two plays a year seems to be my average whatever resolutions I make. But now that I live closer to Seattle, maybe I'll see more plays. 

Some bloggers I follow read 100+ books a year, which both awes and horrifies me. I think I'm happy sticking to fifty. I also have non-reading resolutions to keep.

What are your resolutions/goals this year? (Reading or otherwise.)

Writers' Name Resources

I've just made my way through Clans and Families of Ireland: The Heritage and Heraldry of Irish Clans and Families by John Grenham, which, besides being a good, basic guide to Irish surnames, is also a "pretty" book: full of photos of the Isle and drawings of coats of arms. (I love coats of arms with strange things on them. A cross and a red hand: okay. A cross, a red hand, AND a gold hedgehog standing on a unicorn: perfection.)

This made me think of other name books I've read. When I was younger, I used to spend days going through Best Baby Name Book In The Whole World by Bruce Lansky (possibly still my favorite baby name book).




Then I'd have huge lists of characters with amazing, meaningful names, who I'd never write any stories about. (Plot wasn't my strong point.) When I started writing stories on a deadline, I'd tack "temporary" names onto my characters, hoping to come up with something more purposeful later. Eventually, I'd turn the stories in with the temporary names still in place.

But I'm easing my way back into name-meanings--not just the literal definitions of characters' names, but the cultural connotations too. (For example, in Susan Glaspell's play The Verge, the main character has relationships with three different men--Harry Archer, Richard Demming, and Tom Edgeworthy--they become "every Tom, Dick, and Harry," a sort of Greek chorus for the socially acceptable.)

Literal name definitions, however, still fascinate me, and I've collected a handful of baby name books. I thought I'd see if anyone had a favorite name book or website that he/she'd recommend. Suggestions?

(Images from BooksUlster.com and Mommie Books.)

Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Although to have been born,
I know, is an offence, and with just cause
I bear the rigours of your punishment:
Since to be born is man's worst crime. But yet
I long to know (to clarify my doubts)
What greater crime, apart from being born,
Can thus have earned my greater chastisement,
Aren't others born like me? And yet they seem
To boast a freedom that I've never known.
The bird is born, and in the hues of beauty
Clothed with its plumes, yet scarce has it become
A feathered posy--or a flower with wings--
When through ethereal halls it cuts its way,
Refusing the kind shelter of its nest.
And I, who have more soul than any bird,
Must have less liberty?

~ Segismund


My reading of Marlowe's somber Doctor Faustus probably suffered from being followed immediately by Pedro Calderón de la Barca's techni-color Life is a Dream. Roy Campbell's translation of Calderón is thrillingly vibrant. I hadn't heard much about this play, but after reading it, I won't be able to think about Renaissance theatre without this play jumping to my mind as the (late) essence of the era.

Let me count the ways Calderón delighted me: his poetic language, the question of free will vs. destiny, parallels in his characters' dilemmas with honor, disguises, imprisonment, the force of Rosaura's personality, the portrait struggle scene, etc. The tragi-comedy mix of Life is a Dream threw me for a loop several times, but this was also part of what made the play so enjoyable--not knowing whether a scene would end in laughter or an increase in the overall body count.

There were some scenes that sat oddly with my modern sensibilities. The romantic pairings at the end of the play occurred with swift, Renaissance comedy convenience ("You hate me? Let's get married!" "Sure!"), which I imagine is a challenge for contemporary directors. But I enjoyed this play so much, I was willing to temporarily suspend whole truckloads of disbelief.

Note on the Translation: I don't know much about translations beyond the fact that I enjoyed Roy Campbell's efforts in Life is a Dream. The first pages of Edward FitzGerald's translation on Project Gutenberg read much differently than Campbell's (almost like a different play). In Spanish, Life is a Dream rhymes, and FitzGerald attempts to keep this element in his English translation (Campbell doesn't). FitzGerald's version, however, seems to have very different (flatter) images and many more lines than Campbell's. I don't know if there are several versions of Life is a Dream (Calderón reworked his plays frequently) or if FitzGerald just took more creative liberties, but Denis Florence MacCarthy's translation is much closer to Campbell's (while rhyming).

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

I was feeling very proud of myself for noticing allusions to Faust in Conrad's Heart of Darkness when I realized I'd never actually read any version of Faust.I decided to start with Christopher Marlowe's version because, well, that's what I found on the shelf.

