50 book challenge: it begins.

The origins of the 50 book challenge, I believe, can be found in this LiveJournal page. The goal is simple: read 50 books in a year. I guess it's a little late for me to start, but I'll try to catch up. Good thing I read War and Peace last year!

This initial list is actually in backwards chronological order, as I recall them.

1, 2 and 3. Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, all by C.S. Lewis. The first was intriguing, the second tedious, and the third merely tolerable. Stick to the Chronicles of Narnia.

4. Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky. Very much deserving of the praise it's received--on the book's merits, in addition to the fascinating story of the manuscript's rediscovery.

5. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco. Much more tedious than I remember from reading in high school. I think I had more time then for intellectual noodling, as well as long mostly plotless novels about vague conspiracies. Still, I'd rather this than the Da Vinci Code.

6. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray. Er, also very long. With flashes of brilliance. The digression on the internal politics of Pumpernickel I could have done without. I actually found Thackeray's characterizations of Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley to be well-rounded: both showing the inherent flaws that accompany their respective virtues. Becky's ambition comes with overvaulting ambition, of course, while Amelia's good-natured sweetness has its own dark side:

Amelia stood scared and silent as William thus suddenly broke the chain by which she held him and declared his independence and superiority. He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn’t wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.

7. Carnegie, David Nasaw. Carnegie was short (only five feet). This book is very long. Too long. At times, it reads like an amplified day planner, with long, long quotes from letters. If I wanted to read a book of Carnegie's correspondence, I would do so. The biographer's task is to digest, not simply regurgitate. (I think this metaphor has me, the reader, eating poop, but...)

8. The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton. Slow start but some of later essays offer half-decent speculations of why we travel and what we do and do not get out of it. Especially good was the essay on how artists condition the way we see a place--Van Gogh for Provence, e.g. This is from Proust, of course.