Book 7: The Great Gatsby. I read another book that referred to Gatsby so often I decided I had to finally read this. It is an American classic that some how managed to slip by me as a student. I’m not sure how many other “classic” American authors I’ve managed to avoid reading in my 40 something years. Probably not many. I enjoyed this book. Of course, bought used. Thank heaven my neighborhood is blessed with great used bookstores.
Book 8: Into the Wild. I loved this book. I spoke about it a bit in an earlier post but I’d recommend the book, the movie and the soundtrack. That is a lot of recommendations in one for me.
Book 9: Les Fleurs du Mal. Great poems. Very dark. Baudelaire is one of my favorite poets. I took this out of hiding to post about it but never did. This is a very old edition that I think I bought when I lived in France in the early 80’s.
Book 10: Beautiful Boy. A beautiful book but a heartbreaker. A man writes about his son’s struggle with Methamphetamine addiction. This memoir is painful to read and makes me intensely grateful there isn’t much Meth abuse in Chicago. I have enough on my hands without that!
Book 11: Where the Bluebird Sings, etc. Bought on one of my travels west. I tend to buy books that pertain to my travels but sometimes don’t follow up by actually reading them! It is supposed to be a classic of western writing. I have to get to it one of these days.
Book 12: Anil’s Ghost. I read something by Ondaatje for the writing class I took in Iowa last summer. That was more of a film criticism book but it made me want to know the author better. I didn’t love this book. It is more like Book 1, Disgrace, in that it made me think but still made me feel a bit as if I was reading it out of academic duty not sheer pleasure. I learned a lot about Sri Lanka from it though.
So, do you know a bit more about me now? Probably. See how much one’s shelves reveal?
2 comments:
Beautiful Boy is heart wrenching. Meth is out of control here, and destroys lives in ways that alcohol, pot, and others never will. I used to work with at risk recovering moms and their kids. Speed kills.
I was completely obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald when I was in my mid 20s. Wanted to replicate the lifestyle that he wrote about. Didn't work out so well.
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