Another list! (and what I learned about lists and life from a kid who poisoned himself in Alaska; spoiler alert - not much)

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.

Drifting, not much progress

The Horse's Mouth is this year's Tender is the Night. I spent a month reading that not so very long owned book last year. I'm in the same reading dead zone right now. I'm just not making any progress on any book at the moment. I have The Horse's Mouth going, making very little progress, and The Eyre Affair (library ebook) also consuming some of my reading time. I basically did no reading over the weekend and very little this week. Life stuff is taking a good chunk of my time (spent Saturday night in a hotel and had basically zero time to read) and I've been watching baseball and football games rather than reading. My reading motivation is very much at low tide.

My motivation in general is at a pretty low ebb. I'm going to the gym out of habit more than a real desire to hit the weights, and I'm very much struggling with my marathon training. I'm getting in most of the longer runs, but I cut my long run on Saturday short (mostly to make sure we made it to DC for the Nationals game on time but I was struggling big time for most of the run) and I just flat out decided not to run on Monday morning. I was tired and my knee didn't feel all that great. I was much more consistent in my training last year. I kind of what to attribute my struggles more to the weather than any fitness or performance shortcoming. I've been greeted by muggy mornings pretty much every run. Who knows what conditions I'll be facing on Saturday morning as Florence rolls through. We've been spared a strong impact by the storms shift south, but rain and wind are still very much in the forecast. Twelve miles on the treadmill does not sound very appealing. Regardless of the conditions, I'm just not that excited to get out and run. Maybe a slower paced weekend will give me a chance to rest up and get my mind in a better place. I have to confess that I'm not bursting with optimism that this will be the case.

My motivation woes are closely tied to my long term residence in a pretty deep rut. I've been in what can best be thought of as a nice stable spot for the past few years. I've done a very good job of staying in place. My fitness, weight, and strength are all pretty much holding steady. That could be viewed as effectively resisting the eroding forces of time, but I feel like I'm just failing to really take the actions I need to get some kind of improvements in at least one of these areas of my life. I look at the scale and think that I may just be gaining muscle, but I look in the mirror and see the same of spare tire that I've been saying I want to get rid of for years. My books to read number has gotten smaller, but I don't really feel the progress. I was promoted at work at the beginning of the year, but I've been doing pretty much the same job for the last few years. It's gotten very stale.

I'm not really sure how to bump myself out of this long term equilibrium. I'm happy that I don't have a huge gut, but I'm frustrated by the lack of any positive movement towards a more trim frame. I've gotten no faster, I'm not noticeably stronger, and I still have to resist buying books. It's just all getting so old. Some cooler temperatures might make me feel faster running. Fewer family plans may allow me to get in more regular lifting workouts (which usually result in me being able to put more weight on the bar). Cutting out desserts may help me shed a pound or two. Some progress would be nice, but failure to face the inadequacy of goals like this to make me feel fulfilled may be the real problem.

These few pursuits I just highlighted have me looking for satisfaction and contentment in the future. When I lose the gut, I will be happy with my body. When I can run faster (exact speed not specified), I will be in shape. When I have read all my books, I will feel like I have really accomplished something. My life has been one long series of long term goals with some kind of promised salvation with the goal's accomplishment. Long term goals are fine, but I really need to find satisfaction and contentment with my current status. This is not the first time I've told myself that I need to find a way to focus on my current happiness rather than pursuing future joy, but I really have no idea of how to go about achieving this ideal state of satisfaction.

Long overdue update

I've started several posts updating my reading progress, but I end up getting pulled into other activities before I get a chance to finish them up and get them on the blog. Rather than going into detail about all that I've read since my last update, I will just say that I'm at 149 books to read (after a brief dip down to 148).

I spent most of August reading The Wise Man's Fear. It's a very long book. A fun and engaging read, I never felt like it was dragging despite the mountain of pages, that still took me a long time to finish. I read a couple of other books along with that one. I zipped through The Ghost Brigade to get it read before my online loan period ended. I waited three months to get that book. I didn't want to wait another 3 months to get another crack at it. I finished it on the last day of my two week loan period because I was trying to get all of Excession, my fourth Culture book, read before my vacation ended. I was very close to meeting that goal, I finished at home the day we got back. I also read a narrow philosophy book that I've had for ages. I believe I mentioned it in a previous post. I've kept thinking about Varieties of Presence weeks after finishing it up so it was a worthwhile read.

