Me Bad and List for 2013

What was I reading in 2012?  How can there be 20 unread letters on last year's bucket list?  Maybe that was the wrong name ... did I think I would die when I finished the list?  It will be renamed "Fill My Literary Void List" for 2013.

2012 certainly was a year of distractions, faint resolve, and lack of diligence.  Not only do I intend to keep plugging away at these authors, but I will come up with a real, new them for 2013 by tomorrow.

B:  Fire Next Time by James BaldwinD:  Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
F:  The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 
G:  Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
H:  The Marble Faun by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I:  Exit the King by Eugene Ionesco
K:  Flowers of Algernon by Daniel Keyes and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milos Kundera
L:  The Giver by Lois Lowry and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Leguin 
M:  Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell  and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
N:  Miguel Street by V. S. Naipaul 
O:  The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
P:  The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe and A Cab at the Door and Midnight Oil by V.S. Pritchett
Q:  Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey
R:  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque -- March 18, 2013
S:  Grapes of Wrath and/or Of Mice and Men by John Steinback
T:  The Art of War by by Sun Tzu and Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
U:  Gunnar's Daughter by Sigrid Undset
V:  Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
W:  Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton or Beau Geste by Percival Christopher Wren and Decline and Fall by Evenlyn Waugh and My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
X:  NEED SOMETHING FOR THE LETTER X
Y:  Disturbing the Peace by Richard Yates -- March 19, 2013
Z:  We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Here we go 2013:  the tangent-driven, one word search list.

A for Attraction:  Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes by Jena Pincott -- January 17, 2013
Artful by Ali Smith -- March 3, 2013 (Happy Hundredth Birthday Daddy)
B for Bonk by Mary Roach -- April 15, 2013 
C for Celebrity:  The Frenzy of Renown by Leo Braudy -- March 3, 2013  
F for Fashion:  Paris Fashion by Valerie Steele -- January 17, 2013 
G for Gulp by Mary Roach -- May 28, 2012
H for Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks -- September 8, 2013
S for Stiff and S for Spook by Mary Roach -- June 22, 2013
Tangents on Ali Smith:  Girl Meets Boy and There but for the -- March 10, 2013
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann -- July 6, 2012



Off List Tangents:
Leadership and Crisis by Bobby Jindal -- March 18, 2013 
After Visiting Friends - A Son's Story by Michael Hainey -- March 30, 2013 
Girl Gone by Gillian Flynn -- March 30, 2013
Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight -- Juky 7, 2013
Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell -- July 28, 2013
Life Time by Liza Marklund -- September 8, 2013
Little Green by Walter Mosley -- September 9, 2013
Brave Genius by Sean Carroll --December 25, 2013

Book Club Books:
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien -- March 3, 2013 
Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks -- April 2, 2013 
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett -- April 15, 2013
Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson -- May 28, 2013
The Price by Arthur Miller

Movie Reviews:
The Horse Whisperer -- March 10, 2013
The Motorcycle Diaries -- March 10, 2013 
Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter -- March 18, 2013

Shamed into a Similar Retrospective Assessment

I know this is a venue for book reviews, but my darling daughter-in-law has used these questions to reflect on the passing year and I've decided it would do my psyche benefit to answer the following self-assessments:

