I have once again matched my lowest number of to be read books. I'm back at 147 after finishing The Map and the Territory last week. The last bit of that book took an unexpected turn, but I think I get what Houellebecq was getting at with a creative/destructive impulse thing going on. It was a weird ending, but nothing like the weirdness that suffused The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I've read plenty of Murakami, but TWBC really takes the crown for random, weird stuff going on in a novel. I enjoyed reading the book. It's a good thing that I did as I spent several weeks working my way through all of its 600 pages. I finished that one a week or two before I read The Map and the Territory.
I had some library reading between those owned books. I read The Topeka School. I waited awhile to get this one so there was no way I was going to let it slip past the borrowing period without finishing it. I was actually reading this and The Map and the Territory simultaneously for a few days. They were getting way too mixed up in my brain so I set aside the owned book for a bit. I'm only a few years older than Ben Lerner. The sections about high school felt very real and familiar. I didn't live in Kansas, but white kids living in suburbia had a fairly consistent experience in the late 90s. The sections about proving your manliness were a bit less familiar. I relied on my size and status as a starter on the football team to vouch for my masculinity. I never really felt the need to prove anything, unless being able to bench press 315 pounds is considered demonstrating my masculinity. Maybe it was, but I was also a virgin with no girlfriend so I wasn't really checking all the stud boxes either.
I had fun reading Buzz Saw, a book about the Washington National's World Series winning season. I bought the book for the family so I never counted it as a book that I bought. My daughter read it so I wasn't just justifying a way to get a book without adding it to my tally (and violating my plan to avoid buying books in 2020). I expected it to be a quick read. I was not wrong. It was very fun to revisit the season (particularly given that there is no baseball, or any other sport, being played at the moment). I finished that book a couple of days ago. It was the 8th book I've finished this year.
I wasn't sure what to read next. I picked up a Jefferson bio that I have on my nightstand last night. It focuses on his relationship with Monticello. The book was surprisingly engaging. I had to force myself to put it down to attend to some things I needed to take care of for work. I'm not sure that I will stick with it though. I'm listening to the big Alexander Hamilton bio on Audible (after abandoning Neal Stephenson's latest), and I'm not sure I want to have two Founding Father narratives running parallel in my brain. I'm not sure what else I would read though so I may have to deal with having two sides of a big story going on at once.
Looking forward to hitting 146. I don't have much else going on in my life at the moment so it's nice to have a goal!
