(return to Homepage: http://www.phil.vt.edu/JKlagge/Homepage.htm)
What I'm reading
'for pleasure' in 2009
(in order starting in January):
Songcatchers: In
Pursuit of the World's Music,
by Mickey Hart and K. M. Kostyal, 2003.
A
Remarkable Mother,
by Jimmy Carter, 2008.
(Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.)
The
Songcatcher, by
Sharyn McCrumb, 2001.
The Elusive Dream:
The Power of Race in Interracial Churches, by Korie L. Edwards, 2008.
Fibromyalgia: The
Complete Guide from Medical Experts and Patients, by Sharon Ostalecki, 2007.
Me
of Little Faith,
by Lewis Black, 2008.
(He is much funnier live than on paper.)
The Pluto Files:
The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, by Neil deGrasse Tyson, 2009.
Sixty-five
percent of participants in a Book Day survey confess to having lied about
reading a famous book.
Yesterday
(3/8/2009) on "CBS Sunday Morning" they had a top-ten list of
"must-read" books that people lie about having read:
10. "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins (6%)
9. "Dreams From My Father" by Barack Obama (6%)
8.
"Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust (9%) (I would be lying
if I said I read this!)
7. "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie (14%)
6. "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking (15%)
5. "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert (16%) (and
this)
4. The Bible (24%)
3. "Ulysses" by James Joyce (25%)
2. "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy (31%)
1. "1984," by George Orwell (42%) (and
this!)
Spiritual
Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith, by Henri Nouwen, with M. Christensen and R. Laird, 2006.
Breaking the
Taboo: Talking about Faith and Money in the Church, by John W. Sonnenday, 2004.
Stagolee
Shot Billy, by
Cecil Brown, 2003.
Whitefoot: A Story
from the Center of the World,
by Wendell Berry, 2009.
The Logic of Life:
The Rational Economics of an Irrational World, by Tim Harford, 2008.
Deconstructing
Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering, by David Burrell, 2008.
The Odyssey: A
Modern Sequel,
by Nikos Kazantzakis, tr. from Modern Greek by K. Friar, 1938/1958.
The Sad King of
Czech Literature: Bohumil Hrabal, His Life and Work, by Radko Pytlik, tr. from
Czech by K. Hayes, 2000.
Summer
of '49, by
David Halberstam, 1989.
(Recounts the Yankee-Red Sox pennant race in 1949.)
Reading the Bible
Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but not Literally, by Marcus Borg, 2001.
The Much Too
Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, by Aaron David Miller, 2008.
The
Year of the Frog, by Martin Simecka, tr. from Slovak by P. Petro, 1990/1993.
Talks with T. G. Masaryk, by Karel Capek, tr. from Czech
by M. Heim, 1935/1995.
Liquidation, by
Imre Keretesz, tr. from Hungarian by T. Wilkinson, 2003/2004.
(Keretesz won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.)
Summer of Caprice, by
Vladislav Vancura, tr. from Czech by M. Corner, 1926/2006.
Golem Walks in Prague, by Ina Rott, tr. from Czech by
D. & L. Bainbridge, 2004.
Six Armies in Normandy, by
John Keegan, 1982.
In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic, by
David Wessel, 2009.
50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days, by
Dean Karnazes with Matt Fitzgerald, 2008. (in 50
different states!)
Littlewood's Miscellany, by
J. E. Littlewood, ed. B. Bollobas, 1986. (Based on Littlewood's A
Mathematician's Miscellany, 1953, with a few supplementary pieces.)
An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles;
Orestes by Euripides, tr. from Ancient Greek by Anne
Carson, 458 BCE, 40? BCE, 408 BCE; 2009.
The Last Lecture, by
Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow, 2008.
The Lost Symbol, by
Dan Brown, 2009.
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by
David Benedictus, with decorations by Mark Burgess, 2009. (First sequel
approved by the trustees of the Pooh Properties.)
Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other
Plays, by Steve Martin, 1996.
Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and
Photography, 1890-1950, ed. by Jim Linderman, 2009.
Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, a Memoir, by
Cornel West with David Ritz, 2009.
Juliet, Naked: a Novel, by Nick Hornby, 2009.
Ralph on Ralph: The Clinch Mountain Express Interviews Dr.
Ralph Stanley, ed. J. Fox, 2002.
An article about a woman who has been
reading a book a day for a year: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/nyregion/12towns.html?scp=1&sq=sankovitch&st=cse.
And she did not read any short books. The best I have managed since starting to
keep records was 73 books in a year!
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, 2009. (Graphic non-fiction novel about Bertrand Russell's attempt to construct a logical foundation for mathematics.
What I read 'for
pleasure' in 2008
(in order from January through December):
Out of Solitude: Three
Meditations on the Christian Life, by Henri J. M. Nouwen, 1974.
In
the midst of the presidential primary campaigns, here
is a report on the favorite books of the various candidates.
Genesis: The Movie, by Robert Farrar Capon, 2003.
The Golem: A New Translation of the Classic Play and Selected Short Stories, tr. from Yiddish by J. Neugroschel, 2006. (Legendary accounts of the exploits of the golem, an artificial man created by Rabbi Lowe in the sixteenth century to protect Jews in the ghetto of Prague.)
Born Standing Up:
A Comic's Life,
by Steve Martin, 2007.
Literature from
the 'Axis of Evil': Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy
Nations,
various authors and translators, 2006.
The First
Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus's Birth, by Marcus Borg and John
Dominic Crossan, 2007.
Bringing Up Girls
in Bohemia, by
Michal Viewegh, tr. from Czech by A. G. Brain, 1994/1996.
Can We Talk About
Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School
Resegregation, by Beverly Daniel Tatum, 2007.
Letters
to Scattered Pilgrims,
by Elizabeth O'Connor, 1979.
Reconciliation:
Islam, Democracy, and the West, by Benazir Bhutto, 2008.
Diary
of a Bad Year,
by J. M. Coetzee, 2007.
Colored People: A
Memoir, by
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1994.
In the Name of
Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership, by Henri J. M. Nouwen, 1989.
To Rise Above Principle:
Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean, by Josef Martin (pseudonym for Henry Bauer), 1988. (Bauer
was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech in the 1980s.)
Pirouettes on a
Postage Stamp: An Interview-Novel, by Bohumil Hrabal, tr. from Czech by D. Short, 1990/2008.
Crazy '08: How a
Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in
Baseball History,
by Cait Murphy, 2007 ('08: 1908, that is.)
The Poetics of
Music: in the Form of Six Lessons, by Igor Stravinsky, tr. from French by A. Knodel and I.
Dahl, 1942.
Here is New York, by E. B. White, 1949.
Godel, Escher,
Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid,
by Douglas Hofstadter, 1979.
Ocracokers, by Alton Balance, 1989.
Who Speaks for
Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, by J. Esposito and D. Mogahed, 2008.
Portsmouth Island:
Short Stories and History,
by Ben B. Salter, 1972.
The Economists'
Voice: Top Economists Take on Today's Problems, edited by J. Stiglitz, A.
Edlin, and J. B. DeLong, 2007.
Becoming the
Authentic Church: From Principle to Practice, by N. Gordon Cosby and Kayla McClurg, 2004.
Moyers
on Democracy,
by Bill Moyers, 2008.
Predictably
Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely, 2008.
Culture
and Conflict in the Middle East, by Philip C. Salzman, 2008.
Just Who Will You
Be? by Maria Shriver, 2008.
Ghost Riders, by Sharyn McCrumb, 2003.
Spoken Here:
Travels Among Threatened Languages, by Mark Abley, 2003.
The
Miracle Game,
by Josef Skvorecky, tr. from Czech by P. Wilson, 1972/1992.
Lysis, by Plato, tr. from Greek by T.
Penner and C. Rowe, 2005.
Phaedrus, by Plato, tr. from Greek by W.
Cobb, 1993.
