2001 was busy. Except for an Adolescent Literature class during the summer, I was finally finished with school. I had a variety of part-time ESL teaching jobs. One of the highlights of the year was that I got a chance to visit Larry McMurtry's bookstore in Archer City. Even better, he was there sorting books! What can I say? He's my Lit Hero.
1. Son Of The Morning (novel) - Joyce Carol Oates. LitAmnesia. Dang.
2. On Writing (nonfiction) - Stephen King. In the first part, King discusses the influences that shaped him from a very early age. The second part is advice to would-be writers and the last part deals with his near-fatal pedestrian accident in 1999 and his long road to recovery and how it affected his writing. A very short book, especially by King standards, but quite satisfying. Highly recommended.
3. Helen Keller (nonfiction) - Dorothy Herrmann. I liked this bio much better than the genteelly restrained Joseph P. Lash biography published in 1980. Keller comes off here more like a real human. Usually, she seems almost abstract or the patron saint of physical challenges. Herrmann gets more in-depth with the temestuous relationship between Helen and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen's ardent support of socialism, her feelings about sexuality and other previously little-known facts.
4. Anything For Billy (novel) - Larry McMurtry. McMurtry's take on the Billy The Kid legend.
5. Boone's Lick (novel) - Larry McMurtry. This novel is narrated by 15-year-old Shay, but his mother is the real main character and heroine. Mary Margaret Cecil has been waiting placidly in Boone's Lick, Missouri for her husband to make his fortunes in the west. Dick (appropriately named, I might add) comes home every couple of years then he's off again. Finally, one day Mary Margaret packs up her large and extended family and travels west to find Dick. During the long journey, the family makes a surprising discovery about Dick's years away from home. There's a dry comedic tone that makes this book a pleasurable reading experience.
6. One Child (nonfiction) - Torey L. Hayden. A disturbed young elementary student is angry and nonresponsive, due to a mother who abandoned her and a father who abuses her. Sheila is put in Torey Hayden's class. Torey's skills as a caring teacher slowly bring her around and in the process, it is discovered that the child is highly intelligent.
7. The Widower's Son (novel) - Alan Sillitoe. LitAmnesia. I really hate when this happens with English authors. I always feel as if I should have a few points shaved off my IQ.
8. Saratoga Trunk (novel) - Edna Ferber. Creole beauty Clio Dulaine and Texan Clint Maroon meet up in New Orleans in the mid-1800s, hit it off and decide to team up in order to fleece some robber barons at Saratoga. Clint wants to become very rich and Clip's dream is to marry respectably, unlike the other women in her family. Ferber describes New Orleans lovingly and thoroughly. When the action is moved to Saratoga, you can percieve Ferber's interest dropping off considerably. Sadly, for the sake of the plot, this is precisely when and where the novel needs the most energy. Ultimately, it's a fail, but I'll always treasure this book for those early scenes in New Orleans, particularly the one where Clio eats jambalaya for the first time.
9. While I Was Gone (novel) - Sue Miller. zzzzzzzzttt! LitAmnesia strikes again. It always happens with Sue Miller, Elizabeth Berg and Kaye Gibbons. I'm sorry, ladies. I really don't understand why.
10. Private Demons: The Secret Life Of Shirley Jackson (biography). This was a reread. Actually, make that a re-re-reread. One of my favorite biographies. Oppenheimer had the full cooperation of all 4 of Jackson's children, her many friends and scads of correspondence at her disposal. She puts it all together with a discerning eye and doesn't overload the reader with the need to not waste a drop of research as some biographers do. Best of all, she's got a very warm and natural writing style. Highly recommended. If you see Private Demons at your library or in a used bookstore, go ahead and grab it. You won't be sorry.
Right before the beginning of the year, I had a *click* moment when I realized that I could go to graduate school. But what to study? I spent several months working on my decision. Even though I was still unsure about things, I felt calmer and this is reflected in my reading. There's not so much LitAmnesia for 1998. By the fall of that year, I had begun an MA-TESL course. The work was challenging and sometimes overwhelming at times, but I was happy and excited. Reading for pleasure took a back seat, but that was okay.
1. The Silent Woman (nonfiction) - Janet Malcolm. Exploring poet Sylvia Plath's life, Malcolm interviews Plath's friends and acquaintances during those last years of her life and makes some interesting observations about the nature of biography.
2. Our Noise (novel) - Jeff Gomez. First published as a serialized zine. Excellent portrayal of Generation X. Twenty-something slackers living in the town of Kitty, Virginia. Coffeehouses, thrift stores, flashbacks to the 1980s, a zine called g*df*ck -- what's not to love?
