T.B.R.

I think I may have mentioned the "To Be Read" Challenge out there on the Facebook thingie, or somewhere else, or maybe just in passing conversation with someone, but since I'm writing this on the old Kberry, on which the Blogger post/edit functions are decidedly user hostile, and I can't post the link via my email upload, I'll have to come back and add it later.

Anyway, some guy out there on the interwebs has an annual reading challenge called "TBR," in which you list 12 books that you own that you haven't gotten around to reading yet. If you're registered on his site, you report back on your progress.

This sent me searching through my bookshelves, because surely I don't have a dozen unread books! Well, to my chagrin, there are 12, and then some. I guess I've got a busy year ahead of me, don't I?

Here's what I found:

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, Susanna Clarke (started this once but grew intimidated by its sheer bulk)

Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory

The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, J.P. Donleavy

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

Contact, Carl Sagan

In America, Susan Sontag

Where Men Win Glory, The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, John Krakauer (borrowed from Yishun with a stack of other books)

The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk

The March, E.L. Doctorow (another Yishun borrow)

The BFG, Roald Dahl (thanks again, Yishun)

Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith (bought off a blanket on Bedford Avenue for fifty cents)

The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon (wrote one of my top three favorite books of all time, Wonder Boys)

Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos (started several times, I WILL get through it!)

The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

No Man Is An Island, Thomas Merton

The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels

Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

I imagine I'll get through a good portion of this list, since I'll be spending a lot of time on airplanes -- it looks like I may have to go to Italy at least once in the next two months, and if I'm lucky, twice. Nine hours in coach, whee. Better have a big book for each way. (I want a day on either side of those press checks, so I can finally see the Duomo, darn it. And I'll be back and forth to LA a couple times over the summer, as well, so there are those long trips, too.

I think I'll save the Dostoyevsky for those summer Fridays at Coney Island, because I've always wanted to be one of those girls who reads Dostoyevsky on the beach.

Totally unrelated aside: Once last summer, I was on the G train after a Coney Island Friday, sandy and salty and full of Nathan's, reading Jack Kerouac's "Desolation Angels," when I felt someone looking at me. I looked up from under my straw hat, and a tousle-headed hipster was looking at me and smiling. When I smiled back at him, he looked at my book, back at me, and smiled more broadly. I went back to reading. All the way to Metropolitan Avenue, we exchanged those smiling glances. I think he liked that I was reading Kerouac. I imagined that he was at just the right age that Kerouac was really important to him.

Isn't it funny how you create a persona about people based on what you see them reading? If I had been sitting there reading a book written by, say, Glenn Beck, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been so shyly appreciative. Or who knows, maybe he would have been completely dazzled (scary thought). When I got off the train, he gave me a half-wave and I smiled at him again.

Anyway, I think I'll take the Clarke with me for this trip, since it's a long one, and I'll report back with my findings as I plow through my list.

Well, that's all I have to say for now. Bed.