Guardian's 1000 books you must read, the definitive list

For inspiration, we could take a peek at the Guardian compilation of the 1000 books you must read, the definitive list. It's divided into sections so be sure to scroll down to the end.

On the pending booklist, updated

These were the books still left on the pending list from the last meeting

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
Review from Salon.com

In his sober, searing and even cynical little book "Disgrace," J.M. Coetzee tells us something we all suspect and fear -- that political change can do almost nothing to eliminate human misery. What it can do, he suggests, is reorder it a little and half-accidentally introduce a few new varieties. This view should not surprise any of the great South African novelist's readers. In his early-1980s masterpieces "Waiting for the Barbarians" and "Life & Times of Michael K" -- indeed, in all of his work -- political and historical forces blow through the lives of individuals like nasty weather systems, bringing with them a destruction that is all the more cruel for being impersonal. "Disgrace" is Coetzee's first book to deal explicitly with post-apartheid South Africa, and the picture it paints is a cheerless one that will comfort no one, no matter what race, nationality or viewpoint.

Amazon.com link to Disgrace

David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of Disgrace is at the end of his professional and romantic game, and seems to be deliberately courting disaster. Long a professor of modern languages at Cape Town University College, he has recently been relegated to adjunct professor of communications at the same institution, now pointedly renamed Cape Technical University:

Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: "Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other." His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Twice married and twice divorced, his magnetic looks on the wane, David rather cruelly seduces one of his students, and his conduct unbecoming is soon uncovered. In his eighth novel, J.M. Coetzee might have been content to write a searching academic satire. But in Disgrace he is intent on much more, and his art is as uncompromising as his main character, though infinitely more complex. Refusing to play the public-repentance game, David gets himself fired--a final gesture of contempt. Now, he thinks, he will write something on Byron's last years. Not empty, unread criticism, "prose measured by the yard," but a libretto. To do so, he heads for the Eastern Cape and his daughter's farm. In her mid-20s, Lucy has turned her back on city sophistications: with five hectares, she makes her living by growing flowers and produce and boarding dogs. "Nothing," David thinks, "could be more simple." But nothing, in fact, is more complicated--or, in the new South Africa, more dangerous. Far from being the refuge he has sought, little is safe in Salem. Just as David has settled into his temporary role as farmworker and unenthusiastic animal-shelter volunteer, he and Lucy are attacked by three black men. Unable to protect his daughter, David's disgrace is complete. Hers, however, is far worse.

Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine
from Amazon.com

Each summer, Andrei Makine's narrator and his sister leave the Soviet Union for the mythical land of France-Atlantis. That this country is a beautiful confabulation, a consolation existing only in his maternal grandmother's mind, makes it no less real. Though Charlotte Lemonnier lives in a town on the edge of the steppe, each night she journeys to a long-ago Paris, telling tales that the children then translate with their more Russian minds: "The president of the Republic was bound to have something Stalinesque about him in the portrait sketched by our imagination. Neuilly was peopled with kolkhozniks. And the slow emergence of Paris from the waters evoked a very Russian emotion--that of fleeting relief after one more historic cataclysm ..."
Makine's first novel is a singing tribute to the alchemy of inspiration, but it is no less familiar with the sorrows of reality. And it is only as he gets older that the narrator begins to piece together his grandmother's far more tragic past--her experiences in the Great War, the October Revolution, and after. Dreams of My Russian Summers is a love letter to an extraordinary woman (it's hard not to see the book as autobiographical) as well as to language and literature, which the boy turns to in avoidance of history's manipulations. It has all the marks of an instant classic.

Updated:
Just added Jonathan Franzen's latest, Freedom.
Guardian review
NYTimes review written by Michio Kakutani
Amazon link to Freedom

A new look and changes

I've updated the template and switched the books we read to a separate page.  I still need to update the book list but if you see any errors, please let me know. Thanks!

What do you think?

I don't usually recommend any books for our list but I ran across these recently. I'll be interested in reading them in the future even if they don't make our list but if you want to warn me otherwise, go ahead.

Far Tortuga by Peter Matthiessen. Here's one Amazon reader review:

Far Tortuga is one of the finest works of fiction I have ever read. Had this book been written a hundred years ago, we wouldn't be comparing Matthiessen to Conrad today (as happens often), because Matthiessen's writing is so much better. This book's prose is mytho-poetical, gorgeous, and shorn of everything that is not necessary (unlike Conrad's heavy-handedness). Even though we (ironically) live in an age of some fine writing, the frenzy of life and the vulgarity of taste of most people is such that a book like Far Tortuga comes along, gains some readers, gets some good reviews, and is forgotten. It's not Matthiessen's fault; it's just that anything today of real quality is noticed by fewer and fewer people. Far Tortuga is a dream. Please read it, you won't be disappointed.