3. Lady Chatterley's Lover (novel) - D. H. Lawrence. I read this book while house-sitting for a friend. She had a waterbed and it seemed like the perfect place to read LCL. I loved Mellors' Yorkshire accent (once I got my eye adjusted to reading the thorny dialect) but I hated that he was the one who made all the pronouncements about love and sex, men and women when Connie probably knew as much (or more) than he did. Love the story, anyway. This is Lawrence's best-known and most controversial novel and I'll argue that it's also Lawrence at his best.
4. In Cold Blood (novel) - Truman Capote. Such a strange combination -- a violent subject coupled with Capote's meticulous, almost delicate prose. Adds to the chill and horror of what happened at the Clutter farmhouse in Kansas on that night back in 1959.
5. Look For The Woman (nonfiction) - J. Robert Nash. A historical encyclopedia of women who were famous (infamous) criminals.
6. Birthday Letters (poetry) - Ted Hughes. After Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963, her widower, Ted Hughes began a series of poems chronicling the story of their relationship. This book was published shortly before Hughes' death in 1998.
7. Reviving Ophelia (nonfiction) - Mary Pipher, Ph.D. According to Pipher, so many things can get adolescent girls off track during this crucial part of their development and mess them up permanently regarding their feelings of self-worth. Instead of leaving them to their own devices and also open to traps like boys and sex and the media with its warped messages about body image, they should be encouraged to do volunteer work or sports or similar things in which they can repeatedly prove their capability and develop their gifts with will counteract those other influences and build self-esteem. I highly recommend this book to everyone who knows a girl in this age bracket. It would also be helpful for women who are still carrying unnecessary baggage around.
8. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulumia (memoir) - Marya Hornbacher. The part I remember most vividly is when Hornbacher was making herself throw up so much that the weight of her vomit burst the pipes in her uncle's home. Hornbacher offers as a quick aside that the same problem exists in girls' dormitories and sorority houses at universities all over the US.
9. Cold Mountain (novel) - Charles Frazier. Set during the Civil War, Inman struggles to get back to his true love, Ada, who is experiencing challenges of her own after her father dies. I love Frazier's use of old-fashioned words and phrases while maintaining a modern style.
10. A Patchwork Planet (novel) - Anne Tyler. Barnaby is an ex-juvenile delinquent who still hasn't gotten his life together at the age of 29. He works for an agency called Rent-A-Back which does errands for senior citizens. His well-to-do family is frustrated with him, and his 7-year-old daughter really doesn't know what to make of him. I would love to hear the audiobook version of this novel, which is read by David Morse, an actor that I always enjoy watching.
11. NixonCarver (novel) - Mark Maxwell. An amusing, quirky fantasy about the former president being good buddies with poet/short story writer Raymond Carver. They have long conversations about just about everything. This novel actually made me like Nixon a little better. Lovely portrait of Carver.
12. Fasting: The Ultimate Diet (nonfiction) - Allan Cott, M.D. Yes, it is.
13. High Fidelity (novel) - Nick Hornby. This was my introduction to Hornby's work. Rob Fleming works in a record store and makes lists about music and his life. Since this book takes its title from an Elvis Costello song, I had the nicest earworm going on as I read.
14. Backtalk: Four Steps To Ending Rude Behavior In Your Kids (nonfiction) - Audrey Ricker, Ph.D and Carolyn Crowder, Ph.D. The authors give simple but not easy advice to follow: Recognize backtalk when you hear it (includes eye-rolling and put-upon sighing) and let the child know you recognize it, figure out a consequence for the backtalk, apply the consequence, then disengage from the rude behavior. There's also a chapter for dealing with backtalk in adult children!
15. Fasting: A Neglected Discipline (nonfiction) - David R. Smith. This book discusses fasting as a spiritual practice to be used in conjunction with prayer.
16. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (nonfiction) - Kathleen Norris. When Norris became interested in church again as an adult, she found the vocabulary of religion a little off-putting because it was often confusingly abstract. This book describes in her calm, lucid and always excellent prose how she was able to make meaning of this language in her own spiritual journey.
17. The Everlasting Story of Nory (novel) - Nicholson Baker. A fun book about life through the eyes of a nine-year-old. As always with Baker's books, it was too short -- I wanted more!
18. Helen and Teacher (biography) - Joseph P. Lash. A starchily dignified and restrained joint biography of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan.