To Know as We are
Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey, by Parker Palmer, 1983/1993.
Song
of Solomon, by
Toni Morrison, 1977/2004.
(Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.)
I
recently ran across this site,
which critiques the narrowness and peculiarity of the Nobel choices in literature
over the years, and offers its own prize 'from an alternate universe'. It was a
real shocker to see that Ludwig Wittgenstein won the prize in 1950!
I Think, Therefore
I Laugh: The Flip Side of Philosophy, by John Allen Paulos, 1985/2000.
Identity and
Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, by Amartya Sen, 2006. (Sen won the Nobel Prize in
Economics in 1998.)
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
tr. from French by K. Woods, 1943.
The Battle for
History: Re-Fighting World War II, by John Keegan, 1995.
Ben Bernanke's
Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan, by Ethan Harris, 2008.
Life in the
Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love and Loss with Parkinson's Disease
and Dementia, by
Thomas Graboys with Peter Zheutlin, 2008. (My father has had Parkinson's for
several years and perhaps some aspects of dementia. The book puts into words
many things my father does not express.)
Netherland, by Joseph O'Neill, 2008.
Walden: An
Annotated Edition,
by Henry David Thoreau, ed. by W. Harding, 1854/1995.
The Possible and
the Actual, by
Francois Jacob, 1982. (Jacob won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1965.)
What I Talk about
When I Talk about Running,
by Haruki Murakami, tr. from Japanese by P. Gabriel, 2008.
Capitalism with a
Conscience: Globalization through the Lens of Zacchean Economics and Servant
Leadership, by
Ronald Reimer, 2001.
Wedding
Song, by Naguib
Mahfouz, tr. from Arabic by O. Kenny, 1981/1984. (Mahfouz won the 1988 Nobel
Prize for Literature.)
Resident Aliens:
Life in the Christian Colony,
by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, 1989.
I Went Down to St.
James Infirmary: Investigations in the Shadowy World of Early Jazz-Blues, by Robert W. Harwood, 2008.
The
Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino, 1968.
Hand Me My
Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell, by Michael Gray, 2007.
Some
reading this webpage may suspect that I am just making this up to impress.
Apparently nearly half of men have lied about what they read in order to
impress friends or potential partners: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7776046.stm.
All I can say is-I'm already married, and would I make all this up?
Talking Book:
African-Americans and the Bible, by Allen Dwight Callahan, 2006.
God's Trombones:
Seven Negro Sermons in Verse,
by James Weldon Johnson, Jr., 1927.
Wicked: The Life
and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Robert Maguire, 1995.
The Heaven-Sent
Leaf: Poems, by
Katy Lederer, 2008.
Nudge: Improving
Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, 2008.
Reflections
on a third year of reading: I read less this year-56 books-mostly because my
wife and I now live together and I have much less time to kill. Early in the
year I read Literature
from the Axis of Evil, which began with this comment: "Since the
1970s, American access to world literature in translation has been steadily
decreasing. A 2005 Bowker study calculated that only 3% of the books available
for sale in the English-speaking world were works in translation. (A
significant proportion of these, too, are new translations of known classics,
rather than discoveries of unknown and contemporary writers in other
languages.) By comparison, Western Europeans are accustomed to translated works making up one-third of their smorgasbord of
literary offerings. In summer 2003, the New York Times announced that 'America Yawns at
Foreign Fiction,' while pointing out that the number of books in translation
that year accounted for fewer than 0.5% of the books available to Americans." In my 3 years
of record-keeping and 196 books, I have read 53 books in translation (= 27%).
Even more striking, however, is how few books of non-fiction we read in
translation-reflecting the attitude that if it is worth knowing, it is known by English-speakers. Only 13 of the books I have
read in the past 3 years were translations of non-fiction. My favorite book
this year was Crazy
'08, about the 1908 baseball season. The Cubs still have not repeated!
What I read 'for
pleasure' in 2007
(in order from January to December):
The Magic Circle
of Rudolf II: Alchemy and Astrology in Renaissance Prague, by Peter Marshall, 2006.
