Books 2010

A list of books that I have read this year.

This is probably for my own purposes more than anything, but I’ll be updating this throughout the year if you’re interested.

  1. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace: This book took me the better part of a year to get through (but that was through my own lack of dedication to the cause), and it was tough in parts, but it was worth it in the end. There were so many astute observations about human nature that you never would have picked up on yourself.
  2. Consider The Lobster and Other Essays, David Foster Wallace: DFW has this ability to make dry topics (for example English usage) incredibly interesting. Some of the essays I found more interesting than others (good: Authority and American Usage, Up, Simba, and Consider The Lobster; not so good: Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky1), but in spite of that, I’d highly recommend this.
  3. No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July: I suppose this is the first piece of (what I would call) modern adult fiction that I’ve ever read. I was surprised by the explicitness in which it described sex and lust2 and the pairing of lovers. I didn’t expect a book of short stories to be engrossing in the way that Infinite Jest was, but somehow, she managed to draw me into a fictional other world in just a few pages.
  4. How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain de Botton: This book looks at the life of Proust and his book In Search of Lost Time, and simplifies it down, very well, to a series of lessons: How to take your time, how to suffer successfully, how to be happy in love, etc. It’s a pretty light read, and there are some nice little observations about life along the way that sort of makes me want to read In Search of Lost Time to get the full picture, but the 4000+ page length is a little bit off-putting. So, we’ll see if I ever actually get the motivation to read that.
  5. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee: Classic. I love the mind games they play and the abuse that gets thrown about and their oblivion to social convention.
  6. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald: Good, good, good! (5 April)
  7. Death of A Salesman, Arthur Miller: I think I enjoy these stories of the disquiet and desperation and tragedies that lie inside the stereotypical American family home. (16 April)
  8. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’d Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace: More essays by DFW, similar to 2 in that some essays were amazing, and others were boring. Especially enjoyable was “Tennis Player Michael Joyce’s Professional Artistry as a Paradigm of Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness”3, 4. (26 May)
  9. The Winter of Discontent, John Steinbeck: This took me far too long to read, mainly through my own laziness over the exam period and mid-year break. Main character raises interesting questions though: how far is one willing to compromise one’s morals to achieve success? If the officials running the town are already corrupt, how can he perceive himself to be any better, any more pure or innocent if he uses the same dishonest means to achieve wealth and influence? Or is it inherent in the attainment of wealth and influence that some beliefs and values must be corrupted? (15 August)
  10. HALF OF: Rabbit, Run, John Updike: I’ll be honest, I got bored of it. I know this is a shallow assessment, etc. but it felt like it was about a little boy who wanted to indulge all his own selfish desires, and I couldn’t get far enough through it to see the pay-off. (24 October)
  11. Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky. Powered through this. Much more enjoyable than Updike was. It was just a wonderful look into the thought process of DFW. (6 November)
  12. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen. (13 November)
  13. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. So good. (30 December)

  1. Although my disinterest in this essay is probably more due to the fact that I have no knowledge of Dostoevsky than something on DFW’s part. ↩

  2. This surprise may be, and probably is, due to my own aforementioned lack of exposure to such writing. ↩

  3. Note the extremely long title - it seems to be a bit of a theme with the essays in this book, although this is by far the longest one. ↩

  4. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really enjoy reading about the day-to-day loneliness of being a pro tennis player - there’s something about the fact that you can be a complete unknown to the majority of the population, and yet make a rather handsome living from playing professional tennis, and the fact that aside from the big stars you see at the Grand Slams, there are hundreds of tournaments being played to tiny audiences where there are people who are exceptional at tennis strive to make it to that next level, where the money is, that really fascinates me. ↩

Posted on February 21, 2010 at 10:16pm

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