XplanaZine

I read Brian Lamb’s post on getting things done today and couldn’t help but laugh. It also made me think about how much content there is to read and process these days. Maybe that’s why I don’t seem to be too interested in reading lists (or any other lists, for that matter) these days. With blogs and the Web, it seems that informal and organic lists pop around us on a minute-by-minute basis. Who has time to go out looking for trouble by scoring the New York Times suggestions or actually paying attention to the recommended lists on Amazon or iTunes?At least that’s the excuse I was going with until my daughter asked me what books I recommended that she read. Imagine, if you can, the amazing and humorous flexibility with which I suddenly shifted positions, put on a combination persona mixed of father and academic, and started to hack out a list of books that my eighteen year old daughter should read. In the end, I poured through the mental files of my old literary haunts and took inventory of the diverse fiction I’ve read on airplanes over the past four years.

Now, before you proceed to look at my list, I should point out a few things.

• My daughter is a prolific reader. There are many works of the “canon” that she has already read so I tried to list only books that I was relatively certain she had no yet experienced. To her credit, she has read most major works of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and has even been exposed to Westerns. She’s devoured all of Neil Stephenson and good sampling of Asimov and Heinlein (daughters will do anything to please their fathers).
• I tried to make the list as honest as possible — that is, I meant to include only books that I had read. I was less interested in recommending books that other think she should read and more focused on sharing my personal favorites.
• I divided the list into three categories — serious (likely taught in literature classes and in someone’s list of officially serious literature), less serious but still somewhat literary, and popular.

What was interesting is that I discovered that the ensuing list said a great deal about me (age, race, sexual preference, and social idiosyncrasies). In addition, the process reminded me of something important about proactive lists like this one. Making a list, whether it’s about books, blogs, or music, is a great tool for self reflection and a pretty harmless way to communicate something about yourself to others. In this case, making a list was a true labor of love and something I enjoyed doing. My belated New Year’s resolution is to make more such lists and to be willing to share them with others.

Rob’s Recommended Reading List for His Daughter

This is a copy of the e-mail text I sent to my daughter) Okay. Here’s a list of good books to read. You may have read some of these. Also, I’m not entirely sure what kind of reading you want to do. I’ve put a little of everything on the list. There is fun reading, serious literature, and other stuff. You can decide what suits you. Every book on here is highly recommended, however.

Serious Literature (but good reading) – This is stuff to read if you want to have models for real depth in your writing and thinking.

• William Gibson – Neuromancer. This is the book that started cyberpunk and made books like Snow Crash possible. Mind boggling.
• Thomas Pynchon – The Crying of Lot ‘49. This is one of the great books of last century by a guy who was arguably our most gifted writer. It’s crazy, 60ish, and full of wild stuff but it is a book everyone who loves American literature should read.
• Richard Powers – Galatea 2.2. This is book about a writer and English teacher who ends up as part of a bet regarding artificial intelligence and computers at the university where he is Writer in Residence. Deep, thought provoking, and fun. It will make you laugh and cry. If you like Galatea 2.2, you have to read his masterpiece, The Gold Bug Variations.
• Maya Angelou – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou has served as poet laureate on the U.S. and in this autobiography writes about her childhood as a thoughtful African American girl in the Midwest and South. Beautiful prose.
• J. D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye. Best coming-of-age novel ever.
• Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot. Beckett wrote this existential play and the world has not been the same sense. It goes to prove that we can encounter sad situations with lots of humor.
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky – The Brothers Karamazov. Ultimately a search for truth and God. On the surface, however, it is the novel of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder.
• Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart. Achebe is a great African writer and this is the first of his trilogy about Igbo life in western Africa. The most important novel of the postcolonial world.
• Ernest Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises. Written mostly in sharp dialogue, this novel follows the relationship between Jake Barnes and the beautiful Brett. It is beautiful, lean, and deals with American artists and aristocrats living in Europe after WW1.
• Gabriel García Márquez – One Hundred Years of Solitude. The greatest novel written in Latin America<. You have to read it at least once in your life. The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor’s name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women–the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar — who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick.
• Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Seat against the fall of Czechoslovakia in the late 60’s, this novel treats everything from love and war to what it really means to be satisfied in life. Told with beautiful, lyrical prose.

A Little Literary Reading (but a bit more serious than traditional fantasy) – Excellent novels that may not make the “canon” but are books you don’t want to miss.

• John Irving – A Prayer for Owen Meany. One of my favorite books about three friends (Johnny Wheelwright, Owen Meany, and Hester the Molester). A tremendous novel about faith, love, and war.
• Anne Tyler – The Accidental Tourist. A hard book to characterize but the characters are great. Here is a synopsis of the book – “Scarred by grief after their 12-year-old son’s senseless murder (he was shot by a holdup man in a Burger Bonanza), Macon and Sarah Leary are losing their marriage too. Macon is unable to cope when she leaves him, so he settles down “safe among the people he’d started out with,” moving back home with two divorced brothers and spinster sister Rose. Author of a series of guidebooks called “Accidental Tourist” for businessmen who hate to travel, Macon is Tyler’s focus here, as she gently chronicles his journey from lonely self-absorption to an “accidental” new life with brassy Muriel, a dog trainer from the Meow Bow Animal Hospital, who renews and claims his heart.
• Margaret Atwood – The Handmaid’s Tale. Tough but inspiring. The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates she will, like all dissenters, be hanged or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred’s nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.
• James Clavell – Shogun. Beyond the story, which is wonderful, it introduces you to the Japanese spirit—a first glimpse (for me) into the culture, history, passions, and fears of a people that I knew very little about at the time. Incredible love story as well.
• Tom Robbins – Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This novel tells the tale of a hitchhiking female vagabond with a gross deformity. Although it is a comedy, and absolutely hilarious, it deals with subject matter (woman love) that is usually dealt with dramatically or not at all. This book is one of Tom Robbins’ best; it is extremely well-written and delivered in an almost colloquial way, making it a great summer read.
• Chaim Potok – The Chosen. You would really like this if you haven’t read it yet because it treats a subject with which you are personally familiar – how to handle growing up in a conservative religious environment. This book was published in 1967 and is about two teenage Jewish boys who form a friendship, though they come from different worlds. It is a first-person narrative from the point of view of Reuven Malter.

Authors I’m Reading these Days (mostly junk and fun)/p>

• John Ringo – Writes science fiction with war themes.
• James Lee Burke – Writes detective fictions set in Louisiana and Idaho. Violent yet compelling and has fantastic characters.
• Haruki Murakami – Japanese author who writes dreamy books in beautiful prose.

-Dad