Go here for more.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. I will read this book anyway if we don't chose it for bookclub. Hearing Howard Zinn on the radio once is enough to want to read his book. I would love to know what he writes about American history. Reviews at Amazon include this :

A quick look at the reviews for this book will tell you just how difficult it is for a reader of Zinn's works to whistle and walk on. Either one ends up savagely dismissing him as a petty caviller, or extolling his brand of "eye opening" wisdom. I doubt I can add anything purposeful to this seemingly hot debate because I approached this book with a different intent altogether.
I wanted this page of history to answer some of my business questions. How America came from a nowhere nation of vagrant Arawak Indian tribes just a few centuries ago to being a commerical (ok, and imperial) superpower in our times. My interest was not to equip myself with geewhiz anti-US trivia (although I picked up a fair bit on the way, tra la) but to answer the atavistic question of what promoted capitalistic thinking, meritocracy, love of freedom etc in the United states more than the rest of the planet (assuming this is true in the first place).

And in that department, I have to say that this book left me startled. It might sound presumptuous but the quick answer is that there is nothing specific in the history or the anthropological station of US in this century and the last that may have accentuated its drive for capitalism. What's more, America was and is, just like any other country on the planet, subject to the exact same vagaries of civilization/humanity/bigotry/dogma that make and mar an empire every few centuries or so. I also recognize why this is very difficult for Americans to identify with or agree to, specially Americans who typify the inward looking solipsism of the current generation and perhaps the last 2 or so.

I recommend this book highly as a VIEW of historical events that are difficult to deny occured. Whether the guardians of the old order spring into an attack or not this is bound to yank a lot of people (me included) out of a langour of perspective.

Not all books need to be read to be "liked". Even a book that makes you constantly revulse in disagreement is worth a read for that precise reason. 5 stars from me.

Southland by Nina Revoyr. I'm not a mystery fan but I was intrigued since the author takes you through another side of south central LA.

Spanning three generations, Revoyr's follow-up to The Necessary Hunger (1997) uses the murder of three boys during the 1965 Watts riot as the pivot point for a moving, sometimes harrowing exploration of race relations among black, Japanese, and white residents of L.A. When her grandfather dies in 1994, young Japanese American lawyer Jackie Ishida seeks to discover why her grandfather, Frank, had once planned to leave his Crenshaw grocery store to one of the murder victims, a black teen from the neighborhood. After enlisting the help of one of the young man's relatives, rock-solid community group worker James Lanier, Jackie embarks on a journey that will enable her to understand why she has fled so far from her Japanese roots she won't even consider dating a fellow Asian. Switching effortlessly from the mid-1990s to the 1960s, the 1940s, and back again, Revoyr peoples the landscape with compelling characters who are equally believable whether they're black, Japanese, male, female, gay, or straight. With prose that is beautiful, precise, but never pretentious, she brings to vivid life a painful, seldom-explored part of L.A.'s past that should not be forgotten. If Oprah still had her book club, this novel likely would be at the top of her selection list. Frank Sennett

This last one is a book of poetry. Mountains and Rivers Without End by Gary Snyder. Sounds intriguing but I think I'll check this one out first.

A magnificent achievement, this epic poem belies the common take that Snyder's poetic career is notable mainly in the past tense and is refracted by the works of others. Without doubt, Snyder's exploration of nature, Zen Buddhism and his travels through unexplored corners of American society influenced the Beat writers of the 1950s and early 1960s, and some of his early works (Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, 1965, and Turtle Island, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975) are masterpieces. This new, vital work sums up stylistic and thematic concerns by uniting 39 poems written between 1956 and 1996 (many published here for the first time) into a seamless whole that, like a modern Leaves of Grass, combines fascination with the varied particulars of the way people live with awe at the majesty of nature. Each of four sections is organized around a familiar Snyder focus: the demands made on people by nature and time ("The road that's followed goes forever;/ in half a minute crossed and left behind"); observation of the terrain he occupies ("Slash of calligraphy of freeways of cars") and various American landscapes ("trucks on the freeways,/ Kenworth, Peterbilt, Mack,/ rumble diesel depths,/ like boulders bumping in an outwash glacial river"); and subtle tributes to those who have survived the last 40 years ("At the end of the ice age/ we are the bears, we are the ravens,/ We are the salmon/ in the gravel/ At the end of an ice age"). A concluding essay, "The Making of Mountain and Rivers Without End," serves as an intellectual mini-autobiography and a gloss on some of the Eastern influences on the poem. This is a major work by a venerable master of post-WWII American poetry.

