• GAME OF THRONES

• by George R. R. Martin
• [rated by PBS readers as #48]
• 704 pages

I have formulated a list within a list of the PBS reads for this. If you knew me, that list within a list thing wouldn’t surprise you a bit.

Anyway, it is a list of the real “bears” I have coming up on the remaining list – long slogs, hopefully fun but who the hell knows, if boring as all hell what will I do, etc. I will not list those now, because I’m hoping to mention them in hindsight after reading them, thrilled to have been proven wrong.

So I’m rambling. The upshot is that I need to read one of those long-winded bears every three books. I have no idea why I’m so sure of this but I know in my soul that if I’m left in the end with only bears, this project won’t happen. Well, it’ll happen, it’s happening as we speak, but it won’t finish. Is what it won’t do.

Fresh from two little teeny books, it was time for a bear. I picked four titles and Game of Thrones was the bear. I dove in.

The first thing I realized is that when you are over 50 years old, you lose your ability to remember a novel with 50 characters introduced in the first 50 pages. GONE!

Plus, these characters had names I couldn’t pronounce, which pretty much seals the deal for vaporizing characters in the mind of yours truly.

But the other post 50 thing you realize is that you just go on autopilot and say, I’ll ramble along and if the writing is good, they will become clearer to me.

There isn’t a doubt in the world that the writing is good. Martin has created an entire, cogent Universe, a place where geeks can mentally slide into and geek out beyond their wildest dreams.

Problem being that, while equal to any geek in weirdness, Thrones isn’t my particular geek fantasy direction, so the going got a bit hard. I eventually knew who was who but I kept forgetting who were in the same family. I mean, shit. I even forgot stuff like that when I was a therapist and I was paid to remember it!

But here, it isn’t just family members. It was who was married to who until he got killed by who and now owes his life or allegiance to who. Geez!

One irony here is that I had never been drawn to the TV show, but now I sort of am! The reason is that I am not entirely visual and so I’m imagining a small portion of this and it would be fun to see visually where it was taken.

And maybe if I watched it, I would finally know how to pronounce some of these names, for pity sakes!

I am about two thirds through it. For my blog book, I’ve been stuck on it for quite a long time.

But I realized the other day that there is a simple reason – simple but hard to overcome. It just isn’t a place that I long to return to. It is an amazing place, but it isn’t my thing.

But hey. 200 and some pages left. I’ll get there!

DONE! DAT DA DA DA DA DA DAT!!!

Being the Sherlocks that you are, I know you figured out that I’m done with it.

I have never, throughout a third of the project so far,  felt the sense of relief that I did finishing this one off.

That IS a little puzzling, now that I’m done, of course. I didn’t hate anything about it. To be brutally honest, I didn’t care anything about it either. The characters and their Universe are spectacularly captured in this tome.

As I believe I wrote earlier, this is the first and only thing I have read in this blog, or beyond that, that I want to see the TV equivalent for. The primary reason for this is to see how a crack design team takes my limited visual imagination and fills it all the way out.

Since I have no allegiance to anyone in this story (well, I did like one guy whose head is now on a spear on top of some bad guy’s castle somewhere), I couldn’t possibly experience some primal quibble over the casting.

But I must also add that one season will probably be enough. I’m basing that on all the open storylines after this first book and how I am not really anxious to know what happens to any of them.

One last time, I must say this. I COMPLETELY GET how this book went into millions of people’s hearts and lives.

It was what they were looking for and the author gave them a story and more than that. He gave them a whole world. Bless him for doing that. Truly.

We live in a world with people desperate for comradeship. Thank God whenever it presents itself.

The fact that I am not so into prehistoric battles and people wearing chains that don’t bathe very often doesn’t change the appeal. Because the appeal for this little reader wasn’t there. But I read it, and I’m proud of myself.

My hat is off to Martin, a writer of extraordinary creativity.

For my next book, I’ve labeled the really long books, approximately a quarter of the books I’ve got left. And though I didn’t want to go directly to one of those, I also didn’t want anything too easy.

So I picked something I’d already seen at the movies, but hadn’t read. I hope it will be surprising but, given my track record in this blog, how could it not?

THE ALCHEMIST

• by Paulo Coelho
• [rated by PBS readers as #70]
• 208 pages

I’m torn writing this right after putting the book down. But then again, I also fear that in a very short time, it will evaporate and swirl away, like all the sand contained in its pages.

