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Reading List

I've always loved to read, a proverbial bookworm. When I was young, I was a voracious reader, consuming several books a week. (Over one memorable weekend, I read 7 books. These were all light novels, admittedly, but full novels nonetheless.) Then came marriage, children and a demanding career. My reading tapered off until all I could manage was much closer to 7 books for an entire year.

Several years ago, I started writing again, and this rekindled my love of reading. What follows is a list of what I have been reading recently, seasons in chronological order by year and season, starting from that summer. The current season is at the bottom.

Sadly, of late, the time demands of my job greatly increased and my free time again plummeted. C'est la guerre.

Summer 2001 / Fall 2001

  1. D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley's Lover
  2. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye
  3. Orson Scott Card Ender's Game
  4. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice
  5. Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
  6. Anais Nin Henry & June
  7. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter
  8. D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers
  9. Nathaniel Hawthorne The House of the Seven Gables
  10. Henry James The Wings of the Dove
  11. Myla Goldberg Bee Season
  12. Melissa Etheridge The Truth Is...
  13. Henry Miller Tropic of Cancer
  14. Stephen King On Writing
  15. Betsy Lerner The Forest for the Trees
  16. Anais Nin Little Birds

I started writing Unpack My Heart in the late spring of 2001. In making time for my writing, I also again found time for reading; I read more books in those following two seasons than I had in the previous two years. A pair of the books was directly related to my new interest in writing. One was the autobiography of my favorite musical artist. Beyond the serendipitous element that I enjoy in my selections, there were two themes manifest in my choices.

The first theme was a consequence of my catching Henry & June on some movie channel or other. I had somehow neglected to read these notorious works in my younger years and felt I needed to "catch up". Subsequently, I read a number of the classic erotic novels, including works by Miller and Nin.

These selections were interspersed with a second theme: 19th century classics by women or by men with sensitivity to the feminine. (For the latter, I take Hawthorne as an example.)

Winter 2001-2002 / Spring 2002

  1. Alan S. Kessler Night Screams
  2. Alison Bechdel The Complete Dykes To Watch Out For, Volume 1
  3. Nanci Little First Resort
  4. John Updike Gertrude and Claudius
  5. Nanci Little Thin Fire
  6. Nanci Little The Grass Widow
  7. Rita Mae Brown Six of One
  8. Anne Lamott bird by bird
  9. Patricia T. O'Conner Words Fail Me
  10. Anne Kent Rush The Back Rub Book
  11. Steve Capelli and Michel Van Welden Massage for Dummies
  12. Tom Clancy Submarine
  13. Lucinda Lidell The Book of Massage
  14. Claire Maxwell-Hudson The Complete Book of Massage
  15. Stephan Bodian Meditation for Dummies
  16. Kate Bornstein Gender Outlaw
  17. Pema Chodon The Places That Scare You
  18. Joan Budilovsky and Eve Adamson The Complete Idiot's Guide to Massage
  19. Joan Budilovsky and Eve Adamson The Complete Idiot's Guide to Meditation

Three themes dominated that winter and into the following spring: more books on writing, stories touching on broader views of sexuality, and massage/meditation.

The lesnovs and the book on gender issues were all suggestions from my dear friend Carol, with whom I had reconnected with after a lapse of some 25 years. She suggested several because they are good books in their own right (including one of her favorite authors) but also because of the characters in my novel, a mixture of gay, bi & trans folk.

My interest in back rubs lead to massage and from there to meditation and Buddhism.

The continued interest in writing should be self-evident.

Summer 2002 / Fall 2002

  1. Sharon Salzberg Lovingkindness
  2. James Rogers The Dictionary of Clichés
  3. Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises
  4. Jean Klein The Ease of Being
  5. Constance Hale Sin and Syntax
  6. Helen Hunt Jackson Ramona
  7. Ernest Hemingway A Farewell to Arms
  8. Carl G. Jung (Ed.) Man And His Symbols
  9. Eugen Herrigel Zen in the Art of Archery
  10. A. E. Van Vogt The War Against the Rull
  11. Lloyd Biggle, Jr All the Colors of Darkness
  12. Poul Anderson The Enemy Stars
  13. Poul Anderson The Star Fox
  14. John Keir Cross The Angry Planet
  15. Carl Sagan Contact
  16. Isaac Asimov The Naked Sun
  17. Arthur C. Clarke A Fall of Moondust
  18. Michael Chrichton The Andromeda Strain
  19. Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence
  20. Robert A. Heinlein The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
  21. Sue Miller The World Below

I was on sabbatical from work for the summer (eight full weeks) and I had two objectives: type up what novel material I had into a manuscript (it had been written strictly in longhand) and to completely unwind and enjoy my first summer off since college. Toward that latter end, I indulged in some nostalgia. I read a box full of musty and yellowing science fiction books that I had bought for $0.25 a-piece at a clearance sale held by the Verteran's Memorial Library in Patten, Maine.

