Wow, what a crazy month. July was just — I mean, it was just — um — let’s just say entering The Sandbox Designs Competition took a lot out of me. In an effort to quell your dissatisfaction with my somewhat irregular posting schedule this month I tried to write better posts. Apparently, you like that sort of thing. So thanks. Here’s the best of July:

Don’t Wait — 5 Classics to Read Now — My five picks for classic works you just shouldn’t wait to read. Make sure you read through the comments for more suggestions. The list should really be never-ending so don’t wait, add your own suggestions.

Stay Dead, Harry Potter — This just in: Harry Potter (possibly) lives (in a book I’ll probably never read). Um, watch out for spoilers in that last sentence. Anyway, timely or not you can get a rough idea of my opinions of the Christ figure in popular culture from this post.

I Wish I Read These As a Kid  — A list of books I wish I read as a kid, including your suggestions. Feel free to add to the list. And consider any book on this list a strong recommendation for your next read.

Two Books I Won’t Be Reading — My thoughts on two recent purchases in the context of a lament for the book buyer with sagging shelves.

Stop Reading So Many Books — My advice (based somewhat on Mortimer Adler’s) on cutting your reading pile in half using the simplest of speed-reading techniques: don’t read the whole thing.

There’s more somewhat amusing posts coming up, for good or ill, but if you liked these ones you might want to add my blog to your Technorati favorites, join my MyBlogLog community, or bookmark this page on del.icio.us. And don’t forget to check out the Sandbox Designs Competition next week to see my design go live. Win or lose (more than likely lose) I had a lot of fun.

As always, thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing and thanks for commenting. I’m continually impressed by how great you’ve all been. Thanks for the support.

I’m one for putting my books into stacks so you can imagine I usually put a bit of effort into deciding what I’m going to read next. For instance I avoid punishing myself with weighty tome after weighty tome. And I usually avoid the temptation of uninterrupted volumes of pulpy, psychedelic science-fiction. So I set plans in place. I carefully consider the next book I’ll read. And then I ignore all my plans and just read whatever.

A fer instance: I just finished Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a book best described by Nathaniel Philbrick in the introduction to my edition as reading something like “a very weird book on whaling by Shakespeare and the translators of the King James Bible.” It’s not light reading. After setting it down I knew exactly what I wanted to read. Something light, trashy, possibly garbagey. I needed a break. What am I reading now? A 150 year old travel memoir, the first published work of historian and writer Francis Parkman, the Oregon Trail .

It’s not exactly the heaviest reading but it’s not quite the trash I was hoping for. Melville, of all people, liked it, though. It apparently has “the true wild-game flavor”. And I’m liking it so far. But, again, it’s not trash. This is what happens when you run out of books when you’re at the cabin and go into town to the local used bookstore. Did I say bookstore. I meant Goodwill store where books are a dime. Yes, a dime. Amongst the mountains of used-up Danielle Steeles and V.C. Andrews I usually find a few gems. Like Parkman.

Now, what should I read after the Oregon Trail?

It’s the biggest unspoken secret amongst Comics fans: Comics are not for normal people. Comics fans are not normal, after all. Regardless of what they say about the special power of the form for communication the preferred content of the majority remains quite particular — Angry muscular dudes punching each other. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m a comics fan too, I’m all for the punching. I just don’t like pretending comics-reading is a normal past-time.

Of course, like always, I’m being incredibly unfair. Anyone who’s been to the bookstore in the past five years couldn’t help but notice the explosion of Graphic Novels. You know, those big fat comics marketed towards teenagers and adults. Most of them are, again, Super-Punch-Man Comics repackaged and dressed up for fancy folk — but not all. You may have noticed something peculiar of late. Yes, Comics for normal people are gaining in popularity.

It’s one such Comic that I’ve been just overtaken with recently, Flight Volume Two. Flight is a series of short comics by a multitude of creators with seemingly only one simple direction from editorial, let your imagination take flight. OK, that’s corny (and from me, don’t blame the publishers for that bit of corn) but what am I supposed to say? A quick flip through Flight is like a blast of the best in contemporary illustration. The stories are filled with wonder, sentiment, and overall a distinct lack of punching. No punching is, in this case, very good. Somehow a story about a sweet innocent robot that learns to dream or a friendly space-dog saved from destruction aren’t best served by punching. Anyway, I highly recommend Flight to anyone and everyone, normal and unusual person alike.