I feel some twinges of guilt, as I packed two small fables for this trip to Maine that I’m on – Little Prince & Alchemist. There are at least 16 books coming up on the blog that come in around 1000 pages! What am I doing

reading two small sweet ones back to back?

But you know? I was searching for transcendence. And I got it!

While the Alchemist is all about pursuing your dreams, I was aware throughout the read that this was the first time I had lived with that theme that it didn’t bug me.

As the boy hero heads to the Pyramids to find his treasure, I headed to LA to find mine. I didn’t get it and got scarred up a whole lot. I don’t feel the satisfaction described here for having done it.

The boy meets a Muslim man who doesn’t travel to Mecca in his life because then he can always dream of its splendor and never be disappointed. This is treated as sad. But oddly enough, from my vantage point, it feels like a valid way to go!

Yet, The Alchemist is a lovely fable. It feels like an at least once in a lifetime read for every living soul. It is written with a beautiful multifaceted entrance point that would include any one and every one.

I do believe and depend on many things stated in here. I gain huge amounts in my life by basing things on signs, often spoken by a casual passer by. In many ways, my book series, Ruby, is based on signs.

The hero must be a young boy because of his openness and innocence. I believe that you lose the chance for any moment of greatness if you lose your openness and innocence. May we never lose that.

And if we do, a quick reread of The Alchemist will cure it!

• THE LITTLE PRINCE
• by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
• [rated by PBS readers as #36]
• 96 pages

Here’s a little funny great weird story for you guys. And I’m not even talking about the book!

When PBS announced the 100 greatest reads, in no particular order, the public was encouraged to vote for our favorites, over a matter of months. Our votes would then determine the final order of the 100.

I had about 10 of the titles that I routinely voted for. Among those ten, I routinely voted for The Little Prince.

It wasn’t until tonight, when I finished reading it, that I realize. I have never read it before.

Now, especially if you know me personally and care about me, you might become agitated at the thought of where my brain has gotten to. I assure you, there have been many a moment where I share that agitation. Man, have I ever shared it!

Or you could believe, as I do, that The Little Prince, like life, is a state of mind. And his royal highness is indeed a state of mind and a force of nature all rolled up in one!

You know, for all of its multitude of fans, accolades from critics, 8 gablillion translations, more books sold than McDonald’s filet of fish, His Tiny Majesty is really quite a quirky little fucker. Quirky and charming.

As for any little tale that reminds you of Prince, this one came before any of them. Tiny Highness was a fable of transcendence before that was even a thing. A genre…

To me, the core of what makes this wonderful and unbelievably lasting is what the author doesn’t say. It feels like he saw down the road and knew what he had to do.

Keep it light. So many themes go through this little tale – all touched upon with feather softness, giving them each to you to think over and then flying away, to not belabor

the point.

I feel like I know what this book is about and I have no idea what this book is about – at the same time. And I love that! I have a feeling the book loves that too. I’d love to discuss this with some friends and I almost never feel that way.

Not bad for a children’s book. Wait a minute, is it a children’s book?

It’s anything you want it to be. It transcends. It is a state of mind.

THE JOY LUCK CLUB

• by Amy Tan

• [rated by PBS readers as #42]

• 352 pages

What a nice, interesting read. Of course, I’m imagining that I have run out of descriptive terms about writing about 20 summaries ago! And if that is true, then please accept my apologies.

Dauntless, my run on sentences will continue to run on!

The first sensation I had starting this was how wonderful it was to have an interesting read again! But no, that’s not quite right. Before the interesting read, there was a preface by Amy Tan, tucked into this edition that celebrates the novel’s 30^th anniversary.

Amy’s note is delightful and newsy about parallels with her own mother and her surprise that this has resonated on this deep a level with the public. The intro is written well, her being a good writer and all, and really primes you for the book.

Then the book begins with the almost insanely inviting premise of four Chinese women who have played mah jong together for decades. There is a chart in the front to follow, with the four mothers and their four daughters.

Tan says in the beginning that many of the tales contained within are based on reality, but that doesn’t diminish her amazing storytelling. Both true and false stories can be interesting or boring. I’m sure we have all heard both kinds of them.

She then backs up from the initial real time story and moves to telling each woman’s story, separately. It feels as if she had pulled each one away from the game and put on the tape recorder.

