How To Murder the Art of Reading
I kept one New Year’s resolution. I read a hundred books in 2017. I kicked off the year by finishing Adam Grant’s Originals on New Year’s Day. I mixed my reading from classics like Hamlet and A Farewell To Arms with white-collar crime stories like The Spider Network and self-improvement guides like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. I read essays, short stories, and poems — contemporary poetry books are the fastest reads.
I read two to three hours a day covering 80–120 pages, so it takes about two days to read a book. I lose attention after three days. I get my books from the New York Public Library. With my online account, I search for books and place holds on them. When available, I pick them up from the hold shelf. Going the hold route means I do not get the books right away and I may have to wait indefinitely. It’s worth the wait. In a popular post, I outlined seven reasons for reading paper instead of electronic books.
I used to buy books — that would be expensive now. I spent too much time evaluating or shopping for the right book. How to Murder Your Life is the type of book I would not buy, but I loved. I read a story about the USC med school dean partying with hookers and doing all types of drugs — he should have just read Cat’s book instead.
Several books didn’t work for me and I stopped reading after a hundred pages. Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1 starts strong but it splits into four different versions of the same story and was too hard to follow. Gardner’s Sunlight Dialogues drew the perfect picture of an old Police chief in a Western New York summer, but Gardner shows off to much with his cat and mouse game (Tag you’re it?). Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel has a well-written first chapter, but his style is too romantic and just too much of that David Copperfield crap, as Holden Caulfield would say.
I tried once to write down a reading list. But this time I just went with the flow. One book led to another. You, Too Could Read a Poem turned me on to Fredrick Seidel, Kim Addonizio and Robert Pinksy. John Gardner’s essays turned me on to William Gass’ Omensetter’s Luck and Charles Johnson’s The Way of the Writer, which turned be back to Gardner’s Grendel and Art of Fiction.
Feeling that maybe I wasn’t reading enough classic fiction, I took out J.D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey. It gave me a fresh taste for the classics. Then I read A Farewell to Arms, the best fiction I read all year. For 101 I read Old Man and the Sea and I am now re-reading Invisible Man.
On Goodreads I put my reading onto few shelves. The Life Changing Magic of Tiding Up taught me the value of keeping physical possessions that bring joy. So, I bought a copy of Several Short Sentences from the Strand for seven bucks. I placed it in my collection of approximately forty books, which includes Absalom, Absalom, Fahrenheit 451, Narcissus and Goldmund, Group Portrait With Lady, and The World According to Garp. I may buy few more books below — my favorites from my last 100.
Classic Fiction:
A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
Franny & Zooey — J.D. Salinger
Omensetter’s Luck — William Gass
The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath
New Fiction:
Blue Angel — Francine Prose
Man and Wife — Kate Chase
Lighthousekeeping — Jeanette Winterson
The Signature of All Things — Elizabeth Gilbert
The Great American Songbook — Sam Allingham
Books On Writing
Several Short Sentences About Writing — Verlyn Klinkenborg
Bird By Bird — Anne Lamott
The Art of Fiction — John Gardner
Self Improvement
Man’s Search for Meaning — Victor Frankel
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck — Mark Manson
Essentialism — Greg McKeown
Alternative
Essential Bukowski: Poetry — Charles Bukowski
Slouching Towards Bethlehem — Joan Didion
How To Murder Your Life — Cat Marnell
I went through a phase were I was trying to read too fast. I wanted to accomplish my goal in six months instead of seven. I wrote about slowing down after fifty books and the fun of starting out on the quest.
I have a stack of books at home, which are due in three weeks and twenty holds at the library. My New Year’s resolution set me on the habit of reading voraciously. I have no plans to slow down. Taking whatever task — piece-by-piece or bird-by-bird is the most important thing I learned from this:
he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
― Anne Lamott
Thanks for reading!
Here are my three latest reviews:
Yelling Ethics in the Boadroom — my review of Pre-Suasion
Inside the LIBOR scandal — My review of the Spider Network
Re-trying the FBI’s failed case against SAC — My review of Black Edge