On
Truth, by Harry
Frankfurt, 2006.
(Follow-up from the author of On Bullshit.)
My Freshman Year:
What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, by Rebekah Nathan, 2005.
(Actually a pseudonym, as she wrote it anonymously. Helps me see where students
are coming from.)
The
Book of Laughter and Forgetting, by Milan Kundera, tr. from Czech and French by A. Asher,
1978/1996.
The Last Week: A
Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem, by Marcus Borg and John
Dominic Crossan, 2006.
Listening
Essays, by Bob
Tschannen-Moran, 2004.
(An e-book by a close friend, running buddy, and professional life-coach.)
Why I Write, by George Orwell, 2005.
Non-Violent
Communication: A Language of Life, by Marshall Rosenberg, 2003. (An audio-book.)
Aeneid, by Virgil, tr. from Latin by
R. Fagles, 2006.
(I'd never read it, and was waiting for Fagles's translation.)
Songbook, by Nick Hornby, 2003. (A collection of essays about
how he relates, and we relate, to certain songs.)
A
Little Book on the Human Shadow, by Robert Bly, 1988.
War
and the Iliad,
by Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff, tr. from French by M. McCarthy, 2005.
How Equal
Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care), by Ross Duffin, 2006. (His website has some
illustrations of the differences between temperaments, which are very subtle as
far as I can tell.)
Moneyball: The Art
of Winning an Unfair Game,
by Michael Lewis, 2003.
Dreams of My Father:
A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama, 1995. (My man for president!)
A
Man without a Country,
by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005.
The
Little Book of Plagiarism,
by Richard A. Posner, 2007. (I would have thought it should be titled on Plagiarism,
or about
Plagiarism. As it is, it sounds like the book is itself plagiarized.)
So Many Books:
Reading and Publishing in an Age of Abundance, by Gabriel Zaid, tr. from Spanish by N. Wimmer, 2003.
Branded: The
Buying and Selling of Teenagers, by Alissa Quart, 2003. (This is the Virginia Tech 'Common
Book' for 2005-2007. It was probably chosen by a nagging mother-at least that
is the feeling I get from reading it. I find it hard to imagine college
students enjoying reading it. Previous VT common books have been Einstein's Dream, and The Life of Pi.
I thought the latter was a good choice, but by the time I was ready to use it
in a class, they had moved on to a new book.)
Emperor and
Galilean: A World Historical Drama, by Henrik Ibsen, tr. from Norwegian by B. Johnston,
1873/1999.
On Job: God-Talk
and the Suffering of the Innocent, by Gustavo Gutierrez, tr. from Spanish by M. O'Connell, 1987.
Ulysses, by James Joyce, 1922/1934. (I don't recommend it unless
you really feel you 'should' read it.)
James
Joyce's Ulysses,
by Stuart Gilbert, 1930/1952. (Only somewhat helpful.)
Einstein: His Life
and Universe,
by Walter Isaacson, 2007.
Plato and a
Platypus Walk into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy through Jokes, by T. Cathcart and D. Klein,
2007.
The
Visible World,
by Mark Slouka, 2007.
My Father Before
Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives, by Michael J. Diamond, 2007.
(Read as my son graduates from college.)
The
College Administrator's Survival Guide, by C. Gunsalus, 2006.
The Making of an
Economist: Redux,
by David Colander, 2007.
Why We Run: A
Natural History,
by Bernd Heinrich, 2001. (The second time I've read this fascinating book.)
The
Castle, by
Franz Kafka, tr. from German by M. Harman, 1926/1998.
To the Castle and
Back, by Vaclav
Havel, tr. from Czech by P. Wilson, 2007. (British edition subtitled:
'Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero'.)
The Zuerau
Aphorisms, by
Franz Kafka, tr. from german by M Hofmann, 2006.
A Term at the Fed:
An Insider's View, The People
and Policies of the World's Most Powerful Institution, by Laurence H.
Meyer, 2004. (Since Nick will be working there.)
