Selecting Number Eighty-Four

I have started number 84 of the list, An American Tragedy. I didn't start it right away, because, to be honest, it took me a few days to decide what to read next. This was a fairly easy task when I had 65 book left to ready, but as I'm now down to only 17, the choice becomes a little more complicated.

First off, I need to have the book, which isn't too bad, as I own 13 of the remaining 17. And, I did manage to plan ahead on the other four, and had them all checked out from the library. So, really, I had all 17 book sitting on my bookshelf. Wanting to save the 13 I own for last, I only needed to decide between An American Tragedy, A Clockwork Orange, Lord of the Flies, and Watchmen.

Next, I also need to keep in mind the...what's the word...the heftiness of the book. Of the 17 remaining, the ones that might be the most daunting in my mind are An American Tragedy, A Dance to the Music of Time, and At Swim-Two Birds (the first two because they have a lot of pages, and the other for no reason other than it strikes me as one that might take awhile).

Since there is only one lengthy one left of the four I need to get from the library, I figure I'll start with that, leaving me three books I'm anticipating will go by quite quickly. An American Tragedy, at 850 plus pages, is longer than the other three combined, by several hundred pages.

So I guess the decision ended up being a fairly easy one. But I still hemmed and hawed. I also read a couple of other books too, which might have also delayed the process.

My aim is to finish An American Tragedy sometime before July 7th, leaving me the summer to read the other three. If all goes as planned, I could find myself with only fourteen books to read come September.

Wish me luck!

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A Big Ol' Pile of Books

This past Friday marked the 5th anniversary of my first book review on this blog about The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. It's hard to believe it's already been five years, as it really doesn't seem that long ago that I decided to embark on this mission.

For the longest time, I had expected to be finished after five years. In fact there was a time I thought I'd be done in four! Now that I'm older and wiser, I figure I might be done in a year and half, and that two more years is probably more realistic. I've read 76 books from the list in those five years, which is more than one a month. I've also read about 170 non-list books in that time. I guess if I had stuck to only list books, I would have been done quite some time ago, but I also might have succumb to madness. Really, I don't think my pace has been that bad when put into perspective, and 76 books really is a lot of books. 

To beautify thy triumphs and return,

Like MacArthur to the Philippines, I have returned. I took a hiatus of sorts; not from reading, but from writing this blog. There are probably a million reasons, but most importantly, I seemed to have lost my motivation.

I'm still eager to read through this list of 100 books, but I seemed to have lost my desire to write about it. I'm sure there were probably several reasons for this, but the most likely was I'd just run out of things to say, especially when I'd been bogged down in a book as I was with the most recent read, A House for Mr. Biswas. There are only so many things you can say about reading a 500 page book for close to four months. 

The excuse that thou dost make in this delay

I seem to be making the same mistake I've been making for quite some time now, in that after I finish one book, I don't seem to start the next book for a week or two. The good news is I have started #76, A House for Mr. Biswas, but the bad news is I didn't start it until yesterday.

I'm not really sure of the reason for doing this, but I think the problem might be that there are currently 199 books on my "to-read" list, and only 25 of them are from the list. Add to that, I have 17 non-fiction books out from the library right now, and they're all screaming to be read!

After finishing a list read, I think my mind set is that I'll just whip through one of these non-fiction books, and then start my next list read. Of course I never read as fast as I think I'm going to, and before I know it, a week has passed.

The culprit this time, since I finished White Teeth, was Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by a Calgarian author, Marcello Di Cintio. He travels the world, visiting different places where walls have divided a society or city or culture. It was kind of a combination political essay and travelogue; basically it was right up my alley.

But that book is finished, so I have moved on to #76. I just really need to make sure I go back to reading two books at the same time; one list read and one non-fiction read. When I have done this, it's really worked well, and I seem to get a lot more reading done.

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On the Road at the Library - Seattle

I'm heading to Seattle this afternoon on a trip that will be dominated by golf and baseball, and I doubt it will afford me any time to read. Of course I will have my books with me, but reading doesn't seem to be in the cards.

