Howevermany Books Challenge Round-up #7

So, yeah: I'm calling it. Year's over, folks. Oh, sure, you can keep reading and reading and reading for the approximately 48 hours of 2006 that remain? But in the grand scheme of things, they won't much matter. So here's the end of my list. Now you can buy me 75 beers in celebration of my having read 75 books.

I suppose I might do some list analysis at some time. Though I suspect the results will be grim; I'm sure my male-to-female authors ratio makes me look like a bad person, for example. And I haven't read enough graphic novels, which makes me an anti-hipster ass. And I've read neither enough current books nor enough back catalogue books. And, and, and. That's a list for another day.

Meanwhiles:

70. Ghost World, Daniel Clowes.


71. Black Hole, Charles Burns.
    
    I tumbled out of Gravity's Rainbow in November and immediately fell into a reading rut that grips me still today. I tried to ease my way out of Pynchon's book with a couple graphic novels--I'm not a graphic novel guy, but the timing seemed right to take a look at a few. In the sense that really, at that point, I just wanted an author to show me exactly what he had in his mind. And these were good, these were good for that purpose, and that's great. Great and all but, yeah. I'm still not a graphic novel guy.
    
    I know that saying that might make me look like some kind of jerk when seen through the filter of certain strains of popular opinion, so let me be clear: I know that graphic novels have "come of age" and that adults can read them and they can be targeted at adults and that they can be treated as serious literature. I know all that. I also know that there's a rising choir of voices singing the praises of the graphic novel and the fact that they are an essential part of a complete literary diet. I get it. I've seen the light. I acknowledge it.
    
    Also, I appreciate the skill and talent that goes into the production of graphic arts, illustrated novels, the lot of it. I see that the artist's "style" constitutes his or her "voice" in this literary realm. I also find the techniques and technology of the contemporary craft quite fascinating. (Penny Arcade ran a four-page comic over the last week that featured commentary by the artist, which I've been avidly reading; neat stuff.)
    
    So now when I restate my belief that I'm simply not a graphic novel guy, you (hypothetical holder of above-referenced "popular opinion") will need to find new ground to refute me from. I suppose what this "you" would be saying would be made more clear were I to actually go dig up some concrete examples of said popular opinion so that my own perspective could be aligned precisely against this weird strain of elitist tomfoolerly I've seen once or twice now? But it's the end of the year and I'm feeling lazy. Real lazy.



72. End of I., Stephen Dixon.
    
    I read a lot of his stuff this year. Five books, to be exact. I'll be attempting to take a break from him in 2007. It'll be good for our relationship, I think.



73. The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald.
    
    Yeah, so, still caught in a Pynchon rut, what do I go off and do? I grab a fat book off the shelf that I think is going to be a total fluff epic about childhood and children and childish things, something real light I can wrap myself up in for a while--only to find out it's a book that centers, in large part, on the manufacture of the V-2 Rocket in Nazi Germany during World War II.
    
    Right.
    
    I liked it well enough. Needed to be about two to four hundred pages shorter, but really I didn't care that much, at the time.



74. Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
    
    One of the weirdest books I've read that I feel comfortable saying deserves the status of "modern classic." Is it fair to say Dunn single-handedly invented and perfected Chuck Palahniuk? Like, his entire "modern-day messiah" genre? Am I right or am I right?



75. Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson


76. The Confusion, Neal Stephenson


77. The System of the World, Neal Stephenson
    
    I'm gifting myself this series. I finished Quicksilver for the 75, and I'm going to keep reading until my eyes fall out of my head, but it would be physically impossible for me to finish the series before the year's over. But listing them next year would just look silly, so I'm putting them here, regardless of whether I do finish them or not, next year.
    
    Whatever. I'm 300 pages into The Confusion as of this writing. When I picked it up last night I slogged through 30-50 pages of crap; I was at a serious nadir and was ready to get up and walk away for good. Then Stephenson whipped out 150 pages of high-seas piracy and ship chases, plots and counterplots surrounding a secret stash of gold, a beheading (and a head delivery), sword fights, and various other actions and activities. I couldn't put the book down. Gripping stuff! I'm scared to pick it back up because I think he's about to tank all the momentum he just built up.
    
    McQ is right, for sure--these books aren't as cool as Cryptonomicon was. (I'd substitute Snow Crash for The Diamond Age, myself, since I think I read the latter once, forgot it completely, read it again to see what I'd forgotten, then forgot it all all over again, and, unless someone makes a good case for it, I will probably not be going back to it a third time, because if I don't even know what I don't know, what don't I know? Nothing.) But when Stephenson is on, yeah, there's this weird thing that happens where you can see how perfect and brilliant the Cycle would be, if he would stop doing the uncool stuff, and do nothing but the cool stuff that he does so well between all the uncool stuff.
    
    There's a real concept versus execution gap here, I think. Sure, a super hot girl single-handedly creating the modern system of commerce is fascinating, in concept. But something lacks in Stephenson's execution.
    
    In general he seems to do much better when he has actual things and actions to describe. There's a lengthy description in The Confusion of one man entering a room where another man is standing, that suggests all the ways they react and prepare for each other before they say a word, on the off-hand chance that one of them will attempt to begin a fight with the other. It's totally gratuitous and needlessly technical. It's silly, is what I'm saying. But compellingly so. And, then, like, back in Quicksilver, reading about all the foolish experiments conducted by the Royal Society is great fun, though it moves nothing along; there's something concrete and happening in front of the reader, and it makes it feel like things are moving along, like there's something to be gotten from the text. But then he'll go off and talk about genealogy or scene or who did what to who (someplace other than where the current action is) and it's like, agh, shut up, what am I bothering for? I hate you, book, and I want you to die.
    
    Then a bit later you've got a samurai running around Cairo separating heads and limbs from their owners' bodies, and it's like, yes, YES! This is AWESOME! And I'm pumping my fist in the air over the book. A samurai in Cairo! This rules!
    
    What I'm saying is it's very back and forth and up and down right now. It's sort of a metaphor for the year, or something.