For more information check out flightcomics.com. They’re on volume four now.

Reading Moby Dick out loud to my son — at his request with “no scary parts, dad” — I’m amazed at the difference in rhythm between contemporary fiction of this century and the last two. I know Melville’s a special case, all manic skipping lines, excitement, exasperation, then thunk, dead stop, horror. I know. But today’s work doesn’t really compare.

OK, that makes me sound about eighty years older than I actually am. But you all know what I’m talking about. I’m wracking my brain trying to come up with a fair, passing delightful, contemporary prose stylist. I’m sure there are some that are absolute pleasures to read aloud. I’m sure I’ve even read some. The only real stylist I can think of is Hemingway and he’s defiantly not delightful in the sense I’m thinking of. He’s more “Get out from between me and my drink so I can shoot that lion.”

Anyone got any ideas? If you want to recommend someone I’d appreciate it. Bonus points if the author has published short stories I can easily find in a used book store.

I’m a worst offender when it comes to “waiting till I’m ready” for this classic or that classic. In fact, I’ve been psyching myself up for Jame Joyce for over ten years! So in the spirit of “don’t be like me” I thought I’d share five of my favorite intimidating classics that don’t deserve their stonewalling rep.

• Julius Caesar. I think this is a great start if you’ve been avoiding Shakespeare for the bulk of your natural life. Here’s the thing about Shakespeare, by the way: he trades off of emotions and situations we can all relate to and, believe it or not, he’s entertaining first, good for you second.
• Robinson Crusoe. I read this last year for the first time. It’s now my favorite puritanical page-turner post Pilgrim’s Progress. Perfect? Probably.
• The Bible. Speaking of puritanical page-turners — OK, this isn’t exactly a page turner. But, like Shakespeare, if you’re not familar with the Bible you’re sort of not familiar with your own culture. Just don’t read some weird, weepy modern translation of it. Yech. Read the NRSV or something (you won’t finish King James’ Bible). Those English have a history of doing this sort of thing right.
• The Brother Karamazov. Surprisingly just a soapy murder-mystery. Of course it’s a soapy mystery written by one of the greatest novelists of all time so it’s about everything else in the world. But trust me, you’ll love everyone in this book. I mean it.
• Anna Karenina. Often called the greatest novel ever written but don’t let that intimidate you. Like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy is also a fan of melodrama. You’ve seen this story play out a million times in movies and with your friends but you’ve never had a piercing psychic look at the emotions and thoughts of all the players. A phenomenal example of an ultra-realistic novel. It was Tolstoy’s brilliant efforts that drove me through the book. A rare thing.

Anyone else have any classics that don’t deserve their intimidating rep? I know I could go on and on.

For the past two weeks I’ve been living like a bachelor, working in the city during the weekdays while my wife and son spent some time away at the cabin. As mentioned previously, I should not be left alone with myself. On my own, all proper thoughts of nutrition and culinary propriety leave my head and it’s not hard to find me eating a dinner of cornflakes and nacho chips at 11:30 in the evening (yes, I actually did this). This probably comes as a surprise to anyone who has been to a restaurant with me or been a dinner guest at Upper Fort Stewart. Excepting my unholy love of gravy (can’t make poutine without it!), I think it’s well known, I love fine food.

Anyway, all this digestive abuse has reminded me how much I love my old out of print copy of Everyday French Cooking by Henri Paul Pellaprat. Printed in 1968, it’s described in the introduction as being something like a primer on basic french cooking for the American house wife. For the American house wife? Where’s Beav and Wally with my Apron? Whatever, I love it. This, for me, is cooking orthodoxy. Whenever I follow a recipe from this book I produce a simple, almost platonic, meal that just tastes the way one thinks it should have tasted always. That’s an accomplishment. But it’s hard to expect less when the author was a professor at le Cordon Bleu, the MIT or Harvard of cooking schools, for over forty years.

