The editorial page of today's Boston Globe has useful recommendations of books we should be reading - mostly with geopolitical themes. So that reminds me that I should prepare of list of books I've been wanting to/meaning to read for some time. My hope is that by posting the list I may actually read the books.
Fiction: The recent death of John Fowles motivates me to go back and reread The French Lieutenant's Woman, which seemed so powerful to me years ago. Will his writing stand up? I enjoyed immensely Ian McEwan's book Atonement (which had a John Fowles-like ending), so I plan to read Saturday. I have always read E.L Doctorow's novels, and his newest, - The March - about General William Tecumseh Sherman's destructive march through the Civil War south promises to be quite good. I have been "out of touch" with recent German fiction, but I am a fan of Hella Streicher's blog Paperback Fighter, so I would like to read her novel about Bremen: Höhere Welten. Ein deutscher Alltagsroman. Any other recommendations would be welcome!
Poetry: Garrison Keillor has new selection of (mostly American) poetry out: Good Poems for Hard Times. Keillor has been attacked for his middlebrow taste, but I find his choices wonderfully eclectic. Thanks to his earlier Good Poems I began to read two good poets - Howard Nemerov and Philip Appleman and looked at another poet (from just up the road in Maine) Edna St. Vincent Millay in a new light. As far as German poetry, I recently acquired Gottfried Benn's Sämtliche Gedichte and hope to read them all.
History: After reading some interesting pieces by him on Telepolis, I want to find Peter Bürger's book, Hiroshima, der Krieg und die Christen. Unfortunately, the book is not available through Amazon.
Theology: It is hard to keep up with Karen Armstrong - she is amazingly prolific. Her newest book A Short History of Myth has received splendid reviews. 2006 will be the centennial for the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so I am anticipating a flood of new books. In the meantime I want to read Renate Wind's Dem Rad in die Speichen fallen.
Biography, Memoir: I recently became interested in the American painter Rockwell Kent after visiting a wonderful exhibit Rockwell Kent: The Mythic and the Modern. Kent has always been controversial here because his political views attracted the attention of the witch-hunts during the McCarthy period in the 1950s (he eventually gave some of his paintings to the Soviet Union). Some of his greatest work was done on Monhegan Island in Maine. Not much has been written about his fascinating life, but there is one biography that sounds interesting: An American Saga: The Life and Times of Rockwell Kent, by David Traxel.
Finally, was there ever a better memoir in recent times than Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt? I have been lucky enough to seeand listen to him in person; Frank McCourt is a unique combination of Irish wit and poetry and New York irony. He now has a book about his years as a public school teacher in New York City: Teacher Man: A Memoir. I look forward to learning from this master storyteller and teacher.
So what's on your reading list / Was steht auf Eurer Leseliste?
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