Aleema Popa Libro

Today’s Post: I’ve Read 50 Books

(I promise to write a post about our trip to Brazil...but I do have my priorities.)

When I was getting ready to finish my last quarter at the University of Washington, my advisor Ivan cautioned me not to be “one of those volunteers who reads 200 books but doesn’t get anything done.” My first thought was “He’s darn right” and my second was “Maybe I’ll be the kind of volunteer who reads 200 books and gets something done.”

On 2 July 2010, I finished my fiftieth book since starting the Peace Corps. This commemorative blog posting is probably the most inevitable one I’ve written yet. Forget: “I made it to Paraguay alive,” “I swore in as a volunteer,” or even, “Sometimes, being in the Peace Corps is hard.” I could have been captured by the Ejército Pueblo Paraguayo and kept in a cage for two years or eaten by capybaras and I still would have found some way to claw inexorably toward my reading objectives.

In between the many hours spent paging through trips to and from Asunción and early-morning solo maté sessions, I managed to keep a running log of all of the books I’ve read so far, as well as an Excel spreadsheet tabulating important data about each books. That I now have this information to share with you is a tribute to the fact that I have a laptop with me but no internet as much as to my borderline compulsive personality.

Let me just say that the last nine months (24 June was my anniversary) of Peace Corps reading have been a joy. I’ve fallen in love with books again in a way that recalls other such periods of infatuation: my Uncle Rob turning me on to Star Wars novels (at the time, the longest books I’d ever read) and the start of a lazy summer of pleasure reading in Oberlin come to mind. In Paraguay, books have been my only English-speaking companions for days on end, my only link to a cosmopolitan world of ideas that sometimes feels far away. I have felt terrified when my stockpile has run low before a trip to the Peace Corps Office and succored when a particularly good novel has helped me wait out a rainstorm. (And confidential to my mother: I’ve never wanted a K----e.)

I will also add that the Peace Corps Paraguay reading library, allegedly run entirely by volunteers, is one of the best services that the institution could offer to us. The cost must be miniscule, but my Peace Corps service would be completely different without it. I am very grateful.

So what has my note-taking and subsequent data analysis (thanks, Excel!) revealed about my reading over the last nine months? Some salient points follow:

First, I should note that from 24 September through 11 December, I was in training and thus had little time for reading. I still managed to plow through over 1000 pages of Richard Hofstadter’s masterpiece, Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, but, in the narrow accounting of my book list, this shows up as less than one book read. Furthermore, I only brought three novels with me for my first month in Prettyview. Such folly! I tried to see this as a time to savor every page, but really it was just an unproductive exercise in frustration. I was re-reading my green manures extension manual by the time I made it back to the capital in mid-January to resupply. After four books in the first three-and-a-half months, I emerged from my bookworm chrysalis. Soon, I was plowing through pages as well as fields of mandioca.

What was I reading? 84% of my selections were books I had never read before and a full three quarters were written by authors whose work I had never read. Two trilogies (His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman and the new blockbusters by Stieg Larsson) comprise the 12% of books I read that belong to series. (For me, reading a series in the Peace Corps is a fraught experience: you had better check out all of the books in the set lest the last one end up in a beekeeping hut in Alto Paraná for the rest of your service.) 7 out of every 10 books I read were novels and 2 out of every 10 were non-fiction (including memoirs). Short stories and poetry made up the difference. All of my selections were in English, though 16% were translated. Slightly over half of the books I read came recommended to me by at least one person, including a few recommendations that I’ve had knocking around in my brain for years.

I somewhat unsystematically gave each book a ranking between one and five. 90% of books received scores of 3 or greater, corroborating my sense of satisfaction with my reading choices. Only one novel bombed out with a rank of one: E. L. Doctorow’s City of God. I almost hate to mention this book in my blog, since I hold the superstitious belief that doing so might somehow boost its Google prestige or whatever. I’ll have to consult with my brother about that. Anyway, City of God was a pretentious and too-little-too-late stab at post-modernity that, disturbingly, tarted itself up with Holocaust references and boring musical pastiche. I expect that its publication had Saint Augustine of Hippo rolling in his grave. I awarded fives to GEB:EGB and four others: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami), The Cider House Rules (John Irving), East of Eden (John Steinbeck), and White Teeth (Zadie Smith). Given the acclaim that greeted each of these books following their publication, I guess you could say I wasn’t in uncharted critical waters.