Slow Man, by J. M. Coetzee, 2005. (I
found the ending very disappointing.)
All Day Permanent Red:
The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad Rewritten, by Christopher Logue, 2003.
And They All Sang:
Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey, by Studs Terkel, 2005.
The One Minute Manager, by K. Blanchard and S. Johnson, 1982.
The
Meaning of Life,
by Terry Eagleton, 2007.
The
Dubliners, by
James Joyce, 1914.
(His best writing IMO.)
The
Gospel in Brief,
by Leo Tolstoy, tr. from Russian by I. Hapgood, 1910/1997.
Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow, by
F. R. Leavis, 1962. (A devastating critique of Snow.)
Misreadings, by Umberto Eco, tr. from
Italian by W. Weaver, 1963/1993.
How to Have that
Difficult Conversation You've Been Avoiding, by H. Cloud and J. Townsend, 2003/2005.
War
and Peace, by
Leo Tolstoy, tr. from Russian by A. Briggs, 1869/2006. (Read it first about 15 years
ago.)
Tolstoy, by Theodore Redpath, 1960. (A former student of
Wittgenstein's during the 1930's.)
Search for Silence, by Elizabeth O'Conner, 1972.
(Offers a very practical spiritual discipline, which I have been working at.)
The
Cossacks, by
Leo Tolstoy, tr. from Russian by P. Constantine, 1862/2004.
A Farewell to
Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, by Gregory Clark, 2007.
Where Have All the
Prophets Gone?: Reclaiming Prophetic Preaching in
America, by Marvin
McMickle, 2006.
In-House
Weddings, by
Bohumil Hrabal, tr. from Czech by T. Liman, 1987/2007.
Carrying Jackie's
Torch: The Players Who Integrated Baseball and America, by Steve Jacobson, 2007.
Dylan Redeemed:
From Highway 61
to Saved, by
Stephen H. Webb, 2006.
A
Philosophical Testament,
by Marjorie Grene, 1994.
(The philosophical equivalent of a Nobel Prize winner: She was the first woman
to be honored with a volume in the Library of Living Philosophers.)
Istanbul: Memories
and the City,
by Orhan Pamuk, tr. from Turkish by M. Freely, 2003/2005.
The Trial of God
(as it was held on February 25, 1649, in Shamgorod): a Play, by Elie Wiesel, tr. from
French by M. Wiesel, 1979/1995.
The Age of
Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, by Alan Greenspan, 2007.
Deep River:
Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals, by Howard Thurman, 1945/1955.
The Return of the
Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming, by Henri J. M. Nouwen, 1992. (Reflections on the parable
and the painting by Rembrandt.)
Proof: A Play, by David Auburn, 2001.
Beowulf, tr. from Old English by S.
Heaney, 2000.
Mere
Anarchy, by
Woody Allen, 2007.
Grand Obsession:
Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon, by E. Butler and T. Myers,
2007.
The
Poetry of Jaroslav Seifert,
tr. from Czech by E. Osers and G. Gibian, 1986. (Seifert won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1984.)
Musicophilia:
Tales of Music and the Brian,
by Oliver Sacks, 2007.
Escape from Indian
Captivity: The Story of Mary Draper Ingles and son Thomas Ingles, as told by John Ingles, Sr.,
written before 1836, published 1969. (This happened right on what is now the
Virginia Tech campus.)
The Naked and the
Dead, by Norman
Mailer, 1948.
R. Crumb's Heroes
of Blues, Jazz and Country,
by Stephen Calt, David Jasen, R. Crumb, and Terry Zwigoff, 2006.
Prague
Tales, by Jan
Neruda, tr. from Czech by M Heim, 1878/1993.
Acting: The First
Six Lessons, by
Richard Boleslavsky, 1933.
Welcome to
Doomsday, by
Bill Moyers, 2005.
Galileo: A Play, by Bertolt Brecht, English
version by Charles Laughton, 1940/1952.
Primates and
Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, by Frans de Waal (and with
commentary by some philosophers), 2006.
