Update and new items and deletions

I'm better than halfway through Huckleberry Finn. It's quite good, but really I don't think it's as good as Tom Sawyer. Full report when I finish.

A few more decisions on books:
Adding Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Adding On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Adding Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Deleting Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West. I decided I couldn't deal with reading a thousand pages about pre-World War II Yugoslavia.

Started Huck Finn Last Night

I started reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn last night. The biggest difference between Sawyer and Finn so far is that Finn is written from Huck's first person perspective where Sawyer was written from Twain's omniscient perspective as narrator.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Brilliant!

The long summer days of childhood, how we all miss them so. I think, even 130 years after it was published, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer can make nearly all of us nostalgic for the days of just being a kid. I don’t think I played Robin Hood or Pirates like Tom did; I think I played World War II instead. And I think every boy dug for treasure at one point or another and had horrible superstitions about haunted houses. Life was full of possibilities and adventure as a kid, and Twain’s ability to evoke those memories is what makes Tom Sawyer a true classic. When you’re reading about Tom, Huck, and Becky, you’re not really reading about them, you’re reading about you when you were a kid. Admittedly, their adventures are our adventures writ large. And some of their escapades actually came to fruition (sometimes life would be better if it happened like fiction).

I think Twain makes an important point, however, when he reminds us that childhood days weren’t so carefree after all. He notes that “Within two minutes, or even less, he had forgotten all his troubles. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man's are to a man…” We tend to forget the bad and turbulent aspects of our childhood and remember how great it was to have a certain kind of freedom. We forget how soul-rendingly important it was that we get to have Billy sleep over or how bitterly disappointed we were when we didn’t get what we wanted for our birthday. So let us not forget that we had to take the bad with the good. Still, it all seems a lot better than paying bills.

Ah, youth. Or as they said on the Sopranos “yoot.” And speaking of dialect and dialogue, this is another area in which Twain excelled in Tom Sawyer. The characters spoke in the Missouri accent of the time (which, looking at a map, is more Southern than my mental map gives it credit for). You get a real feel for the characters because they speak in language that real people (of the time) used. When Huck says he’s “afeard,” it’s almost as if you know the voice from somewhere in the past. As a pretentious aside, Bernard Malamud would have done well to read Tom Sawyer before he sat down to write The Natural. It would have turned a middling book into a very good book; baseball players don’t say things like “I shall not”…rather they say, “I won’t” or “I ain’t a gonna.” Embrace the contraction Bernie!

But back to Tom Sawyer. I think the book also gives us a chance to reflect on childhood friends that we may have lost over the years. Certainly Tom and Huck were good friends, but not best friends like Tom was with Joe Harper. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine Tom and Joe going to the Temperance Tavern together as adults. However, I just get the feeling (that might be proven wrong when I read Huck Finn) that Huck can’t be constrained by the ways of society and will always live by his vagabond life. It makes me sad to remember all those cool folks "I used to know."

Finally, I want to finish by mentioning the youthful courage of Tom and Huck. Even though situations looked grim at times (lost in the cave, following the robbers, et al.), and they were both certainly “afeard,” some moral center brought them to eventually do the right thing. I think it’s well worth remembering that there’s a hero in every boy.

Halfway through Tom Sawyer

I made it about halfway through Tom Sawyer last night. I have to say I'm pretty impressed. There have been about a half dozen or better times when I've found myself smiling about something that's going on. Pretty funny stuff. I also have to say that Twain's description of a severe thunderstorm was great.

More when I finish (or when I feel like it).

And So It Begins

Today I'm starting The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I will be interesting to compare this with Huck Finn in order to see why the latter is considered the "great" novel when I'm assuming that they're fairly similar.

Only things I know/remember about these books is: Missouri, a raft, a cave, racially insensitive character names that were appropriate for the era (not that it makes them good), a fence, whitewash, and deception into getting other kids to do the whitewash.

We'll see how it goes.