Three out of every 10 books included what I believed to be strong post-modern elements of structure and/or content (although it may be un-post-modern of me to distinguish between the two). 34% of my selections were “page-turners.”

Whom was I reading? Perhaps problematically, 72% of the books I read were written by men, 52% of authors were Americans, and 70% were from predominantly Anglophone nations. The issue of nationality and ethnicity is certainly tied up in the fact that I only really read English-language books for pleasure. Perhaps I could enrich my inner life by reading more in Spanish, but I have to do that every day for work and reading in English currently constitutes one of my great escapist pleasures. Revealing a trend in my literary tastes that I was already aware (and ashamed) of, my spreadsheet also indicates that while 44% of my choices were first published in the 21st century, the other 56% were all published in the 20th. The oldest book I read was D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I am currently working on Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, so I’m hoping that I can begin the next stage of my journey by “going under” in the late 1800s. But I must admit that I’ve always enjoyed contemporary literature most and probably won’t be reading too much from the 19th century (or, for that matter, earlier ones). And I am trying not to think about what it means for my spreadsheet if I finish the bible I have been reading since February.

In a more impressionistic sense, the books I’ve read over the last nine months have provided a satisfying, and occasionally appropriate, backdrop to my life in rural Paraguay. Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos’s Son of Man takes place in rural Paraguay in the 1930s. Many details from the historical novel seemed like they could have been plucked from my daily life: chiperas selling their wares at train stations (instead of the bus), mandioca fields and endless rows of sugarcane, Catholicism and folk customs vying for prominence, and a tortured relationship with Paraguayan ciudadanos and foreigners alike. May political questions from that era also remain unresolved. Flannery O’Connor’s short stories and William Faulkner’s Light in August led me to believe that the post-Reconstruction American rural South and post-dictatorship rural Paraguay may have quite a bit in common. Though there are notable cultural differences, East of Eden, Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, and Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits also were somehow reminiscent of my current environment.

Linear regression suggests that at the current rate, I may not reach 200 books by December 2011, but I’m not too worried. Quality matters over quantity and I think my advisor will understand.

I currently have about 30 selections piled up in my house in Prettyview, waiting for their turn in the 51-100 bracket. I’m trudging through Zarathustra (which, like reading the bible it was meant to parody, is both beautiful and, at turns, inscrutable) and eyeing Tolkien’s The Hobbit. A trio of George Eliot novels and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest bide their time, my insurance against a broken leg, two months of strikes closing Ruta Dos, or any other such disaster that would put me in the position of needing a good book.

***

The First Fifty: Jake’s Paraguayan reading list through 2 July 2010

Books are listed as “Title (Author) comments”
*Indicates a book I re-read.
Unless otherwise noted, all books are listed in the order I read them.

1. Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Richard Hofstadter) One of the best books I’ve ever read. GEB is a non-fiction exploration of the ways that small parts give rise to conscious wholes through an examination of the work of the three eponymous thinkers, as well as number theory, artificial intelligence, computer programming, psychology, molecular biology, Zen Buddhism, music theory, and linguistics. I read all of this but the last 100 pages or so during 3 months of training and then finished it in March 2010.
2. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle* (Haruki Murakami) My favorite of Murakami’s works and among my favorite novels.
3. The Golden Compass* (Philip Pullman) First book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, which I first read in 8th grade. Still good, but less mind-blowing now that I have lost my virginity and read Nietzsche.
4. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) Retelling of the second half of Genesis from the perspective of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter. Very well-written and moving.
5. The Subtle Knife* (Philip Pullman) Second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
6. The Amber Spyglass* (Philip Pullman) Third book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.
7. Infidel (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) Fascinating non-fiction account of Ali’s life in a number of African and Middle Eastern states and Holland, including her embrace and eventual repudiation of Islam.
8. Collected Short Stories (Flannery O’ Connor) Excellent and haunting, especially when read in a society that occasionally resembles O’Connor’s American South.
9. Empire Falls (Richard Russo) I enjoyed reading this novel, but did not really see why it won the Pulitzer Prize. Nothing terribly complex.
10. The Cider House Rules (John Irving) Made my top five list. I loved the characters and the exploration of moral ambiguity. I also felt that the novel was an excellent period/cultural piece.
11. The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie) I did not enjoy reading it terribly, but understand its political importance and its status as an early postmodern work. It did become easier to read as I went.
12. The House of the Spirits* (Isabel Allende) Still one of my favorite novels.
13. Son of Man (Augusto Roa Bastos) Fascinating to read this account of Paraguay in the years leading up to and during the Chaco War – many aspects of life have not changed 80 years later. It’s hard to know how I would have appraised this book if I weren’t living in Paraguay while reading it.
14. American Fuji (Sara Backer) Though a lightweight novel, this was fun to read and I actually think about it from time to time, maybe because I am also a long-term foreigner, like one of the protagonists.
15. Ordinary People (Judith Guest) I enjoyed this novel, which deals with psychological illness and grief in an understated and thus not too devastating way.
16. Long Way Gone (Ishmael Beah) This memoir by an Oberlin grad was brutal and starkly written. I would have appreciated a little more political or historical context since I didn’t take much away other than the story itself.
17. City of God (E.L. Doctorow) The worst book I’d read in Paraguay as of 9 months in. The author goes for postmodern but the result seems like a self-conscious shamble through “been-there” territory. I actually found the “musical” passages unreadable, like some of the poetry in Tolkien.
18. Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath) I loved this book as much as Plath’s poetry. There’s not much more to say about it than that it deserves its reputation.
19. History of Love (Nicole Krauss) A beautiful and touching novel, but I’d be curious to know how, if at all, Krauss and husband Jonathan Safran Foer think HOL and his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are related, thematically. Also: do they ever get competitive when their work overlaps?
20. The Crazed (Ha Jin) This well-written novel left me with a lot to think about, esp. the contention that while suffering may ennoble the unusual person, it actually destroys most people.
21. The Other Boleyn Girl (Philippa Gregory) The writing is a little pandering, but I found this work of historical fiction to be sexy, fun to read, and at least somewhat historically edifying.
22. The Covenant (James Michener) It took a long time to make it through, but this historical novel taught me a great deal about South African history. What would otherwise be pacing problems were overcome by changing central characters every chapter.
23. On Beauty (Zadie Smith) A well-written novel, although I thought the ending was a little botched.
24. Man’s Search for Meaning* (Victor Frankl) Gave me inspiration in my work and in my hopes for love, just like when I first read it.
25. The Savage Dectectives (Roberto Bolaño) It was sometimes difficult to get involved in this book given that many central characters were very unsympathetic, but I thought it was excellent if viewed as a sort of literary and cultural history of a certain group of Mexican writers.
26. A Year in Van Nuys (Sandra Tsing Loh) Though the author occasionally delivers hilarious moments, I ultimately thought this book was too insubstantial and lacked direction.
27. By the River Piedra, I Sat Down & Wept (Paulo Coelho) Though enchanting in a Pablo Coelho sort of way, I wanted this to be more substantial; I finished it in less than a day.
28. The Shrine at Altamira (John L’Heureux) Compared to Ordinary People, this other realist novel about a family with problems seemed both more gruesome and less psychologically interesting. But it was still a good read.