Reflections
on a second year of reading: I seem to have read even more than last year-sped
up by a sabbatical in the Spring, but then slowed down by becoming an
administrator in the Fall. This year I read 73 books. The ones I enjoyed the
most were the Czech books-Neruda's tales, Seifert's poetry, and Hrabal's
ramblings. I got the least out of Ulysses. I note that in the last 2 years (140
books), only 13 books were by women and 11 by minorities (less than 10% each).
That was less than I would have guessed. Also, in the last 2 years, about 30%
of my reading has been fiction (well, 30% of the books, but probably a much
larger proportion of the pages!). I again ran a gamut from the very long (War and Peace,
Ulysses, The Aeneid)
to the very brief (Moyers' pamphlet-I'll read anything by him!).
What I read 'for
pleasure' in 2006
(in order from January to December):
And Then the
Vulture Eats You: True Tales About Ultra-Marathons and Those Who Run Them, edited by John L. Parker, Jr.,
1990. (I thought I'd better know what to expect.)
The
Hangman's Beautiful Daughter,
by Sharyn McCrumb, 1992.
(Local author. I like her ballad novels.)
Bury Me Standing:
The Gypsies and Their Journey,
by Isabel Fonseca, 1996.
Don
Quixote, by
Miguel de Cervantes, tr. from Spanish by Edith Grossman, 2003. (I've started it before, but
now I finished it and loved it.)
High-Fidelity, by Nick Hornby, 1995. (Not a
novel I would have chosen, but he's my daughter's favorite author, and music is
very important to me. I liked it.)
Ultramarathon Man:
Confessions of an All-Night Runner, by Dean Karnazes, 2005. (Some good reflections near the
end about why
run long distances. In the fall of 2006 Karnazes completed 50 marathons over 50
consecutive days.)
Dore's
Illustrations for Don Quixote,
by Gustave Dore, originally published with a French translation in 1863.
Lectures on Don
Quixote, by
Vladimir Nabokov, 1983, originally given in 1952. (A most critical critic who
is often insightful, but unable to appreciate slap-stick humor.)
Exiles,
a Play in Three Acts,
by James Joyce, 1914.
(I'm working my way up to Ulysses.)
Commies, Crooks,
Gypsies, Spooks & Poets: Thirteen Books of Prague in the Year of the Great
Lice Epidemic,
by Jan Novak, 1995. (Written by a Czech exile who
returned to live in Prague for a year after the Velvet Revolution.)
Trust Matters:
Leadership for Successful Schools, by Megan Tschannen-Moran, 2004. (Written by a dear long-time
friend to help public schools. I hope it also works for university philosophy
departments!)
The
Future of the Race,
by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West, 1996. (Their responses to DuBois's
'Talented Tenth' essay nearly 100 years later.)
Night, by Elie Wiesel, 1958, new
translation from French by M. Weisel, 2006. (Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1986.)
The Gospel of
Judas,
translation from Greek and commentary by Ehrman, Kasser, Meyer and Wurst, 2006.
(Recently discovered and published Gnostic Gospel.)
Binge: What Your
College Student Won't Tell You: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and
Excess, by
Barrett Seaman, 2005. (I'm not worried so much about my own college-age student
as I am about the students in my courses.)
Goethe's Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
tr. from German by Walter Kaufman, 1961. (Not at all the
dour, dusty tome it has a reputation for being. Almost farcical in places, and
with a 'happy' ending.)
The
Death of Mr. Baltisberger, by
Bohumil Hrabal, tr. from Czech by M. Heim, 1975. (Collection of slice-of-life
short stories by the master Czech palaverer.)
The World is Flat:
A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman, Updated and expanded edition: 2006.
(I recommend this to any person who may need to look for a job or hold onto a
job.)
Letters from
England, by
Karel Čapek, tr. from Czech by G. Newsome, 2005. (An engaging account of
life in the British Isles in 1924 by a Czech traveler.)