In light of the destination, I thought it was time for my second "On the Road at the Library" post, this time in Seattle, about my visit to their Central branch. The difference between Seattle and my previous library visit in Philadelphia is incredible; the two are night and day.

Philadelphia's central branch is a classic stone structure from 1927, while Seattle's is a shiny modern glass and steel building opened in 2004. To say the Central Library in Seattle is a unique building would be a massive understatement. Designed by architects Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, the building reminds me of Rubik's Magic, the far less successful sequel to the Rubik's Cube.

On the Road at the Library - Philadelphia

One thing I always like to do when I'm travelling, is check out the local library of the city I'm visiting. Just as I like to browse the aisles of my own local library, I also enjoy doing the same when I'm out of town. I suppose it's a nice relaxing atmosphere where I feel at home. But I also find that libraries offer insight into a city that many places do not. Often the typical tourist areas or haunts don't offer a real glimpse of a new city, but rather an image cities want projected. As libraries are not often visited by out-of-towners, they show a city not often seen by the typical tourist.

Just as I enjoy talking about books, I also enjoy talking about libraries; something few others seem to be interested in. But since this is my blog, I can talk about whatever I want! And I'll assume that if you're reading this, you probably have an interest in books, and more likely than not, an interest in libraries.

This past summer, I visited friends in Philadelphia, and while spending the day walking around their downtown, or Center City as they call it, I was able to pop into the Parkway Central Library, the cornerstone of the "Free Library of Philadelphia."

O lord, sir! thick, thick, spare not me.

As I read my 71st book, The Adventures of Augie March, I have come to a conclusion about the book, despite not having even read a quarter of it. Let me be straight, I'm not talking about the quality of the writing or story, I'm talking about the actual physical printed book. I hate it.

The copy of Augie March that the Calgary Public Library has, is actually an omnibus called Saul Bellow: Novels 1944-1953.  Since my book is the third one, it began on page 383, which for reasons unknown I find very off putting. Then, the pages are very thin, so thin they remind me of a bible, where the pages feel more like tissue paper than regular stock. This presents two problems, first the pages are often difficult to turn because they stick together, second, I can see through them. And I'm not talking when I turn the page, or hold the book up to the light, I mean as I sit and read, I can see that there are printed words on the other side of the page. I find this very distracting.

But since the library doesn't have another copy, which I find a bit odd, I might be forced to make an emergency trip to a used bookstore this week. That's right, I might actually buy a book that is available at the library. But I don't know how much longer I can stand reading this book, and I fear these problems might impede my progress even more than my current reading habits already do.

End Rant.

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Only 30 Books to Go!

As I begin to read The Adventures of Augie March, I realize that I really am on the home stretch right now, with only 30 books, including Augie, to go. I'd like to say I'll be done in a year, but I'm probably going to be close to a year and a half or more.

Regardless of when I end up finishing, the fact remains that I have only 30 books to read. While I was reading American Pastoral, I did manage to amass almost all of the remaining books at one time. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to do this, maybe as a way to see exactly how much I have left to read.

Time Enough at Last

Henry Bemis:
Book Lover/Wife Hater

Since a trip to Disneyland in September, where I rode the Hollywood Tower of Terror more times than I care to count, I've developed an interest in the original Twilight Zone TV series. Of course I knew about the series, but could only really think of one or two episodes that I might have seen over the years. To fix this, I picked up a few DVD's at the library, and have been watching old episodes here and there.

A couple of days ago, I came across an episode entitled "Time Enough to Last" featuring Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, a bespectacled man who loves to read. Unfortunately for Henry, his life doesn't seem to allow him much time to read. We first see Henry working as a teller at a bank, with a book in his lap trying to read David Copperfield while he helps a customer. But his Mr. Potter-esque bank manager has a problem with this, and forbids him from reading at work.

Often give us soldiers the lie: but we pay them for

My reading through a list of 100 books has meant that I have had to get my hands on...100 different books. While I understand the appeal of buying books and having them displayed on a bookshelf in one's home, it isn't really for me. Maybe if the books I bought were leather-bound first editions, but I have no desire to line my shelf with a collection of paperbacks, most of which I will never read again.

