Another list of highly acclaimed books showed up in one of my numerous information feeds. This list is the best novels (of the sophisticated artistic type) written this century. I've only read a few of the 100 books listed, and I haven't even heard of the vast majority of them. Contemporary literary fiction is not something I pursue with much vigor, but I'm not averse to picking up a solid literary effort of recent vintage. I've read five of the 100 books in the list. That's much lower than either of the other lists that I'm pursuing. I'm not sure this is a list that I want to pursue to completion. This is more of a source for good books to read kind of list.
This attempt at the 21st Century Canon does have a nice feature that makes pursuing parts of the complete list a fairly realizable goal. They have the best book of the century, 12 new classics, and then the rest of the list. Reading the top 13 books isn't such a huge task.
I've already used my new favorite way to grab new reading material, borrowing ebooks from the library, to get a couple of books from the list. I've borrowed a couple and put holds on a couple more. I actually just finished a borrowed ebook. Into the Wild. My one sentence summary, Krakhauer romanticizes Chris McCandless the same way McCandless romanticized Nature. All I could think of while reading the book were the freaks that I knew in college (the only place I would ever encounter people who take life to such extremes) and how odd and totally out there I found them. I didn't find myself inspired by the thoughts and words of an overly intellectual kid who was conducting some crazy life experiment. I ironically comment on the conventionality of my life from time to time, but I have absolutely zero desire to engage in some kind of crazy minimalist, anti-capitalism kind of life. I'll keep plugging away at my career while pursuing an odd compulsion to read books from random lists that I find on the internet.
Pretty much every book that I read is in pursuit of checking some book off a list that I have in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Into the Wild is actually a rare departure from my pursuit of Book Shelf Zero or some internet list. I guess I'm just too goal obsessed. I look outside myself for meaning and validation rather than sitting calmly and reflecting on my various internal states to find the thing that really appeals to the deep inside version of myself. I should probably sell all my crap, abandon my family, and pursue a life of solitary wondering through the wilds of America. Sounds pretty ridiculous, no? Our current batch of wisdom peddlers would likely condone this kind of meaningless pursuit. We live in a crazy culture that imposes all kinds of crazy expectations on us, expectations that we enthusiastically embrace in pursuit of fame and fortune. The pursuit of status is a total waste of a life, but you don't have to oppose wealth and live totally outside of society to reject the pursuit of status as the central pursuit of life.
My wife read me some stuff she wrote about the objectification of men for a class she is taking. The point of her assignment was about power and how the rising objectification of men shifts the power dynamic between men and women, but it could be read as a reflection on status. Her response was all about status. A bald man is lower status than a man with a full head of hair. All the vigor and vitality suggested by a full head of hair gives an objectified man loads of sexual status. There is a reason why all those boy bands emphasize the fullness and thickness of their hair. (For the record, I am certainly on the more fully coiffed end of the spectrum for men in their early 40s, a fact I must share to ensure that I get my full credit of status.) She discussed older men's delusion that twenty somethings are still attracted to them driving the effort to maintain as full a head of hair as possible. (I will not pursue any balding remedies by the way.) The objectified man must maintain his youth and vigor to retain the status position of his youth. These desperation these guys exude is pathetic.
Of course the highest status goes to those who reject the expectations of cultural norms and live life on their terms. A refusal to hide a culturally defined deficit (or being flippant about having a highly desirable status position) carries a power and status all its own. Defining yourself in your terms is the essence of cool. So reading a bunch of books granted social acceptance makes me a bit of a square. My list reading compulsion is nothing more than the transformation of my life in a bunch of checklists and randomly assigned arbitrary tasks. It may look like that, but I'm really just about reading good books. Judge away if you will. I really don't care.
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