Decline of the Water Babies

I think I have finished Waugh, which is sort of exciting. Generally, anytime I finish an author's canon (or at least what they have on the list if they have more than two) it is exciting. With Waugh, there is an added piece of excitement, since reading so many of his becomes a bit repetitive. This actually reflects one of my criticisms of the list. For many of these authors, once you've read two or three you get it; you need not read every Dickens and Austen to have a pretty good sense what every other Dickens and Austen will be like. If you've read two Waugh (to say nothing of a mix of Waugh and Wodehouse), you are set. I'd advise Brideshead Revisited, since it's actually remarkably different from his others, and then any one of Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies or Handful of Dust.

Which isn't to say that Decline and Fall wasn't fun; it certainly was an enjoyable light read, and Waugh is great at satire. On my one-word summation bit, I would pick Breezy for this one (I realize that these summations are more one-word reflections of my impression of the tone of the novel, but whatever). There isn't a whole lot to say about it, though. The lead character is a bit of a cipher, but I think that works in the story. You can almost lose sight of him, even though he's always right there at the center.

I've meant to read The Water-Babies for an extremely long time; I've had an incredible challenge getting a copy, but I remember when I was 10 or 11 and Penguin re-issued all of these classic children's books that I saw it all the time. It reminded me in some ways of Princess and the Goblins or The Light Princess. Like many classic children's books, it was written for one particular child (think Winnie-the-Pooh, Narnia, etc.). The story feels extremely old fashioned, and I'm not sure how well it has stood the test of time. It's a fairy story, but it also feels a bit dated.

I actually do not know if I would have liked it as a child, primarily because it has a boy as the protagonist. I had an issue with that (seriously, I even went so far as to make people change the baby to a baby girl at the end of The Root Children; I'm not sure why that was so vitally important, but for some reason it was. . .). I was able to enjoy it in a removed sort of way now, but I didn't fall in love.

I did, however, learn something very interesting: there are no late fees for overdue juvenile books in the DC Public Library system. I do not understand this at all. Why have due dates then? And it's not like the fines are that heavy to be prohibitive; plus, as I well know, they send you daily reminders that your book is coming due starting five days before it is, so it's not like they aren't already holding our hands. I could see having some sort of fine forgiveness program, perhaps, but this seems odd.

The FAQ Part I

This seems a little self-serving, but on the other hand, people really do tend to ask me the same questions when they first learn that I am attempting to read each and every book on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list (from here on out, just the list). The project also comes up pretty frequently, for three reasons 1) if you're reading Babbitt, King Solomon's Mines, or American Psycho, people will want to know why, 2) I tend to trot this out when I need to make small talk, since I find it a remarkably impersonal topic to discuss, and 3) it tends to snowball from there since people tell other people. I don't really know why.

Without further ado, The FAQ:

How do you decide what to read? What people really mean, usually, is: "Are you reading in order? Oldest to most recent?" to which the answer would be, no. Not even close. The process isn't exactly random, but it's not apparently systematic and it's hard to describe. It's a combination of what I feel like reading, and what I can easily get from the local library (I rarely buy a book on the list).

I have to break up authors and genres. D. H. Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh become repetitive if you try to read more than two in a row. I need to start on Dickens soon here (I've only read A Tale of Two Cities, Nicholas Nickleby, and Christmas Carol) or I will really be in trouble later. I also need to break up styles. White men are a bit overrepresented in the list (why should it be different than congress?), and I need to slip in some women, people of color, and people not from the US or Europe on occasion or I start to get cranky. A little Noir goes a long way, and coming of age stories get old quite quickly.

Overall, though, the project is capricious. If it looks long and painful, I try to bookened it with something shorter and more fun. In general I try to go long, short, long, short as much as possible.

How much do you read a day/week? How long does it take you to read a book? I average around 100 pages a day (50 pages each way on my commute! Thanks, Red Line, for single tracking!). I try to read at least two books a week.

Do you ever stop a book once you've started it? In theory, no (see the rules). In practice, once. This reasoning behind the rule that I have to finish the books is simple. I'm only putting it off, since if I seriously plan to finish the list, then eventually I will have to read it. I prefer to do unpleasant things right away, so coming back to books doesn't make sense for me. It's also way too easy to shop around different books and never actually finish anything. Making the rule hard and fast keeps me moving forward.

There has been one exception though, in the form of Franny and Zooey. I actually find this exception ironic, given that when I came back to it I really enjoyed it (I would love to see the scene with Zooey and his mother as a play short). When I first tried to read it, though, I was dealing with my own angst, and didn't need Franny's adding to it. While the fact that I enjoyed it more when I came back might be an argument for letting myself not finish books on the first go, I think it's easy for that to become a cop-out/excuse for not finishing. If I genuinely think I will get more out of a book if I wait, then I will. If I'm just being lazy or indulging my short attention span, then the rule keeps me accountable.

What will you read when this is done? Books that aren't on the list. One thousand and one is a lot, granted, but there are so many books (and plays, memoirs, essays, short stories, and poems which don't usually appear on the list) that didn't make the list, and more are always coming out, that I am not at all worried. I find this question one of the most strange. When people do ask, they always sound so genuinely concerned that I will somehow run out of reading material before I turn 40.