So I'm steadily working my way through my owned books while managing to avoid accumulating too many more of them. The online library loans have been an essential escape valve for the buying urge. I just finished World War Z. That's not something I would have picked up if it wasn't on that NPR list and it definitely not something that I would have purchased. The wonders of modern technology certainly have their place in an activity as ancient as reading. I have another ebook loan teed up and ready to go in my Kindle library. I may get started on that soon.

I have been reading one of my owned print books. The Horse's Mouth. I bought it at a library book sale more years ago than I can remember. It somehow made it through my book purge a couple of years ago. It's in remarkably good shape for a used library book. I suspect it was never checked out. I pulled off the library tags and it looks brand new. I am right around page 150 so I've built up enough momentum to keep plugging away until the end. It's not the best book, but it's amusing and not a particularly challenging read. It's not overly long either. That's definitely a point in its favor.

My next finished book gets me to my goal of reading 30 books this year. That either means I've read much more than I planned this year or I have been spending less time reading big, fat intimidating books this year. It's actually a bit of both. The books I have borrowed from the library have all been pretty quick reads. Those titles have added some nice bulk to my reading this year. I have also not been doing a nice job of avoiding the really nasty books on my shelf. I've finally gotten around to reading books I've owned for years and years, but I'm still slipping around the really hard stuff. Maybe later this year...

More on the slog

I took my own advice and expanded the time scale of my Book Shelf Zero retrospective. My starting number was 194. After finishing Use of Weapons (a book I bought and quickly read), my current number is 152. My to be read pile has been reduced by 42 books. That's significant progress. I keep a pie chart on the spreadsheet where I track my reading related activities (the spreadsheet has grown far beyond anything I imagined when I started keeping track of these things at the end of 2015). I'm 17.4% of the way to Book Shelf Zero. I'm 4.5 miles into the marathon.

I still have a long way to go. An unstated but very much consciously acknowledged aspect of this blog is delving into what it takes to stick with a project that will take years to complete. While I'm not sure how many people out there are interested in my reading habits, people are typically interested in how to stick to their long term plans. My last post about patience is part of that story. The thrill of accomplishment will never fuel an objective that takes years and years to complete. Something deeper and more meaningful must be present to maintain progress.

My deeper purpose, at least at this point, is getting to the books that have been sitting on my shelf for years. I've hit a few of them this year. A House for Mr. Biswas and The Confessions of Nat Turner are the exact type of books that I had in mind when I set out on this quixotic quest to empty my shelves of books that I haven't read. My recent frustration with the lack of progress is related to my decision to read those books nearly back to back. They both took a long time to read. (Simultaneously reading ebooks from the library was just as big a part of the time to read as the nature of the books.) The commitment required to pick them up and stick with them is what has prevented me from reading them in the first place. My books read list will not expand very quickly when I'm taking on these more intimidating reads. This is just part of the process that I need to anticipate and accept.

I was thinking about the new runner who maps out a training plan for whatever target race they have set for themselves (runDisney events seem to be a popular choice for this type of runner but that could just be because I occasionally take a look at runDisney Instagram posts) while I was running early in the morning last week. The challenge feels like something very much within their ability to overcome when you're looking at a calendar of planned runs. The runs will be hard but manageable. Then you get out there and start running. It's hot, it hurts, and nothing about it is very much fun. All those well laid plans could start to crumble when faced with the battering ram of reality. Big challenges like marathons and reading all of something (a series, an author, some list) are about learning to manage reality's brutality. There will be times when progress is easy and fun, and there will be way too many occasions when progress requires overcoming pain and discomfort beyond imagination.

I'm entering a fun stage in the quest of Book Shelf Zero (I'm also poised to start training for my second marathon, I'm not anticipating very much fun in that process). The already mentioned Use of Weapons is part of that fun progress. This was the best Culture book yet. It only makes me more excited to read the rest of the series (I've already ordered the fifth book, it was very cheap on Amazon while book 4 was a bit harder to obtain). I decided to read A High Wind in Jamaica now that I've finished Use of Weapons. It's another Modern Library Top 100 book. Unlike the other book from that list that I've read this year, Mr. Biswas, A High Wind in Jamaica reads very quickly. It reminds me of Deliverance in the way that it deals with very complex themes but is tense and well plotted. The third of High Wind that I've read was an effortless experience. I expect that I will have it wrapped up by the end of the week.

The only thing that I see getting in my way of quickly finishing High Wind is Flowers for Algernon (well, the Fourth of July holiday could slow me down as well). This is my latest borrowed from the library read. It definitely demands attention. I'm staying disciplined with getting in a bit of physical owned book reading before switching to something borrowed. I can also see myself getting through this one by the end of the week.

