What I Read in 2009, Part 12

December! I remember very little of it. West Chester became unbearable, and so did the drive from it to Newtown. So I moved. I'm in Phoenixville now. I'm not illiterate yet. Life continues.

December

142. "The Alcoholic"- Jonathan Ames. People keep telling me I'd like "Bored to Death." Maybe. I liked this autobiographical little GN Ames wrote, so perhaps I'll give his show a shot.

143. "And Her Soul Out of Nothing"- Olena K. Davis. O.K. Davis is a great poet who told me she was going to stop writing for awhile. Apparently she has a new book coming out, which is great, I'm glad she's back. Anyway, some people prefer this, her first book, to her second. I'm not sure I do. This one is definitely more traditional, and don't get me wrong, it is very lovely and honest and ferociously energetic. I just like the other one a bit more.

144. "The Republic of Plato"- Plato. Another one that improves vastly upon rereading. This time, less as a set of philosophical points and more as a story. As a kind of weird bildungsroman for Glaucon, it holds up surprisingly well, and ends up subverting a lot of the more troubling passages. Chew on that Karl Popper.

145. "Days of Reading" -Marcel Proust. Fell off on my Proust habits in 2009. Oh well. I bought this little Penguin compilation of essays for a friend, left it in my car, and read the whole thing during a horrific traffic jam. Frustrating in that it contains selections of a long article about Saint-Beuve, which apparently isn't available anywhere in its entirety.

146. "The Book of Genesis"- R. Crumb. Did you know Crumb apparently had a band back in the 90's? What a fantastic guy. Well, this book is something else.

147. "Mind"- John R. Searle. I love Searle's enthusiasm, and his willingness to tackle a problem from the very bottom of it, but I had some qualms with this book. Some of his "conclusions," particularly his solution to the mind-body problem, ended up seeming more like rephrasings of the original question, and he did kind of a rush job on some of the classic objections to structuralism.

148. "The Actual"-Saul Bellow. Oh, a book by Saul Bellow, this will probably be goo-SYKE THIS NOVELLA IS TERRIBLE.

149. "The Paris Review Interviews Vol. IV"- I love the Paris Review Interviews, and was surprised and delighted to see that they're still putting them out. Highlights in this one include Jack Kerouac (what is he even talking about) Wodehouse (almost tragic) and Ezra Pound. Murakami's is a little depressing.

150. "Too Cool To Be Forgotten"- Alex Robinson. I like Robinson a lot, but even I thought the premise of this sounded terrible. I gave it a shot anyway, and I didn't regret it. Doesn't top any of his earlier stuff, but its fun and has its moments.

151. "The Burial at Thebes"- Seamus Heaney. Heaney's lean, mean, translation of Antigone. I would love to see a production of this.