My favorite recipes: Pellaprat’s simple Roast Chicken. Beef Bourguignon. Baked Eggs. Simple stuff that tastes perfect.

Most terrible sounding recipe that I long to try: Smothered Rabbit. That “widdle wabbit” was a monster, judge, he deserved it!

Recipe I just won’t ever make: Braised Sweetbreads Jardinière. Sweetbreads is guts.

If you ever get a chance to pick up this book, do it (you can buy it used from Amazon). It will increase your confidence in the kitchen, teach you something about cooking, and probably make for some great nights entertaining. Plus, it’s old looking, and does not have Rachel Ray on the cover. That always helps.

You know, somehow, I suspect Mssr. Pellaprat would not be amused by late night cornflakes and nacho chips.

I think it’s fairly obvious you’re reading too many books. They pile up on your shelves without rhyme or reason, they’re all over your house, and anything else with words in it, magazines, manuals, postcards, they’re gathering dust in the corner. I think it’s a mixture of option paralysis and shame. Good old shame. Anyway, I have a solution for you, stop reading books. Or at least, stop giving your full attention to books that don’t demand it.

Books that demand your attention

Here’s how to tell if a book demands your attention. It’ll have a few things going for it, an index, a table of contents, and an introduction and a conclusion. And I’m talking about proper introductions, too, written by the author and clearly defined with clever titles like, “Introduction” and “Conclusion”. “Epilogue” is not a good substitution. A book that has these three things has some respect for your intelligence. A book like this is going to let you know whether or not it’s worth your time, whether or not it can demand your attention.

This is the thing: when you’re reading a non-fiction book you’re doing it to solve a problem. You might not know how to do something, you might have an interest in a particular field, you may want to bolster your skills, you might want to win a bet. You need a solution. You’ve come to a book for answer. Do yourself a favor, don’t read the whole thing. Don’t even read half of it, just read three things: the index, the table of contents, and the introduction and conclusion.

The three attention filters

The index, the table of contents, and the introduction and conclusion are filters that will help you learn if a book can demand your attention. Flip through the index. If you already know a little about the subject there should be some names you recognize in there. There should be some subjects there that, at the very best, excite you, and, at least have you noting the pages they appear on. The table of contents, on the other hand, should definitely excite you. No kidding. That table of contents should absolutely thrill you and if it doesn’t I might just put it down right there. It’s the outline of the whole book. If the basic structure is boring and useless no amount of delightful prose will save it.

With the first two filters out of the way you’re in luck. You’re either about to finish that book in half an hour to an hour and come away smarter and better off or, maybe, start a relationship with a book and an author that will change your life. But get ready, I’ve got some pretty radical advice here: Don’t read that book! Read the introduction — at first. The introduction should 1.) let you know that it will solve the problem you have and 2.) let you know about a whole host of other problems you didn’t know you have. The second point is pretty crucial. If it’s not met I wonder if your problem can’t be just solved in ten minutes on the internet.

And you’re done reading

Now, read the conclusion and you’re done. Maybe. You do not have to read the rest of that book. If you want to read the rest of the book at this point you may. In fact, if you do want to continue I suspect it’s because you’ve found a great book. The kind of book that’s going to change your life. Do keep reading this one. Of course, it’s more likely that you don’t need to read any further and your problem is solved. You may, like me, find this slightly depressing, looking at rows of shelves of books and realizing 90% of them can be read in half an hour, but it’s a sad fact that most books are crap. You’ve solved your problem but now you’re a realist. Out of the frying pan into the fire, I guess.

Please try not to read anymore books than you have to. Read the index, table of contents, and introduction and conclusion of non-fiction books, in that order. You won’t be missing out. Most books aren’t worth reading. Save your time for the best ones.

I just can’t stop buying books. What’s wrong with me? Oh, right, I forgot, I’m crazy. Here’s two out-of-print books I won’t be reading (in their entirety, I’ll probably scan and browse) anytime soon.

The Writings of Martin Buber

I like to tell people I’ve read Buber’s big deal I and Thou and then quickly admit that, actually, I’ve read only half. I’m not sure I can think of a quicker introduction to Buber that does justice to him. He’s hard to read. Poetic, brilliant, dense. Always trying to explain something that you suspect he doesn’t fully understand himself. In fact, It would surprise me if he did fully understand what he was writing about.

