I've been reading a lot this month trying to get through my huge backlog of books. So far this month I've read:
This was the first book I bought when I purchased a Kindle and it wasn't until I finished the book that I realized it was almost a thousand pages long. This was also my first Murakami book, and while I enjoyed the genearl narrative and characters, it felt like there was a lot of redundancy in the action, and large chunks of the novel where nothing happens.
I've been told by a number of people that
Breaks is required reading for anyone who wants to be a sportswriter and/or enjoys the game of basketball on a advanced level. I don't think I've ever read a work of sports writing that feels so lived in. Halberstam is able to encapsulate 1979 Trail Blazers season so well that you would think you you had just watched them play last year. There is also a lot of talk about how TV contracts and the formation of the players union changed the game. It's not the easiest read, but I highly recommend it.
Not a whole lot to say about this book that hasn't already been said. Hemingway does such a beautiful job in detailing the minutia of life a as a soldier. My favorite aspect of Hemingway's writing is his talent for writing about the little joys in life; the comfort of a woman, a glass of wine, an afternoon at a cafe. He makes the little things seem worth fighting for.
Trying read David Foster Wallace feels like running a marathon in the dark with a pack of angry raccoons chasing you. After an eight page paragraph where the action shifts twenty times, I'm exhausted, confused, and more than a little terrified about where all of this could possibly be heading - but in a good way!
That's it for this month. Next month I'm going to try to tackle Faulkners
The Sound and The Fury and Dostoyevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov. Kurt Vonnegut once said that you can learn everything you need to know about being a man by reading T
he Brothers Karamazov, we'll see if that holds true.
