2012: The Big Reveal...

...and it's only a month late! I took stock of 2011, what worked and what didn't, and have made modifications for 2012. Here are my thoughts coming out of 2011:

-The main problem with reading a novel a week is that it's just not sustainable long term. This was an entire year without a break. Ever. Even jobs usually give you time off once in a while. I'll be honest; it was really hard to keep on track all year. Some weeks were insane and I had to choose shorter books. During 2011, I traveled out of the country twice-once for a funeral and once to visit family, had eye surgery,  worked at a farmers market and had a 2,000 sq. ft. garden in the summer, took care of my two kids, and had house guests for at least 11 weeks (I lost track). And every Sunday I said to myself, "What am I reading this week?" That's not going to happen this year. I am going to have some breathing room.

-If I kept this up forever, I'd also never get to read long works like War and Peace, and would rarely have time to squeeze in short stories either.I would be limiting myself to one form (the novel), and only novels of a certain length.

-Intellectually, I go on little jaunts where I obsess over a theme for a few weeks and then move on to a different one. This lends itself to reading thematically rather than structurally, which also brings me to my plan for 2012:

THE THEME OF THE MONTH!

It sounds all gourmet, doesn't it? Like those clubs where you sign up and they send you a pound of coffee or chocolate or cheese or escargot (not really) each month. Yes, I know they have book of the month clubs, but I'm definitely going to be reading more than a book a month. I' will, however, read on a certain theme each month, and I'm only going to choose the theme at the beginning of each month. No long-term commitment here. Right now I might think that November will lend itself to all-Shakespeare-all-the-time, but when month #11 actually rolls around, I might be thinking Isaac Asimov. Or novels about jungles. Or short stories. Or Greek lit. Who knows. And I'm not going to put a quota on my reading either. One month (maybe July...aah..vacation) I might whip through 10 books, another might see me battle with one or two. Doesn't matter. I'll pick the theme and see how far I get. If the theme is somehow extra-awesome, I might be inspired to stick with it for another month. I'll probably end up reading some nonfiction and non-theme-related books too, which I may or may not blab about on here. So here's to 2012, which will be spent meandering through many categories.

Fourth Quarter in Review

From bottom to top, the books I read in the last three months were Bleak House by Charles Dickens, The Prairie by James Fenimore Cooper, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Persuasion by Jane Austen, A Hero of Our Time by Mikhael Lermontov, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, The Professor by Charlotte Bronte, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo, The Pearl by John Steinbeck, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

The books that are turned around so you see the pages instead of the spine are stand-ins for books that I read on an e-reader and don't own a hard copy. This last quarter I relied most heavily on the e-reader, as I had finally read most of the books I already owned but hadn't read yet, and was moving on to books I wanted to read but didn't own.  In the end, I really found that there are a lot of great books that I enjoyed reading, but will probably only reread once or twice in my life. It's not worth it for me to keep a book for years just because I might want to read it again someday, and these classic novels can be found in any library, or for free online since they're in the public domain.

Which brings me to the e-reader. I got an e-reader in June, and it was very handy when traveling and when reading really long books that would be heavy to hold for hours on end. However, because I'm a fast reader and the screen is fairly small, I have to turn the page (technically, refresh the screen) every 30 seconds or so, and this creates a short delay that jars me out of my mental reading zone every. single. time.  Because of this, I found that I read a lot slower using an e-reader than I do using a book, so I still prefer reading a book when possible. That said, I do not regret my e-reader purchase at all.  It's great for the purposes I mentioned above, and it's also more convenient to quickly load a new book onto it than to make a 30 minute round trip drive to the library.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

December 26th, 2011 dawned, as mornings tend to do...but this day was different. It was the first day of the last week of 2011, the day I would pick up my last novel of the year. It was exhilarating, yet a little sad, as I approached the end of an era (if I can pretentiously use the word "era" to describe a one-year-thing). I had chosen Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I found fitting for reasons I'll get to in a minute. It was a short book. After the previous week's monster, Middlemarch, it was going to be a piece of cake to whip through the 250-odd pages. So as the birds chirped merrily and the sun's rays shone upon the "December 26" page of my page-a-day calendar, I did not pick up the book. Instead, I ate leftovers and stayed in my pajamas, because I was on vacation. Sort of. This repeated itself for five days. It was like an acute but unexpected case of senioritis, where the finish line is so close that you expect momentum to carry you through. Of course, on December 30th I realized that this book wasn't going to read itself, and what was worse, I now had only 48 hours to perform the literary equivalent of chugging a $500 bottle of champagne. Sorry, Joyce. But I did it!

