A Year of Start Here

Thirteen months ago, I first posted about START HERE, the reading guide edited by Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Joines Schinsky of Book Riot. The book contains essays on 25 major authors with recommendations on where to start reading their work. I decided I would use these suggestions to structure part of my 2013 reading, and I began working my way through the alphabetical list of authors.

Now that I've finally tackled Dickens, I thought it was time to take a look back at how this reading project played out for me during the past year-and-a-bit. Under the guidance of START HERE, I read the work of 7 authors. Of those, Alexie, Calvino, Dick, and the long-dreaded Dickens were brand new to me, and they were all authors I'd always meant to read, so this was a great motivation. Atwood is a long-time favorite, and I'd read some Bradbury before, and for each of those the suggestions involved one reread along with new discoveries. I'd read Austen previously as well, but only the year before.

At the start of this project, I probably expected to get to more of the 25 authors, though I certainly didn't think I could do all of them in a year. However, I didn't anticipate that I'd end up reading more than one book for nearly everyone I tried. In total, I read 16 books for this project, and it made up more than a third of my reading for last year.

Thanks to START HERE, I read some books I really liked that I might not have known about or ever gotten around to. I also read some books I didn't much care for. I'm not sorry about reading any of it. This project was a great experience, and even doing just 7 authors involved a lot of variety.

At this point, I'm putting a stop to my START HERE project, but I'll definitely keep referring to the book for advice. Of the remaining 18 authors, over half are writers I've never tried, often because I wasn't sure where to begin, and the rest are mostly authors I'd like to read more of. Whenever I'm ready to get started or continue on with these writers, I know where to look.

And wait, there's more! Just recently, the fine folks at Book Riot released a second volume of START HERE, with reading pathways for 25 more authors. This new collection features another fabulous and varied set of writers, and I'll be eagerly referencing it as well.

Incidentally, in my original post about my project, I said that I was also planning to spend the year making some alphabetical progress through all the unread books on my shelves. It turns out that aside from a few START HERE recommendations that I already owned, I read almost nothing that was on my bookshelves at the beginning of last year. So I guess that's something to look forward to accomplishing in 2014?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Sarah McCarry has launched a series focused on writers who identify as living/struggling with depression and mental illness. In these interviews, writers speak frankly about their experiences and coping mechanisms. "There's the myth, right, of the Tortured Artist, and then there's the reality, which is most often exhausting and difficult and not at all glamorous." (Thanks, Nathan Bransford!)

Starting Charles Dickens

One reason I embarked on my START HERE project was that I knew it would force me to read Charles Dickens. I spent much of my life avoiding the traditional literary classics unless they were required reading, and for whatever reason, I developed a particular aversion to Dickens, who happened to never be assigned to me in school. As a result, I'd never read anything by Dickens (except possibly A CHRISTMAS CAROL, which I've certainly watched many adaptations of), and I never had any real desire to. But since I have at least one friend who adores the work of Dickens, and since the author is considered significant, it did seem like I should really find out what the fuss is about. Therefore, I resolved to keep Starting Here at least until I reached the Ds.

The Dickens pathway laid out by Amanda Nelson is designed to give a fresh introduction to those who already read (or avoided reading) the major works at school, so it turned out not to be the best course for me. I started with the first suggested book, OLIVER TWIST, and while I liked the beginning more than I expected, by the end, I was bored and annoyed with the story. The pathway continues with DAVID COPPERFIELD and BLEAK HOUSE, but once I looked at their lengths, I thought I'd better take a different approach. GREAT EXPECTATIONS is one of Dickens' most widely read books, and it's also considered among his best work, so I read that next, and it made for a much more rewarding Dickens experience.

→ For OLIVER TWIST, I listened to the audiobook narrated by Peter Batchelor, which is available on Audible at a surprisingly low price. Batchelor is a great narrator, with an impressive range of character voices, and he reads at a somewhat faster pace than other recordings, which I appreciated. I'm not ordinarily an audiobook listener, but I was working on a knitting project with a holiday deadline and thought that having Dickens read to me while I knitted would be a good way to address my reluctance to try this author.

At the beginning, I was pleased to find the story more entertaining than I was expecting, and much funnier. As the story went on, though, both my interest and my amusement diminished. I was curious what was going to happen to Oliver, but a great many of the scenes bored me. Some of them dragged, some were entirely irrelevant to the plot, and almost none involved Oliver taking any action, which makes him a dull protagonist. Dickens is quite enamored by his detailed portrayals of various rough characters, but I didn't get the same delight from this that perhaps readers of his time would have.