1. What did you do in 2012 that you'd never done before? Got a concussion, ah me and Ms. Hillary if that is what happened to her instead of "a gash, a rash and purple bumps."
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No, my resolutions are public, to wit, the Slackers' 2012 book list which really needs a do-over for 2013.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Unfortunately, no.
4. Did anyone close to you die? Fortunately, no.
5. What countries did you visit? Texas! (This is a copy and paste from my DIL.
6. What would you like to have in 2013 that you didn’t have in 2012? A Triple Crown winner.
7. What dates from 2012 will be etched upon your memory, and why? Of course, Bill and Em's wedding and probably Labor Day, the day of the great fall.
8. What was your biggest achievement of this year? Getting kudos at work and an early confirmation of continued employment in 2013.
9. What was your biggest failure? Letting too many old friends fade away without keeping in more frequent correspondence.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?   Well, duh, the blessedly awful fall.  At least the scars are minimal, I didn't get a blood clot, and I had my family to get me to the ER quickly.
11. What was the best thing you bought? Two gorgeous emerald rings.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Getting at least one tree up for Thanks-mas and all of the presents wrapped, the goose bought and cooked.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?   One woman at work who is losing it, aggressively attacking someone I am trying to mentor and develop.  That woman is jealous.
14. Where did most of your money go? E-bay
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The grand wedding in Texas, bringing my menfolk with me and Cookie coming as well.
16. What songs will always remind you of 2012? Not really songs per se, but Carlos Santana at SPAC and Tedeschi Trucks at the Palace.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?  I am definitely happier, 7 pounds heavier, and depending on the market, a tad less well off.
    
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Gone out for dinner, movies, coffee with my girlfriends.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Wasting time at work.
20. How did you spend Christmas? We had two holidays, the Texas and the Delmar versions.  Both were special.  Although the food for the Texas celebration was much better.
21. Did you fall in love in 2012? Of course.
22. What was your favorite TV program? Since I really don't watch TV, I was unexpectedly surprised to discover The Midwife on PBS.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?  No, my political dislikes became more entrenched.
24. What was the best book you read?  Several:  Fahrenheit 451, Closing of the American Mind, Intellectuals and Society, and The Phantom Tollbooth. 
25. What was your greatest musical discovery?  When we went to the Brandenburg Concerti last New Year's Day, I actually recognized most of them.
26. What did you want and get? Loved, adored, and cherished.
27. What did you want and not get? More of the above.
28. What was your favorite film of 2012? Hysteria.
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?  Never ask a lady this question.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? See 27 above.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept of 2012? Jersey dresses, over the knee boots, and Lutens, Lutens, Lutens.
32. What kept you sane? A dark quiet room at night and a warm puppy on my head.
33. Who did you miss? Too many close people live in other states.
34. Who was the best new person you met?  My boss.
35. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2012.   Eventually, there will be someone who recognizes you for what you considered to be your core values and experiences.

My Last Bucket List Author of the Year

Read two Pablo Neruda poem anthologies:  last night, finished The Book of Questions and earlier in the week, Intimacies Poems of Love.  Neither of them gave me a poem I wanted to read to book club members next week.  Nor did any of them provoke self-examination or personal identification with the themes.  Particularly, TBOQ seemed strained and contrived to me.  Written entirely as questions, these haiku like verses were constructed by putting one sensory perception against a dissonant other:  colors making sound, smells making noise.  They seemed autistic and not universally human.  They were more than the misunderstood curiosity of children, they were not allegorical, they were not the wandering nonsequitors of the elderly.  All together the anthology didn't present topics for meditations or musings.  Nor were his love poems romantic or erotic.  Sorry, bucket list, I have not found a key piece to my missing literary foundations.

Another Year End Easy Read Favorite Author

When James Lee Burke started writing about Montana, I gave him up for lost.  The last New Orleans book of his I read left me flat as well, but glad I took the chance reading Creole Belle, a long violent, family threatening, industry mogol polluters, both morally and ecologically.  Burke many times reminds me of Dick Francis in that his main characters are so likeable and yet the crime, anger, and onslaughts they undergo borders on sensational.  Unlike Francis, Burke sticks with Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcell, two former NOPD officers who deal with nasty nasty criminals while Burke begins and ends each chapter, if not paragraph, with some of the most beautiful descriptive writing of peaceful Louisiana bayou geography, nature and atmosphere.  I'd have to go back to my year of reading states to see what I read for Louisiana, but reading Creole Belle, I was lost in thoughts of how this is the essence of the state and of a man who loves his surroundings and home.

