DAN WILBUR

My Reading List for 2011

I’ve heard it is important for a critic to establish his stance on books in general before forcing others to read his opinions. Let me be clear: I loathe reading. But of all the texts I trudged through this year, there are a few I think others will find readable (as there are two types of books: readable and unreadable). Here are a few I finished:

Paul Murray, Skippy Dies: An updated mix of Dead Poet’s Society meets The Sandlot, a group of libido-driven, insult-spewing, catholic school boys experiment with drugs, girls, and time travel. One of the funniest and most accurate books about my generation’s experience in school.

Emma Donoghue, Room: The gritty reboot of The Lovely Bones, narrated by a child trapped with his mom in a secret backyard shed that a kidnapper has placed them both in for the child’s entire life. It would be silly to say this book is a realistic account of the subject (I did not grow up, for all my kicking and screaming, in a rape shed), but something about the detail and lack of sentimentality concerning the catastrophe that befalls the mother and son is familiar and moving.

Patton Oswalt, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland: Worth the money just for his first essay about Patton’s first job at a movie theater. A beautiful set of essays on the writer’s taste in genre fiction sprinkled with varied humor pieces throughout, this is the most entertaining book I’ve read by a comedian (no offense to everyone in the profession, including myself)

Robert Penn Warren, All The King’s Men: Remember all the wonderfully complicated political compromises in the later seasons of The Wire? Well, they stole a few ideas from this book. Beautiful prose about a college educated reporter (and sometimes emotional basket case) following a Southern politician from his humble beginnings to his governorship. Full of Southern innuendo and long, revealing descriptions about relationships, power and morality.

Jennifer Egan, A Visit from The Goon Squad: A string of linked characters experiencing New York City, Punk and Folk Music from 1980-2040(?) A few nods to a Hemingway story, a few dystopic descriptions of a future concert, and a poignant power-point won this book the Pulitzer.

Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth: A graphic novel that I’m sure I will spend years re-reading. Multiple generations of poor fathering (scaling the 1893 World’s Fair to the present) all imagined by a little boy in Chicago.

Victor Pelevin, Homo Zapiens: This last book is less a recommendation, and more a description of the strangest book I read this year in the hopes that someone might read this and explain it to me. The Russian version of Mad Men, detailing one advertiser’s journey from copywriter to a media god (not a euphemism but a literal guru in a temple) and how he got there by merely taking mushrooms and translating American slogans. It’s funny and scary. Like watching Videodrome right after reading a lot of Marx.

There are a few good books I could not finish: David Mitchell’s Thousand Autumns, the Steve Jobs bio, and every book Faulkner ever wrote. This is not because these books are bad. I just gave up. There were also a few I read that we all (including me) should have already read, and once I had read them I had nothing to say about them other than “Why did I wait so long read that? Glad I did it!” They are: Slaughterhouse Five, Alice in Wonderland, and Trials of a Young Werther.

Here’s a list of books I plan to read, but will most likely fail to finish:

Don Delilo, Underworld

Saul Bellow, Herzog

John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

Any suggestions? I’m open.