29. Confederates in the Attic (Tony Horwitz) This non-fiction account of revisionist Confederacy worship in the contemporary South was mostly valuable to me as a Civil War history lesson.
30. The Metaphysical Club (Louis Menand) I loved the topic (the birth of American pragmatism) and the historical tidbits, but there was something wrong with the way this was written. The narrative flow was bad down to the sentence structuring and ordering, and the organization was mediocre. Still, it was fascinating enough to recommend itself.
31. Light in August (William Faulkner) I had always heard that reading Faulkner was so difficult as to be hard to enjoy. This was not the case with LiA. My favorite aspect was the lush descriptions of both the characters’ emotions and of the story’s physical setting. It was interesting to compare Faulkner’s work to Flannery O’Connor’s short stories in terms of style and content.
32. Field Work (Seamus Heaney) The first book in a collection of Heaney’s poetry I found in the PC library. The poems therein were generally accessible and lovely, if often muted. Favorites included “Oysters,” “A Drink of Water,” “Casualty,” “The Guttural Muse,” Glanmore Sonnet V, “The Skunk,” “Homecomings,” “A Dream of Jealousy,” and “The Harvest Bow.”
33. Little Children (Tom Perotta) I saw the movie adaptation of this novel several years ago and found the film to be equally enjoyable, sexy, and morally ambiguous. However, the novel’s ending is both more complex and less disturbing!
34. The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories (ed. Ben Marcus, 2004) This collection contained a number of stories I enjoyed and a few I did not. Style varied widely. I think the opening story, “Sea Oak” by George Saunders, might be my favorite. It made me laugh so hard, even the second time I read it. Marcus’s introduction is also thoughtful.
35. Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut) Very well-written, with sympathetic characters, a great moral tone, and lots of pithy observations about human behavior.
36. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) A masterly novel with powerful psychological and spiritual themes. I was impressed with its contemporary feel, given the age in which it was written and set. It also felt more personal than Grapes of Wrath.
37. White Teeth* (Zadie Smith) Better than On Beauty, especially in its wider scope. I still loved this book, which manages to revel in endless, satisfying detail while retaining a sense of its overall theme and structure.
38. Paddle to the Amazon (Don Starkell) A non-fiction account of the author and his son’s successful trip from Winnipeg to Belem, Brazil in a canoe – easy to read and gripping. I would never have picked this up, but a friend recommended it. I’m glad I forced myself, out of courtesy, to start it!
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H. Lawrence) Incredibly erotic and fun to read story. I’m not sure if Lawrence’s critique of modernity holds up today, but it is definitely intellectually interesting.
40. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Junot Diaz) A fantastic contemporary novel. I especially enjoyed the use of Dominican slang and the historical footnotes.
41. In the Time of the Butterflies (Julia Alvarez) One of the most beautiful and affecting novels I have ever read: the tale of the Mirabal Sisters’ resistance to the Trujillo dictatorship. Though I didn’t consciously choose to do so, I borrowed this book and Oscar Wao at the same time. Butterflies deals with Trujillo-era DR, but from a closer temporal and spatial perspective rather than from the perspective of Dominican immigrants to the U.S. in the post-Trujillo era.
42. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig) An allegedly autobiographical story of a father and son interwoven with the father’s philosophical treatise. I have to write that I ended up respecting this book even if I didn’t like it all the time. I didn’t like the narrator/author’s voice or personality much and did not buy all of his philosophical arguments. However, he offers too many important and thought-provoking insights for me to discount the book. I also enjoyed the last portion, when the two narrative lines merge, the most. The divide, which prevails for much of the book, seemed artificial to me.
43. Shutter Island (Dennis Lehane) I read this thriller right after seeing the movie in Asunción. It was gripping and well-constructed, but nothing mind-blowing.
44. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson) First book in the (now blockbuster) trilogy. Gripping and well-written with excellent characters and a gratifying left-wing perspective.
45. The Girl who Played with Fire (Stieg Larsson) Sequel to TGWTDT, excellent.
46. The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Stieg Larrson) Concludes the Larrson trilogy, impossible to put down.
47. Irish Girl (Tim Johnston) David Sedaris publicized this collection of short stories. I thought they were well-written but not outstanding or as “dark” as he claimed.
48. Refuge (Terry Tempest Williams) A seminal work of feminist-environmentalist literature. It is easy to relate to the author’s travails and I appreciated her linkage of the “natural history” of the Great Salt Lake with the “unnatural history” of the effects of nuclear testing on her family.
49. The Value of Life (Stephen R. Kellert) A summary work on the psychological and social value of the natural world, as demonstrated through his and other’s empirical research.
50. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim* (David Sedaris) Hilarious, especially the essays about the author’s brother, although it doesn’t crack me up quite as much as Me Talk Pretty One Day.