So, to read through these books I've been making good use of the library. Of the 65 books I've read so far, 60 were from the library. However, the library doesn't have every book on the list. To ensure that I'll never been in a situation where I'm waiting to read the 100th book, I've always kept my eyes open for these missing titles at every used bookstore I visit.

Currently my two most sought titles are Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, and Loving by Henry Green. There are other titles the library currently doesn't have, but I know this is only because their previous copies were discarded and are being replaced (White Noise).

Might be a copy to these younger times;

As I continue plodding through The Recognitions, I've noticed that it is, like The Sot-Weed Factor, quite anonymous.  But, I've had one or two people recognize the title, and I've had several people say they've heard of author William Gaddis, so that already makes it a better known title than Barth's book, but nonetheless, few seem to be aware of it.

 

I then noticed on the copy I have out from the Calgary Public Library, that it was first stamped into circulation on October 15, 1975.  Not only was it stamped the same day that President Ford was involved in a fender bender in Hartford, it also still has the card catalogue information on the inside cover.  The typewriter font tells me the author's name and birth year, as well as the title and publisher; offering me amazing cross referencing capabilities.  Sadly there isn't the envelope on the back cover letting me know who took it out and when.  The book also doesn't have an ISBN, joining The Day of the Locust and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as books that predated the computer age.

But while all of this is quite nostalgic journey through the library procedures of yesteryear, it leaves me wondering about the book itself.  Sure, it finds itself on a list of 'all-time' novels, but it's been borrowed so few times, the Calgary Public Library has been able to keep it in circulation, albeit with a few tears, longer than I've been in circulation.  I've read that on average, a book can be loaned 25 times before it needs to be replaced, which would mean this copy of The Recognitions has been loaned out no more than every 18 months, for the past 37 years.  I'm going to assume it's another hidden gem, waiting for more people like me to discover its brilliance.  Instead of a book so repugnant, it's been borrowed fewer times than To The Lighthouse.

You must return and mend it.

Progress on number 48 continues, as I read The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski.  I'll admit it might end up being a bit of a slow read.  I say this because the book is turning out to be a major downer; it's about the Holocaust.  While there's nothing wrong with a 'depressing' book, many good reads are, it's just that it's a difficult read, and one you don't just breeze though.  But it isn't slow because of boredom, like To the Lighthouse or because it's so mammoth like Infinite Jest. I'm hoping that as I get deeper into it, my pace will pick up.

In other news, I've been having a little bit of trouble managing my library books.  After not incurring any fines for almost six months, I racked up fines on Animal Farm and Red Harvest in October, but only $1.40, so nothing to write home about.  Before I left for Hawai'i, I thought I had made sure I had everything renewed until I got back, but some how missed two, which became overdue the day I left.  It wasn't until yesterday afternoon I realized I had two book that were more than ten days overdue.  The books in question were Christopher Hitchens' biography of Thomas Jefferson, as well as poet Ian Williams' Not Anyone's Anything.  As a result, my library account was locked, and I was billed $7.30.  To add to my shame, I didn't read either of them, which means I paid the library seven bucks to store their books on my shelf for a few weeks.

When I had started this project, I only borrowed one or two books at a time, but thought that with the Internet making it so easy to renew, I could take out dozens at a time, and always manage them without any problems.  I guess I was wrong.  While it is still much less expensive than buying all the books I read, I have now generously donated $41.15 to the Calgary Public Library since November of 2009.  Of that, $25.15 has been from books from the list.

I vow to not incur any more fines, until the next time I forget to return a book on time; which could be as early as next week.

forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed;

I'm about 10% finished my most recent read, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.  While there have been many books I didn't know anything about or had never heard of or had never heard of the author, this book has an extra air of...forgetability.  When I try to go through the list in my head, I usually miss about five books that I can't think of and they're always the same five.  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of those books.  So not only am I not familiar with it at all, I always forget about it too.


