Reading Deliberately: My 2011 Reading Plan, Part 2

My “Read Deliberately” Plan for 2011, Part Two: If you missed part one last week, suffice it to say that I’ve made a list of books that I intend to read this year, set down a few rules for said reading plan, gave a partial list, as well as descriptions of and reasons for choosing these books. The list continues here:

The Undertaking, by Thomas Lynch: reading a review for this National Book Award finalist simultaneously put goosebumps up my neck, tears in my eyes, and a wry smile on my face. Written by a poet-essayist-undertaker from small-town Michigan, this book collects Lynch’s reflections on life and death, as seen from the perspective of one who “serves the living by caring for the dead.” I immediately thought of my friend Jim, who has a lovely, quirky sense of humor, a fine mind, a compassionate nature, and one of the hardest jobs in the world. You’ll see him greeting people at the door of Tussey-Mosher. People skills? Ministry? Science? To face daily those bedrock issues of being human, to help others deal at the worst time, all with diplomacy and gentility? A book chronicling these experiences? Wow.

Everything That Rises Must Converge, by Flannery O’Connor: the last collection of short stories written by O’Connor, published shortly after her death in 1965. O’Connor was a brilliant woman whose writing career was cut short by debilitating hereditary lupus; a devout Catholic living in the Protestant deep South; a Christian academic who refused to write apologetics. Her appreciation for the ironies of her life – indeed, of our lives in general – was readily apparent in her stories, where strange and often unlikeable characters found their intentions turned around to slap them in ways they hadn’t expected. O’Connor’s stories consistently wove together the grotesque and the sacred, wrestling with morality, ethics, with a trademark use of foreshadowing and allegory. My favorite professor in college was a die-hard fan. Evidently, so are many other American book lovers, since last year her “Collected Stories” was voted the best book to have captured the title of “National Book Award” in sixty years.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan: Jen Egan has been an author I’ve trumpeted about ever since I read her first novel, The Invisible Circus, over ten years ago. I keep telling people, “she’s one to watch. In the meantime, read her books.” Goon Squad is her newest endeavor, and showed up on no less than four “big name” lists as one of the best novels written in 2010.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy: I need to read this for many reasons – because I have never read any Tolstoy; because I need to try some of the “classics” again; because I am woefully ignorant of “the Russians” but have many crazy friends who adore them; because I do not want to read War and Peace.

A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry: Once upon a time, a popular television talk show host named Oprah had a list of book club suggestions, and she chose authors that the general public may not have known but whom deserved to be read. Many of the books she chose told sad stories about characters struggling mightily, but the writing of said stories was beautiful, and Oprah did a wonderful service, bringing these books and their authors to national attention. A Fine Balance was one of the books on the Oprah List for 2001, before she chickened out and chose books from the required freshman reading list at half the colleges in the nation. I am finally reading it, after being drawn to stories about India, by way of wonderful recent reads from Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Abraham Verghese.

Murder in the Marais, by Cara Black: I really do enjoy the entire gamut of styles and situations offered by the mystery genre, but I especially appreciate a well-written novel that happens to focus on unraveling a mystery – a disappearance, a murder, a motive. After hearing me wax ecstatic about Elizabeth George’s “Scotland Yard” mystery novels, and knowing my Francophile streak, Judge Dalton recommended these mysteries to me, featuring French-American computer forensic specialist, Aimee LeDuc, with this first novel set in the Jewish quarter of Paris.

As will no doubt happen with my reading plan, I am running short – on column space now, most assuredly on calendar pages later – and so need to end my blabbing about these great books before I actually finish listing them. No matter: If I ever expect to make progress on the list, I need to get away from the computer and put my nose in a book. Seems like good advice on many levels, for most of us.

Miss last week’s launch of the list? Stop by Hobo’s blog at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com to see it from the start. Want to share your own reading plan for the year? Email Hobo at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com, or stop by the bookstore for your own personalized reading plan.