Hitting the Books

While I was working on my summer reading list over the past few months, a number of titles caught my eye, but I had to place them instead on my never-ending, always-growing, lifelong reading list. However, my summer reading list was quite successful, if not 100%--and I'm still trying to make my way through the last sixty pages of Absalom, Absalom!, and Sexual Personae is something I will slowly but surely be making my way through. I'm not quite 1/3 done, but I hope to finish it by Christmas. So along with graduate school, television programming, a new city, and (hopefully) new friends, I present the thirteen books I would like to read this fall, and while several are short and/or fast reads, I certainly don't expect to finish them all, but here they are nonetheless.

My first two selections are novels from my summer list that I didn't get to. The first is Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence which is his most notorious novel, and that is saying something. It was also at the center of the landmark obscenity trial that allowed the book to be published. The second is American Rust by Philipp Meyer, a new American novel that is already racking up comparisons to Steinbeck and Twain.

Wishful Drinking is the latest memoir by Carrie Fisher and is the basis for her new, one-woman show. Just out in paperback, the memoir is supposedly candid and hilarious dealing with Hollywood inbreeding and family affairs, alcoholism and drug addiction, and her battle with bi-polar disorder. I can't wait to read it!

Dracula by Bram Stoker. I tried to read this book once many years ago, and failed real hard. But I'm thinking I would like to try again this October. After all, I always aim to read something terrifying around Halloween.

Death in Venice is perhaps Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Mann's best known work. I'm thinking I would like to try the novella's latest translation by Michael Henry Heim.

Morality Play by Barry Unsworth has to be more exciting than actual morality plays. It's a novel of a Medieval English theatre troupe that gets caught up in a small-town murder.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by locavore Michael Pollan who is also known for his bestsellers The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire. I've decided recently that I would like to change my eating/buying habits somewhat and read Pollan among others.

Blame by Michelle Huneven is a new novel that came out today. It's the story of a reckless professor who kills two people on a drunk driving spree and attempts to atone for her crime. It's supposedly smart, deep, addictive, and . . . then the author drops a bomb. I'm intrigued.

The Liars' Club by Mary Karr is a seminal family memoir. It was recommended by Alexandra Fuller of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, and is a memoir of childhood and a family of liars and drunks. For those interested, Karr's third memoir, Lit, comes out in November.

Nocturnes is a collection of five heartbreaking stories and is the latest work by Kazuo Ishiguro, author of The Remains of the Day. It comes out later this month.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk comes out in October. Pumak's (who also won the Nobel Prize) novel is about forbidden love in Istanbul. GQ quips "sure to become a Cate Blanchett movie," which sounds good to me.

"Buckingham Palace," District Six is a novel by Richard Rive who traces the stories of several characters living in District Six before their eventual removal by the South African government under apartheid.

And finally, also coming out in October is The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. Am I excited? Very. Let's get biblical.

So here's to a whole new slew of books I'm excited to read, and to GQ for helping some of these novels to catch my eye.