As to the story, it's about an orphan who goes from place to place being mostly ill-treated and occasionally well taken care of. Eventually there's some mystery about the past that I was eager to have explained, but overall, I thought this book was merely okay.

→ My first impression of GREAT EXPECTATIONS was that it was another story about an orphan being mostly mistreated, but at least it was about a far more interesting orphan than Oliver Twist. Pip not only makes some decisions and takes some actions of his own accord, even as a child, but he narrates his own story. The first-person, retrospective point of view is used to good effect, with the narrator conveying his childish misunderstandings of the world but at the same time commenting from his adult perspective.

As the story progressed, I found myself genuinely enjoying it, not merely judging it more tolerable than OLIVER TWIST. The major characters are compelling people with some depth, and the shallower caricature characters are interestingly portrayed without driving the joke into the ground. The plot unfolds at a pretty good pace, and it becomes quite a page-turner, with all sorts of twists I didn't anticipate.

While Dickens is often revered, other times it's pointed out that he was paid by the word and that this is evident in his work. OLIVER TWIST frustrated me with its many long digressions that served no purpose, but in GREAT EXPECTATIONS, I was impressed to find that almost every element that seemed potentially extraneous was eventually revealed to be a crucial part of the plot. Ultimately, that's the aspect of this novel that won me over. I wasn't converted to an overall Dickens fan, but I highly recommend GREAT EXPECTATIONS to anyone else wondering why his work has endured.

I'm glad to end my Dickens reading on a positive note. If anyone can convince me that another of his books has the same entertainment value as GREAT EXPECTATIONS (relative to word count, please!), I'll consider it for the future.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ S. Hope Mills writes at the Ploughshares blog about the importance of deadlines: "It's not like I was sitting around waiting for the muses to come. I was writing and thinking and revising and wrestling and revising again. I was staring at the computer screen for hours at a time trying to figure out if that sentence was really saying what I intended for it to say. Too soon, the due date would arrive and I'd be scrambling. But then 'magically,' usually within the last hour before I submitted a post, the idea would come together."

Starting Philip K. Dick

Next up in my START HERE project is Philip K. Dick, another author I've long intended to try. The reading pathway for Dick, written by Steve Randolph, is more loosely structured than the previous ones. I chose two of the recommended novels to serve as my introduction to Dick's massive catalog.

→ I began with EYE IN THE SKY, which I would not actually recommend as a starting point, because it was only so-so.

The book opens with an accident at a particle accelerator that causes a tour group to fall into the beam. Despite the science-y premise, everything else that happens is more fantastical and absurd. When the accident victims regain consciousness, they find the world has changed in ways that are either terrible or terrific, depending on which character you ask. As the strange new world becomes more menacing, the characters have to figure out what's going on and how they can get back to the world they know.

I liked some of the plot ideas, though others didn't do much for me. The book is definitely more focused on plot than character -- the people in the story are fairly one-dimensional, and their actions often didn't make a ton of sense. It was a quick and reasonably entertaining read, but dated in both style and content.

→ I found THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE to be a far more interesting and better executed book. It's not flawless, and it's also very much a product of its time (it was published in 1962), but I do recommend it.

In this alternate history, Germany and Japan were the winners of World War II and divided up the United States. Most of the novel takes place in the Japanese-controlled Pacific States of America (the west coast), a relatively benevolent occupation in which whites have second-class status but are still mostly allowed to carry on with their lives and livelihoods. Things are less pleasant for non-Germans in the Nazi-controlled east.

The plot follows a number of characters of different backgrounds who are dealing with situations both political and personal. As the text jumps between the characters and we find out how their problems are interconnected, we get a good sense of how this world operates. I appreciated the way that the premise and facts of the world are revealed gradually, without ever requiring big chunks of exposition. On the other hand, I could have done without some of the large chunks of philosophy and social commentary.

On the whole, I found the story engrossing and the setting well-developed. I was dissatisfied by how the plot resolved, but that may have been because I'd been led to expect something else. After I read Matt Ruff's THE MIRAGE last year, I saw many reviews comparing it to this book. The two novels have parallels, but the stories are quite different.

