#185: books I have read and animals I have eaten

I want to tell you about books I read in 2010. The ones that I can remember, that is.

I spent the first couple of months after I moved here not reading because I was so overwhelmed with acquiring newspaper/reporterly knowledge and the idea of cramming anything else into my head that wasn't directly relevant to work seemed stupid. Must know everything! And if I'm not reading leases and deeds and contracts and press releases, by God I should be!

Well, I finally got over that and purchased a 6 month library card in a nearby town and went on a reading frenzy.

I read:

1) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and it horrified me. Such a sad book, but so engaging and weird, it lures you into a false sense of safety. How can a book this weird be tragic? And then it is, terribly so. I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone because a) you'll probably never want to talk to me again, b) it might completely disgust you, c) it is full of unsavory things (but not tasteless...there's a difference), and d) it will destroy your mind and trample on your emotional core with the indifference of rural kids in pick up trucks.

2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I read this mostly in one day, and mostly in one 6 hour sitting. I left a crazy voice message on Tim's phone, babbling incoherently about holiness and the Glory of God in Nature (like the Beethoven piece except not musical) and how none of us need to write anything ever again because, darling, it's been done. We can all go home and take naps.

Am I repeating myself? Something I've said before?

What amazes me about The Road is how boring it is...or rather, could have been, because it's not boring, but very few things happen. Folks are just walking, I'm sorry...trudging through an ashy wilderness and occasionally are attacked. But he kept things simple (of which he is master) and beautiful and each word had weights attached to it and then sometimes (to switch it up) he beats the reader over the head with a mallet and you find yourself curled on the floor wanting to weep but finding you are empty of tears and there is only raw pain and no quotation marks and sometimes you have no idea who's talking and conversation is so minimal anyway so you keep on reading and hope it ends with your death. Just like that.

So I read several McCarthy books this year: The Road, Outer Dark, All the Pretty Horses and the first part of The Crossing (before I decided I couldn't make myself read it. At least not right now. When my next dark night of the soul comes along, sure I'll read it, but I'm feeling too happy and generally content and I don't want to throw this away for no good reason).

Favorites is a tie between The Road and Outer Dark (which is about such acceptable topics as incest, murder and evilness and also, I think, poetry).

3) My Traitor's Heart Rian Malan. I'd been told to read this a year ago by my then-comparative literature professor who was amazing, from South Africa, exceedingly white, and who taught me ever so much (but especially that the word "posh" is hilarious). This is a book written by a man, the descendant of Dutch oppressors, whose entire history and heritage is wrapped up in what exploded during apartheid. He leaves South Africa unable to deal with what is going on, wanting to disassociate or reinvent or something. But then he comes back and stands as a witness to what is going on, reporting everyday crime, the pounding relentless little blood lettings. I don't know about some of his conclusions, but it's something to think about, something to test against, something I really won't ever be able to understand. People were a bad idea. I hope I don't get struck down for that, but it feels true. A terrible idea, worse than spiders.

4) The Corpse Had a Familiar Face by Edna Buchanan. Crime reporter. Famous crime reporter. I wish I was her. She says in (I think) the introduction that she's covered over 10,000 murders and I was like "Holy Cow!" and I got really excited about my job as court reporter (not happy. Excited. There's a difference). And then I realized that there are barely 10,000 people in this entire town and the reality of my life came home a bit more.

So this is about her life as a female crime reporter. Fascinating stories, good writing and lots of funny and sad mixed up together. Oh the stories. I love journalism. I love journalists and how inappropriate they are and how outwardly uncertain about humanity they are, but how inwardly idealist they remain despite it all.

5) Searching For God Knows What by Donald Miller, which was interesting...I'm going through a religious books phase, apparently...but he kept using the phrase "It's quite beautiful really" and I wanted to shoot him every time. I wanted to make the use of the word "beautiful" a capital offense and convict him on every count. The book is some sort of D.Miller apologetic, I suppose, but the writing gets boring. I liked Blue Like Jazz (I remember liking it). It was more story-oriented though and not so darn weepy and full of phrases like "It's quite beautiful really." I know it's beautiful, I can figure it out, or approximate it. Stop telling me like I'm a slow child. Maybe living outside of civilization has put me against "It's quite beautiful really." I associate that phrase with the more obnoxious parts of Eugene and coffee shop Portland. What we really need more of is dirt. But not like the Alice in Chains album.

6) Clockers by Richard Price. Drug dealing and homicide investigation and a brilliant writer who can write realistic people without making you completely hate them. Also, I read an interview The Paris Review did with Price and he grew up blue collar and should have gone to school to be a lawyer because that's what you did to get out of the projects but instead he became a writer so that he could write about the projects and nobody was writing about the projects because the people who came with that background went on to be lawyers or doctors. To say "Hey I'm going to be a writer" was telling your parents or your relatives or your friends, "Yeah, I know you sacrificed a lot to get me an education so that I could get a good job and leave this dump forever, but I'm going to be a writer and make no money. How do you feel about that?" And mostly, Price said, people were confused.

Ok. I read more, but I've spent too long on this now and I need to move on.