Being a list-oriented neurotic, I’ve set out to read the bulk of a small list of books that would test many a short attention span. I used to make lists a lot more, but since I began my college academic career three years ago, I’ve become a bit more sane. However, I still believe there’s a season for every book and author. For example, winter’s the time for Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Don DeLillo and H.P. Lovecraft (dark, dense texts whose decadent, contemplative protagonists often find themselves embroiled in tragedy, epic romance or some other kind of terminal crisis). With summer on its way (we all hope), the warmer temperatures demand different decisions: Kobo Abe, Paul Auster, Harlan Ellison and Haruki Murakami (quicker reads that explore the human condition with an emphasis on imaginary landscapes ruled by pulp, fantastic and/or spectacular logic).
Since we all get behind on our reading, summer is catch-up time. Instead packing a book for the beach (too much potential for dampening mishaps), I spend my time commuting from Queens to Manhattan on the Long Island Railroad to read a book in two weeks or less. I’ve already started this season with Cthulhu 2000, a collection of short-story homages to Lovecraft by everyone from Gene Wolfe to Roger Zelazny. It’s really a January read due to its ornate rituals, hideous ghouls, isolated protagonists and cold, barren landscapes, which hasn’t been a problem considering with the chilly weather we’ve had so far.
Now I’m ready to dive in to the rest of my summer reading, a list that only seems to grow. That’s OK, since we all know that summer reading is all about good intentions; but we’ll end up finding something else to distract ourselves by the time Labor Day arrives.
Here’s a list, in no particular order, of a few books that should be devoured between June and August:
Kobo Abe—Secret Rendezvous:
Since I read Woman in the Dunes two years ago, I’ve been trying to read one of his books each summer, continuing last year with The Face of Another after reading the Criterion Collection’s announcement of their release of Hiroshi Teshigahara box set (the box includes, The Face of Another, Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes). Though Abe can be maddeningly abstract, his characters are all sweat-drenched paranoiacs whose stories bring the blazing sun crashing down on top of you as you read it. Secret Rendezvous has something to do with a hospital and bizarre sexual experiments. Sign me up.
Paul Auster—Leviathan & Travels in the Sriptorium:
I got bit by the Auster bug bad after reading a copy of Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s adaptation of his City of Glass I picked up at the MoCCA Convention three or four years ago (and promptly lost until last summer). After reading all of Auster’s New York Trilogy, I devoured his Book of Illusions in time to see his dismal film adaptation, The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Auster is the master of the metaphysical noir, his plots equally hard-boiled and surreal metaphors for storytelling, memory, God and authorship. I think I’m interested in Scriptorium just to see if he’s as much of a has-been as his awful Martin Frost made him appear to be.
Clive Barker—The Hellbound Heart:
This is definitely a winter book because of its ornate prose, but I need something to wean me off Lovecraft and this may be it. Like any good chiller, Heart boasts ample boudoir thrills and buckets of blood: Julia, an unhappily married woman helps resurrect the animated corpse that was her brother-in-law and ex-lover from a state somewhere between life and death. After seeing Hellraiser, Barker’s horrific film adaptation, I needed to be reassured that at least the source material was worth the time. I’m not sure what to expect but, considering how short this novella is (176 pages), I’m just hoping for some quick, breezy chills.
Roberto Bolaño—By Night in Chile:
I never caught up with Bolaño despite how ubiquitous his name has become during the last few years. By Night in Chile’s protagonist grapples with his religion, political affiliations and bibliofilia, reminding me in some ways of the tragic, labyrinthine, exotic, smoke-filled and sweat-drenched worlds Renaldo Arenas and Gabriel Garcia Marquez invented. This seems like the shortest of his books and one of his most highly touted, so I’ll start here and, if the mood strikes, try the slightly longer Last Evenings on Earth.
Denis Johnson—Jesus’ Son:
Like many people, I prefer to get into writers I don’t know by using collections of their short stories. The collection centers on addiction and boredom, and what says summer better than a bored junkie? Considering how highly regarded this one is, I’ll start here instead of Johnson’s latest, Tree of Smoke (although it has me intrigued if for no other reason than how much I love to say its title).
William Gibson—Neuromancer:
I finally got around to reading my first Gibson stories this spring, namely selections from Burning Chrome. Now I feel like I need to read his canonical novel. There’s no way better way to beat the heat than donning a pair of mirrorshades and beating the streets with Gibson’s cool cyborgs. When it comes to the “cyberpunk” writers, I think I prefer Pat Cadigan—but perhaps Neuromancer will change that.