What other Dick novels or stories should I read or avoid? I've bought THE PHILIP K. DICK READER, a collection of his short stories, and I intend to dip into it soon.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At the New York Times' Opinionator, Marie Myung-Ok Lee argues that the Internet is a welcome distraction: "While I still have epiphanic moments while staring out my window like a proper author, or am inspired by a long article in the New York Review of Books, I am just as often prompted by a random bit I've gleaned on a friend's Twitter feed as it speeds by, or the latest ha-ha list from BuzzFeed."

Starting Italo Calvino

I'm still gradually continuing through my START HERE project, and I was pleased that it gave me the push to finally read Italo Calvino, whose work I've long been curious about. I read and was delighted by two of the books on the reading pathway by Kit Steinkellner. I also tried a third and found it not to my taste, so I remain intrigued about Calvino's very wide range of styles.

→ IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER is a strange, meta novel from the opening sentence: "You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler." The first chapter introduces you, the reader, who buys the book and prepares to read. The second chapter is the purported first chapter of that book, but the following chapter returns to the reader, who discovers that due to a printing error, the rest of the book is missing. You go back to the store for a new copy and start reading that, but it turns out to be an entirely different story. Once again, just as it starts to get exciting, the text stops.

The novel proceeds in this fashion, with a series of unrelated first chapters that break off right as things become interesting, alternating with the story of the reader's increasingly bizarre quest to track down the continuations of the books. This may not sound as though it would make for a readable novel, and it's definitely a weird experience, but I found it compelling enough that I read the whole book in 48 hours. The story of the reader protagonist is fun and clever, the varied first chapters are intriguing, and throughout the novel are many great musings on books and reading.

→ COSMICOMICS is a collection of short stories all featuring the same narrator, though one who was present in an unspecified form at the birth of the universe as well as later living a more recognizable human life on Earth (some of that while the moon was close enough to be reached by a ladder). Also he was a dinosaur for a while: "about fifty million years, I'd say, and I don't regret it." Oh, and our narrator is named Qfwfq, which is typical of the character names in the book.

All of that might start to give you an idea of what these stories are like, but some of them are weirder than that. I liked this collection very much, but it's not going to be for everyone. Most of the stories have a connection to some real astronomical phenomenon, but portrayed in an absurd, tall-tale sort of way, so the ideal reader will be both interested in science and willing to see plausibility thrown out the window.

Many of these stories concern love (including one about Qfwfq's time as a mollusk), often with a love triangle or unrequited yearning. Long-standing rivalries are another common theme, which is perhaps to be expected among characters with infinite lives. This is quite a funny collection in its idiosyncratic way, although at moments it becomes serious. I was especially amused by two stories that are probably my favorites: In "The Light-Years", Qfwfq is seized with paranoia when he discovers that galaxies millions of light-years away are observing the actions he took millions of years in the past, and judging him for them. "How Much Shall We Bet?" involves some extremely long-term gambling. If these stories tickle you as well, I recommend the whole collection.

→ Before turning to COSMICOMICS, I started reading INVISIBLE CITIES, but I could quickly see it wasn't going to be for me, and I stopped after only about 20 pages. The book consists of short descriptions of cities, as told by Marco Polo to Kublai Khan. The descriptions are more poetic and metaphorical than informational, and there didn't appear to be any plot to it at all, and none of that appealed to me. Lots of other people love the book, though, and if that includes you and you think I'm missing something, I'd be interested to hear about it and maybe give it another chance.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ben Blatt at Slate performs a textual analysis of the Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter series to find the most commonly used adjectives, adverbs, and sentences.

Starting Ray Bradbury

The next author from my START HERE project is Ray Bradbury. I followed the reading pathway created by Cassandra Neace, consisting of two new-to-me books and one reread:

→ THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES is made up of short stories (most originally published separately) connected by short vignettes. Together these form a novel-ish work with Mars as the main character and the evolving relationship of humans to the planet as the central story arc. I find the idea of colonizing Mars intriguing, and though Bradbury's take on it isn't a realistic one, I was fascinated by the issues and possibilities explored in this collection.

The Mars of THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES is already occupied before humans arrive. Circumstances allow the book to include several first contact stories that play out in very different ways, all engrossing. I enjoyed how often I had no idea what was going to happen next. While a few of the stories in the collection didn't appeal to me (these happen to mostly appear toward the end), the rest were gripping and often beautiful. I definitely recommend this book to any science fiction fan who hasn't read it.

→ THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is a strong collection of short fiction with various subjects and settings. There's a brief framing device involving a tattooed (illustrated) man, but it's far less interesting than the stories themselves. The collection includes some additional Martian Chronicles and other tales of space travel. Several stories are focused on families. Many are disturbing.

I liked almost all of the stories a great deal. Two stood out for me: "The Long Rain" is about a group of men lost on Venus, where it never stops raining. I could feel the visceral horror of the constant deluge. "Zero Hour" is an unsettling story about the way adults ignore children at play.

→ In FAHRENHEIT 451, society has transformed to a point where houses are fireproof and ideas are dangerous. The job of firemen is now to burn forbidden books. The story revolves around one fireman who starts having doubts about the nature of his work. When I read THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN, I was interested to spot stories in both collections that involve the banning and burning of imaginative books, anticipating the later novel.

I originally read FAHRENHEIT 451 as a kid, and as far as I can remember, I liked it then. Reading the novel again, I was somewhat bored and didn't find it nearly as compelling as the short story collections. The characters aren't that fully developed, and the focus is more on the philosophical nature of the ideas than on the construction of a convincing situation. It wasn't until near the end that I started to feel at all invested in the outcome of the events.

In reflecting on my reaction to FAHRENHEIT 451, I realized that none of the Bradbury I read is especially strong in the character department. In all of these books, the scenarios and the plots are what stand out, as well as his wonderful way with language. This combination of strengths and weaknesses work better in the short stories, since I'm willing to tolerate a lack of characterization if I'm only spending a few pages with a character rather than an entire novel.

It is also worth noting that these three books are among Bradbury's earliest published work. He went on writing for another half century. Aside from some scattered stories, I think the only other Bradbury I've read is DANDELION WINE, a non-science fictional work based on Bradbury's childhood in small-town Illinois. I would like to read more.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Wallace Yovetich writes at Book Riot In Praise of Reading Slowly: "It means more to me than just the story between the covers because it holds the story of that entire year of my life. When I see it now on my shelf I am taken back in time -- I remember the relationship that started that fall as I started the book, that faltered as many times as I put the book down, and that was picking up speed again as I picked up speed in the reading."

Starting Jane Austen

It's been a while since my last post related to my START HERE project, but I've been proceeding with the next couple of authors, though it's taken a while to finish in the midst of all my other reading, writing, and conference-attending.

I started reading Jane Austen prior to embarking on this project, but it was only last year. When I read PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a classic that I actually enjoyed.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is funny. It has a nicely constructed plot that keeps the story moving along in a compelling way. It offers a look at the stifling social customs of 200 years ago, and while these are strange and foreign to readers today, the commentary on the annoying ways people behave is perfectly relevant and identifiable. (For those familiar with the book, I recommend this Slate Book Club discussion of the story and why it remains popular.)

The reading pathway for Austen, suggested by Amanda Nelson, starts with SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and puts PRIDE AND PREJUDICE second. Now that I've read SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, I have to disagree with that ordering, because if it had been my first Austen, I wouldn't have the same feeling of finally understanding why her work has stood up through time.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY is Austen's first novel, and maybe that's why it didn't hold my attention nearly as well as her next book. I often found the story slow going, and I wasn't as invested in the outcomes of the various romances that form the plot.

Still, the sarcastic social commentary is in there and is the book's big strength. I enjoyed cringing along with the main character as she experiences the unpleasantness of being forced to spend time with tiresome people. I just would have preferred that the novel didn't dwell quite so long on making this point.

I guess I haven't mentioned what either of these novels are about. Most people are probably already aware that both focus on the question of who is going to marry who, while demonstrating the economic importance to an upper-class woman of making a good match. In my opinion these aren't particularly romantic stories -- the characters never have an opportunity to get to know each very well before declaring their love, because that's how society worked at the time -- so I don't recommend either reading or rejecting Austen based on whether you're interested in a love story. The books are really about how a particular part of the social structure works and how people manage to find even a little bit of love within its constraints.

The third book in the pathway is EMMA. I do intend to read it, but not right away.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ann Morgan completed A Year of Reading the World and relates what she learned from the experience: "In the hands of gifted writers, I discovered, bookpacking offered something a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes." (Thanks, Louise!)

