• CHARLOTTE’S WEB
• by E. B. White
• drawings by Garth Williams
• [rated by pbs readers as #7 !]
• 184 pages

I have a confession to make. I was scared to read Charlotte’s Web again.

It basically slaughtered me as a kid. But since life has recently given me a reason to contemplate life and death, it seemed like the perfect time to read it.

Picking it up tonight, I read a third of it (even a third grader would have read a third of it). I was totally charmed.

The thing about writing for younger readers is that every darned word counts. How I love that! I found myself skimming, unintentionally, and then going back and picking up every word. After just reading a book that was the pinnacle of extra detail, I found myself in love with how much was said with so few words.

Because 60 pages in, you are in that barn with Wilbur and Fern and Charlotte and the geese and sheep and smells and sweetness.

Reviewers in the front fold correctly suggest that White finds a way to tell a sweet story that at its heart contains darkness and complication. And that is a hat trick. This is a story about life and death and sure enough, life and death exist on every page.

But – and this is a big but, if you’ll pardon that expression – there is beautiful innocence here. Life desperately needs more innocence. Aw hell, I need more innocence. And this is a perfect stomping ground for it. I’m in love.

What I didn’t remotely remember from childhood were the drawings by Garth Williams. I don’t know if his drawings are in every edition, but for this reader, they make up a healthy half of what you are getting here. They are achingly innocent and beautiful. I don’t know how many times I’ll return to this book, but I would love to have one of the drawings on my wall. They grab my whole heart.

DONE.

Oh my gosh. What can you say about this gentle treatise on love, death, friendship, the changing of seasons…

I loved it.

But my last word on this, if you haven’t for awhile is, read it again. This is a beautiful thought-provoking book for kids, but it lulled this adult like the world’s greatest fairy tale. And maybe it is just that.

Charlotte’s Web was picked in the top ten of this survey, along with heavyweights like To Kill A Mockingbird. And it belongs there. And thank you to E.B. White. As Wilbur says on the last page, it is hard to find a good friend and a great writer. You created a masterpiece that has held the world in its sway for decades. And because of your great writing, I feel like you are my friend. I’m sending you a hug through the seasons to wherever you have ballooned off to.

• A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
• by John Irving
• [rated by pbs readers as #26]
• 627 pages

I just dropped off my copy of Da Vinci Code to a friend and I already miss it! What a gloriously fun read.

Owen Meany has been a book that I have almost read a couple of times in this project and then something else captured my attention.

It is also one of my big 13 left! Mind you, I have 56 books left, having read 44 so far. But of the 56, there are 13 of them that are either 1)long or 2)complicated or 3) far from my normal reading or 4)War & Peace, which is all those things.

At any rate, I realized a while back that I needed to fold these 13 into the list at a regular pace, like every four books at most, so that I wouldn’t get all the way through this list except for three of them and then want to shoot myself trying to finish.

So Da Vinci Code was so fun and quick that I knew it was time for a big one and here’s come Owen Meany.

Check out Irving’s first words in this book.

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God: I am a Christian because of Owen

Meany.”

Whew! First paragraph! His best friend accidentally kills his mother and that starts the story. It isn’t even the point of the story! I don’t know about you guys, but there is no way I’m that deep!

At 100 pages or so in, the other amazing thing about this read is that Irving writes the way teachers want you to write. He writes properly, with a scroll of images that take you to the story and gently pull you along.

The characters are anything but stereotypical. In fact, there are very few characters and I feel that I don’t even know them that well yet! So it is that he unfolds his characters to the reader, on his terms and with his images.

There is a slight hitch for me. Though this was always the way you were supposed to write (I’m sure a writing class in college would be well served by using this book as a manual on the correct way), it feels like it belongs to a time in the past. It is from a time when we didn’t have the choices in life that we have now, when a read was celebrated by using ten images to make a point over just one. And while that is all well and good, it feels belabored to me. Tens of thousands of words to tell a story is an art form, but possibly an antiquated one.

I know there are still people who love this kind of eloquent drawing out of a beautiful story. I don’t love it, but I respect Irving’s artistry.

It should also be said that Irving could easily have made this list with Cider House Rules or Garp. That alone makes me curious as to how this rises above those two amazing books. We’ll see!

A LITTLE OVER HALF WAY DONE…

This is a hugely difficult read for me to get through, but possibly for a different reason than usual.

