Unlike other end-of-year book lists, this isn’t a list of favorites published during the previous year. This is just me going through what’s been on my bookshelves for a long time (recommended unit of measure: decades).
An exception to that general principle is Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel, Klara and the Sun, read within two days of receipt and highly, highly recommended.
As I did last year, I mixed classic and not-so-classic fiction, nonfiction, plays, poetry, humor, short, long, and interstitial magazine articles (New Yorker, mostly; Smithsonian continues to neglect art and art history). Once again, my goal was to finish everything I started, even if I didn’t like it much. There’s something to be said for reading what someone took the trouble to write. Karma, or something.
My 2021 reading list, in somewhat chronological and/or thematic order:
- The Iliad, Homer. Mythology. A Victorian-era prose translation.
- The Odyssey, Homer. Mythology. Same, but read a few months later. Some critics have called Iliad a man’s story (wars and such) and Odyssey a woman’s story (romance, and a virtuous hero who reminded me quite a bit of Russell Crowe in Gladiator).
- Bulfinch’s Mythology, excerpts on the Trojan War and the Fall of Troy—to help figure out what happened in Iliad and Odyssey.
- Joy in the Morning, P. G. Wodehouse. (Re-read.) Fiction, humor. Jeeves.
- John Glenn: A Memoir. One of my virtuous heroes. I love how he loved his wife, Annie.
- Where No Man Can Touch, Pat Valdata. Poetry; women in aviation history. Timely reminder that women had the right stuff, too.
- Founding Mothers, Cokie Roberts. History, women. Referring to women by their first names rather than last makes the stories more intimate, but harder to keep track of who’s who.
- 3 Plays by Thornton Wilder, to wit, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. (Re-read.) We’re getting Our Town this season at Shakespeare Theatre Co., but somebody really needs to stage Skin again.
- A Pale View of the Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro. (Re-read.) Fiction. Prepping myself for the anticipated new book. And you can never have enough Ishiguro.
- Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro. Fiction. Technically science fiction (artificial intelligence, human enhancement), but if you only read it that way, you miss the point and pain and pleasure of Ishiguro’s storytelling.
- The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Alain de Botton. Philosophy, sociology. What’s it like to be an office worker (accountant) or somebody who checks on power lines or sells aircraft parts? These activities to earn money to live life seem rather pointless to de Botton, who comes off kind of judgey in this.
- Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll. Children’s fiction. Another one of those books I never got around to reading before. Can’t remember it now. (Pass judgment on my powers of retention, not on Lewis Carroll.)
- American Discoveries, Ellen Dudley and Eric Seaborg. Nonfiction—outdoors, memoir. Shortly after my former co-workers left The Futurist they took on the project of connecting the various hiking/biking trails from California to Delaware. They also got engaged!
- Ninth Street Women, Mary Gabriel. Art history, biography, women. Five influential modern artists in mid-century New York: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hardigan, Helen Frankenthaler, and Joan Mitchell. I look for them now in every museum. Again, I notice, women biographers refer to their subjects by first name. Only five main ladies to keep track of, but I still had to look back at the chapter title to remember who I was reading about. (I have almost no retention anymore.)
- Raven Girl, Audrey Niffenegger. Fantasy. Art and storytelling, evidence that fairy tales are not passé.
- The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy. Poetry, biography. More about Jackie later on the reading list.
- Persuasion, Jane Austen. (Re-read.) Fiction. Maybe my favorite Austen heroine, the overlooked and undervalued Anne Elliot.
- Lincoln and Shakespeare, Michael Anderegg. History, biography. Really overly academic treatment of Lincoln’s fondness for the theater and for Shakespeare in particular. Good tidbits on American theater, but sourcing and citing is numbing to a casual (non-academic) reader.
- Seventeen, Booth Tarkington. Fiction. Oy. This sample of early 20th century Midwestern humor doesn’t really age well. Or do we accept minstrels and suburban prejudice as “of the era”? I did like his Penrod, though.
- My Brother, Grant Wood, Nan Wood Graham et al. Art history, memoir. Nan loved her brother deeply, recounting his life endearingly though perhaps not fully. Some things just aren’t anyone else’s business, and I appreciate the more-relevant focus on Wood’s art and influence.
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. (Re-read.) Fiction. My notes record that I was bawling my eyes out at the end. I do love my virtuous heroes, even if it takes them the whole story to get there.
