2017 Mooks™ Awards

Last year I predicted a banner year of reading for 2017, and — not to brag but with every intention of saying something in a boastful manner (i.e., New Oxford American Dictionary’s definition of “brag”) — I was right. It was a big year for reading. In fact, for those keeping track at home (i.e., all of you), 2017 was the 2nd highest year of reading for me on record (nothing is going to top the ridiculous year of 2010, when I read such behemoths as Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamazov, Bleak House, East of Eden, Alexander Hamilton and 34 others!). Next year could either be big or little. I’m planning on reading the Bible, which is a big book (if you haven’t heard of it before), so that will account for more reading in some ways, but it also might kill other book-reading plans. So stay tuned!

In 2017 I read a total of 29 books of a combined 3.2 million words or 100 pages shy of 10,000 pages (that averages to 8,750 words or 27 pages a day). Again, that’s a lot, if numbers are confusing to you. That would be like reading Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” every day, which would probably feel like a lot, especially after a week (I mean, it’s a fine story and all, but how did I end up reading it every day?! … okay, dumb comparison, forget it). It is also 600,000 more words than what I read last year. That’s like reading the equivalent of three of Jules Verne’s novel The Mysterious Island more than the previous year. That, I think, would be far better fate since there’d be plenty of survival and civilization-building information in it to digest in multiple readings. Or maybe I shouldn’t take my comparisons so literally.

2016 was the year of Mark Twain, and that some of that bled into 2017, where he netted two books, placing the totals of his works that I’ve read at 14 (2nd most among novelists I’ve read — the 1st, I’m proud to admit, is P.G. Wodehouse at 17).

For reference, here are previous Mooks™ Awards winners: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016. And here is a list of book ratings and reviews that I wrote for new books (and a couple re-reads) on Goodreads.

Statistics

Plays

Oldest-(≈100 A.D.) The Little Clay Cart

Newest-(1899) A Princess Far Away

Non-Fiction

Oldest-(1880) A Tramp Abroad

Newest-(2012) Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

Longest-(189,872) Following the Equator

Shortest-(85,563) Grant and Twain

Fiction

Oldest-(710 B.C.) The Iliad

Newest-(2012) The Rent Collector

Longest-(272,797) The Idiot

Shortest-(76,362) The Blithedale Romance

Average Words Per Book-108,613 (Fiction); 154,297 (Non-Fiction)

Most Average Book According to Average Words-Peace Like a River (109,572 — difference of 959 words); The Devil in the White City (154,440 — difference of 143 words)

Accuracy-Peace Like a River was above average … but only by about a thousand, which means that it is super accurate. The Devil in the White City is definitely more than 143 above average, so that one does not pan out so well!

Average Year Published-1786 (1875 without The Iliad; 1941 without The Iliad or The Little Clay Cart)

Most Average Book According to Average Year Published-The Red Rover (1838 — difference of half a century!)

Accuracy-The Red Rover is a bit above average for my liking, but maybe not fifty years worth!

Original Reads = 20

Re-reads = 9

Total = 29

Longest Title: Journey to the Center of the Earth (34 characters)

Shortest Title: The Road (8 characters)

Titles With “The” in Them = 17

Titles With “A” in Them = 2

Titles That Inaccurately Depict the Story: A Tramp Abroad (he rarely tramps … mainly pays for trains or carriage rides); Journey to the Center of the Earth (um, they get far, but *spoiler* nowhere near the center, by their own admission); Following the Equator (he goes around the world, but only touches the equator a couple times … hardly “following”); The Blithedale Romance (it has characters that are in love-ish … but this ain’t no romance!)