John Irving is a superlative writer – of the kinds of books that don’t really exist anymore. And I accept that I am one reader’s responsibility for that.

I know I’ve talked earlier about reading huge books when I was a kid. I loved having an 800-page epic to take to the oceanside, or to crawl up my grampa’s tree and read for hours. Michener, Uris, all those guys.

Now granted, I remember those books being filled to the brim with adventure. But books like this, written by writers like this, were part of that wave.

Unlike my most loyal and responsive reader of this blog, Laurie, I haven’t read his books in the past. I imagine that I would have enjoyed Cider House or Garp, maybe more than this one.

But the funny thing is – it feels too late. We are now a society where you can read and you can also be presented with the most awe-inspiring tales on film and tv that twist out into any direction you fancy. What I mean is that we have a ridiculous amount of choice in the tales we attach to. And the level of these enticements is first rate.

I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t have twenty TV series that they would still like to see and at least that many movies they haven’t gotten to yet.

To that new deep diving pool, we throw in Owen Meany. This is essentially a story of two friends coming of age over about five years. That’s it. Okay, I haven’t finished it yet and I’m prepared to be stunned. But for almost 400 of its 600+ pages, that has been it.

Is it written well? It is written beautifully. The deep dive, in this case, is the detail. Imagine that you saw something painted – maybe a wall, maybe a piece of furniture, maybe a fountain – and painted exquisitely. Every detail has been caressed to perfection. You admire

it and look at every detail of it.

Now imagine doing that for the amount of hours it takes to read this.

You wouldn’t. Life is too short to sustain an opus, beautifully written, that could be told in 400 fewer pages. I mean, as a writer in this style, Irving has sustained it. As an older reader with too many quick and pleasurable choices, it is I, as a reader, who can’t sustain it.

I will finish it. And I will be able to say I enjoyed it, for the most part. But on a spectrum where it enjoys the far sided position of detail after detail, page after page, this book could really stand to swing at least a bit towards get to the point!

DONE.

Well, what can I say? It is a masterpiece. Irving is a spectacular writer. As I first mentioned, he is the kind of writer that every writer teacher loves. He writes by the book, incorporating what you have to have to be good and then adding layers and layers on top of that.

I’m grateful for this project and having the chance to read this lovely book. Do I still feel that it is longer than people will sit and read? Absolutely. In fact, my gratitude stems from that fact that I would have put it down somewhere in my house several times and not have had the driving force to pick it back up, if it weren’t for this project.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a long experience. In the end, I will remember my admiration for a great writer’s skills. I will remember the characters. The feeling I often have of wanting to return to a book isn’t there minutes after finishing and I know it won’t be there.

But I will always be grateful to be exposed to a lovely book with a depth and detail that I may not read again – except in another one from this project!

• THE DA VINCI CODE
• by Dan Brown
• [rated by pbs readers as #33]
• 597 pages

I did myself a little favor here. Going through a tough time in my live, personally, I finished a delightful read with Pride & Prejudice and am following it up with another

fun opus, The Da Vinci Code. I know it is delightful because I have already read it before and liked it very much. Yet, it isn’t one of the magical rereads in here that scares me, like Lonesome Dove, which I loved beyond words and didn’t want to suddenly love less.

I roundly liked this before and have every expectation that I will enjoy it again. Given my love for pacing, I picked it up and read 50 pages already. LOVE THAT!

Strangely, the only difference now that I really wish I didn’t have is having seen the movie, which was fine, but I’m now forced to think of this lead guy as Tom Hanks, since he played him. And while I love Hanks and always enjoy watching him work, he was wrong for this part, I felt at the time. And now, picking up the book again, he is this part in my head, right or wrong. Actually though, when Audrey Tautou shows up as the girl, I will love that association, as I love her and thought she made the character richer than in the read.

But who knows what surprises I will receive? I don’t know what they will be yet, but I’ll let you know!

A THIRD OF THE WAY IN…

Now we’re talking!

This is nothing but a wildly fun read! I can’t remember how long it has been since I couldn’t stop myself from jumping into the next chapter. Or looking and realizing I had been reading for an hour. I’m having the greatest time reading this and a few observations have already gelled for me.

The first is that Dan Brown is a diehard researcher. There are an extraordinary amount of researched facts on every single page. This is easy for me to notice since I hate researching anything and he so obviously loves it!