About a third of the way in, it is these stories and the way she tells them that really have my admiration. Each woman’s story is immediately to the point and with the greatest bang for your buck, dealt out of the uniqueness of their experience, compared with white America of the time.

The telling of the stories is just magnificent! She constructs wonderful tales. Simple, elegant, unique.

Always feeling the need to represent for my demographic of “mature women who can’t remember shit,” I will point out that, though each character’s story is separate and wonderful, when it’s over, it’s over and the book moves on, leaving me to pretty much forget one story and one woman from the next. Then she goes into each daughter and the mother of that daughter figures in, obviously, but not with any throwback to the mother’s story! So I feel a little bit like I should be making a flow chart with each story on it. But I’m a third in and who knows how this whole thing could come together?

DONE.

Wow. What an amazing storyteller Amy Tan is. Every detail and image is hand picked to further her story in the richest, most dramatic way possible.

Last night, I was looking at a bunch of titles on Audible and came across Water For Elephants. And the message came through. The reason that book works so well is because it grabs you and puts you in a thorough, bright and unique life – the circus. You can forget everything about that book, but you’ll never forget that life.

Joy Luck Club is the same. There is a richness that will remain in every reader’s head long after putting the book away.

My prevailing thought in reading it was that I should never again complain that my mother didn’t understand me. It is scary the openly hostile way that these mothers are attempting to make sure their daughters get the trappings that they had wanted, often up to the expense of their souls.

The generational love is always present but with so much bleak history it is difficult to have or to hold. And that is what Tan wants – to understand the adversarial, passive / aggressive way that concern is shown and administered.

And yet, this is, in the end, not just a Chinese story.

When my parents divorced as I was growing up, I remember thinking that I was part of a new wave of kids who were the first to see that the pictures of success that our parents had thought were the things worth fighting for and getting, were no solution to their pain and estrangement at all.

And the younger generation of women here were just like me. The house, the family, the car, the picket fence – these things didn’t give our parents what they promised. So we were forced to live, looking for other things. This story highlights that divide and how it played onto the Chinese / American landscape.

I was still a bit confused by the jumps between families but I could tell that she was too good a writer to not end in a large, healing, Universal way. And she did, with a trip to China that healed.

A lovely book with amazing, gigantic yet tiny stories throughout. I’m so glad to have read it.

And I still want to learn how to play mah jong!

• GILEAD
• by Marilynne Robinson
• rated by pbs readers as # 84
• 256 pages

This is an interesting phenomenon to me. I started this book – a letter from a grandfather to his grandsons, to be read years after his death. And I liked it immediately.

60 pages in out of 247, I can’t tell you how long this might take me. I’ll bet that it will take me significantly longer than many of the books so far that exceeded 500 pages. More than any other lesson this blog has taught me, I have learned, solidly, that the amount of pages in a book has almost no effect on the length of the time reading it.

Gilead is written beautifully. If I had a beef, it would be that he is talking about two generations that came before him and two that came after him, and often in a jumbled collection of memories. Color me lost! It is a bit hard to keep track of.

But the phenomenon that I referred to earlier is that this style of writing – and by that I mean any style of writing – that is so rich, either in verbiage or imagery that every phrase has import requires of the reader a slowness in reading that I don’t think many of us still have.

I’ll be interested in observing this when I reread Beloved for this blog. Completely different styles, but again so dense that you have to slow down completely to take it in. The weird result is that you are basically never slow enough and therefore you have a guilty feeling of light skimming throughout. And it doesn’t make sense to skim in a book that isn’t leading you to greener pastures. These are the greener pastures!

I like the images and the stories and, like The Book Thief, it is great to read an author who is on a psychic roll with their writing – almost untouchable in their singular vision of how it should be.

Though I’ll finish this, you can bet that I will be grabbing reads along the way with less richness and a plot!

LATER, NOT QUITE HALFWAY THERE…

Okay. The first hundred pages had me mourning for the storytelling richness and how I couldn’t slow down enough for it.

But then again…

I am, after all, a postmenopausal woman without enough patience to listen to a long joke. In all fairness to the previous statement, I have a lot of experience with comedy and I know for a fact that if a joke takes too long, it almost never has a payoff that is worth all of that. So one way to see me is someone wanting to avoid that feeling of disappointment. Another way is a cranky bitch. But I digress…

So, can I point out the elephant in the middle of my mental living room when I’m reading this? I’m impatient so I won’t bother waiting for your answer.