Panos Karnezis—The Maze:
I’ve had this on my shelf for some time now and may actually get to it this summer. The cover caught my eye and just after looking at the first page, I was astounded by how rich Karnezis’ sun-baked narrative was in its detail and imagery. It’s set in 1922 and is the story of a ragged platoon of Greek soldiers on their long trek back home after a failed expedition into Asia Minor. Oh, and they think they’re cursed.
Stephen King—It:
Summer is the ideal time to pick up something this long since I’ll probably be reading all 1,000-odd pages of it all summer long. And then I can watch Tim Curry as an evil clown in the film adaptation! Whee!
Sergei Lukyanekov—Twilight Watch:
Took a break from the “Watch” trilogy after the second book blew me away. Now I’m eager to sink my teeth into some more tirelessly inventive and effortlessly imaginative Russian fantasy.
Cormac McCarthy—The Road:
For me, McCarthy is a fall writer: stark, direct, meditative prose—and enough dark ruminations to segue nicely into winter. But after reading his stellar The Sunset Limited this fall, I’ve found myself eager to read this Pullitzer Prize-winning, post-apocalyptic story of a father and son’s trek across the barren wasteland of the future. While it may seem too dark for summer, the sweltering, sticky prose of books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men make me think I should be reading this near an AC unit.
Haruki Murakami—A Wild Sheep Chase:
Murakami was the instrumental, pivotal writer that got me interested in reading as an adolescent. After reading Kafka on the Shore a year or so ago, I wanted to go back and visit some of his earlier novels, like Sputnik Sweetheart and A Wild Sheep Chase. Both would make for great summer reading thanks to their magical realism, but I think I chose the latter because I’ve read that Dance Dance Dance was a semi-sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase and felt like I should go back and see what I missed.
Chuck Palahniuk—Haunted, Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey & Snuff:
Palahniuk’s my idea of beach reading. Stuffed with drugs, sex and death, his books are quick, funny and imminently quotable in their potty-mouthed pontificating. Diary, the last one I read by him, was a somewhat shaky but enjoyable return to form after Lullaby, and I enjoyed the petty shock of Haunted’s “Guts” when he read it at the signing I attended for Diary years ago.
Georges Simenon—Monsieur Monde Vanishes:
Another book banished to my shelf for far too long. It seems like just another light read that I should be able to polish off in a couple of days. I know escaping the daily grind and slumming it with pimps and prostitutes is what I have planned for this summer. Oh and because Roman de Gare left such a horrible test in my mouth: Why is it that I read so many good books in anticipation of—or after having seen—a terrible adaptation/homage?
Since we all get behind on our reading, summer is catch-up time. Instead packing a book for the beach (too much potential for dampening mishaps), I spend my time commuting from Queens to Manhattan on the Long Island Railroad to read a book in two weeks or less. I’ve already started this season with Cthulhu 2000, a collection of short-story homages to Lovecraft by everyone from Gene Wolfe to Roger Zelazny. It’s really a January read due to its ornate rituals, hideous ghouls, isolated protagonists and cold, barren landscapes, which hasn’t been a problem considering with the chilly weather we’ve had so far.
Now I’m ready to dive in to the rest of my summer reading, a list that only seems to grow. That’s OK, since we all know that summer reading is all about good intentions; but we’ll end up finding something else to distract ourselves by the time Labor Day arrives.
Here’s a list, in no particular order, of a few books that should be devoured between June and August:
Kobo Abe—Secret Rendezvous:
Since I read Woman in the Dunes two years ago, I’ve been trying to read one of his books each summer, continuing last year with The Face of Another after reading the Criterion Collection’s announcement of their release of Hiroshi Teshigahara box set (the box includes, The Face of Another, Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes). Though Abe can be maddeningly abstract, his characters are all sweat-drenched paranoiacs whose stories bring the blazing sun crashing down on top of you as you read it. Secret Rendezvous has something to do with a hospital and bizarre sexual experiments. Sign me up.
Paul Auster—Leviathan & Travels in the Sriptorium:
I got bit by the Auster bug bad after reading a copy of Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli’s adaptation of his City of Glass I picked up at the MoCCA Convention three or four years ago (and promptly lost until last summer). After reading all of Auster’s New York Trilogy, I devoured his Book of Illusions in time to see his dismal film adaptation, The Inner Life of Martin Frost. Auster is the master of the metaphysical noir, his plots equally hard-boiled and surreal metaphors for storytelling, memory, God and authorship. I think I’m interested in Scriptorium just to see if he’s as much of a has-been as his awful Martin Frost made him appear to be.
