I haul a lot of books around with me. At any given moment I am midstream of 60 or 70 books, but if I get torn too off course, I'll go back and start anew.
So, here are the books I'm currently reading, many of which I'm sure will end up in the next block of 500 and may even end up in the last three, although I've already decided which book is going to be number 500 -- Ulysses by James Joyce. I'm currently through 16 episodes and have two more to go.
I've read raves about the book and I've had a life long struggle connecting to Joyce. I read A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man in college and all I remember is how much I hated the book. I probably ought to go back and read that book again. I enjoyed The Dubliners, but Joyce has always felt inaccessible. Finnegan's Wake looms on the horizon, but I think I've had just about enough Joyce for now. Joyce is maddening because you know that he has crammed so much detail, minutae, trivia, mythology, literary references, literary styles and historical details into this non-narrative novel that most of the time I had that awful feeling of "I just don't get it." No one likes to be made to feel stupid, and Ulysses makes me feel that way at times. On a couple of rare occasions, I get that feeling that comes only with great literature -- a feeling of connection, depth and genius being conveyed to me through the words. I've felt like this about Ulysses a couple of times in the previous sixteen episodes and I have a hunch that my lack of feeling was due more to my unpreparedness and lack of knowledge, rather than any defects in Joyce.
Although it does raise a valuable question: If you communicate your genius beyond the ability of the audience to understand, is that desirable? effective? useful? What is the point if no one gets it? Joyce did something right, judging by the books staying power, but he didn't make his art suited for a mass market audience. I'll do more on Joyce and Ulysses later.
Some more books in my backpack:
The Meaning of Everything, Simon Winchester
Best American Erotica 2002, Susie Bright, editor
Story of O, Pauline Reage
Orpheus Emerges, Jack Kerouac
Chronicles of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
James Joyce's Ulysses, A Study, Stuart Gilbert
Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens
Elements of Style, Strunk and White
Kangaroo Notebook, Kobo Abe
Severance, Robert Olen Butler
Move On's 50 Ways to Love Your Country, MoveOn.org
Why Orwell Matters, Christopher Hitchens
Mythic Worlds, Modern Words, Joseph Campbell
Well, if I finish all of those, I'll be ten books into the next fifty.
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