I have taken a bunch of books out from the library, again with the strategy of always having a variety of books to choose from when I finish my current read.  However this time I vow not to incur any fines on them.  Or at least not on the bulk of them.  My previous six loans, five of which I didn't read, I incurred fines of $0.70 on each, after having forgot to renew them for a couple of days.  Sure, it isn't much, but it's stupid to pay $3.50 when it takes two minutes to renew on-line.

I currently have out on loan, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Painted Bird, The Sheltering Sky, Slaughterhouse Five, All the King's Men, The Day of the Locust and Red Harvest.  I also have two books I've previously borrowed and returned without reading; Gravity's Rainbow and Gone with the Wind. I picked those two up because I happen to pass them on the shelves and figured, what the hell.  I'd like to read them at before I hit 50, so I think I'll try to squeeze one in next month.

Other than the one I'm currently reading of course, I have no plans to read any particular one next.  I guess it'll be whatever happens to tickle my fancy that day.

But then renew I could not, like the moon;

I'm heading out of town tomorrow, to spend a week in New York and Philadelphia watching hockey.  In my preparation, I'm first off, trying to finish On the Road, which I should be able to do today as I only have about fifty pages left.  Secondly, I've been making sure I don't have any overdue books out and that everything is renewed until I get back.

When I went online to do this, I discovered Gone with the Wind has a hold on it, and therefore cannot be renewed.  That's okay, as I didn't plan on reading it for at least a month, as it is scheduled to be my 30th entry.  And, since I was heading to the library anyway, I decided to return The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow and The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.  As I mentioned in my last post, I'm not going to read two books from by the same author in the same half.  I've already read a Faulkner book, Light in August, and I'm planning to read Herzog, by Bellow, after I've finished On the Road.

I'm taking two books with me (unless I don't finish On the Road, then it'll be three books), while I'm away, as I can usually get quite a bit of reading done on a trip.  I'll start with the above mentioned Herzog and then move to Play it as it Lays after that.  Neither look too daunting, so hopefully I can finish the first and put a good dent in the second before I return to Calgary.  After that, I'm thinking I'll finally tackle Gravity's Rainbow, which I've had on loan from the library since September.

The purchase made, the fruits are to ensue;

I did something with The List today that I haven't ever done before; I purchased one of the books.  I had been doing some spring cleaning at home (in fall), and was looking over my bookshelves when I noticed such classic titles as Leonard Maltin's 2001 Guide to the Movies and Golf Jokes.  While the former was replaced by the Internet in 2001, the latter has been replaced by...well...anything.  I think the only funny part of that book was the look of dismay on my face when I pulled it out of a Christmas stocking fifteen years ago.

I gathered up about ten books that I probably hadn't touched in five years and would never touch again and ventured down to a used bookshop near my house.  I had planned ahead, and arrived at the store with not only my used books (well, one of them wasn't used, it was a textbook from my first-year statistics class), but also a list of three books that are not available from the Calgary Public Library.  These are Dog Soldiers, Loving, and A Death in the Family.  They had the last one in stock, in good condition for $8.50.  I headed back to the counter to see how much I would profit from my literary gems, only to hear they would only take two books (Golf Jokes wasn't one of them), and give me six dollars in store credit.

So, it has cost me $2.50 to acquire my first book from The List.  I think I'll add that to my fine total, in a sub category, so I can arrive at a total cost for reading 100 novels.

Might have found easy fines: but there to end

I had to go to the library today to return a book.  Yesterday, I had gone on-line to renew all the books I currently had out, but ran into two problems.  Firstly, Portney's Complaint had been put on hold, so I couldn't renew it.  That makes it the second book I've borrowed from the library and not read, after All the King's Men, which was also put on hold before I could read it.  My second problem was I missed renewing one of the books on time.  It's no mystery how this happened either, as I've been borrowing so many books at one time, and until today had six checked out, it was only a matter of time that I'd forget to renew one  on time.  If you recall, on October 1st, I had written about this very problem:

"As an aside, while at the Central library, I picked up a bunch of books, as my local branch doesn't have near the selection. I already had Housekeeping (which I'm reading), Deliverance (which I had delivered to my local branch), and Gravity's Rainbow (which I'm delaying, because I'm intimidated by its' 750 pages). I've now added Portnoy's Complaint, Herzog, Ragtime, Snow Crash, and On the Road to my loan collection.  My thought was they can be renewed several times and they can be returned to any branch, so while I'm downtown, why not grab a bunch...just in case. Only time will tell if this is a move so shrewd it's worthy of an Arab spice trader, or if this is a quick path to increasing my fine total."

