ETA (6/09): This page isn’t relevant anymore because I’m far past the point of trying to keep track of my reading, but I’m leaving it up because I just want to hide it, not delete it, and wordpress won’t allow for that.
If I didn’t spend so much time sitting in the chair in front of the computer, I’d be sitting in the chair by the window, reading. (If this looks like a place where I might keep track of what I’m reading for the diss., it is.)
- The Good Life, Jay McInerney
- Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
- The Colossus of New York, Colson Whitehead
- Saturday, Ian McEwan
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
- Terrorist, John Updike
- A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, Ken Kalfus
- The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
- The Emperor’s Children, Claire Messud
- A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
- Falling Man, Don DeLillo
- Man Walks into a Room, Nicole Krauss
- Stuff Happens, David Hare
- A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
- Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
- The Usual Rules, Joyce Maynard
- The Days of Awe, Hugh Nissenson
Stuff I’m not going to read…yet. These are the books I thought might be useful for the diss, but after skimming I’ve decided against them. However, I don’t want to lose track of them in case I change my mind. Or my topic.
- Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
- Wormholes, John Fowles
- Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
- Underworld, Don DeLillo
- Drown, Junot Diaz
- That They May Face the Rising Sun, John McGahern
- The Path to the Nest of Spiders, Italo Calvino
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
- The Map of Love, Ahdaf Soueif
Let me know when you read *Man Walks Into a Room.* I read *History of Love* and liked it well enough, but Krauss’ work was so much like her husband’s (*Ext. Loud*)–or vice versa–thematically and stylistically, that I wondered whether they were engaging in some kind of pomo joke.
I read it awhile ago, but I need to do a re-read. They both seem overly-fond of the “Man/Child on a Mission” theme, though I haven’t thought about whether they’re somehow writing to each other or into each other’s universes.
Then there’s Foer’s dedication in ELandIC: “For Nicole, my idea of beautiful”. Wonder if that’s supposed to be a joke…