19. The Fermata (novel) - Nicholson Baker. And everyone thought Vox was dirty! The main character finds a way to pause time and uses this power to undress women and look at them then redress them before starting time again. Very junior high, but Baker keeps it lively and interesting.
20. Fool For Love (play) - Sam Shepard. A half-brother and sister in a rocky love relationship deal with all of their issues in a tacky motel in the Mojave Desert. In spite of everything, I was bored and not propelled to go out and read any more Shepard plays. Too bad -- I really want to like his writing because I really like his acting. Plus, even though he's in his 60s now, he's still really hot.
21. A Widow For One Year (novel) - John Irving. LitAmnesia. Damn. I thought I had it whipped.
22. Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind The Legend (biography) - John E. Miller. A little dry and academic in tone, but an interesting mother-daughter portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Apparently things weren't always smooth between Laura and Rose. Miller doesn't believe that Lane rewrote her mother's books, but anyone who has readThe First Four Yearsand the other books in the series can see the marked difference. After reading this, I had to make a pilgrimage to Laura's home in the Ozarks, less than two hours from where I lived.
23. Genie: A Scientific Tragedy (nonfiction) - Russ Rymer. Heartbreaking true story of "Genie" who was abused by her father in a particularly odd manner -- nearly from babyhood, he kept her alone in a room tied to a potty chair. No one was allowed to communicate with her and he only "spoke" to her in grunts and growls. Family Services finally got wind of this and rescued Genie when she was a young teenager, but it was too late for her to acquire language except for a word croaked out here and there and some birdlike noises. Interested in this 20th century "wild child", scientists competed to study Genie and test their theories. No one was really focused on getting her the help she needed. Finally, after a court battle, she was returned to her mother who put her in a home for mentally disabled adults. There is also a PBS documentary of this case which features footage of Genie.
24. Anne Sexton: A Biography (biography) - Dianne Wood Middlebrook. Quite controversial, because Middlebrook was allowed access to tapes and notes from Sexton's sessions with her psychiatrist.
25. Interlanguage Phonology: The Acquisition of A Second Language Sound System (nonfiction) - Georgette Ioup and Steven Weinberger, eds. Graduate school reading.
26. How Languages Are Learned (nonfiction) - Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada. More graduate school reading about second language acquisition.
27. Approaches and Methods In Language Learning (nonfiction) - Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers. Historical overview at different ways to learn language. they run the gamut from boring (Grammar-Translation Method) to completely whack (Suggestopedia).
28. The Multilingual Self: An Inquiry Into Language Learning (nonfiction) - Natasha Lvovich. Lvovich, a native of Russia, began studying French when she was young. Because she only used it in an art/culture context, it never really felt like a true second language as English did a few years later when she emigrated to the US with her family and had to operate in English on every possible level. Lvovich also briefly discusses her young daughter's language issues -- the girl's first language is Russian, which they spoke at home, but the daughter didn't like it and was constantly code-switching into English. She told her mother that she "felt ugly" when she had to speak in Russian. Interesting and extremely readable firsthand account of second language learning. You don't have to be an ESL/EFL teacher or a linguistics expert to enjoy this book.
29. Marry Me (novel) - John Updike. Updike returns to one of his favorite themes -- adultery -- in this novel. As much as I enjoy Updike, I felt as if I'd read this book before.
1996 found me doing a great deal of rereading. One good thing about rereading is that LitAmnesia is less likely to occur.
1. The Snapper (novel) - Roddy Doyle. Re-read.
2. Zombie (novel) - Joyce Carol Oates. Oates gets into the mind of a serial killer who resembles Jeffrey Dahmer. She seems almost too comfortable in his skin. Chilling stuff.
3. A Prologue To Love (novel) - Taylor Caldwell. Re-read. Novel about the world's richest woman, an American named Caroline Ames Sheldon, and how various people in her life influenced her. Takes place in the years shortly after the Civil War and leading up to World War I. A little heavy handed, but good storytelling. I've always thought this could make a halfway decent movie.
4. Listening To Prozac (nonfiction) - Peter Kramer. Kramer discusses the different ways Prozac works on brain chemistry and presents testimonial after testimonial from people whose lives were miraculously changed by the little pill. I always meant to readTalking BackTo Prozac, but never got around to it.
5. The Story of English (nonfiction) - MacNeil, Cran and McCrum. This was entertaining...I watched the PBS series as well. I love English so much; I'm soooooooo glad it's my native language. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!