Clive Barker—The Hellbound Heart:
This is definitely a winter book because of its ornate prose, but I need something to wean me off Lovecraft and this may be it. Like any good chiller, Heart boasts ample boudoir thrills and buckets of blood: Julia, an unhappily married woman helps resurrect the animated corpse that was her brother-in-law and ex-lover from a state somewhere between life and death. After seeing Hellraiser, Barker’s horrific film adaptation, I needed to be reassured that at least the source material was worth the time. I’m not sure what to expect but, considering how short this novella is (176 pages), I’m just hoping for some quick, breezy chills.
Roberto Bolaño—By Night in Chile:
I never caught up with Bolaño despite how ubiquitous his name has become during the last few years. By Night in Chile’s protagonist grapples with his religion, political affiliations and bibliofilia, reminding me in some ways of the tragic, labyrinthine, exotic, smoke-filled and sweat-drenched worlds Renaldo Arenas and Gabriel Garcia Marquez invented. This seems like the shortest of his books and one of his most highly touted, so I’ll start here and, if the mood strikes, try the slightly longer Last Evenings on Earth.
Denis Johnson—Jesus’ Son:
Like many people, I prefer to get into writers I don’t know by using collections of their short stories. The collection centers on addiction and boredom, and what says summer better than a bored junkie? Considering how highly regarded this one is, I’ll start here instead of Johnson’s latest, Tree of Smoke (although it has me intrigued if for no other reason than how much I love to say its title).
William Gibson—Neuromancer:
I finally got around to reading my first Gibson stories this spring, namely selections from Burning Chrome. Now I feel like I need to read his canonical novel. There’s no way better way to beat the heat than donning a pair of mirrorshades and beating the streets with Gibson’s cool cyborgs. When it comes to the “cyberpunk” writers, I think I prefer Pat Cadigan—but perhaps Neuromancer will change that.
Panos Karnezis—The Maze:
I’ve had this on my shelf for some time now and may actually get to it this summer. The cover caught my eye and just after looking at the first page, I was astounded by how rich Karnezis’ sun-baked narrative was in its detail and imagery. It’s set in 1922 and is the story of a ragged platoon of Greek soldiers on their long trek back home after a failed expedition into Asia Minor. Oh, and they think they’re cursed.
Stephen King—It:
Summer is the ideal time to pick up something this long since I’ll probably be reading all 1,000-odd pages of it all summer long. And then I can watch Tim Curry as an evil clown in the film adaptation! Whee!
Sergei Lukyanekov—Twilight Watch:
Took a break from the “Watch” trilogy after the second book blew me away. Now I’m eager to sink my teeth into some more tirelessly inventive and effortlessly imaginative Russian fantasy.
Cormac McCarthy—The Road:
For me, McCarthy is a fall writer: stark, direct, meditative prose—and enough dark ruminations to segue nicely into winter. But after reading his stellar The Sunset Limited this fall, I’ve found myself eager to read this Pullitzer Prize-winning, post-apocalyptic story of a father and son’s trek across the barren wasteland of the future. While it may seem too dark for summer, the sweltering, sticky prose of books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men make me think I should be reading this near an AC unit.
Haruki Murakami—A Wild Sheep Chase:
Murakami was the instrumental, pivotal writer that got me interested in reading as an adolescent. After reading Kafka on the Shore a year or so ago, I wanted to go back and visit some of his earlier novels, like Sputnik Sweetheart and A Wild Sheep Chase. Both would make for great summer reading thanks to their magical realism, but I think I chose the latter because I’ve read that Dance Dance Dance was a semi-sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase and felt like I should go back and see what I missed.
Chuck Palahniuk—Haunted, Rant: An Oral History of Buster Casey & Snuff:
Palahniuk’s my idea of beach reading. Stuffed with drugs, sex and death, his books are quick, funny and imminently quotable in their potty-mouthed pontificating. Diary, the last one I read by him, was a somewhat shaky but enjoyable return to form after Lullaby, and I enjoyed the petty shock of Haunted’s “Guts” when he read it at the signing I attended for Diary years ago.
Georges Simenon—Monsieur Monde Vanishes:
Another book banished to my shelf for far too long. It seems like just another light read that I should be able to polish off in a couple of days. I know escaping the daily grind and slumming it with pimps and prostitutes is what I have planned for this summer. Oh and because Roman de Gare left such a horrible test in my mouth: Why is it that I read so many good books in anticipation of—or after having seen—a terrible adaptation/homage?
