How to reduce your reading backlog
The moratorium on buying books has turned out to be an excellent idea: I’ve never read so many books in my life. The thought that you cannot acquire any new books motivates you to deal with your stack of unread books as fast as possible, to gain a fresh excuse to run to the bookstore. (Browsing on Amazon.com is not the same as holding the book, flipping through the pages, and reading at random. Even if you do succumb to temptation, the thought of the freight charges should cool your ardor.) The experiment was so effective, I’m thinking of imposing another ban on book-buying in May.
Uber-nerd habits never die; at the start of the year, I made a schedule of the books I would read each week. Go ahead and laugh, but drawing up a list and checking off each item as it’s done has always worked for me. Just having the list makes you feel like a responsible sort. The plan was to read one or two books a week; by the end of February I would have disposed of at least nine books in my dusty library.
During the first week things proceeded according to plan: I read Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (dutifully reviewed here) and The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa. Hedgehog was translated from the French, Leopard from Italian. I enjoy reading translations because their rhythms are markedly different from that of English. They sound slightly odd but elegant.
The Lampedusa is heavy going at times; I recommend watching the faithful screen adaptation starring Burt Lancaster to get acquainted with the historical period of the novel, its characters, the terrain of Sicily, and the mood. Set during the revolution that led to the unification of Italy, The Leopard is about a prince who recognizes that his era is coming to an end, and that ambitious, cunning men unburdened by a sense of noblesse oblige are taking over. When the author, a Sicilian prince, describes how the heat and dust of the landscape causes a torpor that accounts for much of Sicily’s history, he could be describing the Philippines.
My big failure was Henry James’ The Wings Of The Dove. Having enjoyed the film version starring Helena Bonham-Carter I thought I could handle it, but I just kept getting more and more annoyed. Dove — ooh, zoological theme so far — has been called the pinnacle of James’ prose.
Apparently it’s so evolved, to me it doesn’t even read like English anymore. To keep myself from getting violent I dug out my college-era paperback of Boccaccio’s Decameron, my favorite Renaissance naughty book. Written in the 1350s, the Decameron is a collection of tales — tragic, romantic, joyful, and bawdy — purportedly told by a group of people who have fled to a country villa to escape the Black Death (plague). It’s too much fun. In my effort to escape Henry James, I also read eight Tintin graphic novels that my sister left in the house, and I am pleased to report that they’re as charming and addictive as they were when I read them in my teens. A movie version is reportedly in the works, directed by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, and starring Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) as the intrepid young reporter.
When I ran out of Tintin comics I abandoned The Wings Of The Dove — and the schedule. The next books were chosen according to my mood swings.
Wild East, an anthology edited by Boris Fishman and set in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, opens with a bang: stories by hot young authors Gary Shteyngart, Tom Bissell and Arthur Phillips. The rest of the stories crackle, then fizzle. After this I had a short Jane Austen period with Emma and Persuasion (also written about previously), my absolute favorite of her novels. Emma was successfully adapted into the Alicia Silverstone comedy Clueless; I think Persuasion could be made into a contemporary Filipino romantic comedy.
My frustration with the user-unfriendly New Yorker archive — every single issue of the magazine in four CD-ROMs — led me to The Fun Of It, a terrific collection of Talk Of The Town pieces from the 1920s to the 1990s by the likes of James Thurber, John Updike and editor Lillian Ross. My loathing of the Kate Winslet Oscar vehicle The Reader led me to the Stories of Anton Chekhov in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The collection includes The Lady With The Little Dog, which figures in that movie. I noticed that in the movie the dog in question is a Pomeranian; in the new translation it’s a Spitz. Chekhov is probably the greatest short story writer in history: he’s pure. No artifice, no extenders, no caricatures or didactic stuff.
Ford Madox Ford’s highly influential novel The Good Soldier is the tragic history of two charming, seemingly perfect couples, as told by a narrator who gives new meaning to the word “unreliable.” On top of everything he has a habit of springing shockers on the unsuspecting reader. My friend Otsu calls it the “No way! They didn’t! Nooo!” novel.
As February drew to a close I dealt with my appalling ignorance of graphic novels by cramming Alan Moore’s Watchmen (written about here, in conjunction with Jane Austen’s Persuasion — bet that’s not a common pairing) and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. The latter came in a handsome leather-bound volume of 20 issues, with its own case. It was a gift from my friend’s ad agency, where I’d given an entirely useless talk about writing. Yes, I work for comic books — limited editions. (You know what would be great? Leather-bound compilations of Liwayway and Wakasan comics.) My one complaint was that I couldn’t read Sandman in bed — it was so heavy, I temporarily had toned biceps.
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