Saturday, May 24, 2008

Retiring Guy's Retirement Reading List?

Read the New York Times article.

I don't think so.

I'm sorry, but lists like these remind me of one of the settings on our washing machine: "Whitest Whites".

This one, "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die", novels all, is from Peter Boxall, a Brit who teaches English at Sussex University. He asked 105 colleagues -- "mostly obscure" critics, editors and academics — to submit a list of their favs. From this input, he assembled his exhaustive list.

Best zinger from the NYT article: Let’s have a look at some of these mandatory titles. Not only is it not necessary to read “Interview With the Vampire” by Anne Rice before you die, it is also probably not necessary to read it even if, like Lestat, you are never going to die. If I were mortally ill, and a well-meaning friend pressed Anaïs Nin’s “Delta of Venus” into my trembling hands, I would probably leave this world with a curse on my lips.

The following is an alphabetical list (by title) of some of the books mentioned in the NYT article and their status in LINK, a consortium of 40 South Central Library System public libraries.

"Ada" by Vladimir Nabokov. (10 copies, 1 currently checked out)

"The Breast" by Philip Roth. (1 copy, not including the Library of America anthology)

"Castle Rackrent" bu Maria Edgeworth, born in 1767 and died in 1849. (3 copies, 4 holds. So there are a few people building reading lists from Boxall's suggestions.)

"Changing Places" by David Lodge. (2 copies, no holds.)

"A Dance to the Music of Time" by Anthony Powell. (12 volumes; I found 2 copies of the "First Movement".)

"The German Lesson" by Siegfried Lenz. (3 copies, no holds.)

"In Watermelon Sugar" by Richard Brautigan. (1 single volume, 7 anthologies; only 1 currently checked out.)

"The Invention of Curried Sausage" by Uwe Timm. (4 copies, 7 holds -- but then it has "sausage" in the title -- and this is Wisconsin.)

"A Kestral for a Knave" by Barry Hines. (zippo)

"The Ravishing of Lol Stein" by Marguerite Duras. (1 copy, not checked out.)

"Tarka the Otter" by Henry Williamson. (3 copies, 2 in large print.)

Looks like it's collection development time, folks!

As for me, if the list doesn't include "Stark Raving Elvis" by William Henderson, I just can't take it seriously. (Guess what library has the only LINK copy?)

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