Apparently I'm no Arab spice trader, as I had forgotten to renew Gravity's Rainbow, which has now incurred $2.10 in fines for being seven days overdue, bringing my fine total to $10.15  This was the first time I've incurred a fine on a book I have not read or even started to read.  To be honest, I had a feeling this would happen at some point, and I'm sure it will happen again as well.

While returnning Portney's Complaint and Ragtime, I grabbed a few more books; Infinte Jest, Gone with the Wind, Lolita and Animal Farm.  As it stand right now, save the books I have already read, I have every single book on The List from my local library branch and a total of 8 books right now.  The only question now is, which one will I incur fines on next!?

Twenty Down, Eighty To Go

This is a little late, but the reason I didn't post it earlier is a good one; I was reading.  I raced through my 21st book from The List last week, and have made a good dent into number 22.  My goal of finishing 25 within a year is still in reach.  Now back to my regularly scheduled twenty book re-cap...

After almost one year, I'm a fifth of my way through the list.  I have now read more books in the past eleven months, then I did in the previous eleven years.  When I think about how much I've been reading, and how much of The List I've been through, I then start to think about what it will be like to actually finish all 100 books.  Will I be relieved because I don't have any more mandatory reading, or will I miss the military-like direction it will have provided me for so long?  I suppose it'll be like eating your first KFC Double Down; you don't how you'll react until you're finished.

I've been thinking a lot recently about how to summarize twenty novels.  My first thought was to talk about which book I liked the most and which I like the least, and discuss my overall impressions of the books.  But I've decided I should leave that for the end, as I'd rather talk about my favorite book from all 100, instead of my favorite so far and then always be comparing that novel to others from the second twenty, and so on.  So instead, I'm going to go through the first twenty 'by the numbers':


Misc.:
Shortest - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - 171 pages
Longest - Midnight's Children - 589 pages
Oldest - The Great Gatsby - 1925
Newest - Atonement  - 2002
Longest Reading Time - To the Lighthouse - 56 days
Shortest Reading Time - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - 4 hours
Books Started but Not Finished - 1 (Neuromancer)
Books borrowed from Library and returned, unread - 1 (All the King's Men)

Books by Decade:                                           Books by Letter:
1920's - 3         1960's - 2                                 A - 1     H - 1     P - 1
1930's - 4         1970's - 1                                 B - 2      I  - 1     S - 2
1940's - 1         1980's - 3                                 C - 3      L - 3     T - 2
1950's - 4         1990's - 0                                 D - 1     M - 1
1970's - 1         2000's - 2                                 G - 1     N - 1

Nationality:
Books by American Authors - 11
Books by British Authors - 9
Books by American Authors but published in other country's because of oppressive US obscenity laws - 2

Source of Book:
From the library - 16
Borrowed from friends - 3
Books I own - 1

Library Fines:
Midnight's Children - $3.15
Atonement - $0.70
To The Lighthouse - $1.05
The Power and the Glory - $1.05
Total Fines: $8.05

References to The List:
The Corrections - A character is reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Atonement - One character reads a book by Virginia Woolf, author of two books from The List.
Ragtime - Theodore Dreiser, author of a book from The List, is a character

The First Twenty Books:
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Brideshead Revisited
Naked Lunch
Light in August
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Great Gatsby
Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
Beloved
Tropic of Cancer
Midnight's Children
The Corrections
Atonement
The Power and the Glory
To The Lighthouse
Lucky Jim
The Sun Also Rises
I, Claudius
Housekeeping
Deliverance

Only Eighty Books to Go!