Titles with Two Words: The Road, The Idiot, The Hobbit, The Iliad, Oliver Twist, Watership Down, Summer Lightning

Most Read Author: Edmond Rostand (3 titles)

2nd Most Read Author: Mark Twain (2 titles)

Authors With First Name Initials: S.C. Gwynne, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R. Tolkien

Authors with only One Name: Homer & Shudraka

Authors Sharing a Name: John Sugden and John Turner; Mark Twain and Mark Perry

Best Play

The Princess Far Away

Stumbling across a couple more of my favorite playwright’s works was the first bonus. The second was that The Princess Far Away has all the earnestness of principled morality to it that Rostand’s other great works boast. The men in this story are hoping, searching for a legend pushing the edge of rational reasoning … and what they find takes them higher, even beyond that.

Best Non-Fiction

The Devil in the White City

Erik Larson is a superb storyteller and both of the stories that he chooses to tell here are fascinating. Probably what won me over the most, however, was that the storyline that wasn’t following the disturbing track of a serial murderer was (barely) my favorite. So far, Erik Larson is two for two (Isaac’s Storm). I doubt that the couple of more of his I have on my shelf will disappoint either.

Honorable Mention: Empire of the Summer Moon (such a mature, perspective-changing look at a time and culture foreign to our modern society and political sensitivities)

Special Category Awards

Most Well Known-The Iliad

(though proportionately not read in spite of its general familiarity)

Honorable Mention: Oliver Twist

Most Roundabout Recommendation-The Little Clay Cart

While reading Will Durant’s Story of Civilization, he mentioned this early play from India. I took an immediate break from Durant and found and downloaded “The Little Clay Cart” from archive.org.

Honorable Mentions: The Princess Far-Away and The Woman of Samaria (I thought I’d found all of Rostand’s translated works, but stumbled across an old translation of these two that I had been missing); Red Rover (looking for a novel to correspond with the musical “The Pirates of Penzance,” I found this one referenced in Wikipedia as being from the same vein)

Best Book Read With the Kids-Banner in the Sky

James Ullman’s strong narration with commendable but difficult moral choices at the end (while still having a triumphant climax), caused me to have to pause a few times at the end before I could clear my throat enough to finish (though only because I was under the weather!)…

Honorable Mention: Deathwatch, Redwall

Worst Surprise-Grant and Twain

This seemed to be tailor-made for me. Grant, one of my historical and political heroes, and Twain, my literary hero, meet in a biography that combines their historical interactions together … and this, after a year of reading Twain and finishing a Grant biography? Yes! But … no. Perry gets these two behemoths wrong and botches the delivery of some of the things he could have got right. It’s still interesting in spots, but not handled well-enough to be worth a look.

Best Surprise-Red Rover

I had a bad experience with James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. I avoided him for a decade before the fates aligned to send me a pirate story by the adventure novelist. The bad taste from Mohicans has since been washed away. The only reason I’d hesitate to read another Cooper is to find out I discovered the one anomaly … but otherwise, he certainly made a passable adventure tale.

Most Satisfyingly Dissatisfying-The Road

This is a bleak, nearly hopeless tale. So if you read it, don’t expect the ending to be rainbows and roses. But does it allow hope for humanity? Even if barely, the needle clearly points towards hope, and that is maybe even more satisfying than a more obvious message of optimism.

Most Disturbing Scene-The Blithedale Romance

This story meanders around meaninglessly for a while. It is pleasant enough and interesting enough to keep one engaged, but it is certainly not a thriller by any means. I think that’s what really lends the heft to the disturbing scene that comes in the penultimate chapter … it feels really out of place. And it’s simply, well, disturbing and downright creepy. (But to be honest — in a sick sort of way — I really liked it.)

Honorable Mention: The Road (there are a couple repulsive though not gratuitous scenes)

Best Supporting Character-Odysseus (The Iliad)

Odysseus isn’t the strongest (though he’s no wimp either) and in a field of all-stars he’s not often the main focus, but his craftiness and courage are enough to make any scene with him in it a better, wiser, more exciting, scene.

Honorable Mention: Hector (The Iliad)

Coolest Setting-Journey to the Center of the Earth

Jules Verne has fun with this one. Once we get past the known, Verne taps into some pretty ridiculous but fun hypotheticals, and the world beneath the world is a cool place to explore and spend time in.

