50 Books

You can count me in on the 50 book challenge too.


Over the last three months, I've been in middle of three or four books at various levels of interest, aware that after a few weeks of neglect on any one, I'd have to start over again:

1. The Known World By Edward P. Jones- Pulitizer Prize Winning novel about a black slave owner. and something I began to read on jury duty in October, was fascinated by the first fifty pages, and then became aware of the depth of committment that the book involved, how many characters I'd have to keep straight through a constantly jumping timeline, and I must have decided at some point, to give it up, to carry it with me, to intend to read it, but not take it out during idle hours. I'll have to start over with that one.
   
2. Middlemarch by George Eliot - This has been my stock answer to the question "What's your favorite novel?" since I was 17 and read it an English course, despite the fact that I had to rush through the last 100 or so pages so I could bang out a paper, and now I barely remember what happened in the book. WHat I do remember was Eliot's ability to turn an unblinking sympathy towards almost every character in the book, even if she had to stop the plot to explain how a certain character was at least partially justified in her feelings, or to caution the reader against judging too harshly. In rereading the first 100 or so pages (and yes, I'm counting both rereading and books I started last year), I find that her voice is more biting and sarcastic than I remembered, and those cautions to the reader against judging anyone have a way of plunging the knife in deeper, along the lines of "Brutus is an honorable man."
   
3. Chronicles: Volume 1 by Bob Dylan - A surprising book in a number of ways, in particular how Dylan can make free form memoirs that jump radically around just as naturally as his best songs can change subject matter and point of view midway without warning. He stays cautious for the most part, doling out little pieces of his private life mainly as a background to what he observes about the scene around him. Since this one is only in a rough chronological order, and jumps from 1960 to '68 to '87 by the halfway point (where I am in the book now,) I don't know how the remaining volumes will be structured.
   

Gotta sleep now. In about two weeks, my commute will change and I will have much more time to read.