Come, and take choice of all my library

I've been getting most of my books from the Calgary Public Library, and am a big supporter of the library in general. However, that isn't to say there aren't problems with the institution. Now, understanding that although Calgary's library is the second most used system in Canada, it is also one of the most poorly funded. And the evidence of this is everywhere.

To begin with, many of the libraries are, for lack of a better word, dumps. And the crown jewel of the system, downtown, is the biggest dump of them all. From the outside it looks like either a drop-in center for the homeless or the building that houses the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four. It isn't inviting, it's run down, and needs to be replaced. Add to that, it is usually full of tramps and hobos, who I'm pretty sure are pretending to be reading so they can sit down in climate controlled comfort. I say this because there will be three or four tramps sitting at one table, each with giant books on their laps open right to the middle page. In two hours there earlier this week, I'm pretty sure not one page was turned at the table next to me. But, I digress, as these problems are not necessarily the library's fault, and have more to do with City Hall.

What is the library's fault and my main beef, is the catalogue search. Going to the library's website, the catalogue search is on the home page and is easy to access. It is the results that are the problem. Obviously the books from The List are well known, highly regarded books, but finding them is a gigantic pain in the ass. When I searched for The Great Gatsby, perhaps the most famous American novel of the past hundred years, it is the 20th result returned. Searching for Deliverance, the catalogue returned 36 results and the actual book was the last one. Titles that came up before Deliverance included The Deliverance of Dancing Bears and I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials (Massachusetts Bay Colony 1691). While I'm sure both are fine works they should not be appearing before the book that's title exactly matches the search query. I'm thinking if somebody was looking for a book on the Salem Witch Trials, they'd type in more than 'deliverance' in their query.

The reason this happens is because their catalogue returns results newest to oldest and the novel is of course older than the 'study guide to' or the DVD or the audio recording. But this frustrates me to no end, because I think a library should return books before non-books. In an attempt to have this fixed, I began contacting the library, first via Twitter:

TheRevBW: I search for The Great Gatsby @calgarylibrary but the book is the 20th result. Shouldn't it be ahead of DVD's, audio recordings and essays?

The library responded a couple days later with this:

calgarylibrary: the results are automatically reverse chronological, can change this by selecting "sort by Old to New" once search has happened.

So, the library freely admits the search gives me the opposite of what I'm looking for. Perfect. Oh, and this didn't work for On the Road, which was the 203rd of over 500 results. Either way, it's going to be in the middle and I'll be stuck sifting through pages and pages of results.  While I hate to admit this, Toronto's public library returned On the Road 1st and Edmonton's returned it 2nd.

Not satisfied with my Twitter attempts I wrote an email to the library, outlining my problem with searching for great books. They responded telling me to use their "power search" feature, which allows the user to enter more detailed search criteria. I have used this feature, but when searching for multiple books, it can be very time consuming. Instead of one click shopping from the home page, you must go through about 300 steps to use power search. First off, you have to fail at your initial search before you have the option of using the power search and from there, you can enter more crucial data than just the title, such as the author, the publication date, or the ISBN (which I'm sure is great for Rain Man, but not for me). However, even all these options don't usually help.

The real key to the power search is to change the 'sort' of the returned results from 'new to old' to 'relevance.' Ah ha! And this is my point, why aren't all search results sorted by relevance, as I'm sure people are more interested in relevant answers opposed to newer answers. When I go to the grocery store looking for aged cheddar cheese, I don't want to be told where 'New and Improved' cheddar cheese soup is, despite it being 'newer.'  I've replied to the library yet again, explaining that I understand this process, but the point I am trying to make is that it needs to be changed. We'll see if I make any progress, but I vow to continue the fight for as long as I can!

End Rant.

As an aside, while at the Central library, I picked up a bunch of books, as my local branch doesn't have near the selection. I already had Housekeeping (which I'm reading), Deliverance (which I had delivered to my local branch), and Gravity's Rainbow (which I'm delaying, because I'm intimidated by its' 750 pages). I've now added Portnoy's Complaint, Herzog, Ragtime, Snow Crash, and On the Road to my loan collection.  My thought was they can be renewed several times and they can be returned to any branch, so while I'm downtown, why not grab a bunch...just in case. Only time will tell if this is a move so shrewd it's worthy of an Arab spice trader, or if this is a quick path to increasing my fine total.