A big part of my 42 books read were a bunch of shorter and less challenging books that I owned but hadn't read. I thought I had exhausted my stash of these easy wins, but I remembered one that I have yet to get to while I was shopping for that hard to obtain fourth Culture book. In addition to being harder to purchase than book 5, it is a short story collection. These collections just don't satisfy like a novel. Well, thinking about short stories reminded me of a book I bought with some birthday gift cards several years ago. It's a book called Memory Wall. It sounded good when I bought it (and it sounded good when I just read its description in Goodreads), but I just don't get excited to read short stories. I'm likely picking that up next. I'm eager to push my to be read number under 150. A short book like this will help make that happen.

Once I'm under 150, it may be time to take on one of my really big reading challenges. I have two big challenging lists. There is The List and Everests. These are big, long, challenging books. They will require a serious commitment of time and attention. Now that I think about it, maybe I should save one of these until after my vacation...

Patience

Big projects do not willingly yield big moments. I'm getting impatient for a big moment. I read a book, check it off the list, and move on to the next one. It feels like such a small thing against the much bigger task of making my way through this large and largely arbitrary list of titles. It's not like I'm going to stop reading anytime soon, but the sense of pressure I feel to make progress, to show something for all my work and effort in resisting the urge to just acquire, makes me want to feel like I'm making progress. That sense of getting something done is hard to find when every step is so small relative to the size of the whole journey.

Losing weight is similar. You work, work, work only to see nothing much change on a day to day basis. Looking back over months or years progress is apparent, but the daily living of the process yields so little in perceptible change. The dedication to stick with the process, to keep living the way you want things to be eventually rather than the way things are now requires patience. You have to wait for results to show up and a difference to show itself. Sticking to the plan is not fun when you're stuck in the grind.

The novelty of the Book Shelf Zero challenge is gone. The thrill of getting the list together, seeing the size and scope of the challenge take shape, and making the first few steps against that big audacious goal is an exciting time. I'm well past that stage. It's just an endless list of books to read. I enjoy the books that I've read. I finished American Pastoral last week. Phenomenal book. I'm charging through the 3rd Culture book now. It's fantastic. The way Banks makes cracks about how ancient the relics of the events of the first Culture book sounds like an acknowledgment of the inferiority of Consider Phelbas. He wants it to be cast back in the deep past. I'm happy to leave it back there with him.

I enjoy each book I read as an individual experience, but the experience of the broader reading goals is not as pleasurable. There is just so little progress. I kind of can't help but thinking why bother and what's the point. I could just abandon my plans and pursue whatever feels good, as recommended by people who manage to read over a hundred books a year (although counting a 90 page play as a book is hardly the same thing as a hefty novel), but that surrender to chance and whim is exactly the opposite intention of Book Shelf Zero. Eat whatever feels good will lead to massive weight gain. Reading (and buying) whatever sounds fun and engaging has lead to my current predicament (over a hundred books in my house just waiting to be read). I can't just do whatever. Sure, the numbers of books I read in a year may pop up a bit (I don't think I could ever get to 100, at least not in my current reading patterns and habits), but I wouldn't be reading the books that I want to have read.

Embracing the pointlessness of reading all my owned books just for the sake of reading them is central to the challenge. There is no tangible reward at the end. It's just doing something that requires some dedication and commitment. It's an effort to break the thread of just living life moment to moment and finding a way to link all of those moments and transient interests into something with greater purpose and intention.

Down to 153, and don't really feel like doing anything to make that number any bigger at the moment

I'm 153 books from Book Shelf Zero after finishing up The Confessions of Nat Turner and Flashman and the Mountain of Light. I managed to slip in another of the library ebooks, Old Man's War, between those two print books. 153 is the fewest books I've had left to read in my quest to read all my owned books. It's a satisfying place. I'm so satisfied with reaching 153 that I am not struggling with a desire to run out and buy another book. I know what I want to buy when I'm ready to pull the trigger, The Use of Weapons (book 3 of the Culture series), but I would rather see my to read number at 153 (or lower) than have it bounce back up to 154.

I secretly hoped that this desire to see my to be read number shrink would help me resist the constant temptation to buy a new book. My book buying habit is so strong I wasn't sure that a goal with such a long time horizon would be enough to counter the quick hit that comes with a nice book purchase. It's taken a couple of years, but I think I'm finally there. I have no desire to repeat the book buying binge that I indulged in at the end of 2016. I would feel like all the discipline I enforced on myself over the last several months would be a total waste if I just raced out and loaded up on a bunch of stuff.