The Pitch that
Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920, by Mike Sowell, 1989. (One of
only two seasons that my hometown Cleveland Indians won the World Series.)
City Sister Silver, by Jachym Topol, tr. from
Czech by A. Zucker, 1994/2000. (Street-life novel set in Czechoslovakia after the
Velvet Revolution.)
Dylan's
Vision of Sin,
by Christopher Ricks, 2003. (Dylan's work considered as poetry by a noted literary
critic. In fact, Dylan has been nominated for the Nobel
Prize in Literature, but never selected.)
The Sorrows of
Young Werther,
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, tr. from German by V. Lange, 1774/1988.
The Annotated
Wizard of Oz,
by L. Frank Baum, annotations by M. Hearn, 1900/2000. (Fifteen years ago I read
the original to my kids, and then followed it up with the dozens of Oz sequels.
This time around Meagan got it for me for the annotations. (Bucking the trend
for fathers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7340720.stm,
I actually read to my kids, especially Nick, before bed until they went away to
college. When Nick left for college we were in the middle of Paradisio,
from Dante's Divine
Comedy.)
Elective
Affinities, by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, tr. from German by J. Ryan, 1809/1988.
The Hunger of
Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, An Autobiography, by Richard Rodriguez, 1982. (A
writer who struggles with his heritage and his opportunities, and ultimately
declines to enter academia.)
Outstanding
Black Sermons, v. 3,
ed. M. Owens, 1982.
(Including a sermon by my favorite preacher, Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes,
Jr.)
The Nobel Lecture
in Literature, 1993,
by Toni Morrison.
The Notebooks of
Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel,
by Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. from German by S. Mitchell, 1910/1983.
Incompleteness:
The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Goedel, by Rebecca Goldstein, 2005.
A Heckuva Job:
More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme, by Calvin Trillin, 2006.
The Bible and African Americans: A Brief History, by Vincent L. Wimbush, 2003.
The Best American Essays of the Century, ed. R. Atwan & J. Oates, 2000. (I just finished reading this collection of 55 essays, but I'd been working at it, chunk by chunk, for almost 5 years!)
Selected Verse, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
ed. and tr. from German by D. Luke, 1964.
Santa Biblia: The
Bible Through Hispanic Eyes,
by Justo Gonzalez, 1996. (Much more Hispanic-American,
than purely Latin American.)
Job: Westminster
Bible Companion,
by James A. Wharton, 1999.
The Magus, by John Fowles, 1965/1978. (Prefigures Bernard Williams' scenario of being told to commit an atrocity yourself to avoid a much greater atrocity being committed: pp. 393-395 of the 1965 Little, Brown and Co. edition. A psycho-drama of extensive deception without the science fiction of the Matrix.)
I
just noticed this
article about what George Bush has been reading this year. What could he
have gotten out of Camus' The Stranger, about a man who kills an Arab for no reason? Bush
obviously reads faster than I do. I also noticed this listing by the singer
Art Garfunkel, alumnus of Columbia University, of all his reading over the last
30 years-nearly a thousand books! And it's not light reading!
The Origin and
History of the Mormons: with Reflections on the Beginnings of Islam and
Christianity,
by Eduard Meyer, tr. from German anonymously, 1912.
Melville: His
World and Work,
by Andrew Delbanco, 2005.
King of the Delta
Blues: The Life and Music of Charlie Patton, by Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow, 1988.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde, by Robert
Louis Stevenson, 1886.
Confessions, by St. Augustine of Hippo, tr.
from Latin by H. Chadwick, 400/1991.
The Roots of
Desire: The Myth, Meaning and Sexual Power of Red Hair, by Marion Roach, 2005. (The
title is much better than the book itself, but I read it anyway because my wife
is a red-head.)
One Day in the
Life of Ivan Denisovich,
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, tr. from Russian by M. Hayward, 1963. (Solzhenitsyn
won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.)
The Great War and
Modern Memory,
by Paul Fussell, 1975.
Elizabeth Costello, by J. M. Coetzee, 2003.
(Coetzee won the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.)