Starting Margaret Atwood

The second author in my START HERE project is Margaret Atwood, and this time I get to be much more enthusiastic than with the first author. However, I hardly needed an introduction to Atwood, because she has been one of my favorite authors for decades.

Even though she's a favorite, I haven't read close to all of her many books. So I was pleased to see that the reading pathway (created by Brenna Clarke Gray) has only one book I'd read before (and wanted to reread anyway) and two I hadn't tried yet.

→ I first read THE HANDMAID'S TALE when I was probably a teenager, and maybe another time since then. I was glad for the opportunity to read it again and glad to find it was just as good -- and just as horrifying -- as I remembered.

The novel speculates an America that has been taken over by religious fanatics who want to put women back in their Biblical place. The narrator, who until recently had the life of a modern woman with a job and a husband and a child, has been forced into the role of Handmaid to a Commander and his Wife. (There are a lot of new and repurposed capitalized terms under the regime.) As a Handmaid, she is supposed to bear a child for this infertile couple, in the manner described in the book of Genesis.

To be clear, this story is brutal and depressing. The moments of happiness are nearly all in the flashbacks to the time before and serve to make the narrator's present even more awful. But the book is amazing in the way it unfolds, the style of the storytelling, the care taken with the details of life in this dystopia, and the moments of humor and wordplay.

Starting Sherman Alexie

Back in January, I announced a reading project based on START HERE: READ YOUR WAY INTO 25 AMAZING AUTHORS. I began the project right away, but since I read three suggestions for each of the first two authors, while also reading various other books, it's taken me a while to get to the point of reporting back.

The first recommended author is Sherman Alexie, whose work is championed in an essay by Kevin Smokler. I've heard Alexie several times on radio and podcasts, and I always find him an entertaining speaker, so I was glad for an impetus to finally read some of his books.

After reading one of Alexie's short story collections and two novels, I can say that he's a good writer with a style that doesn't suit my tastes very well. Sometimes it worked better than others, as I'll explain. Here's the reading pathway for Sherman Alexie, and my reactions:

→ THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN is a collection of short stories, most of them set on the Spokane Indian Reservation and featuring the same set of characters. I like Alexie's writing style, humor, and characters, but the majority of the stories didn't grab me. In general, I prefer novels to short fiction, and while reading this book, I was feeling eager to move on to a novel-length work by Alexie so I could see his talents at work with a stronger plot arc and more room to develop.

Start Here, and Continue All Year

START HERE: READ YOUR WAY INTO 25 AMAZING AUTHORS is a fantastic guide to approaching potentially intimidating literature. The book, edited by Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Joines Schinsky of the great site Book Riot, is a collection of essays from contributors who each champion the work of a different author.

Every essay offers a reading sequence through three or more of the author's works. A best known or most ambitious novel isn't always the best starting point, so there's a suggestion for a first book that serves as the ideal introduction, then a progression for continuing that will provide a solid foundation. The reading pathways take various approaches, with some building toward a major work and others offering samples from different parts of a wide-ranging career.

It's a wonderful idea, and it's very well executed. The START HERE page at Book Riot lists the 25 authors featured and includes ordering links. The book is currently only available as an ebook because the initial small print run sold out, but there may be another print run in the future.

As I was reading START HERE, I found myself thinking that one could use it to structure a reading plan for 2013, if one were the sort inclined to do such a thing. I might be, but I also had another plan in mind for the year, which was to make some serious headway on reading the many unread books on my shelves. My collection is arranged alphabetically by author, so I thought I'd go through them in that order. I really don't expect to get through the whole alphabet, especially since I'm sure to also read a whole bunch of other books that come to my attention, but it would be a start.

Well, as it happens, START HERE is also arranged alphabetically by author, and there's a certain amount of overlap with books already on my shelves. So, I thought I might combine the projects. Again, I don't expect to get through all of START HERE this year, and I'm not necessarily going to do the full pathway for each author, but I'll try the first suggested work for each author I get to (or another one, if I've already read it).

Anyone else want to join me in Starting Here?

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Beyond the Margins, Dell Smith offers an Anatomy of a First Chapter: "I knew I had to approach the first chapter in a new way. I started by reading it over, and making a few small changes. Nothing major, just getting my feet wet. Then I broke down the structure of it. It's only 11 pages, but it needs to introduce the main character, show his roadblocks, let us know what he wants, and set him in motion."