Books: 2009

From Homer to Harry Potter by Matthew Dickerson and David O'Hara*
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien (re-read)
The Children of Hurin by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien (re-read)
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (re-read)
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (re-read)
The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling (re-read)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban
Ulysses by James Joyce

Next fiction book: Middlemarch by George Eliot
*nonfiction

Ulysses reading schedule

Let's take six weeks on this one (thanks for the feedback!), starting on Father's Day (a nice present to myself). While Christie's book was called the best mystery ever written, Ulysses has been termed simply "the best novel ever written." Here's a suggested reading schedule:

June 28: Chapters 1-8 (~175 pages)
July 10: Chapters 9-13 (~190 pages)
July 20: Chapters 14-15 (~200 pages)
July 31: Chapters 16-18 (~185 pages)

Don't look for a lot of insight in my comments. I'll be happy to get through this book with my wits intact. I anticipate it will require many revisitations before I can feel comfortable with the novel. Still, it will be nice to have had the experience of reading the greatest novel by (arguably) the greatest novelist of the 20th Century.

Mystery novel

I am currently reading Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None. I'm not going to say anything about the specific plot or characters -- don't want to ruin anything for you -- but I will say that, although this is the first mystery novel I've ever read and I don't have any experience with the genre, I am really enjoying it and can see why it has been called "the best mystery novel ever written."  Several elements within the text seem like cliches, but since the novel was written in the late 1930s, it probably originated those elements which have since become cliches. An easy-to-read, compelling, fascinating character study. My students and I have generated several connections to modern-day texts (film, TV, and book), making the novel's influence apparent. A quick read, but very good so far. Hopefully, the ending will not disappoint.

His Dark Materials

Pullman's novels, according to his fans, are better than J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. These people must be crossovers from the Flat Earth Society. Someone, please pass them the Kool-Aid. Pullman's anti-God trilogy doesn't even come close to LOTR. It is less enjoyable than the Harry Potter books and less literarily rich than Le Guin's Earthsea books, and neither of those can touch Tolkien's books for their majesty, profundity, and satisfaction. Not even close. Pullman's works are really not even fantasy; they are closer to science fiction. Even so, I won't ever go back to them, and the only reason I re-read Compass was because I was teaching it and using it for my fantasy lit conference paper. The first book (Compass) is the best, but it's downhill from there. By the time I hit Book 3, I just wanted it to be over. The characters were inconsistent between books, the plot holes more disturbing, the morality more overbearing and heavy-handed, the coincidences more ridiculous, and the conclusion completely over-the-top and unbelievable. Don't waste your time with anything beyond Book 1, if that.