But that’s not even the point. The point is that he is truly equal parts research and thrilling pacing. I honestly can’t remember a time that I have experienced that to this extent. If someone does both, you sense their strain caused by bouncing back and forth from research to pacing, pacing to research. That doesn’t exist in this book and I think the marriage of both is the prime reason that one feels such exhilaration here.

The second thing, which is really fun to experience since I have read this before and remember it fairly well, is the reveal on every page. The way he moves his characters is revealed to them and to us at the same time. That isn’t unusual; it’s just unusual for it to be done this well.

And my last point is the sheer faith Brown has in his information and story. There are thousands of books that incorporate history and historical contexts and then build their plot from there. With Da Vince Code, Brown dares and succeeds in making the history the plot! Each ancient specific factoid matters in what happens on the next page. And if it doesn’t, you know it will! In ten or a hundred pages, you are going to need that factoid! So the result is that each fact and the whole story is more of a jigsaw puzzle than a linear lined plot.

This is nothing but fun. I’m not close to finished with it and I’m really happy about that, due to my pure enjoyment of it, but I can already state emphatically that if you liked it before, read it again!

DONE.

I just finished Da Vinci Code and I feel tremendous gratitude. It held me spellbound till the very last page. And for a second read! How often can that claim be made? Right now, I can’t remember a time.

I already mentioned what a superb balanced mix this book is of intrigue, twists and turns while covertly completely upending Christian definitions. It is a subversive read, an educational read and dang nam it, a blazing fun read.

And that’s where the gratitude comes in. I realize that life is overwhelmingly hard. Though we have distractions of food, wine, and natural beauty coming at us from all angles, we have so few opportunities to turn off our insistent minds and let them roam.

The most consistent and sustained of those opportunities is a good story. A story told well, that allows your mind to be carried. I know this book was all about religion, but in the end, it is the supreme good story that is the holiest thing.

Thank you to Dan Brown for allowing my monkey mind to swing in your reality for a sustained 600 pages.

Isn’t that indeed what this whole project is about? The world’s greatest reads. Nothing more than that.

But much more importantly, in this world of fleeting and inferior distractions, it is nothing less!!

• PRIDE & PREJUDICE

• by Jane Austen

• [rated by pbs readers as #4 !]
• 368 pages

Well, slap my face and call me Sally.

What?

Perhaps the most delightful surprise yet.

When I read this in high school, I thought it was dippy and like some kind of prehistoric soap opera. And as such, I submit my objection to this and my previous read, Invisible Man, as wholly inappropriate for readers of that age. Nothing in common, but high school readers are still too new to have any basis for either of these directions.

One additional importance to be stressed in having a class read this book is the explanation of just how very few options were open to women of that time, other than marrying well and helping provide for their larger families. If this isn’t properly emphasized, then this would come off as dippy and a prehistoric soap opera.

But you gotta get the scene for me. I had just finished Invisible Man, the last third of which had about a hundred images or phrases per page, describing anguish, indifference, utter futility and ultimately hopelessness. I was ready – I was righteously ready – for a change.

When I drew a group of titles, Pride felt like the biggest change, I could do. And it was certainly that! Probably my best juxtaposition of two books yet!

But much more than that, I found it utterly delightful. I was engrossed in every page, the characters bounced out and grabbed me and the dialogue was timeless. Of particular interest to me throughout the book was her choice in conversations expressed vs unexpressed.

Practically the whole book is conversations. But Austen chooses which ones are going to take place in front of you and which ones are going to be described. And it isn’t a choice of important ones said and unimportant ones implied. Such is her grasp and her joy at writing discourse between two people that she plays with funny and unimportant talks with as much relish as the implied, more important ones.

There was only one time I truly missed a beat and that was her leaving out of Elizabeth’s telling Darcy the truth of her feelings for him. She just implied that one and I was rather itching to hear how she would say it. It was the one time when Austen was personally caught up in Elizabeth’s skin and their combined shyness got the better of them. This is very small in the overall deliciousness of this read. I loved it. I will return to it.

Pride & Prejudice was a cosmic gift to me.

• INVISIBLE MAN
• by Ralph Ellison
• [rated by pbs readers as #72]
• 581 pages

Well. I am initially slapping myself on the back by choosing this book after the last one, making my wildest blog fantasies come true by the sheer width of the writing involved. From The Hunger Games, where I never went back for a word or even felt I had to, due to its sheer velocity, to a book where I instantly went back over and over, a sentence or a paragraph, to make sure I got every word.

But that feeling was gotten over quickly as I got out of Ellison’s foreward (glad I had that, though) and into the book.