The first two are definitely ones I'd go with. Not sure about the last ones.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(from Marlo)

Here's a great "web find" from Linda.
For a short review by Robin Fiorello, go here.
For the full text of a lecture on Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude delivered, in part, in Liberal Studies 402, on Tuesday, March 28, 1995, by Ian Johnston, go here.

A discussion of MAGIC REALISM: A DISTINCTIVE MINGLE OF FANTASY AND REALITY is here.
Also see this.

Well-organized material suitable for real study:

here

-or-

here

-or-

here.

For notes and outlines...

Other books by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

From Marlo:

I get it. Why BLOG stuff people can see for themselves on the Net, right?

For book reviews

Especially interesting is the review by Nicholas Carvan:
For discussion questions, go to here and here.

P.S. Here's a short animated clip inspired by LIFE OF PI.

(Note: from Sally. I found this interview with the author to be revealing. The Guardian provides us with more info about Martel.)

A Bend in the River by Naipaul

Note: I've edited Marlo's original email. Please click on the links for more details.
More goodies from Marlo:

Analysis

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul [emory]

Biography [emory]

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, on August 17, 1932. His Hindu grandfather had emigrated there from W.India as an indentured servant. His father, Seepersad (1906-53), was a journalist, whose literary aspirations were inherited by V.S., and his brother, Shiva. The family moved to Port of Spain, where Naipaul attended Queenís Royal College. In 1948, he was awarded a Trinidad government scholarship, which he used to study literature at University College, Oxford, beginning in 1950. Following his graduation in 1953, Naipaul worked as a free-lance writer with the BBC, hosting the program "Carribbean Voices," and with the literary journal, The New Statesman. He married an English woman--Patricia Ann Hale--in 1955. Since then, he has resided in London, travelling extensively and writing many critically acclaimed novels, short stories, and essays. In 1990, Naipaul was knighted by the Royal family. His wife died in 1996, and he was remarried shortly thereafter, to a Pakistani woman named Nadira.

Link to the Nobel Prize site on Naipaul.

Scholars link.

More analysis of A Bend In the River

Analysis: critical consciousness

Edward Said on Naipaul

Robert Boyers on Naipaul

A provocative critique of Naipaul, on spitting

The Atlantic Monthly on Naipaul

Transcript of his Nobel prize acceptance speech

His Banquet speech

His Nobel lecture

His PBS interview

Critique

Critique: UCLA

PS Re: Post modernism

From Marlo:

P.S. For those who are postmodernist enthusiasts, there's a Norton Anthology called Postmodern American Fiction by Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy. Of course, after they read a ton of this stuff, they may be too wiggy to participate in future book-group discussions....

A Bend In the River by V. S. Naipaul

is our book for this month.

Thanks to Shelley who points out this great site: The Literary Encyclopedia.

The essay below might be helpful.

V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River was first published in 1979, after Naipaul had firmly established his considerable reputation?one that
would lead to the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. Treating such
topics as the cultural interdependence of Africa and Europe, the
influence of ideology and ethnicity on an individual?s identity, and
the complexities of African nationhood following independence from
Belgian colonial rule, the novel grapples with weighty post-colonial
themes in an undaunted manner for which Naipaul has been both praised
and bitterly criticized.

The novel is set in Zaire (currently the Democratic Republic of the
Congo) during the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko in the late 1960s and early
1970s, a period of great social and political upheaval in the Congo.
However, though major historical events?including armed coups, cold-war
political machinations, guerrilla rebellions, urban riots, rural
massacres, and widespread social reforms?occur in the novel?s backdrop,
Naipaul avoids depicting those events directly; indeed, the country of
Zaire and its president Mobutu are never explicitly named in the book.
Instead, the narrative focuses on the personal life of Salim, the
novel?s first-person narrator. The book is divided into four parts as
follows.

Continues on here. On the sidebar on the left, click "One Work". Then enter the title of this book in the search field.

From Marlo: here's the link from the group email.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

This month's book.

I found these websites on the Hmong FYI.

http://www.hmongnet.org/
http://occr.ucdavis.edu/html/hmong_websites.html

Update: Adding this link to the NPR report on the Hmong.