THERE. IS. NO. PLOT.

I mean, come on! Assorted memories from the two generations before him and to his grandson, two generations below… It’s beautifully written but without a plot, it’s like looking at someone else’s relatives’ photo album. Do I care enough? Sorry. Don’t.

Now I’m trying to contrast it with other densely written books. Book Thief comes to mind, with its very dense and thick writing. But it goes somewhere! From Point A to Point Z. You can follow along. Also, it has characters you ache for, you like them so much.

This may be building up to something in the end, but quite frankly, if it doesn’t get there soon or reveal something more that makes me care about anyone in here, then the joke just went on too long.

DONE.

Color me relieved. I am numb at the thought of trying to put this book into context, when I myself haven’t found the context!

When I make a list at night for the next day, I put the books I’m reading on it from time to time. More than a handful of times, I would look at the word Gilead on the page and I had either misspelled it or put a whole other word that started with G and was about as long. This isn’t a huge thing, but it does seem to underscore my lack of connection to this book.

I appreciated it throughout. I know it is good writing And despite my lack of connection, I didn’t ever disrespect it.

But I did often feel like a girl who either hasn’t drunk enough or has no sense of what she’s drinking, claiming that she’ll have either a gorgeous chardonnay or a glass of Gallo Chablis (remember Gallo Chablis in college, Laurie?) – it’s all the same to her. Sort of an often repeated feeling of “I’m not getting the depth of this and the depth is there, so it is clearly my fault.”

There was eventually a plot point that made the whole thing come together a bit, but for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why it had taken 200 pages to get there.

Gilead has my respect but not my love. Ah well. Shit happens. And I’m truly excited to get a far more readable book to follow it.

Oh and one last thing. This book wound up as some people’s greatest reads? I’d like to meet those people. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Don’t really know what we’d have in common!

PS Hope you don’t mind I sent two at once. I would like to catch up to myself at some point here, so I may do that from time to time. Thanks for reading.

• A SEPARATE PEACE
• by John Knowles
• rated by pbs readers as #67
• 204 pages

Wow. It feels quite amazing to go straight from a ridiculously exciting read into a small, very elegant one.

A Separate Peace has the feeling of a short story that just happens to have 200 pages to it. All the reviews talk about the economy of John Knowles’ writing and that is clear. He is almost Hemingway-esque in his reporting of the facts, ma’am, just the facts, with occasional evocative descriptions that don’t take away from his pacing – a point I deeply appreciate.

The story is of two boys, who are seniors in 1942 at a small boy’s academy. They are going to be seniors and then could, for all intents and purposes, die in the war directly after that.

But that isn’t in the invincible mind of a high school senior who has a whole world to explore ahead of him.

The two boys are very different but they really complete each other – one being great at sports and one being a great mind. Below the satisfaction that the two friends seek out in one another in friendship, lies a troubling amount of conflict and competition.

This all leads to one moment of deception that changes everything (squeamish girlfriends reading this: you can handle this moment. It isn’t gross!).

I am not quite half way through it and have no idea where it will go.

But the elegance in the writing isn’t just in the way it unfolds. It is also that short story plot, where one classic story gains and holds more and more underpinnings till the story becomes about all sorts of things we all feel and wonder and doubt about.

More on this when I know it. But lovely writing….

DONE. JUST PUT IT DOWN

Wow. This was a book that people read in high school a ways back. In my mind, it got linked up with Catcher in the Rye, in the sense that you can viscerally feel what their impact must have been.

Where they part is that I can only imagine the impact of Catcher. With A Separate Peace, I am there. This story would impact absolutely anyone. It is a true classic – a simple perfectly told story about one incident that summarizes two lives and that has infinite repercussions. Anyone and everyone has felt these themes and pangs of love, idolatry, competition, distrust, insecurity.

What a blessing it is when one simple story contains the whole world.

Almost every review mentions the restraint in the writing but I’m not sure I would see it as that. Emotional details pop through with great economy and at the exact moment they should. Yet it also feels like the tempo and way that boys at a private school would experience emotion. It is told with a perfect authenticity.

Every one of these boys is mentioned casually initially but then grows to embody layers of questions and bless them, severe contradictions. In the end, they stay close not out of choice but because the looming war is the only evil that can be dealt with at that point.

