Summer Reading and Other Entertainment

I always wonder how people who work real jobs feel about the term "Summer Reading." If you work a real job, you don't get the whole summer off. So how are you expected to enjoy the lists of books recommended for "summer reading"? It's perplexing.

That said, here's what's on my plate:

I'm just finishing The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolano. It's absorbing, time-consuming, and requires patience, but it's so different from any other fiction I've read. I have read reviews of Bolano's works over the past year or so, and it seems that any self-respecting lover of fiction must be reading him in order to be considered up-to-date in the literary world. Here's the review from The Book Review: "The Visceral Realist"

Before this novel, I read This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust, the current president of Harvard University. It's a really fascinating comprehensive study of how Civil War America dealt with death, both psychologically and physically. I learned a lot, and I really enjoyed the sections that discussed contemporary literature (Dickinson, Whitman, Bierce, Melville) and the way it addressed the war. This was also a Book Review choice: "Death's Army"

And before that, I listened to and read E.L. Doctorow's newest, The March, which blends history and fiction against the backdrop of Sherman's march through the south. I read Ragtime quite awhile ago, and it was one of those books that really tickled me - I think it was the first historical fiction novel I'd ever read, and I was just fascinated that blending the two was possible. The March is just as good.

Up next: On Chesil Beach, by one of my favorites, Ian McEwan. Sadly, it looks really short, but I think it will be a perfect book to bring along on the plane to Spain. I would heartily recommend his Saturday or, of course, Atonement, which are both stunning. He has a way of completely absorbing his reader by presenting an average character and then allowing their entire life to unravel as a consequence of bad choices.

I have some reading to do for the one new section I'm teaching next year, which is an honors section. I get to re-read Oliver Twist and The Odyssey, and then I'll have my first foray into Willa Cather with My Antonia. We also have required summer reading for the faculty, so I'll be spending as little time as possible wading through A Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World. Then I've also got White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, which I have avoided after hating On Beauty and coming to the conclusion that she is truly overrated, but I've been assured that her first book is genuinely worth the time. We'll see about that!

And for more of my opinions...

At your earliest convenience, buy yourself a really lovely bottle of wine, turn off the ringer on the phone, and watch A Very Long Engagement. It is absolutely one of the most beautiful movies I've seen in ages. It stars Audrey Tautou and is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also made Amelie. Paul enjoyed his bottle of wine too much that night and gave up on following the subtitles so that he could just enjoy the scenery and the photography; it's that beautiful. I recommend following the subtitles, however, because the story is just wonderful.

Avoid, at all costs, being forced to watch Sweeney Todd. It is truly, undeniably, terrible. The music is so bad that we fast-forwarded through each song. The only thing that kept me going was Tim Burton's London. The set is just as good as his Gotham City.