6. Vox (novel) - Nicholson Baker. What I liked best about this novel, which takes place during a single phone sex conversation between two strangers is the recipe the woman gives for creamed dried beef and spiral pasta. Although I snickered appreciatively when she said that the pasta and the creamed dried beef sauce "make a sensual noise" when stirred together, after I read this book that dish went into the weekly rotation of meals. She used Stouffer's mix, but it's cheaper if you buy the dried beef in a jar and make your own sauce. Also, if the beef is too salty, you can rinse the stuff in the jar off a bit, which makes it a shade less unhealthy. Dang, I wish I had some now!
7. How The Irish Saved Civilization (nonfiction) - Thomas Cahill. I would really like to read this book again. Basically, while the Germanic tribes and the Vikings were running around ransacking Europe, the Irish monks were copying and hiding manuscripts that would have been irretrievably lost in the chaos and destruction.
8. Room Temperature (novel) - Nicholson Baker. A man looks at his life while he's doing a single nighttime bottle feeding of his infant child. I can't remember if the baby is a boy or girl.
9. Will Campbell and the Soul of the South (nonfiction) - Thomas L. Connelly. Will Campbell was an interesting person. As a pastor, first he ministered to black people in the South during the 1950s and 60s when it was quite dangerous to do so. Then, after the civil rights movement had gained some footing, he decided to minister to poor white racist people, saying that they couldn't help how their society had made them, and they needed grace most of all. His creed is that of St. Paul: "Be reconciled."
10. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (novel) - Roddy Doyle. It's difficult to read the story of battered wife Paula Spencer, although from the way the story is written, the reader can see she's emerging from the worst of it. I would like to read the sequel to this book.
11. Letters To Alice On First Reading Jane Austen (novel) - Fay Weldon. In this epistolary novel, an aunt writes to her niece about Jane Austen. I remember the niece is struggling with her life, her novel and that she had green, spiky hair! A fun read for Austen fans.
12. Harriet Said... (novel) - Beryl Bainbridge. I vaguely remember two creepy little girls living in a resort town and making a game out of flirting with men and writing about it in a shared notebook.
13. Tony and Susan (novel) - Austin Wright. Now how could I forget a novel with my first name in the title?
14.Such Nice People (novel) - Sandra Scoppettone. She's a wonderful writer, but I seriously don't remember this book. I feel bad about that.
15. Clutter Control (nonfiction) - Jeff Campbell. Campbell wrote a series of books about how to clean and organize. I wish he could come and take my apartment in hand!
16. Rabbit, Run (novel) - John Updike. Re-read. How can such a despicable character like Rabbit Angstrom grab my heartstrings so hard?
17. Gardening For Dummies (nonfiction) - I liked the compost chapter the best, which speaks volumes about my gardening interest and skills.
18. The Budget Gardener (nonfiction) - Maureen Gilner. A lot of useful information. -- I remember feeling sorry that this was a library book.
19. Celestial Navigation (novel) - Anne Tyler. Re-read. During this next spate of Anne Tyler re-reading, I was clearly using reading to comfort myself. I think it's probably because I hated my job.
20. A Slipping-Down Life (novel) - Anne Tyler. Re-read.This early novel of Tyler's is one of my favorites.
21. Morgan's Passing (novel) - Anne Tyler. Re-read. Another Tyler favorite. I picked this up at Waldenbooks in the early 80s because the blurb on the front said that Morgan was like Garp, which was my favorite book at the time.
22. Searching For Caleb (novel) - Anne Tyler. Re-read.
23. Family Terrorists (novella and short stories) - Antonya Nelson. Sigh. All that Tyler left me with LitAmnesia!
24. Intuitive Eating (nonfiction) - Evelyn Tribole, M.S. R.D. and Elyse Resch, M.S. R.D. I was in a TOPS group for a while and we took turns making presentations about eating healthily and getting the weight off. I did a book report about this book. We have to retrain ourselves to listen to our bodies tell us when they're really hungry and be aware of all the signals that masquerade as hunger. Also, if we start listening to our bodies, they'll tell us what we need to eat, like veggies and such. There was also a list of the different types of overeaters...the darkest one and the one that I couldn't quite wrap my head around was eating to punish oneself. Dark, disturbing. Overall, it was an informative, interesting read.
25. In The Beauty of the Lillies (novel) - John Updike. A multigenerational saga about religion in America. I seem to remember one of the characters falling into a cult that was like the Branch Davidians. I'd like to read this again. Changing the topic a little -- does anyone else have this problem: When a book is named after a song title or a bit of lyric, does the song play in your head constantly?