Current List and new potential additions

Comments are, of course, welcome:

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (finished Jan. 22)
   
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (finished Feb. 3)
   
3. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
4. All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Deliverance by James Dickey
7. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
8. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
9. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
11. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Candide by Voltaire
14. Don Quixote by Cervantes
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
20. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
    
21. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
22. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
    
25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
26. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
27. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
28. Night by Elie Wiesel
    
29. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
    
30. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
31. Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
32. The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward
33. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
34. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
35. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
36. (placeholder)
37. (placeholder)

Possibilities:

Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucalt
Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
12 Caesars by Suetonius
A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee
The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, et al.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Days of Grace by Arthur Ashe
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Babbit by Sinclair Lewis
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
The Making of the English Working Class by E.P. Thompson
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Some other jerk had the same idea

Whilst killing time on a Friday afternoon, I find out that some other guy is doing a similar project, only writ large. http://www.cclapcenter.com/2007/12/personal_essay_announcing_the.html

Undoubtedly, his project will be better written, better organized, and frankly better in all aspects. Whatever you do, don't read his. Just stick with me kids, I need the ego boost.

Response to a comment in the last post

First, the blog is now open to comments from anyone.

Just in case folks don't read the comments, I'll post my response to the first comment to the blog, posted yesterday by dear KSpoon.

If you didn't catch it there, my response is here in all it's glory:

I have indeed read several of the books before. I have a feeling that I need to re-visit some of them though. Candide, Lord of the Flies, and Catch-22 are the ones that come immediately to mind.

As far as great vs. classic, I guess it's more an amalgam. Some have certainly hit the "great" level, some are old enough to be classics, and some I guess I've just heard of them being "important."

Indeed, I might scrap Beowulf now. "Ick" is a strong indictment against any book. Two from Twain because they go together and Huck Finn because it's the reason I'm doing the list in the first place. I never read Huck Finn and I never would unless I did some foolish project like this.

Shakespeare is not currently on the list. I've read Hamlet way too many times because it's one of my favorites. I don't feel a need to revisit it at this point. Other suggestions from the Bard?

Asimov isn't part of the list, but more a hangover from last year's reading. I considered reading certain books of the bible and calling the "books" but that felt like cheating.

I'm definitely doing Crusoe and Treasure Island. Crusoe is important for being considered perhaps the first novel in English. And Treasure Island is the great pirate novel (though I may have read it before but I don't think so).

Hemingway...yeah, I'm on the fence. I've read "Old Man" and "The Sun Also Rises" in addition to "A Moveable Feast." If "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is that strong, I'll probably add it.

A. Lord of the Rings isn't children's literature. B. It's probably my favorite book(s) of all time. C. Already read them several times. D. Read the whole Potter series last year.

Seriously considering "Their Eyes Were Watching God." Also considering "The Color Purple."

Love 1984 and Animal Farm and have already read them several times. I tried Brave New World before and it didn't go so well, thus it's inclusion on the list.

Catcher in the Rye is great, but I don't feel the need to go back to it. Same with All The President's Men and the Right Stuff. I don't have any interest in the Hannibal Lecter books and no interest in In Cold Blood.

Great suggestions, keep 'em coming.

Other possibilities and inclusions

22. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
23. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. (placeholder, scrapped Beowulf)
25. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
26. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
27. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Other possibilities:
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucalt
Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Awakening by Kate Chopin

More to come...

The Reading List: A Work in Progress

Here are some definite and some likely candidates for inclusion on my "important" books reading list.

1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
2. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
4. All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
5. Beloved by Toni Morrison
6. Deliverance by James Dickey
7. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
8. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
9. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
11. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
12. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
13. Candide by Voltaire
14. Don Quixote by Cervantes
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. The Age of Jackson by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
18. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
19. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
20. [placeholder, I made a duplication]
21. Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West

Possibilities:
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
12 Caesars by Suetonius
A Study of History by Arnold Toynbee
The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, et al.

Obviously, I need more to fill out the list, so I'm counting on you, the teeming handful of possible readers for suggestions.

Late Start on the Reading Project

So I'm finally done with conferences for a while (I think I was only home for 7 days since December 23rd), so I can finally get this book-readin' year long party started. Well, started soon. I still have about 150 pages left of the most excellent Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Vol. 1: The Old Testament. Here's hoping I'll actually get started by the weekend.