Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to keep better track of the books I read during the year, and I’ve done so by marking start and finish dates on my wall calendar. And with a newly catalogued personal library of more than 600 volumes, I reminded myself that I had no need to buy new books. (We do many things despite lacking an immediate need.) So most of the books I picked out had been on my shelves for years/decades.
 |
| Some good books. |
I continued my practice of consuming a good mix of readings, including fiction—novels, short stories, poetry, and plays—interspersed with nonfiction—predominantly history as told through biographies and memoirs of figures in a variety of fields.
U.S. presidential history became a frequent topic on my reading schedule (usually weekday afternoons), and I began and ended the year’s reading with this subject. But despite the urgency of current events, I had no problem resisting temptation (in fact, there was no temptation) to buy or read any of the pieces coming from anyone acquainted with the 45th U.S. president. (This was a person I’d made good effort to ignore since the mid-1980s, up until Clay Aiken forced me to watch Celebrity Apprentice.)
Sorry for the ado, so without further, here’s what I read in 2020, roughly in chronological order:
- America’s Political Dynasties by Stephen Hess. Political history/biography. Started reading in 2019, going one or two chapters (dynasties) at a time. I got sidetracked with the transition between Taft and Teddy Roosevelt with the mention of their mutual friend and aide, Archie Butt. Interesting person (a hero of the Titanic) who could be the subject of a good play.
- Locked in the Cabinet by Robert Reich. Political memoir. Bill Clinton’s first-term secretary of labor has since become one of my moral touchstones on Twitter.
- “Holiday” by Katherine Anne Porter. Short story.
- “Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty. Short story. (Re-read)
- “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison. Short story.
- Sanditon by Jane Austen. Fiction (unfinished novel). I was inspired to pull this off my shelf by the Masterpiece Theatre version completing the story. The 11 chapters Austen wrote were wrapped up about half-way through the first of the TV series’ eight episodes. The rest was not Austen. At all.
- Henry IV, Part I by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) Of everything I read this year (this was in January), this is the one I simply don’t recall. No wonder I keep having to re-read Shakespeare! I might have to turn in my fangirl Bard card.
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Fiction. Part I reads like a series of Wile E. Coyote misadventures! The episode on which the famed ballet is based is described in no more than about five pages; I don’t remember enough of Man of La Mancha to know what that’s based on, except that there is no real encounter with “Dulcinea” (Aldonza) in the novel. I could only think a page-by-page adaptation of the whole novel would make a great Netflix series.
- King Lear by William Shakespeare. Play. (Re-read) While I did read this straight through on my own, I also took advantage of an online Zoom-around-the-table reading starring Stacy Keach, reprising his Shakespeare Theatre Co. performance (without the nudity).
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Fiction. (Re-read) It had been long enough ago that I first read this that it was like reading it new. The fun part was going online after I finished it to find other Austen fans offering their reviews of the story and its heroine on YouTube. Try it! Was Fanny the worst Austen heroine or one of the best?
- Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter. Environmentalism, economics, current affairs. Journalist Minter (author of Junkyard Planet) traces the global journey of your stuff after you (or your survivors) finally get rid of it. He also advises putting your copy of the book into the resale market, but mine’s staying on the shelf awhile.
- “Protagorus” by Plato. Philosophy. Chapter from The Portable Plato, which is about all I could handle.
- A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman. History. Plagues, populist uprisings, and religious and political conflicts have played a very long role in human history. Tuchman used one hero, Enguerrand, as a narrative focus, which made the storytelling more compelling. And I keep falling in love with heroes like this, being noble and all.
- Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Fable(?) Malory translated French tales of the medieval King Arthur and the knights he enlisted at his Round Table. There are other versions of the knights’ legends, such as Camelot and Spamalot (musicals), Tristan and Isolde (poem, opera). I realized while reading A Distant Mirror I should have reversed reading this one with Don Quixote, at least to stay chronological and to understand the importance of chivalry in the work of knights errant. (And to understand that “errant” didn’t mean error-prone, necessarily. It meant “extant”: knights out in the world doing good deeds, like rescuing ladies from ogres and such.)
- Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 by Cokie Roberts. History. One of Roberts’s excellent series on women who helped shape the United States, both through their direct activism and through their grace and charm in Washington salons.
- Foresight Investing (draft manuscript) by James Lee. Finance. One of the privileges of retirement is choosing your own pro bono editing projects and learning from experts one trusts (and being paid in chocolate). Jim is self-publishing this book on using principles of futurism to better evaluate businesses worth investing in. The book should be out soon.
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fiction. (Re-read). I tried re-reading this a couple of years ago and couldn’t get past the first page. Too purple-prosey for me just then. This time it only took a couple of days to absorb. Timely tale of the indifference that unearned wealth breeds. Still too many unlikeable people in the story, however.
- Push Comes to Shove by Twyla Tharp. Autobiography/arts. Great modernist choreographer tells her life story in terms of how it shaped her dances. Chronicles her affair with Mikhail Baryshnikov, among other episodes.
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Philosophy. Words of wisdom, some very timely: “To what use am I now putting the powers of my soul? Examine yourself on this point at every step.” (V, 11) “To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.” (VI, 6) “I seek the truth, which never yet hurt anybody. It is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance which does harm.” (VI, 21)
Some more good books. - The Tulip by Anna Pavord. Natural science/economics/history. Come for the beautiful tulip illustrations, stay for one of those great explorations of cultural and economic history through the lens of a single subject. (Other single-subject cultural histories I’ve loved include Coal by Barbara Freese and Rain by Cynthia Barnett.)
- Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. Play. One of the few I hadn’t already read. Better than the movies! And, as it turns out, pretty close to the recorded history:
- “Antony” chapter from Lives of the Noble Romans by Plutarch. History. I need to read more of the ancients. Maybe some Homer next year?
- Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Play. Starting my deal-with-the-Devil binge reading.
- “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Short story. Dealing with the Devil.
- Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde, including “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Fiction. Dealing with the Devil. Enough of that already.
- Pygmalion by (George) Bernard Shaw. Play. Source material for the musical My Fair Lady includes Shaw’s lengthy explanation of why the artist (Higgins) does not end up with his beloved work of art (the flower girl). See “My Fair Freddy, or Saving Pygmalion.”
- Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Political history/biography. Focuses on influences and critical events in the lives and administrations of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Among these leaders’ shared traits are empathy, charm, curiosity, humor, and humility.
- “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. Short story, reprinted in The New Yorker. (Re-read, but it’s been awhile.)
- “A Village After Dark” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, New Yorker archives.
- “The Summer After the War” by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short story, Granta archives. Both of these early works by the Nobel laureate seem to be precursors to novels, all of which I would love to re-read before the publication of Ishiguro’s forthcoming book, Klara and the Sun. Thanks for answering my 2019 Ish wish!
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Fiction. I probably read this classic in school at some point. This Easy Reader edition hit the highlights (with decent illustrations to boot), but I still couldn’t answer the questions at the ends of the chapters. My retention is shot.
- “The Old Man in the Piazza” by Salman Rushdie. Short story, in The New Yorker. (I subscribed this year to get access to the Ishiguro stuff in their archives. I’ve been reading their poems but confess I almost never understand them. I’ll stick with the articles. And cartoons.)
- A Promised Land by Barack Obama. Political history/memoir. Great storytelling that also provides historical background for the policy issues and events the 44th president faced in his first term. Illustrates many of the traits Goodwin outlines in her Leadership book (see No. 28 above).
It was a year of fat books with breaks for short stories, plays, and poems (mostly New Yorker) that I could get through in a sitting. I made a point of finishing everything I started, whether I liked it or not, but it turns out I liked everything I read. Lucky year!
Love, hosaa
(Observation of the year: Reading is fundamentally easier than writing.)
