The Queue
Alistair, a persistent reader of The Secret Base and long-time friend of your humble narrator, remarked:

TLAM, just curious, where do you get your book recomendations? I'm lucky if I get through eight books a year, which means I'll be lucky to get through 400 more books in my life. Hence, book selection is pretty critical to me.

I try to use college reading lists as a filter. I don't want to be on my death bed wishing I had read more Cervantes and less Dickens. This is what keeps me up at night.

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to be engineers.

I shall accordingly endeavour to edify those interested as to the method of my madness. In the selection of books to be read and the determination of the order in which they are to be read the first and most abiding principle is sadness. Were I to live for a thousand years instead of a fleeting sixty and spent that millennium at my leisure, with no other demands on my time whatsoever, I should still not have time to peruse every book I might fancy. There are simply too many books and too little time. There's nothing for it but to be brave and read on undaunted by the impossibility of ever achieving any manner of completeness.

The second principle is a disregard for convention; simply put, "the classics" are bollocks. Based on the wretched classics of Western literature I was forced to read in school, one would almost suspect that the goal of America's teachers is to teach children to hate books. Wuthering Heights is self-absorbed rubbish. Johnny Got His Gun? Filthy Communist propaganda; it is an anti-war novel, but as soon as the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941 the author, Dalton Trumbo, suddenly reversed his anti-war views and forbade further publication of the book. Notice: in Trumbo's view it was fine to publish a novel criticizing the reasons for which the Western democracies send young men to their deaths while the Soviet Union was waging offensive wars against Finland (see: the Winter War), Poland (coordinated with the Nazi invasion), and the three diminutive Baltic republics, but as soon as the Nazi knife was to Stalin's throat Trumbo's pacifism went the way of the dodo. And yet I was forced to read this insidious tripe in high school. The Count of Monte Cristo, which I read on my own initiative, has permanently prejudiced me against 19th century French writers.

Taken together, these two principles tell us why I do not read certain books, but have precious little to say about why I do read certain other books. The most fundamental influence on my reading habits, from my blissful childhood through to the present day and several decades down the road when I shall be a feast for the worms, is my father. I know of no other two people who read as voraciously as my parents, and for that example I will forever thank them. My mom reads scores of books in a year, but she and I have widely divergent views on every form of popular culture; for Bog's sake, the woman hates Futurama! For all his many faults, my father did impart to me a love of both the past (history) and the future (science fiction). I originally read The Legacy of Heorot based on his recommendation, and the copy I held in my hands was borrowed from his library. The Arms of Krupp is one of four books he lent me, unbidden, several years ago. My father is not the fount of wisdom I believed him to be in my youth, but his library is still a great and tremendously useful repository of knowledge. A shame, really, that he mistakes the one for the other.

The silver and small screens, too, play their part in influencing my literary selections. I was introduced to works of Nick Hornby and Chuck Palahniuk by the films of their novels High Fidelity and Fight Club, respectively. I read The Count of Monte Cristo because I loved the film adaptation starring Jim "Jesus" Caviezel (the lesson there is that literary snobs are not right; on occasion, the motion picture is better than the book). One of the greatest joys of the cinema is a lovely adaptation of a book I already love. I read Shopgirl because I enjoyed Steve Martin's short story collection Pure Drivel, which I read because I had heard on NPR gushing praise for his plays and short stories, praise which I took to heart out of admiration for his brilliance as an actor and comedian. So, when the film of Shopgirl very nearly equaled the book, I was all the more thrilled! I discovered Paul Feig's hilarious and painfully awkward memoirs as a result of his creation of the outstanding television series Freaks and Geeks. The radio, chiefly National Public Radio, viewed here as an adjunct to the cinema and television, introduced me to the essays of the talented Sarah Vowell.

Last but certainly not least among our survey of influences are that which killed the cat and whimsy. To invoke a cliche, my greatest gift is my greatest curse. I have an impatient, insatiable mind. My interests are manifold, multiplying, and perpetually in motion; my mind flits from one subject to the next. I have no idea how to change this predilection and so have elected to embrace it as a strength rather than lament it as a weakness. My interest embarks upon flights of fancy and the rest of me goes along for the ride, ending up in the most interesting places.

A few examples: I consider myself a friend to the State of Israel; so, I was intrigued by Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel enough to buy the book entirely ignorant of it save for it's provocative title and the author's fame/infamy. This led me to read The Case for Israel's sequel, The Case for Peace. For good or for ill, President Bush is at the helm of the American ship of state and he cited The Case for Democracy was a great influence upon his thinking regarding Iraq and the potential for fomenting democratic change through the Arab world; to better understand the why of what we are doing, and because despite myself I have a vested interest in the expansion of human freedom, I read the book. I spied The Merchant of Vengeance while doing my Christmas shopping and was intrigued enough by the clever title and dusk jacket blurb to take a flyer on the book (which, helpfully, was deeply discounted). I enjoyed it enough to desire to read the other books in the "Shakespeare and Smythe" series. The aforementioned Pure Drivel lead me to Shopgirl and The Pleasure of My Company, two of my most favorite books of the last few years. The Man-eaters of Tsavo tugged at my interest in the world on the brink of the Great War, an interest intensified by the decision to place ANTÆUS in this context.

Armed with the sad knowledge that I could never read all the books I might want to read, I am freed from the pressure of worrying about reading the "right" books. I'm game for whatever lies in store wherever my fancies may take me. By subscribing to such a devil may care attitude will I not miss out on a lot of books that I surely would have loved? Certainly, but I would miss out on a great many such books in any event; again, there simply is not time for them all. Abandon the fool's errand of trying to read all the books you should and enjoy the books you've chosen to read. I read Thomas Lynch's The Undertaking because the then Bald Mountain praised it highly. I read David Schickler's Kissing in Manhattan because Mrs. Sacramento (nee Never Girl) gave it to me unbiden back when she was dear to me, when we were dear to each other. I read Leslie Charteris's The Ace of Knaves, a collection of three Saint stories, because it had once belonged to my grandfather and I was ruing having not been a better grandson while he was still alive. The forced moral at the end of this meandering treatise? Don't worry about it, just read the books you want to read, the books that for whatever reason catch your eye or pique your interest.

The Queue
L. Niven, J. Pournelle, & S. Barnes, The Legacy of Heorot
William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp, 1587-1968
Simon Hawke, The Merchant of Vengeance
J.H. Patterson, The Man-eaters of Tsavo
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Jung Chang & Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story
Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
Theodor Plievier, Stalingrad
Wayne Robinson, Hell Has No Heroes

Always in Motion, the Future Is
B.H. Liddell Hart, The Real War, 1914-1918
Daniel Dafoe, Robinson Crusoe (reread, read when I was a boy)
Robert M. Soderstrom, The Big House: Fielding H. Yost and the Building of Michigan Stadium
Brian Crozier, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire
John Mosier, The Myth of the Great War (reread)

I jumped Mody-Dick ahead of Mao because, damn it, I am in the mood for a book about the sea. Plus, I can seque from Mao directly into The 900 Days and Stalingrad, and perhaps even beyond to The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, making a big Communism project out of it with the added bonus of making great headway in plowing through the books my dad, with the best of intentions, foisted upon me.

I remembering loving Robinson Crusoe; so, there is a good chance that when it is finished I'll reread Treasure Island for the four or fifth time, both being in somewhat of the same vein. The Real War and The Myth of the Great War will almost certainly end up as a pairing. Queue-jumping will in all probability be afoot as I find it very likely I will read The Big House in the fall, in celebration of being back in beloved Michigan in the glorious midst of the college football season.