The
Kite Runner, by
Khaled Hosseini, 2003.
Diary
of a Country Priest,
by Georges Bernanos, tr. from French by P. Morris, 1938/1965.
Dying to Win: The
Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, by Robert Pape, 2006. (An empirical study of all instances
since 1980, showing that the largest determining factor by far is large military
presence in a region that has a different religion. The clear implication is
that we will be far safer from suicide attacks if we substantially withdraw
from the Middle East. The author recommends an off-shore
presence with the ability of rapid deployment to protect oil sources.)
The Knights, by Aristophanes, tr. from
Greek, 434 B.C.
The Language of
the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu, by Debra DeSalvo, 2006.
My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk, tr. from Turkish
by E. Goknar, 1998/2001. (Pamuk won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.)
Rock 'n' Roll, by Tom Stoppard, 2006. (A play
about the dynamics of dissent in Czechoslovakia, with reference to the Czech
avant-garde rock group Plastic
People of the Universe.)
The Audacity of
Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, by Barack Obama, 2006. (Since
December of 2004 my car has had the bumper sticker: 'Obama 08'. I'm still
hoping.)
Radical Hope:
Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, by Jonathan Lear, 2006. (An account and interpretation of
the Crow chief, Plenty Coups, as he steered the Crow nation from nomads to the
reservation.)
Jesus the Riddler:
The Power of Ambiguity in the Gospels, by Tom Thatcher, 2006.
Two-Sided
Matching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis, by A. Roth and M. Sotomayor,
1990. (I'm trying to keep up with my son's thesis. I skipped the proofs!)
Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharev, tr. from
Russian by C. Hogarth, 1858/1915.
Blink: The Power
of Thinking without Thinking,
by Malcolm Gladwell, 2005.
The
Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God, by George Bernard Shaw, 1932. (A parable and meditation about
the Bible and religion.)
The
Life of Samuel Johnson,
by James Boswell, ed. C. Hibbert, 1791/1979.
On
p. 320 is recounted the following: 'We talked of a printed letter from the
Reverend Herbert Croft, to a young gentleman who had been his pupil, in which
he advised him to read to the end of whatever books he should begin to read.
JOHNSON: This is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever
men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep them for life. A book
may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing;
are we to read it all through?'
I
have to confess to following Croft's advice. The only book I recall not
finishing, several years ago, was Salman Rushdie's book Midnight's Children. I gave up about a
third of the way through, not being able to make heads or tails out of it
Dorothy and the
Lizard of Oz,
by Richard Gardner, 1980. (Written by a child psychiatrist, it takes up the Oz
story at the end where everyone magically lives happily ever after, and shows how
illusory this is. Instead a lizard helps the characters figure out for
themselves how to solve their problems and strive toward their
goals-the hard way.)
The
History of the Wreck of the Old 97, by G. Howard Gregory, 1992.
Jesus and Buddha:
The Parallel Sayings,
edited by Marcus Borg, 1997.
The Iraq Study
Group Report: The Way Forward, A New Approach, by James A. Baker III, Lee H. Hamilton, et.
al., 2006.
Essays and
Sketches in Biography,
by John Maynard Keynes, 1956.
Largo Desolato: A
Play in Seven Scenes,
by Vaclav Havel, English version from Czech by Tom Stoppard, 1985/1987.
Reflections
on a year of reading: For some 30 years I've wanted to keep a record of all the
books I've ever read. I never started the list because it was always too late
to get all of
them. So in 2006 I decided it was better late than never. I just started. I
notice that this year I didn't read any books by my 'favorite' authors. I read 67 books-from very short (Morrison's Nobel Lecture) to very
long (Don
Quixote). 25 were fiction. I didn't count books I read for my research in
philosophy, though a few of the books I did count were
tangentially related, such as ones by Goethe. 6 books were connected with my
Czech heritage. 9 books were connected with religion. The books I got the most
out of were The
World is Flat and Dying to Win. The books I struggled the most with were the novels
by Rilke and by Topol.