Returns (Sorry, it's a long one)

I know, it has been awhile since my last writing. In this time things have been both extremely busy and wonderfully quiet. A few weeks ago I went to Geneva, Il for my sister's wedding. It was a hectic weekend, but both Robin and I maintain that it was one of the most fun weddings we have ever been to. Good food, good drinks, lots of dancing, and good company.

When we returned we did a little housesitting for an awkward pair of shelties. This was a little bit of an uncomfortable week. I think I might have a slight dog allergy, as I was very cloudy in the head every morning that week. Thankfully, the gig paid well, and Robin eloquently declined the invitation to sit again.

In this time I have also done a little bit of riding, but nothing to write home about. I have mostly been working and reading books in my free time. When I announced my departure from Ph.D-dom back in May, I suggested that it would give me much more time to read for fun and leave me more excited to talk about what I have read. In that time I have only talked about one book, Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (which I still think is great), but I have actually read many books these last few months.

When I first stepped away from my studies I was excited to immerse myself in some guilty pleasure reading. Robin and I are both fans of the epic sci-fi/fantasy adventure genre, and she particularly enjoys listening to books of this sort on tape (well, ipod, really) while at work. I suggested that she give Stephen King's The Gunslinger a try and told her that, if she liked it, there were dozens of hours of listening that could follow.

I started reading the massive Dark Tower series when I was a teenager. The first four works delighted me, as had many other stories of King's. But then he took a break from the Dark Tower and I went off to college and started reading different things. When Robin listened to the first book and I saw how much she enjoyed it, I knew I had get back into the series myself. And rather than picking up where I left off, I decided to start over from the beginning.

The epic tale did not disappoint. But after reading the first five books in succession, I realized I needed a little break from the massive story and yearned for some more character-driven tales. Around this time Steve had mentioned that he started re-reading David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, a gargantuan story of tennis, drugs, terrorist politics, and pretty much everything related and not related to those three things. I had forced myself through this dense work (it's a thousand pages and has probably 300 or more intensely detailed footnotes) in the summer of 2005. For the most part, I enjoyed it. But I did not get everything out of it that I should have. And listening to Steve recount the amusing happenings at the Enfield Tennis Academy sparked my interest to give it a re-read, too.

Unfortunately, Infinite Jest is not a great substitute for a seven volume epic story. I read the first hundred pages, and for the most part really enjoyed them, but I had to put it aside. I think I will still re-read it, but it will probably happen in chunks.

Instead I looked to our rather large bookshelf and started pulling things off that I acquired long ago and never read. In quick succession I read two Pulitzer Prize winning novels. Although the major prizes have their problems (I think Sinclair Lewis's explanation for why he refused the Pulitzer is a nice place to start. Although, it should be noted that five years later he did accept the Nobel Prize for Literature), I generally find that they are good reads. Indeed, many of my favorite books and authors are Pulitzer Prize winners (Kavalier and Clay, Middlesex, Jhumpa Lahiri, Willa Cather, and others).

So I sat down to two rather interesting tales of the decline of American values and icons--Phillip Roth's American Pastoral and Richard Russo's Empire Falls. Both have a strong postmodern undercurrent that leaves one grasping for some kind of stability in life. The former does so with a more serious tone of regret and violence, and the latter is a little more flippant and carefree. I am happy I read them both, but I preferred Empire Falls.

This morning, though, I found myself bookless. Well, not completely, there are others on the shelf that I have not read, but none of them called out to me. So I spun on down to the library and returned with Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist. It was a finalist for the Booker Prize last year, and I am yet to be disappointed by a Booker. It is a short, powerful book set in Lahore, Pakistan in which the Pakistani narrator recounts his life in the United States to an American traveler. The entire book takes place over the course of one sitting, and I think it is best to read the story over the course of one sitting as well. Hamid manages to convey many details through his sparse prose, and the narrator is a fascinating mix between a wealthy Pakistani interested in American cliches and a brilliant, highly educated financial analyst. I highly recommend the story.

While I have no intention of being a book reviewer, I will try to write about my readings with a little more frequency. And if I don't wait so long before I discuss them, I might be able to say more interesting things about each one. But as always, no promises from this blogger.