Bermuda Locke† - ††† Crosses (Bermuda Locket)

49 - 57

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut

God Bless You, Mr Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

World War Z by Max Brooks

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass

Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

40 - 48

In no particular order:

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Pleasure of My Company By Steve Martin

Watch Out by Joseph Suglia

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

Unfortunately, I have not kept up with this over the summer. Though I'm not surprised, summer tends to be my busiest time of the year (I work a lot) and much of the time I'm drained at the end of the day.

37, 38, & 39

#37 The Iliad by Homer

#38 The Aeneid by Virgil

#39 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Done, done, DONE with epics, so done, I'm not going to bother to write about what I thought of them... come to think of it, that says a lot in itself.

Breakfast of Champions was amazing. I never expect less with a vonnegut novel and I have yet to be disappointed. Stylistically, it is the same as any of his other novels, but the narrative is anything but conventional. Here, the novels narrator is the novelist, who is a character in the book as well, actively shaping the events. Besides that, the normal eccentricity that exists in Vonnegut's work is here, perhaps in full force. I love this book.

35 & 36

The Odyssey by Homer, Translated by Alexander Pope

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason

This was the second time I read The Odyssey, and as with the first time, I am amazed at how relavent the issues brought forth in the epic still are. The reader is engaged with a man trying to find home, himself, and atonement for his sins. It doesn't matter that The Odyssey is well over two thousand years old.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey was an interesting read. Zachary Mason wrote it as though the texts were discovered and he was translating them for a modern audience. The reader finds the same issues as with the original text, but with one difference, here there seems to be more of a sense of mortality. Often, Odysseus seems to accept his fate and growing age. A lot of the valor that was in the original is gone and replaced with more melancholy.

#34

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

While I can't say I found this book to be something I would recommend (mostly because it was just so darn predictable), the book does have some very nice qualities about it. Foremost, the locals that the story takes you to are amazing and detailed, so much so that at times it feels as though the project was originally a travelogue but turned into a history lesson with vampires. The history aspect was really interesting to read, though I'm not sure how much of it is factual, for all I know most of it is, though I'm more into Roman history it was still interesting. However, as much of the plot is predictable, and the ending is a let down, I could still see a vampire enthusiast or a history "nerd" enjoying this book.

#33

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

I was just simply floored by this novel. I've always heard great things, but it really floored me. It has been criticized for being "sloppy" and not well thought out, but in reality it was well thought out, and every sentence was carefully crafted by Miller. The sentences are just beautiful, and when you read a book, fly through a the first third of it because of the pacing, but can go back and remember every detail... well the writer did a fabulous job. Before I read the book, I was always curious as to why it was banned in this country for so long, being labelled as "obscene". Well, after reading the first few pages it is easy to see why people would have been stuffy about it. People back then, and to this day in the states, are stuffy when it comes to sex, and a good portion of the book involves prostitutes and the word "cunt".

#31 & #32

#31 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

#32 Sketches of Young Couples by Charles Dickens

I was talking to a friend and we got on the subject of Charles Dickens, at which point I realized how little I have read of his work. I decided on these two because, well I'll be honest, they were short (I really want to get to Tropic of Cancer). I was mixed when it comes to Charles Dickens because the only two books of his that I read before this were A Tale of Two Cities (Good) and Hard Times (Bad). Well, I'm still mixed and I've come to the conclusion that I always will be mixed. He is so subtle (SARCASM). But I did find it interesting to read the intro essay to Sketches. There is a point of view, that I don't agree with, but nonetheless found interesting, that women should not be the ones to propose marriage. According to Dickens, this slowly brings about the decline of society(to keep it short). But in the work as a whole, his portrayal of gender roles and marriage were interesting.

And as far as A christmas Carol goes... well I just kept picturing Scrooge as Michael Caine.

