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Writing a blog about what you're reading, while attending a University to obtain your Bachelor's Degree in English, is redundant and impossible. Here are the highlights of my semester:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I stupidly began this book about the same time as the beginning of the semester. Therefore I read half didn't touch it for months and read the other half. Overall impression = excellent.

Dubliners by James Joyce
Hillarious and depressing and incredibly anti-catholic. Let's just say I'll be attending a Bloomsday celebration next week.

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien
I took a religious studies class that dealt entirely in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. This was the quickest read and the least dense in terms of religious symbolism. Still, I enjoyed the book when I was ten and I enjoyed it this time too.

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
If I could steal the brain of any author in the world it would be this one.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
I understand Seinfeld now.

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
I will never forgive Christopher Tolkien for unleashing this monstrosity on the world.

The Water is Wide by Pat Conroy
A Conroy memoir? What class assigned that? None of 'em suckah's I took a break! And I enjoyed it immensely.

Look Back in Anger by Joan Osborne
Fucked up with a side of twisted. I don't believe I'm a fan of squirrels or bears good sir.

Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill
Delightfully fucked up with a side of shock and sexual awe. Take a walk through colonialism via gender and class. Loved it.

Dreamsongs by John Berryman
You sir, are the type of poet I wish I could be.

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Avatar totally ripped this book off.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
Lewis' version of the Divine Comedy. Fewer face-eating counts more immovable matter. And the ever-present golden apples.

Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien's version of the Great Divorce. Less wandering through a meadow more slaving away in a workhouse.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
A close look at multiculturalism and fundamentalism in postcolonial London via a sometimes omniscient, always hilarious narrator. I read it about a year ago for pleasure and again this semester for class. It only got better.

The Question Concerning Technology by Heidegger
Technology is an attitude.

And that's what you missed. It's over, it's graduated, and it's currently reading Pat Conroy's newest novel.

Everything That is Wrong With the Publishing Industry = Bloomsbury

Dear Bloomsbury,

I am writing to express my disapproval of the cover for Jaclyn Dolomore's debut novel Magic Under Glass. You are developing a reputation for representing clearly black and bi-racial characters with white models. I am surprised you didn't learn your lesson after having to change the cover for Justine Larbalesteir's Liar. Obviously you have not. I am certain that you have received and will receive a large number of emails related to your cover for Magic Under Glass, and will therefore keep my message short.

You defended the white-washed cover of Liar by claiming that it was not a "calculated decision to mask the character's ethnicity." I regret to inform you, whatever your intent, that is how the American reader is interpreting these blunders. Whatever your intent you are hurting your own public image by portraying yourselves as intolerant and ignorant.

Dolomore's novel clearly describes her character, Nimira, as "dark-skinned." This cover is not Dolomore's fault, it is entirely your own. Please stop misrepresenting the characters of the books you are publishing, stop representing yourself as an intolerant company, stop underestimating reader interest in books about people of color, and stop insulting our intelligence by assuming that we won't notice.

Sincerely,
name redacted

Happy f*ing Martin Luther King Day poopheads

Michael Ondaatje - The Collected Works of Billy The Kid

Michael Ondaatje is the most dense writer I've ever come in contact with. His thin volumes require a good deal more time and attention than even Dickens' thousand page monster, Bleak House.

I had to read this book twice. Fortunately it's slim enough to make that feasible (118 pgs including the afterword). This book mixes poetry with prose as well as one jail house interview and a five cent novel. However I wasn't able to unravel anything of this book until reading his afterword.

"I discovered a stunning range of voices and emotional angles. What if I tried to read a book that allowed all these angles and subjects and emotions, but they all came from one person. As far as I could see, one voice never really spoke only in one way: it contained multitudes."

One of the difficulties I had with my first reading was how fluid the perspectives were. Billy was I or Billy or Mr. Bonney and often all three in the same piece. I wasn't sure how to trust the narrator because he kept shifting his relationship to the subject matter. However if it's true that we find multitudes in any voice it must be particularly true of someone, forgive me for being totally cliche, with a reputation that is too big to contain in just one man.

Just look at Henry Winkler, do you think he's ever going to go a full day without someone throwing him a thumbs up and honking "eeehhhh" at him? But, seriously, Michael Ondaatje does a better job discussing this so go read it.

Although I found the afterword to be extremely helpful in understanding the book, I don't suggest that you start with it. I was glad to have the opportunity to form my own opinion of each of the characters and then use Ondaatje's afterword as a key to the parts that I didn't understand.

Also, If you're squeemish, this is a western in every sense. Lots of violence and brutality, very little proper medical care. so be forewarned.

Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna

The first book of the decade is a cheat. I began this novel in the end of December, but I did not finish it until last night, and it is therefore my first book of the decade.

I do my best to avoid jacket copy when choosing a book, preferring to work with fellow reader recomendations and the first line of randomly chosen volumes. Although, I entered my local bookstore with purpose and did not rely on either for the purchase of this particular novel I am still fond of its first line. "In the beginning were the howlers." The novel begins as the diary of a young boy in 1929 and follows him through to 1951. Harrison Shepherd was born in the United States and whisked off to Mexico by his native mother at the age of twelve. The novel begins with Mexico and as I read I thought I was going to read a history of Mexico. Instead Harrison Shepherd becomes the Forest Gump of Communism. I particularly enjoyed her look at the Red Scare in the United States

"Communism? Most people have no idea what it is . . . I do not exaggerate. Look
around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've
been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their
own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it."

Barbara Kingsolver has never been politically inactive in her writing and I feel like many of her points particularly in those scenes occuring in the United States speak directly to where our nation is today and the new dirty word is socialism.

Most of the characters in this novel speak in some sort of dialect, but Shepherd speaks English with the poetry of Spanish grammar. He makes odd word choices and plays with sentence structure in a way that makes the book all the more visually stimulating.

My favorite passage by far:

"Your blood for mine. If not these, then those. War is the supreme
mathematics problem. It strains our skulls, yet we work out the sums, believing
we have pressed the monstrous quantities into a balanced
equation."

This book was an amazing way to begin a new decade.

Happy New Year, and welcome to my year (maybe decade if I find this enjoyable) in books.