I will remember this story for the rest of my life. And I’m often can’t remember what my phone number is. So you get the import of what I’m saying!

Lastly, I love the title and love the fact that we never know if he meant to shake the tree or not. Wow.

• READY PLAYER ONE

• by Ernest Cline

• [rated by pbs readers as #76]

• 608 pages

After finishing my lovely Curious Dog book (so special! great read!), I was still going to be in the ocean listening along to Moby Dick for the vast foreseeable future. So it was time for another book to be read on land.

I picked some titles and even read a couple of pages out of A Prayer for Owen Meany. I even put a bookmark in it, which means that I mean business!

But I am aware of wanting to insert the longer books into the mix, so that horror or horrors, I don’t have to read two bohemoths back to back. And plus, Ready Player One was, for some reason, sitting on my desk and kept grabbing my attention and pulling me to it.

So I picked it up and started to read a bit of it. Over 100 pages in, Owen was moved back to the heap for next time. Or the time after that. Great first page with Owen, though. I’m sure the rest will follow suit. Although, why I would say I’m sure about anything in this little ride eludes me. Every single book has surprised me in one way or another.

Reading Ready Player One, I am filled with thanks for embarking on this 100 book read. I am really, really enjoying it and without this project, I would absolutely never have read it. Ever. Love when that happens.

I’m not even sure of my sci fi genres. This is futuristic, which I believe takes up real estate in the sci fi area, but I’m not sure – and even less sure if it’s important.

The two elements that matter to me with a futuristic alternate reality are 1) is it conceivable that we could really get to this point, even if it takes a lot of conjuring and 2) does the writer keep you in that reality, through pacing and most importantly detail?

In answer to these two elements, Cline is nailing it more than any other book like it that I’ve read. This thing is fun and utterly conceivable! It picks you up, like a video game, absorbs you into its reality and then never loses you. For one minute!

Oh I know what you’re thinking. What difference does it make that I revere this example of futuristic novels when I never read them? You would have a point. But then again, I have been transported to many worlds in my reading life and some travels to get there have been bumpier than others. Also, I’m not an extremely visual person, so when I can visualize what is being described, that means the writer describing it is working it on all levels and that is something to be admired. Many simpler books have carried fans of this stuff, but Cline wrote a book that brought me along in every minute.

So, here’s the idea. This kid is living in urban squalor, as are most people after we have used up fossil fuels. He and most people spend a lot of time in an AI Universe called the OASIS, created by a Steve Jobs kind of character. It has universes to it and he, possessing few opportunities in life, goes to virtual school in OASIS. All of this, so far, is very conceivably, where we are headed.

The OASIS creator, a human God to many, especially nerds, has died with a huge fortune and no heirs and no friends. He has left the key to finding and claiming the whole thing within his Universe. The search becomes the obsession of people everywhere, for decades and decades. Great premise, right?

FINISHED!!!

Mother fucker, is this book ever fantastic!!!! Wow. One of the best reads of my life. I would never have known that.

Picture this, just to make my point. I spent tonight reading the last 150 pages of this thing, drinking tons of water and going to the bathroom a bunch – and still not putting the book down! It’s that kind of good!

This is a whole book about life and death in an alternative universe populated by video games. Sound like your cup of tea? It certainly wasn’t mine.

But I’m telling you. Reading this felt like I was back in high school, with the juiciest read ever, that you’d stay up late with a flashlight under the covers not to get caught.

Every technological detail does not leave the less aware reader out of it, which is a minor miracle by itself. Every plot twist comes of the air, with twists and turns that you couldn’t have known would happen, because you gave up trying to predict anything in the first 100 pages and you just lean back, enjoying the ride.

The book is long and never lets up. You deeply care about the characters and you haven’t rooted this hard in a long time.

It would be impossible for me to step back and really explain this story. Couldn’t do it. But again, how amazing that I couldn’t do that, but for the length of the book, I was as into it as a reader could be.

Oh and the futuristic stuff is so on target that it takes your breath away. Ernest Cline nailed it. He wrote a wise, artistic, thrilling story. Wow. I am completely blown away.

I don’t have a star system for rating these reads, but it gets all my stars. Or whatever. Wow. I feel honored to have gotten the chance to read it. What an amazing experience! Thank you, Ernest Cline. Your fantasy world was an unforgettable ride.