#30 The Dubliners by James Joyce

This book by the great James Joyce is a collection of short stories dealing with characters who live in the city of, you guessed it, Dublin. There seems to be connections between some of the stories--some characters have the same names. Yet, after reading these short stories, I felt as though they lack in ways his novels do not. For instance, after reading some of the stories I felt as though there was more to be told; they felt incomplete. I'm not sure if other people have felt the same way about this collection or the individual stories. However, what is nice about this collection is that it is recognizably James Joyce. The stories exhibit his language, his themes, well everything that one would expect. But with that said, I would not recommend this to someone just starting off with Joyce, perhaps The Portrait of the Artist... is a more suitable place to start.

#29 I, Claudius

This took me longer than I would have liked to finish it, but that's not to say that it was bad. The book was quit amazing, and this was my first attempt at reading historical fiction. Many have called I, Claudius a masterpiece, and for many reasons this label is accurate. At quite a few points, I forgot that I was even reading historical fiction and had to remind myself that it was not the Emperor Claudius who wrote the book, but Robert Graves. Easily the most fascinating span of the book is during Caligula's reign, and the subsequent chapter of how Claudius became Emperor. Of course, his rise to the throne is not surprising, but that's not the point. Here, and as with all history, the lesson that should be taken away is to learn from the mistakes and not make those same ones.

I recommend the book to any who are intrigued by the Roman Empire and I will make it a point to read Claudius the god now.

#28 Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Another amazing novel by the Nobel Prizer winner. He never fails to impress me with his insight and execution. While this novel is shorter than his more celebrated works, it does not lack anything that I've grown to expect from Gabo. The use of magical realism is in place; the wrenching consequences of the choices the characters make cause both the heart to drop and the stomach to boil.

#27 Neuromancer by William Gibson

First time reading anything by William Gibson, and will be my last. The book wasn't bad, really good science fiction, but that's the problem, all science fiction is the same stuff. Any genre fiction has certain parameters that it must abide by in order for a work to be considered that particular set of genre. After a while, if you are a close reader, you start to pick up the nuances (this just doesn't work for me). Yet, if you area devoted science fiction fan and haven't read this, you must.

sidenote: The Wachowski brothers ripped Gibson off when they made The Matrix.

#26

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

What can I say? It's a book by Thomas Pynchon, a master at crafting complex, paranoiac stories that seem completely out of this world yet all too familiar. I love his complex sentence structure, yet because of that, many readers are turned off from his work. If you haven't read anything by Pynchon before I suggest starting with Inherent Vice or The Crying of Lot 49 then working your way up to his other novels, especially in the case of Gravity's Rainbow.

#25 The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

While I love Gabo's work, I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. The elements of his other novels are there, but the lack of dialogue (and I mean complete lack of dialogue) made reading the book tedious. I suggest reading his work, but not this one. Try One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera.

Catching Up

I haven't written on this blog in almost a year and I'm not quite sure why I've decided that I would like to write here more. With that said, a year is a long time, and to try to encapsulate what has happened in that time span now seems utterly pointless. One positive to come out of the year was that I really do need to read more, and so I set a goal for myself to read at least fifty books by the end of May. I will be keeping track here.

Here is the list of what I have read so far:

#1 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

#2 Looking Backwards, 2000 to 1887 by Edward Bellamy

#3 Atonement by Ian Mcewan

#4 Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski

#5 Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

#6 Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

#7 Ubik By Philip K. Dick

#8 An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

#9 The Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen

#10 How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

#11 Candide by Voltaire

#12 Heart of Joy by John Repp

#13 Paycheck and other classic stories by Philip K. Dick

#14 The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould

#15 When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

#16 The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins

#17 Ballistics by Billy Collins

#18 Agape Agape by William Gaddis

#19 Earth (The Book) by the writer's of the daily show *

#20 Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

#21 The Room by Hubert Selby Jr.

#22 On Writing by Stephen King

#23 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

#24 Never Let Me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

* It seems unfair to consider this a book, but I read it none the less.