So it's time to look back at how successful, or not, I have been in addressing my bucket list.  Obviously, not too successful.  I did not of course kick the bucket but certainly was knocked for a loop from my Labor Day downfall and still find myself reacquiring segments of my personality that seemed to have been deep sixed for months.  For example, I tucked my DVD player in the bottom drawer of the night stand and only brought it out a few days ago, so long disused that I forgot where to plug it in and turn it on.  I thoroughly enjoyed Kinky Boots, recommended by our office's affirmative action officer, and last night watched Bridges of Madison County.  BOMC is definitely a chick flick, probably from before that term entered the lexicon.  The viewer easily enters the story and the era and when it's over, only then realizes how willingly disbelief was suspended and how unlikely many events and emotions were.  Of course that did not prevent me from tears.

I admit I use movies as a safe venue for a good cry.  I hate crying and steel myself against it even during those periods of my life when illness or other hardships would trigger weeping in the average person.  I give myself a sham excuse of equating the activation of my tear ducts with a susceptibility to colds and sore throats, so I don't cry to stay "healthy."  But a movie gives me cover and allows my emotions to flood my brain and measure my life experiences against the women I relate to on screen.  I found myself not getting lost in the lust of Clint Eastwood but in the wifeliness of Meryl Streep.  Her understanding and appreciation of the rules of her choice to be a wife and mother seem the ur-theme of the story more than her liberating four days of sensuality.  I need some more good movies. 

So I end, almost, the year resolving to copy those titles I ignored in 2012 and redouble my vows and resolutions to try to read more classics.  I have my N author at bedside, reading through a couple of Pablo Neruda poetry anthologies for the upcoming book club ... which will probably be as poorly attended as December's.  Not sure I am relating that well to Neruda to choose on of his to read.  As a good fall back Plan B I took out Seamus Heaney's Beowulf to re-read and if the audience is select enough, might just read Shakespeare's Sonnet 155.

Ending the Year with a Few Favorite Authors

Now that I am venturing back into the town library, I have fallen into temptation and grabbed a couple of my favorite contemporary "easy reading" authors' latests to rush through the last week of the year.  Finished JD Robb's Delusion in Death yesterday.  (Probably should have spent more time getting a better taste to Christmas dinner, but anyway ...)  If I recall, the previous one of hers I read this year was quite subpar; this one a bit better although 2060 and its technology does not seem that unusual to me anymore nor does the concept of Urban Wars.  It was an interesting themed book to read after all the mass murders of 2012, showing what damage can be done without guns, and emphasizing the depraved motives of a criminal mind.

The other book I will complete shortly and then review is James Lee Burke's latest Creole Belle, thankfully, he has returned to NoLa from Montana.

Success

Not that I actually read Go Down Moses, but I did find it in the back seat of the Sebring in a cloth market bag so I could get back the $15 lost book fine I paid last week.  And I got through two movies this weekend.  First I needed just to make sense of Eco's Name of the Rose.  Of course the movie cut, cut, cut, but Eco larded his novel -- I realized, almost the equivalent of an illustrated medieval manuscript.  Layer upon layer, requiring not only an in depth understanding of 14th Century order factions, the Franciscans, the Benedictines, the two popes, the Inquistioners, but also his most Italian overlay of honorable doubt and love of the Classics.  The movie does reaffirm the messages I was left with after all the ornateness:  Live in one's brain; Laugh at oneself, one's biases, life itself; and trust the ancient Greeks and Romans for their understanding of man and his place in the world.

Of course, it is easy to look at Sean Connery, wrinkled of brow and shaved bald, but still of the sparkling eyes and iconic ironic wit.  Christian Slater was Aldo, so young, so short.

Also finally watched a movie that a fellow at work recommended highly, especially when he teases me about my impractical, snow unworthy winter foot wear:  Kinky Boots.  It was a great movie, Rich was right.  He is our affirmative action officer at work and I'm sure he wants all of us to endorse the tolerance and understanding illustrated in the movie, but a beautiful human story, lots of pain but lots of personal successes.  The other DVD I picked up today was Bridges of Madison County, which is a year late for my lust list of 2011.

Anyway, the days are getting longer and hopefully so is my powers of concentration to read more avidly and loyally.  The pile next to the bed is getting taller and my resolve a bit more firm.