Honorable Mention: Peace Like a River (each stopping point on this journey feels familiar and a bit like home, in spite of the crazy things happening with the plot)

Most Eye-Opening-Empire of the Summer Moon

To truly understand Indian-settler relations, and the absolutely unadorned and simple yet raw and beautiful Indian culture, nothing is more revealing than S.C. Gwynne’s meticulous and fascinating look at the rise and fall of the Comanche Indians.

Funniest-Summer Lightning

Blandings Castle has yet to be beat when it comes to silly, fun, delightful romps through competitively inane aristocratic antics. Summer Lightning strikes again.

Best Duo-The Road

Their conversations may be dull and seemingly pointless, but this father and son team is heartening in a book that is otherwise heartless.

Best Male Character-Prince Myshkin (The Idiot)

Prince Myshkin is an idiot. Would that we were all more idiotic! Myshkin is the perfect example of an innocent — without being naïve — kind, intelligent, compassionate, humble, and unfailingly honest character — something disturbing to a society built upon pretense, ambition, and tethered to strict social constructs. His actions and words, as innocent and simple as they are, evoke wisdom and inspiration in even the most trivial and especially the most traumatic situations.

Honorable Mention: Jeremiah (Peace Like a River)

Best Female Character-Nancy (Oliver Twist)

Nancy is the character of depth in this Dickens novel. Her situation and background are ignoble, but in the right moments, she shows true heart and character. Her tragic relationship with an abusive and evil man makes her against-the-grain goodness even more stark and heart-wrenching. Even in the darkest alleys of England, hope can be found in the form of Nancy!

Honorable Mentions: Nastassya Filippovna & Aglaya Prokofyevna (The Idiot)

Goofiest Character-Lord Emsworth (Summer Lightning)

Lord Emsworth is the Meryl Streep of Goofy Characters. Even if he doesn’t win each year, he’s in the running, and he’s probably not winning because people feel like they should give other characters a sporting chance. The beauty about Emsworth is that he would hardly be aware of any competition at all, and if you tried to explain it to him, he’d mumble, “Capital, capital, capital,” and, for good measure, “capital” before wandering off to the pig sty.

Honorable Mentions: Lizaveta Prokofyevna (The Idiot)

Best Villain-Bill Sykes (Oliver Twist)

Fagan has an almost likeable quality about his deviousness, but Bill Sykes? The guy is straight up bad news. When he enters a scene, you know that it just got serious and dark, and you’re always on edge until the scene ends.

(Dis)honorable Mentions-Fagan (Oliver Twist), Rogozhin (The Idiot), Red Rover, and Efficient Baxter

Best Reread-Watership Down

I really liked Watership Down when I read it as a kid. I loved it when I reread it as an adult. The depth of the culture, folklore, characters that Richard Adams explores in this incredible, action-packed story of community and purpose is unparalleled. Every moment that I read was exciting, terrifying, amusing, beautiful, or joyful … no lapses in-between. I’ll reread this one again, and it’ll likely win again.

Honorable Mentions: The House of Sixty Fathers, The Hobbit, Sir Francis Drake

Best Novel

The Iliad

This one caught me off guard. For a long time, The Iliad has been a lynch pin of western civilization’s culture, but mostly by name. Nowadays, people don’t actually read this stuff (at least, I hadn’t … so that’s the bar). Imagine my surprise as I read and not just appreciating its cultural value but becoming a spectator in the story, switching my allegiances as much as the gods and according to the narrator’s whim. Sure, there are some weird moments that feel out of place, and line after line after line of violent, spear-induced deaths, and — while I’m a fan of the Olympics — pausing a war at the end of the story to celebrate athleticism seemed really odd … but ultimately, the story ended on a touching, human moment. And I left thinking that Homer gets it, and he helps us to get it too through this masterpiece.

