Summer Reading

My phone has been ringing off the hook. My inbox is bursting; unread messages are bouncing like super balls. Everyone wants to know: what is Christine reading this summer? The Times (various) released their summer reading lists to much fanfare, but alas, where was the definitive list from the elusive, reclusive, effusive Christine? (Note: these statements may need fact-checking.)

Following a mysterious process unknown to and misunderstood by even me, I have built a tower of books and a stack of anthologies at once foreboding and inviting: one to read, the other to sample from and nod at approvingly, time to time.

Ready for reading.

In no particular order:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson (What is the fuss about? Plus, seriously, I need to return it to a Read & Return airport location soon or I won’t get my $9 back.)
• Dying, René Belletto (On my to-read list for over a year now; tired of looking at it.)
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (Re-read of a classic I’ve, unaccountably, largely forgotten.)
• Swell, Ioanna Karystiani (Europa Editions – Greek novel I picked up at BEA.)
• The Mirador, Elisabeth Gille (NYRB – memoir I picked up at BEA.)
• In the ice house, Genevieve Kaplan (Red Hen Press – poetry collection I picked up at BEA.)
• Civil and Civic, Jonathan Bennett (ECW Press – poetry collection I picked up at BEA.)
• Lamb, Bonnie Nadzam (Other Press – Nadzam’s début novel I picked up at BEA.)
• Dubliners, James Joyce (I enjoy torturing myself with obscurity and towering genius I will never match.)
• Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol (See above; also, this is something I started reading over 10 years ago and never finished. The dead souls are haunting me.)
• In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson (I’m still not sure I’ll finish this, but we’ll see.)
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (Can you believe I’ve never read this? Neither can I.)
• The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
• The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon (And I’ll probably read this one first.)

And the anthologies, by order of size:

• Collected Poems, W.H. Auden (I read one or two every day. I also have a fine collection of records of Auden reading his poems.)
• Selected Poems of Victor Hugo (A lovely bilingual edition.)
• The Penguin Book of French Poetry 1820-1950 (A book I’ve been browsing since high school.)
• Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy (If I finish The Kreutzer Sonata I’ll call it a success.)
• The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov (I’d actually like to read all of these, time permitting.)
• The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton (Always on my desk or my nightstand.)

Finally, some long-shots:

• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
• The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace
• Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon (I doubt I’ll get to it. But then again, I don’t.)
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith (Have you spotted a pattern?)

If you didn’t spot the pattern, the long-shots are the hysterical realist titles. The books that I love to hate. Because I don’t really hate them, of course. I’m just conflicted and misguided.

I reserve the right to in fact read none of these books and spend the entire summer slacking. I won’t but I reserve the right. Without that right, the list is meaningless; with it, the list becomes sacrosanct.