- Moon Shot, Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (et al.). Memoir, history, space program. A bit of de-mythologizing after The Right Stuff. And a slightly different take from John Glenn’s on that famous confrontation among the rival Mercury 7 astronauts. Bear in mind that all memoirs are exercises in self-justification, to some extent. Probably.
- Cymbeline, Shakespeare. Play. Nice reunion of lost sister and brothers. Shakespeare makes you cry whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy.
- Myths of the Greeks and Romans, Michael Grant. Mythology, literary history. Overview of origins of myths and how different cultures adopted and adapted similar stories. It’s academic but not daunting. [Note, this is the point when I picked up Odyssey.]
- Woe Is I, Patricia T. O’Connor. Grammar. Not to be used as a reference: It’s not set up like a Strunk and White or AP Stylebook, and anyway O’Connor’s preferences are out of date. I broke my rule of not writing in the margins, but this book needed amendments.
- Is Sex Necessary? James Thurber and E. B. White. Humor, satire. A fake academic treatment on the subject. With Thurber’s cartoons.
- All the Time in the World, E. L. Doctorow. Short stories. Chilling stories told in Doctorow’s straight-forward, seemingly acritical, in-the-moment style. Most pertinent to today, I thought, were “Walter John Harmon,” about a cult leader, and “Jolene: A Life,” a young woman drifting through life into sexual servility.
- The USS Emmons: Eyewitness Accounts from Survivors of the Battle of Okinawa, transcribed by Cheri Pierson Yecke. Better than a Spielberg movie.
- The Book of Will, Lauren Gunderson. Play. How Shakespeare’s colleagues collected and recollected what they could of Shakespeare’s scattered works to compile the First Folio. Which almost left out Pericles (a favorite of one of Gunderson’s characters).
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Shakespeare. Play. Of course. I loved how his daughter, Marina, dealt with pirates and procurers. The power of innocence is that it can bring out the best in people. Even fiends.
- And the Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini. Fiction. Brother and sister (and many others) in Afghan in tumultuous times. I don’t know why this stayed on my shelf so long, unless because I read a bad review. My favorite Hosseini book yet.
- Inventing Leonardo, A. Richard Turner. Art history. My late college professor’s comparative study of Leonardo studies through history. Academic. Led me to:
- Leonardo the Florentine, Rachel Annand Taylor. Art history, biography. Taylor was a poet and obviously a classical scholar. It took forever to read this, with having to Google-search every other reference. But in the end I feel I know Leonardo and what motivated him: Beauty. It also seems clear Leonardo was almost universally loved and admired for his charm and grace. I kept picturing him played by Colin Firth. Hope that’s okay.
- My World and Welcome To It, James Thurber. (Re-read.) Short stories, humor. It’s odd how racist the humor could be at times, mostly lampooning a character’s maid’s dialect. Still, Thurber was the author of some of my favorite themes, such as not mistaking a container for the thing contained. And “you can look it up.”
- “Symposium,” Plato, in The Portable Plato, edited by Scott Buchanan. Philosophy. Dialogues on Love. Actually pretty funny. Socrates could be a hoot, apparently.
- Mrs. Kennedy and Me, Clint Hill. Memoir. Jackie Kennedy’s bodyguard tells a riveting tale. Hill’s admiration borders on infatuation but doesn’t go over the line. His sense of guilt in not saving President Kennedy (he was guarding Mrs. Kennedy, not the president) is heartbreaking. The bit about keeping her away from Onassis was somehow funnier than it should have been.
- The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family. Photography. Richard Avedon’s portraits of the Kennedy family between election and inauguration. Interesting look at how editors chose which images to publish from the contact sheets, and how Avedon teased the images into art.
- Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand. Play. Courtly love, misguided romance. Or something. Cyrano wields words and swords.
- The Man Who Invented Christmas, Les Standiford, plus A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens. Literary history. I’m not sure I’ve seen a definitive version of the Carol, or none that pleased me as much as the non-definitive musical versions, but it’s nice to learn the effects of a walk in Manchester on a creative mind.
- A Christmas Story, Jean Shepherd. Short stories. Repackaged stories that formed the basis of one of the all-time great Christmas movies. Midwestern mid-century humor at its best.
- Woman in the Dark, Dashiell Hammett. Crime fiction. Because what’s December without a little noir.
Finally, there was a little unpublished volume I put together myself via Snapfish, by way of Christmas/Hanukkah presents for friends and family. Limited edition (10 copies printed only), called Little Sky.
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| Little Sky layouts. Copyright 2021 C. G. Wagner |
Love, hosaa
writing a little, reading a lot
writing a little, reading a lot