A man living off the grid by living in a basement that no one knows about, lighting the ceiling and walls with bright light that he bootlegs, reflects on what got him here and to the truth that, as a black man, he was essentially invisible. So far, in the first third, Ellison gives us amazing and horrifying stories and asks us to experience them with him, understanding the transition to having no hope.

Yet, for that, it is an amazing read so far, with amazing layering; telling a simple story with ramifications that carry out into infinity.

In the “black man not seeming human to those out of reality” genre, I prefer James Baldwin, due to his ability to employ such rich language at every turn. But this is already delivering the devastating blow that it is aiming for. And, like so many of these great reads, I have no idea where it is headed. Could that be the hallmark of many a classic? I don’t know, but this is amazing writing.

One last point before I leave off. I was supposed to read this in high school. I did. I remember not really getting it. But the thing is – I barely think I’m old enough to read it now! This book is way too mature, in about five senses of the word to be taught in high school. A most ambitious choice and one I doubt is made too much these days.

I’m completely in favor of introducing complex ideas, though, and I’m so glad the young adult market has blown up in success and offers so many fine choices. Because this isn’t a young adult book in any way, shape or form.

Now, college? Have at it!

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH.

In the literary playground, there is a room, I fancy, that very few people play in. Admittance to it is sorta like someone at an art gallery asking someone in a uniform why the three splashes of blue on a huge canvas add up to art. The person asked just sighs, as if to say you either get it or you don’t.

The Invisible Man belongs in that room; the room that I don’t have admittance to. Why? Because I’m sure that the way he writes is genius to the ones that get it. But to me on the outside looking in, without that awareness of the high art people, it just seems wildly uneven.

So, in this book, we are observing why a black man who started off wanting to succeed in white people’s world with the most dignity and striving possible eventually gets that it is all bullshit and turns away from it, seeing it for the fallacy that it is.

I get that! Good storyline! But from there, he veers wildly through the story, taking time for a speech, for instance, that goes for hours and he has us read it for hours! Every single world. Does it pertain to the story? Well, yeah. But not every word of it!

Here is where the people in that room shake their heads sadly at people like me. What can you do? they think. She just doesn’t get it.

At one point, he goes into this Toni Morrison-like soliloquy of ten pages or so of swirling images, not linked together, going nowhere. And I’m slogging through it, going, wait a minute, what?

Oh now see? the people say, suppressing a smile. She doesn’t get Morrison either. That explains a lot.

I will continue, realizing that the literary landscape of this type of writing is going to be hidden to me.

Yet I can’t sign off without reiterating my feeling that this isn’t for high schoolers. I have earned the right to say it just doesn’t make sense to me, after reading literally thousands of books in my life. But if even one high schooler would read this and say, I guess reading just isn’t for me, that would be an unforgivable crime.

DONE.

And so, over a month since the last entry, I am done.

Let me be clear. Nothing that is hard for me about this book is the slightest encumbrance to it being a masterpiece. It is that.

Ellison’s ability to create the most pungent and poignant images and scenes to make his point are unparalleled. Upon an amazing dark and pungent scene, he adds layers and layers and layers of images in every line. It is the reader’s challenge to stop and take them in. Though amazingly rendered, the urge to drop the gauntlet and skim is constant and almost impossible to ignore.

Having said that, this was one of my hardest reads, by far. The last hundred pages or so, I asked myself why. You gotta think of something when you are paused between all the images….

And I think that, maybe, it gets real simple. I’m just not this kind of reader. I don’t know if this it true, but in my imagination, there might be two purest camps involved in writing fiction. One is description and the other is pacing.

Of course, no one has both feet in either, but I’m pretty darned sold on pacing. I read about 10 extra Jack Reacher books more than were any good because the pacing made me feel so good. When Hemingway describes the sky in war time, after bombs have just gone off, as “yellow” that is pretty much all I need! The perfect amount of description! I yearn for simplicity and pace.

None of which takes a mite out of this opus. It is brilliant, it hatched all the Toni Morrisons that will come after it and it deserves to be read by the minds and hearts that find a home and a light in it.

I hope that Invisible Man continues to find its audience for years and decades to come. To question the plight of people of color in this weird nation we live in, it is all in there.

And now, I am deeply hoping for a book with some plain talking in it. Adios.

PS One additional kudo. Love that it’s called Invisible Man. I sort of hate titles that start with The.