After reading most of the book on December 30th, I picked it up again the next day but got distracted when company arrived. Then I was making food and conversing wittily until I realized that it was 11:15 pm and I still had a couple of chapters left. I sat down to finish, cursing myself for my completely typical procrastination, but in the end, it worked out. I had the privilege of reading the last page at 11:45, ringing in the new year with one of the best lines ever written still fresh in my mind: "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."  I really could not have planned a better way to end 2011.

I saved this book for the end in part because it is the coming of age story of a young artist. The main character, Stephen Dedalus, is a fictional version of Joyce. Through Stephen, we see Joyce's intellectual and artistic awakening. I wanted this book to close my year of 52 classic novels because, as the months went by, I saw that this year and all its accompanying blog posts have become a portrait of me as a young (-ish) artist. I look back on these posts and see my development as a reader, and I look through the notebook and computer files I've created this year and see my development as a writer. This isn't to say that I have now reached a particular stage and will remain static. Any portrait is only a partial portrait. But this is my partial portrait, and I'm pretty happy with it. A new year lies ahead of me, with a different reading strategy and new ideas to explore. When I look beyond 2012, I see the years before me like shining pearls on a string, waiting to drop one by one into my hand. And you, reader, have your own jewels to gather. Look around you. Greet your life with an open hand.

Happy New Year.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

I tried to read this novel for three months before actually managing to do it. I got it for my birthday in September, and I thought to myself, "Awesome! I'm going to read this next week!" Well, the next week shaped up to be hectic, and Middlemarch is over 700 pages, so I put it on deck for the following week and bumped up a shorter work from my list. The following week arrived, and the scenario repeated itself. For six weeks. I was starting to fear that Middlemarch was going to become some kind of literary nemesis, or the one that got away, and I would descend into madness like Captain Ahab, taking my family down with me in my struggle to FINALLY READ THIS BOOK!!!

Then the week before Christmas arrived. One group of company had just left, another was due to arrive in six days. Gifts were bought and wrapped; packages sent; cookies baked; house decorated; programs attended; functions contributed to; cards mailed; menus planned... it was the calm before the storm. I pulled out the giant book. I sat down. And I FINISHED IT! Well, not in one sitting, but in one week. After such a build up of anticipation, one might fear an anticlimactic letdown, a mental "meh..." during the epilogue. Fortunately we're talking about one of the greatest English novels of all time here.

I would describe Middlemarch as detailing a set of character portraits and the intricate web of relationships that grows between them. Some of the characters are initially misunderstood by other characters. After some time the mistaken character realizes (at least partly) the true nature of the other character. Some characters change and grow over time; others are fossilized and refuse to change. The work tracks a community over the course of time, and therefore its detail and length are necessary. In some ways, the first two thirds of the novel functioned as set up for the final third. Because of this I found it to have a slow start and to be more difficult to get into. Upon finishing it, I wasn't really sure how well I liked it, but after taking time to think it over, I appreciate it more. As the web of relationships grows between the characters, over time the book grows on the reader. Middlemarch is well-written, with a lot of social commentary and character development. Beyond that, I'm a little paralyzed about how to review it or what to say. After all, it's Middlemarch.

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

The Pearl is Steinbeck's sixteenth published work, and the third that I read this year (following The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden). It is based on an oral Mexican-Indian story he heard while traveling in the Gulf of California. It is a short work with a very folktale quality.

The protagonist, Kino, is a pearl diver who finds an immense and unusual pearl, which had been referred to in local legends as The Pearl of the World. He believes that the discovery of this pearl will bring happiness and prosperity to his family, but instead it brings tragedy. Technically, the pearl itself is neutral and has no effect on Kino, but the way other humans react to his discovery brings tragedy. The pearl symbolizes the American Dream, and Steinbeck is making the point that, while pursuit of the American Dream itself is neutral, our world makes it impossible for it to function as intended.