Howevermany Books Challenge Round-up #4

This will probably be the last year I do big reading list round-ups. I've been thinking hard about how I read and how I blog, and I'm considering changing some things up in 2007. So hopefully the energy that goes into round-ups like these will be replaced with something far cooler. Something interesting and better and more interactive if people wanted to engage in interaction. And different. And hopefully by dumping the reading list update I'll be more moved to blog about books as and after I read them rather than letting everything pile up into big messy masses like this.

Or maybe I'm optimistic.

Here's some stuff.

47. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
    
    After having seen the movies who knows how many times, after having watched all the making-of documentaries, after having listened to the commentary tracks, I figured it was about time I read the book. It had long since become one of those long books I'd always planned on getting to, but never quite did, until I finally did.
    
    Interesting, reading it after the movies. I was secretly interested in learning more about character psychologies--all those interal conflicts and tensions the characters went through in the movies, I wanted to be given more about that, the way books are uniquely suited to do. Yeah, imagine my surprise to find out that Tolkien cared about character psychologies about as much as he cared about brevity.
    
    What I found, reading the books, was that I agreed with every single decision Peter Jackson and his merry band of nutcases made when they made the films. Of course, coming at things from the other direction, I'm biased. I liked the books well enough and all, but I didn't discover that I'm the sort of person who needs to live, breathe, and dream Tolkien's text.
    
    Still, though, getting a better sense of the insanely broad and detailed history of the universe he created was fascinating, and was something the movies were only able to occasionally hint at--a broken statue here, some old moss there. Plus now I can stop feeling guilty every time I walk past the book. More guilt to spread around amongst my other Dostoevsky and Dickens novels.



48. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
    
    I don't ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever want to wake up and find myself in a Soviet work camp.



49. Stephen Dixon, Old Friends
    
    You know I love this guy. I know you know I love this guy. What I don't know is why you don't know why you haven't jumped on the Good Ship Dixonsalot yet. Old Friends is as good a starting point as any, and because it's one of his shortest books, you can get through it quick. It's also, I'll begrudgingly admit, far less emotionally intense than Interstate, which is the one book of his I'd buy everybody in the world a copy of, if I had that kind of means.
    
    I'll admit I think I enjoyed this more than my three-in-a-row stretch of Dixon books I read earlier this year. I think it's easy to sort of gorge on his style and burn out on it for some time. But I obviously didn't burn out for very long, so.
    
    This is the sort of book I should have talked about right after I read it. I remember the phrase "concise yet expansive" being in my mind as a way to describe it, but now I'll be damned if I know what I meant.
    
    Still, anyway: to quote, I believe it was Condalmo who said this, about Dixon: "That guy kicks ass." That's some truth, right there.



50. Carol Shields, Unless
    
    I liked this book a lot. It loosened something in my brain, at a time when my brain needed to be loosened.



51. Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone
    
    Not my favorite book of 2006. But a damn good novel anyway. One that I should have written a lot more about when I read it. But like--oh, I don't know, say, The Road--it's the sort of book that demands and rewards close, considered reading. So much of it drips with weight and meaning and importance. One I'd like to grab when it comes out in paperback, I think, and talk about at greater length.



52. Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
    
    Actually I read this a while back and forgot to list it then remembered I forgot so I jotted it into my written list right here. I like Chuck. He's quite daft.



53. Myla Goldberg, Bee Season
    
    Surprised the hell out of me. Had someone hinted it was about slightly more than spelling bees, I would have read it a long time ago. Plus I'd somewhere gotten it into my head that it was one of those them there young adult books that the older people sometimes read, too. Good lord, it's not a young adult book at all. Adult content, full steam ahead, people.
    
    Really, though, I should have known there was more going on here, the moment I heard the Decemberists song. Oh Colin Meloy, you crazy guy, you.



54. Jennifer Egan, The Keep
    
    A fine book. Not Look At Me great. But still better than many other things in this world.



55. China Miéville, Iron Council
    
    Steam punk rock block! While I wasn't quite disappointed by this book--a bad China Miéville book (were such a thing possible) would still be pretty good--I'll admit, if you get enough drinks in me, that I didn't have as much fun with this one as I did with Perdido Street Station or The Scar. I guess I'm not the only one who felt that way, though it's interesting to see that Miéville liked this book best of anything he'd done by that point. I will still, in time, read everything he's written, and I will, in time, re-visit Perdido, because it was totally freakin' sweet.
    
    Also totally sweet is the fact that I now have the html code for the accented e--é--memorized. People: you are not dealing with an every old other day average litblogger, oh no. I got code-fu.



56. Ian R. MacLeod, The Light Ages
    
    Steam punk rock block! If you can describe a relatively slow, Dickensian novel as "rocking" your brain more than "blocking" your attempt to get through it. It does pick up "steam" around the middle. I liked it well enough, once I let myself slip into the methodicalness of it. I'll likely read the sequel, someday.
    
    "Punk".



57. Laird Hunt, The Exquisite
    
    Sucks.
    
    Sucks that you haven't read it yet, I mean.
    
    I mean, come on. People. Get busy now.



58. Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
    
    I said some stuff about this here and then here. I would not look down on you for giving up on the book, or avoiding it entirely--you'll probably find something else worth doing with your time. Still, I think there's some reward to getting through the entire book.
    
    
59. Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
    
    I was surprised that I found this book disappointing. Not quite to hatchet job levels of disappointment. But I was still displeased that I did not like the book as much as I wanted to.
    
    I really wanted to like the book, and I really thought I was going to like it. Surreal? Funny? I like those things. And there's some really good moments in the book: that opening story kills, and the one about the kid who finds lost things was stellar. But for the most part I was left feeling let down, like after finishing the book I was left holding less than I wanted to have in my hands, only something paper thin, shifting too easy in the breeze. I hope this doesn't make me a bad person.



60. Thomas Pynchon, V.
    
    I think I've said plenty enough about this book for the time being.



61. William T. Vollmann, The Rainbow Stories
    
    Ditto, twice over. Also, I forgot to link to Scott's recent Friday Column about the book. Also the reader interested in learning more about Vollmann could probably do worse than to check out the Vollmann Club. I'm not a member, so I hope they don't come running into my apartment shooting blanks at me to scare me off their blog turf.



62. Cormac McCarthy, The Road
    
    When I said some stuff about this book, I didn't really say enough about this book. It's sort of that kind of book.