[lit-ideas] Re: 2006 reading lists
- From: david ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 10:42:10 -0800
I wonder what Mike thought of McCarthy's Bar.
I'm a many volumes open at once kind of reader, so remembering which
volumes I finished in 2006 is hard. And then there's the issue of
works that I read or re-read for a seminar, or to remind myself how
the things goes so that I can have a decent conversation with a
daughter who is coming to literature for the first time, and works
that I read "off the clock." Here's what I recall in half an hour:
Two biographies of P.G. Wodehouse--the new one by Robert McCrum and
the older one by David Jasen. David Jasen is the better read; McCrum
has more complete information on the Berlin fiasco. Lots of
Alexander McCall Smith. Gleanings among the few P. G. Wodehouse
novels I've not read. An abridgment of Clinton's autobiography.
Some of Bill Bryson's, "Short History of Everything." Poetry every
week, but none that has stuck. The complete novels of Patrick
O'Brian (there are twenty). I had tried these many years ago and not
found them interesting. Beginning at the beginning and reading
sequentially was the right idea. They are odd, and engaging. Kate
Adie, a BBC reporter, on her broadcast experience--very good on
bureaucracy, shallow on America. In response to travel I read the
book that started a thread here, about forts in Michigan, and two
books about camels and California: Harlan Fowler, "Camels to
California" and Lewis Lesley, "Uncle Sam's Camels." Rob Nixon,
"Dreambirds; The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and
Fortune." On the history of the Pacific, from a long reading list
I'd recommend Tony Horwitz, "Blue Latitudes" and Simon Winchester,
"Pacific Rising." Among the new books on the First World War,
Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wells, "Intimate Voices From the First
World War" stands out. It begins with the diary of Vaso Cubrilovic,
one of the group of young men who agreed to assassinate Archduke
Franz Ferdinand and moves to, for example, excerpts of a the diary of
Mehmed Fasih, a Turkish soldier, set beside that of an Australian
corporal, George Mitchell. Both were at Gallipoli. Stephen Ambrose,
"Band of Brothers." Richard Overy, "Why the Allies Won." Angus
Calder, "Gods, Mongrels and Demons; 101 Brief But Essential Lives,"
Neal Ascherson, "Stone Voices; The Search for Scotland," Catherine
Aman, "The Scottish Americans," Donny O'Rourke (ed) "Ae Fond Kiss;
The Love Letters of Robert Burns and Clarinda." Lauren Anderson,
"Black Rubber Dress," a detective novel with a female sculptor as
detective, and the most surprising read of the year, Jackie Heuman,
"Material Matters; The Conservation of Modern Sculpture." Who knew
that the problems of how to fix deteriorating contemporary sculptures
would be so interesting?
David Ritchie
Portland, Oregon
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