Honorable Mention: The Idiot

Interestingly, the top two books differed in title by only two letters. The Idiom … (if you exist) you’re next!

Appendix A

List of all books and plays read in 2017 in the order read (grouped in the order completed by — respectively — plays, non-fiction, and fiction). Italics represents rereads.

Chantecler

The Princess Far Away

The Woman of Samaria

The Little Clay Cart

Grant and Twain

Following the Equator

Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet

The Devil in the White City

Empire of the Summer Moon

Sir Francis Drake

Mormon Country

A Tramp Abroad

The Hobbit

Summer Lightning

The Blithedale Romance

Deathwatch

The Castle of Llyr

Journey to the Center of the Earth

The Iliad

The House of Sixty Fathers

Oliver Twist

Redwall

Red Rover

Peace Like a River

The Road

The Rent Collector

Watership Down

The Idiot

Banner in the Sky

Appendix B

Memorable Quotes

The average human being is a perverse creature; and when he isn’t that, he is a practical joker. Following the Equator

Are you really the sort of woman [person] you are trying to represent yourself to be? The Idiot

The profoundest wisdom must mingled with nine-tenths of nonsense. The Blithedale Romance

Cannot you conceive that a man may wish well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down? The Blithedale Romance

Will you cast off a friend, for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right, as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own optics instead of yours? The Blithedale Romance

If an Assistant Pig-Keeper does the best he can, and a prince does the best he can, there’s no difference between them. The Castle of Llyr

The Right triumphs in this world far more often than we realize. Summer Lightning

I did not ask for it, and didn’t want it; but I took it, because otherwise they would have thought I was afraid, which I was. Following the Equator

Compassion is the chief law of human existence. The Idiot

The reverence which is difficult, and which has personal merit in it, is the respect which you pay, without compulsion, to the political or religious attitude of a man whose beliefs are not yours. Following the Equator

While the heart beats and the flesh palpitates, a creature endowed with will should never give place to despair. Journey to the Center of the Earth

Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. The Devil in the White City (quoting Daniel Burnham)

Even a fool may be wise after the event. The Iliad.

One ends by loving that toward which one rows! The Princess Far Away

Loss of identity is the price of immortality. Mormon Country

In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan’t understand them thoroughly. The Idiot

Let us be servants in order to be leaders. The Idiot

A thing can be true and still be desperate folly. Watership Down

Fair is whatever God wants to do. Peace Like a River

If you break little promises, you’ll break big ones. The Road

None are so daring or so modest as those who have long been accustomed to place their dependence on their own exertions. The Red Rover

It is a pleasant world to those who have the heart to make it merry. The Red Rover

The true secret of the philosopher is not in living forever but in living while you may. The Red Rover

In order to be successful, it was only necessary to be determined one would be so. The Red Rover

When you find your purpose — and you will find your purpose — never let go. Peace is a product of both patience and persistence. The Rent Collector

Literature should be discovered. The Rent Collector

Good stories teach. The Rent Collector

I distance myself from heaven and then complain that heaven is distant. The Rent Collector

Relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last words, what you wanted was thrill. A Tramp Abroad

It is a waste of breath to argue with a bigot. A Tramp Abroad

Governments don’t care, individuals do. A Tramp Abroad

Gambling is a kingdom without a throne. The Little Clay Cart

Never interrupt anybody’s happiness. The Little Clay Cart

I’ll never murder you again. The Little Clay Cart

Learned minds see not. The heart sees. What it seeks, it finds. The Woman of Samaria

From willing weariness some help will flow. The Woman of Samaria

He who falls from virtue’s high estate,

Though he be rich, no man is poor as he.

The Little Clay Cart

To hold a horse, you need a rein;

To hold an elephant, a chain;

To hold a woman, use a heart.

The Little Clay Cart

The tree will grow, if but the seed be in.

Wish only, and the Kingdom will begin.

The Woman of Samaria