If you yearn for an old-fashioned juicy read, grab this. Don’t listen to it on audible or watch the movie on TV. Pour yourself a drink, go off somewhere quiet and enter the world and the story of Ready Player One.

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME

• by Mark Haddon

• [rated by PBS readers as #66]

• 221 pages

Now, you didn’t think I could live by audio of Moby Dick alone, didya?

Am I ever glad to have picked and read this little jewel! I believe it is officially the shortest time I’ve taken to reading one of these blog books – less than a week.

By about page 3, I realized that if I had misplaced this book, I would have immediately purchased another copy. The primary voicing the author has chosen, that of a very young autistic boy, is original and captivating and I just couldn’t wait to hear of his travails.

Which start immediately, as he discovers the next door neighbor’s dog has been killed. For animal lovers, this seems unbearable, but it is merely a starting off point for Christopher’s story and adventure to unfold.

From here, his life begins to unravel and he is forced to try to understand all of it – questions that are unsolvable and require more of life interaction than he has ever even tried to handle.

But somehow, every page of this book is a triumph. It is a very tiny story filled with the largest ramifications in life – love, betrayal, safety, goodness, truth…

It is easy to see why Christopher’s tale goes down fast and easy and yet, it is utterly unique and impossible to forget. This writer understands human nature and shows us a concrete story with edges that ripple out into infinity.

I’ll be interested to see how this one stays with me, but I am a richer person for having read it. And I love that it is on this list!

The uniqueness of the story and the writing make it equally difficult to explain. But it is exquisitely written and winning. Easily one of a handful of these books that I would recommend to anyone interested in a warm and quite unique read.

I will return to this one later.

• MOBY DICK

• by Herman Melville

• [rated by PBS readers as #46]

• — pages? Who knows how many?

I wonder if any of you remember a casual mention I made at the start of this whole affair that there would be one exception to physically reading everything. Well, Moby was it. A year before starting this blog, I had purchased the whole unabridged CD set of Moby Dick. Who knows how many CD trees were cut down in this process, but I only own one title with more CDs to it.

And don’t get me wrong! I’m enough of a purist that I wouldn’t have even considered the book substitution if it weren’t for two things.

1) It is unabridged. I’m going to get it all, for better or for worse. and…

2) It cost me a whale of a lot of money (sorry. I’m not a serial punner. that one just slipped out) to buy this bad boy. Money. Lots of it.

So I decided before even starting that my one exception to the reading would be to listen to the seafaring version of Beowulf. The fear being – would it lend itself to being read? I mean, the thing goes on for eternity. Am I an eternal listener? I mean, I can barely listen to my husband (notably when he is going over something he has gone over hundreds of times before – maybe some of you wives recognize your lives here?) for five minutes!

But a funny thing happened to usher this in. I think I might have mentioned that I joined audible a couple of months ago and wanted to finish my remaining CD sets sooner than later, afterward going product-less.

Trouble being that there was a reason I had been putting the last 4 – 5 off for that long. Had to finish them but mighty glad to put them into my “drop off at the library” bag.

And then, after everything desirable was listened to,  there were three. A Tale of Two Cities (not even in my blog!), Moby Dick & XXX (this is the largest CD set – xx CDs, narrated by my former neighbor John Lee, an actor who is a brilliant audio book reader, or whatever that job title is).

I hadn’t picked Moby Dick for the blog yet and the John Lee one was always going to be last. I mean, Great Honk, you gotta leave a year for that one! So I tried to start Tale of Two Cities and dismally failed. It is going to require way more concentration. And then I picked Moby Dick for the blog and thought – might as well!

And now, I have just listened to the first CD of the thousands to follow. I usually don’t listen to a whole CD of a book, but I was thoroughly entertained! The reader is first rate and the tale tells itself well. So far, I really like it!

Well, of course I would – because I was expecting to hate it. Surprise of all surprises – I’m listening to this thing like a kid whose been promised a sundae at the end of it! With rapt attention! It is exactly the opposite of Dickens who introduces 60 characters right off, with 60 different stories. Moby Dick has about three guys plus a whale. Now that I should be able to follow!

AROUND A THIRD OF THE WAY IN –

I’m almost feeling guilty listening to this. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t still have the rapt, excited attention that I started with.