#18 - "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves

History and fiction, combined into one book.  I may be in heaven.  Part of the reason I started the list, was to expand my horizons, and start reading a little more fiction.  For ten years after University, I could probably count the number of novels I read on one hand.  Meanwhile, I had put back half the World War II section at Chapters.  With, I, Claudius, I was able to combine my old reading habits and my new reading habits, in a spectacular novel from 1934.

The book is written as an autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, who lived from 10BC to 54AD.  Born with physical disabilities causing a lifelong limp and stutter, Claudius spends his life in the Imperial Family, forgotten as an idiot and of no consequence.  He lives and writes about the turbulent times of the Roman Empire, an era filled with murder, treason, assassination, corruption, incest and war.  Very interesting times to say the least.  One gets the idea life was pretty cheap in Roman times, as murder seems to be as common as reading the paper.  Husbands are killed by wives, sons by mothers, daughters by fathers, brothers by sisters, and everybody by the emperor.  But through all these treacherous years, Claudius is able to avoid execution laying in the political weeds and eventually rise to become Emperor of the Roman Empire.  Having an interest in history, Claudius prides himself on being a capable historian, and spends most of his life writing about the scandals and politics of his family.

Basing most of the events in some way on historical record, the book, while fiction, can still be taken seriously as a rough guide to Roman times.  Myself, I had never really been too interested in that era, but see now that I was really missing out.  So much going on, so many political games, so much to learn.  What makes Graves' book so good, is the ease with which it reads.  Unlike a textbook, or other works focusing on the Roman era, I, Claudius uses more modern prose to tell its' story.  In the words of Time magazine, "Readers for whom the life of ancient Rome has been mummified by academic historians, museums and Latin grammar will give Author Graves a rising vote of thanks..."  I couldn't sum it up better myself.


You can read TIME's original review from June 18th, 1934 here.  Interesting to note, that in this review, the magazine refers to Claudius as "...a Roman of the Old School..."  Could this be the very first use of the expression 'old school'?  I always thought that had originated in the last five or ten years.

Listen to my discussion of I, Claudius on the CBC Eyeopener, right here.

For my next book, I am planning on reading Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson.  It was quite an ordeal to get my next book from the library, but I shall save that story for another day.

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

I decided when I began reading I, Claudius, that I needed to do some quick reading, to reach my goal of reading 25 books in the first year.  I have about nine weeks to finish six books, so I'm going to have to move quickly.  In an effort to make sure I stay at some kind of respectable pace, I set a goal of reading at least 30 pages of I, Claudius each day.  So far, after 8 days, I'm on page 243, and over half way through, so I suppose I've been successful in that regard.

As for I, Claudius, it's a great read so far.  It basically puts historical characters into a fictional story, which was always an idea of mine, if I were to write a book.  I'd had an idea for taking a well-known figure (I can't say who of course), and then writing some fictional story about his formative years, or I guess the years before he became the famous figure he is today.  I never really got past the first page though, so you can consider that one still a "work in progress."

On a sort of unrelated note, the Calgary Public Library has been forced to cut $3 million from its' budget for next year.  Shameful to say the least, that in a well-off country like Canada, we are making cuts to education; the only thing that really keeps us, well-off.  For the library, this means delaying the opening of a new branch, and possibly closing on Sundays and one weeknight a week, to keep costs down.  It also means the long-rumoured new downtown library isn't anywhere close to being built, and Calgary will continue to be serviced by an ugly, inadequate building meant to service a city of 400,000 people.  It disgusts me that the second most used library in Canada, is also the most poorly funded library.  Shame on Calgary City Council for letting such a great and necessary institution slip into such dire straits.  The need for a public library is as important as ever, yet has been relegated to "nice to have, but not necessary" status.