My beach reading was The Sun Also Rises.

The two minor themes otherwise in play were philosophy and psychology, frequent interests of mine.

And, of course, more about writing.

Winter 2002-2003 / Spring 2003

  1. Stephanie Marston If Not Now, When?
  2. Martha Beck Finding Your Own North Star
  3. Antoine De Saint Exupery Night Flight
  4. Bertolt Brecht Galileo
  5. Robert Bolt A Man For All Seasons
  6. Renni Browne & Dave King Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
  7. Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
  8. Carol Gilligan In A Different Voice
  9. Shunryu Suzuki Not Always So
  10. Gail Sheehy Passages
  11. Daniel J. Levinson The Season's of a Man's Life
  12. Gail Sheehy Understanding Men's Passages

I rather more consciously was reading about life-transitions and adult psychological development. I had realized that I was, and had been for some time, in the midst of what is commonly termed a mid-life crisis. Several of the selections were recommendations from another friend of mine from college whom I had also reconnected with; he was having a similar experience.

Summer 2003

  1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Don Quixote
  2. Bill Walsh Lapsing Into a Comma
  3. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men
  4. Nicholas Evans The Horse Whisperer
  5. Thomas Moore Care of the Soul
  6. D.H. Lawrence Women in Love
  7. Hermann Hesse The Glass Bead Game
  8. Immanuel Kant Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
  9. Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy
  10. Zane Grey Betty Zane
  11. Zane Grey The Spirit of the Border
  12. Zane Grey The Last Trail
  13. Jack Kerouac On the Road
  14. Robert A. Heinlein The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein
  15. Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time
  16. Nicholas Sparks Nights in Rodanthe
  17. Jude Deveraux The Summerhouse
  18. Dorothea Benton Frank Sullivan's Island
  19. Alexei Panshin Heinlein in Dimension
  20. William Gibson Neuromancer
  21. William Gibson Count Zero
  22. William Gibson Burning Chrome
  23. William Gibson Mona Lisa Overdrive
  24. William Gibson Idoru

I started the summer by forcing myself to sit down and read Don Quixote, a book I had bought in college but never read, and discovered that I rather liked it! At the midpoint, I took time-out for the guilty pleasure of re-reading the only Zane Grey I owned, a gift from my mother. This was as relief from the heavier philosophy that immediately preceded. I ended the summer by stuffing myself with Gibson: that should do me for a decade, or two.

My beach read was The Glass Bead Game.

Most of the rest was a mix of literature and what's called "summer reading".

Fall 2003

  1. Charles H. Kepner & Benjamin B. Tregoe The New Rational Manager
  2. Thomas Gordon Leader Effectiveness Training
  3. Ithiel de Sola Pool Forecasting the Telephone: A Retrospective Technology Assessment
  4. Michael J. C. Martin Managing Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship
  5. H. Skip Weitzen Infopreneurs
  6. Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister Peopleware
  7. James M. Kouzes & Barry Z. Posner Credibility
  8. Karen Elizabeth Gordon The Deluxe Transitive Vampire
  9. Herbert A. Simon The Sciences of the Artificial (2nd ed.)
  10. Billie Letts Where the Heart Is
  11. G. Polya How To Solve It
  12. Cassandra King The Sunday Wife

I started the autumn revisiting books from the courses I have taken on management or technology. I ended the season with lighter fare.

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is a book on grammar, by the way.

Winter 2003-2004 / Spring 2004

  1. Ann Packer The Dive From Clausen's Pier
  2. John Guaspari The Customer Connection
  3. Sharon Salsberg Faith
  4. Karen Elizabeth Gordon The New Well-Tempered Sentence
  5. Joseph Goldstein One Dharma
  6. Alfie Kohn The Schools Our Children Deserve
  7. Ian McEwan Atonement
  8. David Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country
  9. Svetlana Boym The Future of Nostalgia
  10. John Steinbeck Cannery Row
  11. Aristophanes Lysistrata

I do less reading inside than outside and therefore the list for winter and early spring tends to be short. In the mix of what I did manage, there were more books on writing and on Buddhist thought, of course.

Cannery Row was a delight!

The new themes were nostalgia and our view of the past. The Lowentahl book I enjoyed but Boym's disappointed me. I'd like to find a book exploring the past's view of the future.