But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, if you have to read Moby Dick and you are given the option of this route of listening to it instead, don’t even stop to think. Pick the listening!

It’s still a great story. Don’t get me wrong. But Melville has fashioned a huge book to capture basically – boy meets whale. So you can imagine. There is a whole lot of room for endless diatribes on types of whales, etc. And those diatribes can just roll over you when you’re listening to them.

If I was reading this, I would be trying to make a lot more sense of it than I have to while listening to it! 

Don’t know if I could read this without my eyes rolling deeply up in my head, but I’m thankful I’m getting it this way!

STILL ABOUT A THIRD INTO IT…

It suddenly occurs to me that this is the original Jaws! With the weird additional facet of little guys in a little boat looking forward to meeting up with and overcoming a supposedly evil whale. Hm. Now that’s lunacy, to be sure, but also deeply rooted in suspense. Suspense is a rare commodity in this list, so it’s fun.

ABOUT TWO THIRDS INTO IT….

Oh, alright. I have to admit something and it is vaguely embarrassing to mention.

All this time, I’ve given Swift the what for on his pontification. Gulliver’s Travels was, so far, the most bloating pontificating I had come across. As time went on, some extra pontification popped up here and there. As a friend of mine points out, book editing hadn’t been invented yet!

But let me tell you, when the final blowhard count is in, Melville makes Swift look like a piker!

I am beyond glad that I’m listening to this. With Moby Dick, the story is only there in service to a veritable manual on whales. Hundreds of pages are dedicated to the difference in whale species. Jesus! Give me air! And while you’re at it, give me morphine!

Now I know that my friend Patty tells the story of a very special teacher she had who taught her Moby Dick in school. And he had all the reasons why those bagpipe-winded explanations were so important and necessary.

Yeah, but you know what? I don’t know those explanations! I don’t know and I shouldn’t have to care! I mean, the story should sail over them!

I have reviewed films for many years. Films are judged on many levels, but they are never deemed successful if the viewer needs a college course to understand their appeal!

Yeah, some are certainly harder to grasp but the path is there if you want to.

And I submit that the same is true here. Whaling must have seemed impossibly exciting and exotic back in the day, as well the people who wanted to go out and kill them and bring them back.

I’ll tell you the truth. I’m so wasted from listening to about ten hours of whale memorabilia that I am solidly rooting for old Moby to show up and swallow them whole.

C’MON MOBY! Show up, eat um with a nice Chianti and let this poor reader go back to something with a plot! Sheesh. As I write that, it doesn’t seem like that much to ask.

The saving grace is that I’m not reading it. When I read things, I tend to need to make sense of them. And with this opus, that would have led to the springs popping out of my head.

I’ve always been against the killing of whales. I just never knew that part of that disgust would include the possibility that someone, upon killing one, would haul off and write another book about it.

C’mon Moby!… Sharpen those big old teeth…..

Oh, one more thing. All the talk throughout this about the magnificence and elegance of the whale and by men who are going to kill it, reminds me of the same verbiage of bullfighters. I mean, if you really respect this animal, might want to think about not killing it! Enough.

ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS LATER… OR 100 FOREHEAD DRIPS OF CHINESE WATER TORTURE LATER…

Okay. Alrightee then. I don’t care if you read this, listen to it, feel it through your pores or absorb it through astral projection, Moby Dick is TOO FUCKING LONG.

Even back then, I have to think that they understood the principle of the longer you bore or numb out your audience, the more they will begin to LEAVE. THE. BUILDING. But then, how should I know. For all I know, that was some kid’s only book for life so he would undoubtedly cling to even more facts about whale blubber!

If it was my only book, I would have memorized it by now, but praise God, I have a choice! About a billion of them!

I have actually sailed through several stages since my last entry. From that one, I got a little more squirrely. And a little more bored. And then a little more bored. Then I was just mad at the world.

But just as I was about to question God and our existence, I hit a patch of smooth sailing. Actually, it was a little more like numb resignation, but what the fuck. Any port in a storm.

And now, I’m sorta starting to see the shore. Way in the distance with a bunch of dead whales to go before I sleep, but I’ll get there. My faith is restored.

Gotta go now. I think the ship might be having another encounter with a whale soon. Who knew what magic might await? Fifteenth time is the charm, they say. Do they say that? Would they if I paid them?