The Writings of Martin Buber comes with some bonus material: a clipping from a yellowed newsprint magazine summarizing his ideas of The I and Thou relationship that’s been used as a bookmark. I feel like Indiana Jones when I find stuff like this in books. An actual holy relic.

The Portable Swift

Another author who’s had only half of his great work read by me, Jonathan Swift. Like a billion other kids I read a heavily abridged and edited (probably sanitized) Gulliver’s Travels. Like many other famous English works, that’s not even it’s correct title. The actual title is so long I’ve copied it from Wikipedia even though it’s right here in front of me on my desk, Vol. IV of the Author’s Works Including Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts, by Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and Then a Captain of Several Ships. Ah, the world before marketing. Today it would probably be titled, “Lem”.

I’ve been somewhat interested in reading the original version of Lem for a while. I won’t read it until I’m terribly interested. More pressing in my desires is Swift’s Modest Proposal. A satirical essay, apparently the satirical essay, that’s been somewhat influential over the years. Well, It’s been influential on me, at least. It’s method of argument, as described to me in High School, has been my starting point for debate and has led me to great success, laughs, and only a few minor threats of bodily harm. I hope it meets my expectations.

Apparently there’s this kids book coming out very soon that’s become quite popular with older readers who have reading disabilities. I think it’s called Harry Potter — wait! — I kid, I kid. Please don’t set my computer on fire. I’ve just never managed to become involved in the whole phenomenon.

I do however have an opinion on young Mr. Potter’s coming death, or non death. It’s too late for pleading, I know, but Mrs. Rowling, I really hope you haven’t tried to finish off Harry by making him the eight-millionth lame Christ figure in popular entertainment of recent memory. I just — I’m bored of it, all right? It always seems forced and it just doesn’t rate. If I hear that Harry Potter so much as gets a sniffle that miraculously disappears when all hope is lost, I’ll be very disappointed.

You seem like a fairly smart lady, you should know that a magic trick isn’t a mystery and the connections it makes to real mystery — when a surface gloss of motion, the form-filling Christ-making of recent popular heroes (unusual initiation, check, finds strange new friends, check, one of them is suspicious, check, appears to die, check) — are only paper chains.

I hope Harry doesn’t turn out to be deathly hollow.

That said, remember when Keanu Reeves came back to life at the end of that Matrix movie? That was like, so cool.

More: Here’s a link to a short AP article that relates Harry’s impending doom (or not) to other traditions.

I’m living the bachelor life for the next three days. My wife and son will be relaxing at the cabin while I stay in the city and go to work. Being thrust back into the bachelor life, its got me thinking about being a grown-up. For instance, being a grown-up means one shouldn’t eat a whole box of President’s Choice Louisiana-style Hot-wings dipped in blue cheese dressing all by one’s self. That’s just not right. A grown-up should not be doing that.

Anyway, these thoughts of grown-up-ness (or lack thereof — maybe it’s just maleness) reminded me of a list I wanted to generate, Books I Never Read When I Was a Kid and Wish I Had. “Kid” being defined for this list’s purposes as below the age of eighteen. “Grown-Up”, well, let’s decide that some other time, I don’t have the stomach for it.

Books I Never Read When I Was a Kid and Wish I Had

• A Wrinkle In Time
• Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain
• Peter Pan
• Don Quixote
• The Lord of The Rings (shocking, I know, I only liked The Hobbit)
• Robinson Crusoe
• The Jungle Book
• Watership Down
• Pretty much everything by G.K. Chesterton
• Ditto for Dostoevsky (I was boycotting pre-twentieth century fiction)
• More Ray Bradbury (that’s a good reading list item for any age)

And some of your suggestions

• Pride and Prejudice
  
• Great Expectations
  
• Anna Karenina
• The Wind in the Willows
• Something by Eleanor Farjeon
• The Princess Bride

Feel free to jog my memory with your own “wished I coulda read it” items in the comments section. If any of our missed ‘ems match up I’ll add them to the list.

I hope my wife left me Tums in the house.