"And all the books you’ve read have been read by other people."

Beginning in April 2007, I started keeping a list of all the books I'd read the previous year. I got the idea from the girlfriend of the son of some of my parents long-lost Baltimore friends. We were in London at the time. (It's one of those undiagrammable connections.)

Previous installments of the reading list can be found over in the Hall of the Revels, here, here, here, and here.

And so, without further ado, here is the comparatively short list of things I've read in the past year. I blame not being an English major any more. Also all the back issues of New Yorker I've been reading over lunch. Also, if I'm honest, Netflix.

Of the thirty-four books (and one play) I read this year, there were only two that I hated. In general, I try to steer clear of books like that, because I have a compulsive need to finish every book I start. Additionally, only two of these books were re-reads, although in the case of The Westing Game, which I read twelve times at age ten, re-read seems a bit of an understatement.

Books

1) The Spire by William Golding
2) In Search of Respect by Phillippe Bourgois
3) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
4) Life Class by Pat Barker
5) Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault
6) Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas
7) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
8) An Unequal Music by Vikram Seth
9) Dorian: An Imitation by Will Self
10) The Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
11) The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
12) The Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies
13) What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
14) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
15) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
16) The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
17) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
18) Savage Inequalities by Lawrence Kozol
19) Friendship, Cliques, and Gangs by Greg Dimitriadis
20) The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
21) Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carré
22) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
23) Answered Prayers by Truman Capote
24) War Horse by Michael Morpugo
25) The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
26) A Neil Jordan Reader
27) The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
28) Listening is an Act of Love ed. Dave Isay
29) The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
30) Breaking the Code by Hugh Whitemore
31) Blackout by Connie Willis
32) As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
33) The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
34) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
35) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins


Top Five of the Year, in descending order

The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John Le Carré
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins


And an Explanation

I went back and forth over including Catching Fire in the Top Five. I wondered whether I should put The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in instead. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was a re-read, true, but I barely remember the first time I read it, it's a classic, and is far better written than Catching Fire. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was the subject of not one but two plays I saw at the Steppenwolf this year (an adaptation and an inspiration), and both moved me beyond words.

With all that being true, why Catching Fire? Ultimately, it had one thing in common with the other books in the Top Five: I couldn't put it down. Indeed, I read it on Cousin R's kindle with Cousin R in the room (she was watching Skins, so it wasn't like I made her go sit in the corner...although she was sitting in the corner). The thing about Catching Fire, and the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy, Mockingjay, is that it made me feel like a teenage reader again. I was so invested in the story and the characters that I didn't spend too much time picking apart the gaps in logic or the wobbly writing. True, I was a college-educated teen reader, so I reveled in the references to mythology, to climate change, to reality TV, and I gloried in the ambiguous emotions and relationships the main character, Katniss, has. Sure, I see its imperfections and the love triangle made me roll my eyes, but those were things teenage me did too. Not everything has to change.

The Hunger Games series is also significant because of the impact it has had on the kids I work with. Kids who don't usually read are reading it. Boys are reading it, and not despite but because of the female protagonist and how much she kicks butt. I love talking about books at work, because it reminds me of college, and it reminds me of high school, and it reminds me of every part of my life I've enjoyed. And, frankly, it's the reason I was hired.

Character and Setting

Words of wisdom from the most unexpected source imaginable: sometimes this is what gets you through the day. Today, for instance, began all right. Then it was bad. Then it was okay again. Then it was amazing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My latest project for the kids in the evening program is a podcast to the editor. We're going around asking each other questions like, "What changes would you most like to make?" "What about the world frustrates you?" "What is going well?" "Do you think it's possible to change other people?"

Now, there is one boy in the evening program who is a mess: always a little ragged, always a little hungry, sometimes a little dirty, always foul-mouthed and peripatetic. He wandered into our interview session today and instead of allowing him to interrupt us (although he is unexpectedly respectful of the voice recorder; he always asks if it's recording before launching into offensive lyrics, and if it is he paces and waits) we decided to interview him.

In response to the question "Do you think it's possible to change other people?" he answered in the affirmative. "How is it possible?" asked his interviewer.

He thought for a long time. Just before the interviewer got frustrated and moved on to something else, he muttered, "The setting."

"What?" he interviewer demanded.

"The setting. You gotta change the setting."

"Setting means place and time," explained the interviewer a touch condescendingly. "You mean place and time?"

"Yeah, man, but, you know..." he trailed off and eyed the floor.

"You mean more than that?" I began. "You mean--?"

"I mean like everything. Their attitude. Their atmosphere. One thing at least. You gotta change the setting."

When the interview was done, he bounced away, grabbing a pool stick as he headed out the door, gone before I could say anything about it. Later I saw him doing pull-ups on the triangular bar holding the library door open. Even later, I stood in the art room and he hopped past the window in the alley outside, grinning widely, waving with one hand, giving the finger with the other, on his way home.

He rarely listens, he is frequently disrespectful, many staff members worry about him although few like him. I really hope he can find it within himself to change his setting one day. Or that, if he is unable, he finds someone who can.