Summer 2004

  1. William E. Burrows This New Ocean
  2. A. G. Hamilton Logic for Mathematicians
  3. Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  4. Thomas F. Mader & Diane C. Mader Understanding One Another
  5. Ernest Hemingway The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
  6. Alan Dean Foster The Chronicles of Riddick
  7. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow
  8. Robert Silverberg, Ed. Invaders From Space
  9. Lee Smith The Last Girls
  10. James Patterson Sam's Letters to Jennifer
  11. Rebecca Wells Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
  12. Rebecca Wells Little Altars Everywhere
  13. Robin Lippincott Our Arcadia

My beach read this year was The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.

I was vaguely aware of the critical praise for the film version of The Unbearable Lightness of Being and so picked it up on the hope that, as usual, the novel would be even better. I was not disappointed.

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was not as well received critically, but the jacket description intrigued me. I liked it well enough to read the sequel.

Fall 2004

  1. Peter Senge, et alia The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook
  2. G. Wilson Knight The Wheel of Fire
  3. David Bohm On Dialogue
  4. Janette Rainwater You're in Charge
  5. Robert Fritz The Path of Least Resistance
  6. Robert Fritz Creating
  7. Daniel Quinn Ishmael
  8. Fredrich Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra

Senge's book, yet another management guidebook, surprised me. It was on the basis of its recommendations that I ended up reading the sequence of Bohm, Rainwater, Fritz and Quinn. Unlike most books on management, Senge's did not automatically subscribe to the view that corporate profits were the be-all and end-all of human existence.

Ishmael is only superficially a novel, being a political/socialogical tract is its raison d'etre. He makes for an interesting opposition to Postrel (below).

Winter 2004-2005 / Spring 2005

  1. Jody Seay The Second Coming of Curly Red
  2. Masaru Emoto The Hidden Messages in Water
  3. David Michaels Tom Clancey's Splinter Cell
  4. Nevil Shute A Town Like Alice
  5. Virginia Postrel The Future and Its Enemies
  6. Fredrich Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil
  7. Larry Downes & Chunka Mui Unleashing the Killer App
  8. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Evolving Self
  9. William Isaacs Dialogue
  10. James L. Framo, Timothy T. Weber, Felise B. Levine Coming Home Again

What's the point of reading only authors with whom one agrees? Occasionally, I'll read a book where, midchapter, I must put the tome down, leap to my feet and sputter awhile. Nietzsche is such a read. I don't like Nietzsche: he was misogynistic, racist, nationalistic, and anti-democratic. For these attitudes, I can not -- will not -- forgive him. Importantly, and curiously, he was not anti-Semitic. What I do respect about the man was his courage in even attempting to forge a modern ethical philosophy. (Of course, his modern is over a century past now, but hey...) And the connections between Objectivists, Dynamists (The Future and Its Enemies) and Nietzschians make for interesting musings!

I also frequently sputtered when reading The Hidden Messages in Water. Emoto-san lacks any deep appreciation for the processes of science, and is clearly unable to see that he is crafting his own mythology rather than a more carefully objective theory. But I admire him for his kind spirit, which shines through in his prescriptions. (He sees them as the consequences of this theory and not as they are, the antecedents of the theories.)

With regard to Splinter Cell, let us just say that Michaels is no better a character author than Clancey.

Jody Seay's first outing, in contrast, shows much promise.

Summer 2005

  1. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
  2. David Brooks On Paradise Drive
  3. Watts S. Humphrey PSP
  4. Robert Zimmerman Leaving Earth
  5. Patricia Hersch A Tribe Apart
  6. Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper
  7. Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible
  8. William Gibson Pattern Recognition
  9. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
  10. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  11. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  12. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
  13. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  14. J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  15. William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury
  16. William Faulkner As I Lay Dying
  17. William Faulkner Light in August

Nanci Little found this page and dropped me a line to insist that I must read The Grapes of Wrath next. So I did. This novel's status as an American classic, arguably The American Classic, is well earned.

As for Harry Potter, I wanted to read the latest book but had not yet read any of the others, so that is how I spent my week at the beach, romping through a book a day.

I ended the summer with Faulkner, who I find much more accessable now than I did in college.

Fall 2005 / Winter 2005-2006

A project that eventually accumulate 998 hours of uncompensated overtime at work had much to do with this extended dry spell. See also Fall 2006 / Winter 2006-2007.