ONLY A COUPLE MORE HOURS TO GO –

There is a phrase used in Hollywood, called a high concept movie or a high concept idea for a movie. I won’t get the definition exactly but what it boils down to is that you can summarize the plot in a few words or short declarative sentences.

And you know? Mr. Dick is a pretty high concept piece. Boy yearns to meet biggest whale again. I am assuming that that will be followed by whale eats boy for breakfast, but maybe not.

I think my point is that, for a high concept piece, it sure takes a fuck of a lot of time to get there. I’m a little more than two thirds done and I’ve already listened to this for over 20 hours. To paraphrase comedian Rita Rudner, “I don’t even want to do something I like for 20 hours!”

And still, I hope. Maybe when boy finally meets whale and whale eats boy, there will be something deeply pleasing in that; contentment at justice served.

But somehow, I kinda doubt it.

STILL MORE HOURS TO GO –

Okay, you know? I just really realized something. Moby Dick wasn’t written for me. I know you will all find that information far from a surprise. But I think I still subscribed to a fantasy that if something is written well enough, it can and will reach those willing to drink it in.

But that’s not the case here. There is no subset diagram you can make with chalk on a blackboard that contains both me and Moby Dick. That subset does not exist.

Off I float for a few more hours of painful listening.

C’mon Moby. Eat these mother fuckers.

DONE.

No exclamation points here. No fanfare. Done.

You know, as I neared the end of this, I thought a lot about the difference in what I would retain from the audio book vs reading the whole thing.

My first glib answer is precious little difference in retention, I would imagine. Probably, I will retain a few different things from hearing it than I would from reading it, but really. Who cares.

My second glib, yet deeper answer as to what I retained is – three to four months. Seriously. Retaining a minimal amount either way, it still would have taken me many more months to slog through it on the page.

Does that make listening to my scariest one, War and Peace, a possibility?

Of course not. I made the rules, up front. The only audio substitution was my recent purchase of the audio of Moby Dick and that is the way it will stay. Besides, I tend to break everyone else’s rules. If I can’t at least obey my own, that’s a sad day.

But I’m happy to move on, concentrating my reading efforts in the amazingly absorbing Ready Player One. And blessed, in the twinkling of the morning star, am I to have been able to skate on this one book by listening to it, of all the choices.

• THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
• by Zora Neale Hurston [rated by PBS readers as #51]
• 205 pages

First off, can I say once and for all, that the number of pages is virtually meaningless in a read? This project has really slammed that home to Christmas for me. This is one of the shorter books on the list, but the read is dense and packed and meaning isn’t slapped out to you, so you need to really examine each words and its implicit meaning.

This book is interesting, as is Hurston herself. Once again, just like with my last bonus book, The Good Earth, it was written by a woman in the 30’s. And it is fierce!

So many stories about female authors from way back are dipped in gauze and stylized so that nothing can take away from their fan’s glossy feelings about that era and its people.

But once again – it was its women who told it plain and dared you to look away. And as a black woman of that time, I am completely dazzled by her outspokenness and her bravery.

Maligned for years for her conservative views, Hurston was not selected for sainthood by those of her race, even though she was the top selling black female author of the time. Also, she refused to bemoan the culture through her work. She chose instead to portray characters who were simply standing up and living their lives as best they could.

But it was Alice Walker and other burgeoning black female writing voices that restored Hurston to her rightful place in front of the literary parade. They were her rightful heirs and they wanted that known. Even though Hurston ended her life in squalor, she is now recognized for the amazing talent she was. And the amazing talent that she still is, every time someone like me reads her for the first time.

The book is vivid. Janie, the lead character, once read will never leave you. Won’t leave me anyway. Her two first husbands leave her empty and her roustabout third man, Tea Cake, pulls her back into the living and allows her to realize and become conscious. He is controversial to us, but never to Janie.

Will I return to this book? I don’t think so. But I’m very much the richer for having read it. And if anyone felt pulled to read it, I would encourage them to do so.

Good writing is good writing. And Hurston wasn’t only a pioneer; she was a damned good writer.

And to have written this in the 30’s? The evolutionary ladder towards self-awareness apparently moved a lot faster than most of us ever realized. Thank God the crumbs have been left for us to catch up with.

Additional Note: The title is a beautiful reference to a point in the story where a bunch of people were trying to live out a storm that would most likely kill most of them, huddled in flimsy shelters.

“The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”

Whew!