The type of books that I've been reading is definitely playing a part in tamping down the book buying cravings. A House for Mr. Biswas, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and that Flashman book are all novels that I have owned for a long time. If I have owned these books for a long time, I have wanted to read them for a long time. It's nice to have actually taken the time to read these books that, while very satisfying, are not exactly thrilling page turners. The sense of mass that I felt when contemplating the number of books that I had on my shelves waiting to be read has slowly receded as I have steadily made my way through my tremendous reading backlog. I have no desire to revisit that cramped and claustrophobic space.

The completion of Flashman and the Mountain of Light (the last of the Flashman books that I own, the last two in the series have been sitting in my Amazon items saved for later for years) left me looking for the next thing to read. I had started a book on my phone, a book that I own, but I wasn't really feeling the desire to pursue that one in earnest. I looked over my shelves and spotted Roth's American Pastoral. That felt like the right thing to read. I was surprised at how quickly this book hooked me and at the pleasure I took in reading it. There is no challenge to keep reading this one. I have given up time to play Breathe of the Wild (a game that still has me engaged while playing it for over a year (although I am getting close to the point of just wanting to beat Ganon and get on to something else)) to keep reading Roth's amazing prose. My progress is slower than I would like as my reading time has been hindered by family activities, but there is no question that I will keep going with this one until I reach the end.

I just happened to pick up this book a couple of days after Roth had died. I didn't know he had died. Somebody following my Goodreads entries would have seen me start reading it and could have assumed that hearing the news of his death had prodded me to start reading what some consider his best book, but there was no conscious connection between his death an me sliding the book off the shelf. I don't know why I avoid Roth's books. I've read a couple of them and have found them highly engaging. I remember reading Portnoy's Complaint in my post-college apartment, but I really have very little recollection of the book (I may have to do a very rare reread). I have Sabbath's Theater on my shelf waiting to be read. That one also has some very high praise. I don't think I will roll right into that one after finishing American Pastoral, but it's become a much more intriguing read than it was a couple of weeks ago.

The pursuit continues, one page at a time...

Fates and Furies - Book 15 of 2018

I read Fates and Furies to spite the reviewers who juts didn't like the characters (that is just the laziest reaction to a book that I can imagine), but it was a surprisingly pleasurable reading experience. The core of this book provides its relevance. The story is nothing inspired and the characters are a bit a flat and cliche. The dynamics of the marriage makes the book worth reading. The whole playwright thing is a joke. A famous playwright? Really? Are there really that many theaters clamoring for stuff from the newest hot thing? Maybe, I have absolutely no interest in the stage so maybe the hot young thing really is famous in the right circles. Our protagonist's name and backstory are utterly ridiculous. The same goes for his wife. But the marriage made the book readable. It's hard to capture exactly what made that part of the book work, but the way two lives were joined and became something greater than two individual lives captures something very real. The rest of the plot is just embellishment. They were better together then either of them could have been alone. That idea, and the reasonably good writing, propelled this book to critical acclaim. Marriages matter. This book puts that feeling into words.

I did not buy this book. It came to my attention through the Kindle Daily Deal. In years past I would have bought it on intrigue alone, but I'm no longer so quick to surrender to intrigue. I read it as an ebook from the library. It's not part of any list and it gets me no closer to Book Shelf Zero, but the book snagged me from the first few pages. It was fairly short and pleasurable to read. I'm happy to have read it. I'm glad I didn't buy it.

Fates and Furies is book 600 in my Goodreads list. I was hoping that book 600 would be some long held book that I've taken forever to getting around to reading (like The Confessions of Nat Turner, which I have finished but haven't gotten around to blogging about yet), but it was this random book that I just happened upon. I added yet another book from my past to extend that list another digit past 600 earlier today. I had not yet noted that I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in my distant reading past. I'm pretty sure it was late in high school. It may have been early in college. I don't remember all that much of it, but I read it during an impressionable part of my youth so I'm sure it tweaked me a bit in some impossible to rediscover way.

I have been extending my list through audiobooks, The Godfather and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and other library books that are also on one of my lists (Old Man's War, I'll get around to commenting on this one eventually, after Nat Turner of course). I thought I was done with library books for awhile, but a title that I put on reserve was automatically borrowed today. My plan was to read one of my owned ebooks. I even read a few pages of one of them yesterday. I may set that aside to read this new book. Maybe I'll try reading them both while also reading Flashman and the Mountain of Light, an effort that was strongly inhibited by Old Man's War. I like seeing my to be read pile shrink (especially as I have decided to not buy another book until I get at least one more book read), but the quick and entertaining library reads are so appealing.