Spring 2006 / Summer 2006

  1. Virginia Postrel The Substance of Style
  2. Mark Epstein Open To Desire
  3. Kay Redfield Jamison An Unquiet Mind
  4. Viktor E. Frankl Man's Search for Meaning
  5. Jane Caputi Gossips, Gorgons & Crones
  6. Robin Pilcher A Risk Worth Taking
  7. Anne Wilson Schaef Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much
  8. Kent Haruf Plainsong
  9. Elizabeth Benedict Almost
  10. Brenda Ueland If You Want To Write
  11. Anita Shreve The Pilot's Wife
  12. Pat Frank Alas, Babylon
  13. Isaac Asimov Prelude to Foundation
  14. Neal Stephenson Snow Crash
  15. Dorothea Brande Becoming a Writer
  16. Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee Cradle
  17. Arthur C. Clarke & Gentry Lee Rama Revealed
  18. Theodore Sturgeon More Than Human
  19. Arthur C. Clarke Imperial Earth
  20. Elizabeth Benedict The Joy of Writing Sex
  21. Edgar Rice Burroughs The Land That Time Forgot
  22. Anita Shreve Light on Snow
  23. Anita Shreve The Weight of Water

How Postrel can write a book on modern aesthetics and not cite Nietzsche escapes me. Apollonian and Dionysian are central to her argument, though she never acknowledges those terms.

I last read Alas, Babylon in high school. I was a fan of apocalyptic SF. I believe this interest was a form of psychological self-immunization, being a child during the worst of the Cold War. The proximity of it all was reflected in some of my poems written from that era.

I read several of Anita Shreve's books this season: I recommended this author.

Cradle was crap. Many a book I'll read once but don't ever feel inclined to read again. (Very rarely am I unable to finish a book, although it has happened.) Cradle was not so bad that I bailed out before its ending, but at the end I remember thinking That was a waste of my time.

ERB was a racist, sexist, and melodramatic author. He was also hugely popular. Why? Because his particular brand of pulp fiction was also imaginative and thoroughly escapist.

Fall 2006 / Winter 2006-2007

nothing, nil, nix, nada, null, aught, cipher, cypher, goose egg, naught, zero, zilch, zip

Spring 2007 / Summer 2007

  1. Helen and Scott Nearing Living the Good Life
  2. Helen and Scott Nearing Continuing the Good Life
  3. Anne LaBastille Woodswoman

I suppose I should have read On Walden Pond too...

Fall 2007 / Winter 2007-2008

See Fall 2006 / Winter 2006-2007.

2008

  1. Douglas Adams & John Lloyd The Meaning of Liff
  2. Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner Freakonomics
  3. Ray Bradbury Zen in the Art of Writing
  4. Stuart Chase The Tyranny of Words
  5. Steve Perry & Dal Perry Titan A.E.
  6. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Dune: The Butlerian Jihad
  7. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Dune: House Atreides
  8. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Dune: House Harkonnen
  9. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Dune: House Corrino
  10. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson Sandworms of Dune
  11. Isaac Asimov Fantastic Voyage II

In 2007 I was given a number of the Dune sequels/prequels, but wasn't in the mood until tthe next summer to read them. I was always a fan of the Dune saga and the original trilogy was, well, original, but being becoming a franchise is universally a loss (even if it isn't in the financial sense).

2009

  1. Doublas Preston & Lincoln Child The Ice Limit
  2. Joe Haldeman The Accidental Time Machine
  3. Greg Bear The Forge of God
  4. Lynne Withey Dearest Friend
  5. Sheila Ballantyne Norma Jean the Termite Queen
  6. Arthur C. Clarke The Other Side of the Sky
  7. Isaac Asimov The Caves of Steel
  8. Isaac Asimov The Naked Sun
  9. D. Jordan Redhawk Tiopa Ki Lakota
  10. Alan Watts The Wisdom of Insecurity
  11. Alan Watts The Way of Zen
  12. Alan Watts Tao: The Watercourse Way
  13. Rita Mae Brown Starting from Scratch
  14. Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
  15. Roger Zelazny Roadmarks
  16. Charles Portis Masters of Atlantis

I selected the Haldeman story because the protagonist was at MIT. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was a really fun concept, though the execution became repetitive.

2010

  1. Roland Merullo Breakfast with Bhudda
  2. Cormac McCarthy The Road
  3. Eileen Favorite The Heroines
  4. Frederick Barthelme Chroma
  5. Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon Days
  6. Martin Ford The Lights in the Tunnel

I found The Road to be well constructed, well written and therefore depressing as hell. When the movie came out, I could not bring myself to go see it.

Keillor I found to be, at the same time, both over-hyped and a more satisfying read than I had anticipated.

2011

  1. Jerry Cleaver Immediate Fiction
  2. Tim Harford The Logic of Life

Immediate Fiction, in the end, gives the same fundamental advice I have seen in all books on how to write: practice, practice, practice!. This is universal advice from any master for any student, no matter the discipline. And here numerous pages are devoted to specific practices as part of a regimine for overcoming "writer's block", which was more detailed advice than I has seen from, for example, Stephen King's On Writing or others. Also, I found Cleaver to be bit more refreshingly mercenary than most.

The Logic of Life is of the new economics school typified by Levitt's & Dubner's Freakonomics, which it cites.

Still Waiting Patiently For Me

In no particular order:

© 1997-2011 Roland F. McKenney

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