26. War and Peace (novel) - Leo Tolstoy. I have to admit that I ended up skimming most of the epilogue. Great novel, though.
27. Esio Trot (novel) - Roald Dahl. A mother-son read.
28. Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams (biography) - Lyle Leverich. I haven't read the Donald Spoto biography of Williams, but it seems a little more sensational than this one.
29. A Simple Path (nonfiction) - Mother Teresa.
30. Rabbit Is Rich (novel) - John Updike. Rabbit is 46 in this novel. His father-in-law has died and left the car dealership (now Toyota) to him. His son has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, so Rabbit is looking at grandparenthood. Age doesn't seem to have slowed him or Janice down; there's some icky and tacky 1970s stuff here like wife-swapping.
31. A Little Princess (novel) - Frances Hodgson Burnett. Re-read.
32. Anna Karenina (novel) - Leo Tolstoy. I liked this better thanWar and Peace, but again, the last chapter was too much. I don't really want pages and pages and pages and pages of Tolstoy's philosophy unless he can wrap it around some plot.
33. A Death In The Family (novel) - James Agee. Sad story about the death of the young father of a family who is killed in an automobile wreck as he goes to see about his own mortally ill father and how his death affects his wife and young children. Ironically, Agee would die and leave a young family before this book was completed. A family friend who was also an editor took the manuscript in hand and got it published to get money for the widow and 2 children. Winner of the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
34. Mary and the Giant (novel) - Philip K. Dick. Dick's mainstream fiction from the 1950s, before he broke through as a successful science fiction writer.
35. The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (novel) - Philip K. Dick. More mainstream Dick from the same period. It's interesting to read his material from this period, but frustrating. How is it that his work didn't catch fire? It's really wonderful stuff.
36. David Copperfield (novel) - Charles Dickens. This was my first full-scale attempt at Dickens, but I didn't care for this novel. I shied away from him for years after this but finally felt some love in 2008 and 2009 when I readGreat ExpectationsandThe Old CuriosityShop. Maybe I just finally got to the right time in my life for Dickens...who knows?
37. Puttering About In A Small Land (novel) - Philip K. Dick. Another mainstream novel, written in 1957. I believe this one is about a guy who owns a TV repair shop. His son goes off to boarding school, somehow adultery is a large part of the plot. Quirky and a great look at postwar America.
38. The Distinguished Guest (novel) - Sue Miller. I don't know why Sue Miller's novels don't stick with me. She and Kaye Gibbons.
39. The English Patient (novel) - Michael Ondaatje. Beautiful novel with unlikely characters coming together. I loved the language in this book and enjoyed the movie.
3. Helen Keller (nonfiction) - Dorothy Herrmann. I liked this bio much better than the genteelly restrained Joseph P. Lash biography published in 1980. Keller comes off here more like a real human. Usually, she seems almost abstract or the patron saint of physical challenges. Herrmann gets more in-depth with the temestuous relationship between Helen and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, Helen's ardent support of socialism, her feelings about sexuality and other previously little-known facts. 
5. Boone's Lick (novel) - Larry McMurtry. This novel is narrated by 15-year-old Shay, but his mother is the real main character and heroine. Mary Margaret Cecil has been waiting placidly in Boone's Lick, Missouri for her husband to make his fortunes in the west. Dick (appropriately named, I might add) comes home every couple of years then he's off again. Finally, one day Mary Margaret packs up her large and extended family and travels west to find Dick. During the long journey, the family makes a surprising discovery about Dick's years away from home. There's a dry comedic tone that makes this book a pleasurable reading experience.
some robber barons at Saratoga. Clint wants to become very rich and Clip's dream is to marry respectably, unlike the other women in her family. Ferber describes New Orleans lovingly and thoroughly. When the action is moved to Saratoga, you can percieve Ferber's interest dropping off considerably. Sadly, for the sake of the plot, this is precisely when and where the novel needs the most energy. Ultimately, it's a fail, but I'll always treasure this book for those early scenes in New Orleans, particularly the one where Clio eats jambalaya for the first time.
some robber barons at Saratoga. Clint wants to become very rich and Clip's dream is to marry respectably, unlike the other women in her family. Ferber describes New Orleans lovingly and thoroughly. When the action is moved to Saratoga, you can percieve Ferber's interest dropping off considerably. Sadly, for the sake of the plot, this is precisely when and where the novel needs the most energy. Ultimately, it's a fail, but I'll always treasure this book for those early scenes in New Orleans, particularly the one where Clio eats jambalaya for the first time.
