Reading 101 Books in 2011: A Year in Review

This year, I have read 101 books. That comes out to almost two books a week. My daily commute (80 minutes, aggregate), though not specifically designed for such first-world leisure as scholarship, is perfectly suited to my inner-Anobium.
 
There was no rhyme or reason to my book selections for this year. I read what interested me, and sometimes, I read what didn’t interest me. A few of the titles on this list were books I read simply because I was tired of seeing them or hearing about them. I think, once I read that, I don’t have to see it anymore. And it’s true.

 
Some people say that it’s depressing that one person cannot read everything. I find the thought reassuring. There’s a lot of shit out there, and even out of 101 hand-selected books, there were a few that would be best suited for a grocery store garbage compactor, puppy chew-toy, or both.
 
For example, I started off the year in the thick of it. I’d never read Herbert’s Dune and thought it high time I give it a go. As I suspected going in, Herbert suffers the genre-writer’s curse: he spends most of his time building worlds, forgoing other story-telling standards like pacing, description, and character building. Yet somehow, he succeeds. I wonder if the Herbert cult is really paying much attention?
 
The other ‘genre’ writer I read was The Scar by China Meiville. I heard from a now-braindead source that Meiville shares common elements with Haruki Murakami. This is an insult to Murakami, and I’ll leave it at that.
 
Those were the only two low points (though, for some reason, I read Pet Semetary). The rest was cake. I discovered P.G. Wodehouse this year. As they say, he’s much too bright to be analyzed. Reading him is like drinking a glass of champagne. It’s bubbly and light and easy to drink too much.
 
I also went on a big Sam Lipsyte kick, reading Venus Drive, Home Land, and The Subject Steve. What his stories lack in plot, they more than make up for in prose. He’s a dangerous, misanthropic, and hilarious writer. I wish people talked like his characters in real life, or that people could at least get away with talking like that. The same goes for Saul Bellow. I read Humboldt’s Gift, Herzog, and Him With His Foot in His Mouth. They’re all essentially the same story, and they’re all essentially the same book. But still, I love his self-hatred. Writers like Lipsyte and Bellow make me proud to be an American (Jew).
 
Speaking of, when I was reading Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz (which is supposedly the Polish answer to mid-century existentialist literature), I happened to be riding the train with the then mayor-to-be, Rahm Emanuel. He asked me what I was reading, and then told me he never heard of it. Then, we took a picture together. I’m taller than him, and I’m not even that tall.

101 books, anobium, fiction, nonfiction, philosophy, reading list, roberto bolano, saul bellow, werner herzog