book report

So it's been a while since I updated about the book project--reading down the EW list of new classics in literature. Here's the link again.

I think I left off with #4: The Liar's Club by Mary Karr. This is a memoir originally published in in 1995, and issued now in a ten year anniversary edition. It is the memoir of Mary Karr growing up in small town Texas with some crazy parents. In the beginning of the 10th anniversary edition, Mary Karr has a new intro where she marvels at how influential this book has been to so many people. Frankly, I kind of marvel at this myself. I mean, the story was interesting, mildly so, but I didn't find her writing particularly fantastic, and in this era of increasingly traumatic memoirs, I guess it just didn't seem particularly traumatic. I mean, it was pretty bad, but a lot of people have childhoods that are as hard or harder than that these days. My own childhood was nothing to sneeze at, including poverty, crazy relatives, moving steadily, fighting parents, and so forth. No, I was not raped, and no, my mother did not set everything on fire, but a lot of what Mary Karr was writing about was familiar to me. And I guess to some people that makes the book more attractive, because they recognize themselves in the experience. I was just left feeling, "So what? And?" And then I mooched Cherry, her sequel about her teenage years. I don't know; I guess I'm a sucker. I started reading it though, and promptly put it down in favor of something else. I guess she spent so much time talking about how dumb her decisions were, and contextualizing everything from her older, wiser viewpoint that eventually, I just didn't care anymore.

ANYWAY. That was #4. I've already read #5 American Pastoral and #6: Mystic River. That puts us at #7, Maus, by Art Spiegelman. As I'm sure everyone knows already, Maus is a graphic novel written about Spiegelman's father's experience as a European Jew during WWII. I found the book at Housing Works and read it again (I've read it before, many years ago...). It was much better this time through. I need to find the second volume now, because I want to know what happened. I think this time, I was better able to appreciate the father's point of view, whereas the first time through I was reading it as the son. I appreciate how he doesn't sugar-coat his relationship with his dad, and portrays them both as honestly as possible, even though it doesn't always make him out to be the good guy.

That brings me up to #8, Alice Munro's Selected Stories, but I've been unable to find this collection anywhere around here. I'm trying to stay local with this exercise--going to the library, buying second-hand, and if possible, mooching them. I don't want to read an Alice Munro novel instead. I want to read her short stories, as that's why she's on the list. She's a consummate short storyist, so...

Anyway. That's where I am, although I did break ranks to read The Watchmen, #13. After I finish the Munro collection, I want to see how the first ten books stack up, likes v. dislikes. I've read #9 and #10 already (Cold Mountain and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles), and I'm not reading either of them again. I just don't have time. But I'm curious to see how many of these 'classics' I actually liked. This has been a really exciting experiment so far!