Mumble Herder

I read 106 books, which does not count books that I started and gave up on or books that I read only portions of (sometimes large ones) for research. It also excludes my online and magazine-based short fiction reading, since the idea of discussing every short story I read in any sort of detail is overwhelming. It's not quite as many as last year, when I read 116; the main reason for that is probably that I was dating for a while this year, whereas in 2009 I didn't have much of a social life.

Last year I expressed disappointment at some of the books I hadn't gotten to during the year, specifically another Charles Dickens, and the Edith Grossman translation of the Quixote, and pledged to read both in 2010. I did read A Tale of Two Cities, and enjoyed it pretty well, though it's not my favorite Dickens; I also read (or re-read, though a different translation) the Quixote, and decided that it's my favorite book of all time, as of now.

This year I also started taking on particular writers as "projects" of a sort; it started with Walter Mosley (because I couldn't get enough of Easy Rawlins) and Robert Holdstock, who passed unexpectedly at the end of 2009, and who I wanted to revisit, because he had been so important to my re-conception of fantasy post-Tolkien, Lewis, etc. Both of those projects were rewarding in different ways. Mosley writes amazing noir with a convincing (and often depressing) depiction of racial dynamics throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties. Holdstock's strength is in the richness of his imagination and the way it blends with his research of legend and history to create a realistic and often frightening blend of horror and fantasy; his weaknesses (particularly characterization, and particularly of his female characters) are often easy to overlook--at least for me--because of how good he is otherwise.

The difficulty with those projects, I quickly realized, was that it was throwing off the gender balance of my reading that I had established in 2009; I didn't keep track of that as closely this year, but I made sure that after I finished Holdstock's Mythago Wood books and read as much Mosley as I dared without running out of some for later, the next two writers I tackled were women. I had never read Patricia Highsmith before, and not nearly enough Ursula K. Le Guin; working my way through the latter's books may be the highlight of this year's reading. I'm not nearly through with the work of either of those writers, so those projects will continue into 2011.

Other things I plan to read in 2011: another Dickens, The Canterbury Tales, and, for the first time in more than twenty years, The Lord of the Rings. Plus, hopefully, 100+ other books.

Here's the Top 16 (completely arbitrary number, and in no particular order; these were what jumped out when I was reviewing the list):

Lavondyss by Richard Holdstock
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel
All Star Superman by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
Good News from Outer Space by John Kessel
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
The Poison Eaters by Holly Black
The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

On to 2011.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen.
102. Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Volume 1 by Roger Landgridge, Chris Samnee, and Matthew Wilson.
103. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith.
104. Darkness Calls by Marjorie M. Liu.

105. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I've been hearing about this book for a while now, most notably from Kelly Link; I'm glad that I finally got around to reading it. It doesn't slot easily into any particular category (which is always good)--it's a little bit family saga, a little bit romance, and a great deal of bildungsroman. Aside from all that, it's a pretty extraordinary book. It's told as a series of journal entries by seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, whose strong and idiosyncratic narrative voice is half the reason the novel succeeds so well. Her family--brother, sister, father, stepmother, and a servant lad/adopted son--live in a dilapidated castle in the English countryside in what might best be described as genteel poverty. Cassandra's family, and the other people in their story, are about the best cast of characters I've ever read about; arguably, the writer's lesson of this novel might be that there are no boring plots, just boring characters. And this novel is anything but boring--every time I thought it was headed down a familiar narrative path, it surprised me, even at the end. I'm trying not to give too much away, here; there are romantic misadventures with the flavor of Shakespearean comedy, tempered by some Middlemarch-like clear-headed perspective on how love can misfire. It's very good.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen.
102. Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Volume 1 by Roger Landgridge, Chris Samnee, and Matthew Wilson.

103. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith. Maybe it's a function of having read all five Ripley books over the past two and a half months, or of having seen more than one mention of the last two as "lesser" works, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others. About halfway through I realized that I was muddling through it, and that I was in fact a bit bored with it. Part of the trouble here is that Tom's antagonist here, the obnoxious and obdurate Pritchard, is in some respects actually more interesting than Tom; even at the end of the book he's the person I have questions about, and not Tom. Perhaps because I wasn't feeling the tension, the eerie juxtaposition of Highsmith's prose about Ripley's domestic life with the violence and danger of his "other life" were less successful here. While I'm finished with Ripley, though, I'm looking forward to reading more Highsmith; Strangers On a Train is next.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.

101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen. Originally published in 1918, this book covers the first era of the fort, up to its (temporary) decommissioning before the Civil War and the Dakota War. It's a bit dry, honestly. There are a lot of dates and troop movements, a few personality sketches but little in the way of anecdotes or incidents that communicate any personality. Ah well.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.
93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
94. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.
95. Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith.
96. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin.
97. The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
98. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by Edith Grossman (Re-read).

99. Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Four interconnected short stories (I suspect that most if not all are technically novellas) about the worlds Werel and Yeowe, and their emergence from systems of slavery and gender imbalance. There are echoes here of Anarres and Urras, from The Dispossessed, but neither of these worlds has even the appearance of a utopia; the process of liberation is messy, heartbreaking, and bloody. Three of the four stories take a sort of Dickensian approach, taking in the scope of an entire life (or lives) in a way that could easily go wrong, but Le Guin--unsurprisingly--makes it all work. It's notable, too, that these stories all have an element of romance to them, or at least of coming together and mutual healing; this doesn't seem to me typical of her work, and I think it's symbolic of the forgiveness referenced in the title. More great stuff from Le Guin.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.
93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
94. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.
95. Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith.
96. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin.

97. The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Critical consensus seems to be that the last two books of the Ripliad (yeah, they really call it that) are somewhat weaker, potboilers which Highsmith mainly wrote for the paycheck. I won't speculate on the author's motives--that's one of the more irritating ways to "review" that I've encountered--but I will say that this was a little bit of a letdown, particularly after Ripley's Game. It's not as tightly written or as tensely plotted, and Highsmith backs off on the dark quite a bit; there are times when Tom seems genuinely compassionate, and at times his actions are unambiguously heroic. The problem with this is that it contradicts much of what we already know about his character. It's fair to say, though, that nearly anything would be a letdown after Ripley's Game, and I still take a lot of pleasure in Highsmith's language, especially her economy of description.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.
93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
94. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.

95. Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. In which things get worse; more tense, more appalling, more insane, but with the veneer of gentility. This time Tom Ripley draws an innocent into his activities, family man Jonathan Trevanny, who happens to be suffering from terminal leukemia; asked to do a couple of simple killings, Ripley instead suggests recruiting Trevanny, who proves surprisingly (and distressingly) malleable. This is dark, dark stuff, fascinating but despair-inducing--of the three Ripley books I've read so far, this is the one in which Highsmith most effectively evokes the horror of the familiar, the paranoia of what might lie behind a polite smile.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.

93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum. Full disclosure: Ben is a friend. As it turns out, nearly all of this collection was a re-read for me, but reading a collection is a different experience. (And hell, I could probably read "The Orange" every day without it ever getting old.) For instance, I never noticed how many of Ben's stories had an undercurrent of yearning for a closer relationship with a god/parent. There's "The Orange" of course, but also "The Valley of Giants," "Start the Clock" (in which it's most noticeable for its omission/denial), "Embracing-the-New" and "The House Beyond Your Sky." Also, I tend to think of Ben as coming more from the "ideas" end of genre fiction, and yet his love of pulp/adventure elements comes through more clearly in bulk--the epic fantasy of "A Siege of Cranes," the vampire story of "The Book of Jashar," and the baroque air-pirates-meet-Sabatini giddiness of "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes,' by Benjamin Rosenbaum." The point is, you should read this.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.

91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz. I've done a fair amount of reading about the Dakota War by now, but this is the most on-the-ground account yet; Schultz culls from memoirs, letters, etc. to create an hour-by-hour account that reads like one of John Toland's books about WWII or the Korea conflict. He lingers a bit much on the Dakota atrocities reported by the surviving settlers, I think--partly because I'm skeptical of the accuracy of their reportage, but mostly because the amount of detail seems unnecessarily sensationalized to me. On the other hand, I appreciate the perspective he gives on Sibley's cautious entry into the conflict, since the biographical material I've read about Sibley largely neglected to report the controversy and criticism of his involvement.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
81. The Dakota Indian Internment at Fort Snelling, 1862-1864 by Corinne L. Monjeau-Marz.
82. A Life on Paper: Selected Stories by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated by Edward Gauvin.
83. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
84. Best American Fantasy, edited by Ann Vandermeer, Jeff Vandermeer, and Matthew Cheney.
85. It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis, Edited and with an Introduction by Josh Lukin.
86. All Flesh Is Grass by Clifford D. Simak.
87. The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin.
88. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

89. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. I was remembering, when I picked this book up, that the first time I ever read Sherman Alexie was in one of the Datlow/Windling (later Datlow/Link/Grant) Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. I am still heartsick about the loss of that annual hunk of great fiction. Anyway, this is Alexie's award-winning first stab at YA literature. I liked that it was a mix of comedy and horrific tragedy, but it didn't blow me away. It falls short of the giddy defeatist absurdity of Reservation Blues, f'r instance, but then it's trying to accomplish something rather different. And, y'know, I'm not the target audience, which I sometimes have to remind myself of when I'm reading YA. I hope that some kids read this along with all the other lit poseurs like me who just have a Pavlovian reaction to anything with Alexie's name on it.