I'd been led to believe that Marlowe was Shakespeare with a more exciting personal life, better hair, and less PR. Sometimes it's unfortunate how expectations play into one's enjoyment of a story; I wasn't overly impressed with my first full-length Marlowe play.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is the source of the famous lines about Helen of Troy, a wonderful dialogue of Mephistopheles' about hell being wherever he is, "misery loves company" as an explanation of Satan's desire for Faustus' soul, and a truly pitiful closing plea by Faustus. In general, however, I found Marlowe's language less fluid and quotable than the best of Shakespeare. (Unless, of course, Marlowe wrote Shakespeare's plays, then... well, I still didn't like it as much.) Perhaps I'm just too familar with hellfire-and-damnation language, but I anticipated most of Marlowe's metaphors before I read them. The descriptions of hell and salvation seemed pulled straight out of morality plays. (You could, I suppose, attribute this to an underlying subversion of religion in Faustus--but often virtue and sin seemed equally dry.) Also, Marlowe's characters read like slightly rounder versions of morality play stand-ins. The only time I really believed Faustus' emotion was at the play's close. Faustus seems to switch between hardened sinner and piously fearful almost-penitent whenever Marlowe gets bored.

Typical Doctor Faustus scene (repeat as needed)...

Random person/angel who we will never see again: Faustus! Stop dabbling in black magic and making deals with the devil--you'll lose your soul!

Faustus: Oh no! I will? Woe is me! I must repent!

Mephistopheles: (Suddenly appearing.) Again? Geez, Faustus! Remember, you like evil. Also, I own you, nerd-boy.

Faustus: Oh, okay! Let's go raise people from the dead and recreate some more scenes from the Iliad!

Mephistopheles: (under his breath) Only twenty-four years, only twenty-four...

Doctor Faustus is obviously not my favorite Renaissance play, but P.M. Pasinetti (1979 Norton's Anthology of World Masterpieces introduction to Renaissance lit.) points out that Marlowe should be credited for creating a Faust/Doctor Faustus who sells his soul not merely for power but for knowledge; a temptation which is understandable to curious Renaissance audiences and scholars in all eras.

Speaking of which, I now have a great desire to read other versions of Faust and compare them to Marlowe's.

(Image from AssociatedContent.com.)

Becket or The Honor of God

Happy Thanks -giving! I am thankful to be over the flu and back online. But while I was sick I managed to finish some reading, including Becket by Jean Anouilh.

I have to confess, in my freshman history class, I had trouble keeping Thomas Becket separate from Thomas More. Both Thomases opposed powerful Henrys (the II and the VIII) and were killed for holding certain ideas of the Church above the king. And I'm not the only one to see a connection.

I particularly appreciated Stephen Greydanus' remark, "In a way the 12th-century events of Becket, which is the earlier story (and also the earlier play, and the earlier film), play as a kind of dress rehearsal for the more momentous 16th-century events related in A Man for All Seasons." The whole time I was reading the play, I kept thinking, "This line is so familiar. I've seen this. No, wait... that was A Man for All Seasons." Now I don't feel so silly.

Anouilh admits that his play is not always historically accurate (particularly in it's portrayal of Becket as a Saxon), and as I was reading, I found myself thinking, "Really? People were that primitive back then?" But it's not the actions, or even the attitudes, of the characters that I had trouble believing. Instead, it's the convenient simplicity of his dialogue that throws me. Anouilh says in his preface that he is not a "serious" person, and his dialogue has a witty, light touch, but this somehow makes it too heavy-handed when revealing who the unenlightened, selfish characters are (i.e. all the Normans). Also, Becket's motives for refusing the king seem petty, or even self-serving, at times, but Anouilh doesn't question them.

Not that I would be overly embarrassed if I had written Becket. Anouilh's play is still an enjoyable and powerfully concise treatment of honor, religion, and politics. I'll have more to say about it once I've read T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral.

Side note: Henry VIII may not have missed possible connections between Thomas Becket (d. 1170) and Thomas More (d. 1535) either because in 1538 he ordered Thomas Becket's shrine destroyed and all references to his murder and sainthood erased. This was only after the long-dead saint refused to show up at a trial to explain why he wasn't a traitor.

King Lear

Huzzah! for Shakespeare. I just finished King Lear (which, strangely enough, I never read in my college Shakespeare class). This may be my favorite Shakespearean tragedy, after Hamlet.

Every possible opinion about King Lear (as well as every possible "study guide"--useful or otherwise) seems to available online. But the line "Would it have killed [Cordelia] to flatter her father just a little?" made me laugh. Cordelia as a pointlessly stubborn troublemaker could make an interesting essay...

On a more serious literary note, I found this wonderful exploration of Mansfield Park as a retelling of King Lear by Susan Allen Ford. I wish the ending wasn't so abrupt (I would have liked more about the significance of Austen's conclusion), but Mansfield Park is my least favorite Austen story, so anything that helps me see Fanny Price as more than a Regency period Elsie Dinsmore is greatly appreciated.

The painting at top is by Edwin Austin Abbey. (See how evil Regan and Goneril look? They're like Lady Macbeth twins!) I also love Susan Herbert's Cat King Lear yowling against the storm.