During 2016, I managed to read twenty-two books. For several
years now, I have been keeping a somewhat accurate record of how many books
that I have read in a year’s time. Some people can read as many books as there
are weeks in a year. My number of books read during a year’s time seems to stay
fairly consistent—roughly twenty books but sometimes a little more or a little
less.
Having downloaded the Kindle app to my Android phone, I now
am able to read samples of books that interest me before I add them to my Wish
List at Amazon. That's how I discovered Edward Humes’ Door to Door: The
Magnificent Maddening, Mysterious World of Transportation, a book that contains
frightening statistics and makes one a more conscious, and more careful,
driver. I discovered Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating: Undercover
at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields, and the Dinner Table from reading a sample
as well. Her book has made me more reluctant to buy much produce at Walmart,
except for bananas and apples occasionally, and to avoid restaurants like
Applebee’s. I have not yet purchased some of the other books whose samples I
have read, such as Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA
and Elliot West’s collection of historical essays. Sometimes I am lucky to find
what I want at a secondhand bookstore, such as Half-Price Books and the Dusty
Bookshelf in Lawrence. I am not including these samples among my list of books
read.
My only digital book is The Book of Women, a chapbook of
poems by Dorianne Laux, which, unfortunately, is no longer available in any
other format.
There are other books of poems that I dip into occasionally
but have not read completely. I am still working my way through Jack Gilbert’s
Collected Poems. Several of the poems in my copy of his book are bookmarked. I
actually have many of the books that make up his collected poems except for
Monolithos, which I originally read as an undergraduate. During the past year,
I also picked up Ruth Stone’s
Second-Hand Coat: New and Selected Poems, Kim
Addonizio’s
What Is This Thing Called Love, Sharon Olds’
Odes, Dorianne Laux’s
Facts About the Moon, Adrian C. Louis’
Random Exorcisms, and Michael
Heffernan’s
The Night-Watchman’s Daughter. None of these books have been
finished as of yet. It is difficult for me to actually say at what point I have
read any one book of poems because I return to the poems often and keep the
book on my nightstand or on a nearby dresser. These books of poems are not
included in my list for 2016.
Only two works of fiction are included among my list.
Sometime during the summer, my wife lent me her copy of Richard Moran’s Earth
Winter, something that she picked up at one of the library sales. She thought I
would at least enjoy the romance between two of the main characters and find
the pages devoted to a Russian submarine interesting, knowing my fondness for
submarine movies. (At one point last summer when I was re-watching U-571 for
about the third or fourth time, a movie about a young officer learning to take
command, I felt as if my father, who had died eight years ago and who made a
career of the Navy, was sitting next to me and listening to me comment on the
movie as we watched it together.) I also
read James Howard Kunstler’s The Harrows of Spring, the fourth and final book
in his series World Made by Hand. Some
of the characters in the fictional Union Grove, New York are adjusting to their
lives, after having seen their country destroyed by nuclear detonations, having
lost loved ones in a flu pandemic, and having seen the conveniences that once
made up modern life disappear.
The great majority of the other books read during 2016 can
be classified as history, such as
The Heart of Everything That Is,
Prairie
Indian Raiders,
Apache Wars,
A Terrible Glory, and
Last Stand. I also read
Trails: Toward a New Western History, a collection of essays addressing what
was once considered the New Western History in the 1990’s and which provided a
point of view to re-examine the history of the American West. These essays have
provided a number of examples of good narrative history that I have neglected
to read, such as Donald Worster’s
Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the
Growth of the American West, a book that has been sitting on my shelf for a
number of years.
Trails is a much better book than
Old West/New West, another
collection of critical essays that I read this last year but one that, although
largely positive, presents a less accepting view of the New West, with Gene M.
Gressley saying in the Prologue that the new history typically contains “an
absence of archival research” and a “one-dimensional underside view of western
history.” It’s those neglected elements of western history, no matter how
critical of our past by revealing flaws, mistakes, and misshapen attitudes,
that need to be examined more thoroughly.
Also included among the books read this last year are two
collections of essays, Barry Lopez’ detailed descriptions and observations in
About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory and David Foster Wallace’s
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. It’s unfortunate that David Foster
Wallace ended his own life in 2008 because I would have liked seeing how
marriage and parenthood, for example, would have changed his world view and would
have altered his sense of humor when observing something like a state fair.
My LibraryThing account now says that I possess 905 books,
the majority of which serve as remnants of the journey, and all of which are crammed
into two rooms of my house. I added thirty-six books to my collection during
the previous year and will be reading the ones that I have not yet gotten to.
Although I try to limit the number of books purchased during any given year, I
find it difficult to resist adding more books to my collection, already having
added three more books so far this year.
For Christmas, my wife gave me a floor lamp with an
adjustable neck to make reading in bed easier. It wasn’t until I assembled the
lamp that I discovered that the bulb is not replaceable although the company
assures me that it will last for 50,000 hours. More than five and a half years
of reading await me, the company says.
