Summer Reading List

I'm feeling relatively inadequate after finding this list of 1,001 books you should read before you die (or die trying) and realizing that I've read a pathetic 50 of them, give or take. So below is my list of books I'd like to read this summer and books that should be on your list if you haven't read them yet.

Books that I would like to read this summer:

• Beloved by Toni Morrison
• Underworld by Don DeLillo
• Rabbit Angsrom: The Four Novels by John Updike
• American Pastoral by Philip Roth
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Books that should be on your summer reading list if you haven't read them yet:

• The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  

Bookshelf Lust, Take Two

A reading list to go with the beautiful bookcase:

• Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin(Currently in my bag. It's like 750 pages, so my shoulder is currently sore, but it is excellent thus far.)
  
• Deciding What's News by Herbert J. Gans (On my bookshelf. This one is so I can convince ridiculously selective grad schools to take me.)
  
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (Because I've never read Rushdie, but should.)
  
• Devil in the White City (On my bed, but unopened.)
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Started this like two years ago and then got distracted. Also, the Russian names trip me up.)
• Leaves of Faith by Rav Aharon Lichtenstein (Currently reading, but slowly. Reading takes much longer when you need to really think--and look up words in the dictionary.)
  
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (On my shelf. Started it and never finished. I think I just don't like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I wish I did.)
• Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (Left over from a previous reading list. Should get on that)
  
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (Ditto.)
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (This has been on my mental to-read list for forever.)
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (My grandmother keeps telling me this is the most fantastic book ever. My aunt says it's the most depressing book ever. I should read it and take a side.)
  

Books you should read if you haven't yet:

• Beloved by Toni Morrison (Selected as the best book of the past 25 years by the NY Times.)
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey (I received it as a gift from two wonderful friends. Probably the best book I read in the last year.)
  
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
• Oracle Night by Paul Aster
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
  
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
• You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
• All the President's Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Just because.)
  

You're Never Fully Dressed...

Things that make me happy:

• Articles or a series of articles about loving THE City. (Also, on the list of reasons to love NY, this is my Prince Charming: "Because the ultimate sign of chivalry is when a guy looks out for stiletto-heel-gobbling grates for a girl to avoid while walking down the perilous city streets.")

• Reading an article and recognizing a sentence from a friend's away message and, so, knowing that we're reading the same newspaper and the same articles.

• A late Chanukah/later graduation present.

• Boots that give me blisters in a different place than the shoes I was wearing yesterday. (OK happy may be the wrong word for that, but still, it's good that I'm giving my blistered toe a day of relief, even at the expense of my ankles.)

• Getting a free promotional iced tea on the street. Even if it has the unfortunate name "Honest Tea."

Headlines on Dog Runners, Lead Paint, and Expensive Camps

I know, I know. I've been away for a while. I'm back, though I can't promise how frequently. We'll see. For now, some articles for your reading pleasure.

• Maybe I should do this with my free time. Too bad I don't like dogs. And I don't exercise.

• In which my sister and I wonder if our 2-year-old brother might have had high levels of lead (which led to a house inspection that drove my mother insane) because he was sucking on Thomas the Tank Engine and not because there was lead paint on our walls.

• Should I feel relieved that there are no Jewish camps on this list of the most expensive camps New Yorkers send their kids to or should I feel gypped that exorbitantly priced Jewish camps can't make the list? My competitive spirit wins out. Also, I never went to sleep-away camp and I like making fun of what my friends' parents paid.

• Excuse me while I go rub this in my siblings' faces... (Also, while I wonder if The NY Times eploys any copy editors.)

And No, I Will Not Get High

I just got funding to go to Amsterdam for two weeks this summer to attend a program about digital methods. This makes me very excited. For all those who are about to ask whether I am going to get high while there (because everyone seems to think it's hilarious to ask that question to someone who so obviously will not), it is not on my to-do list. Though I was thinking that I really enjoyed Widow for One Year by John Irving, which takes place in Amsterdam. But being as it's about a woman who witnesses a prostitute get murdered in the Red Light District, I do not think I will be re-reading it in anticipation of my trip. Also because even though I shipped 250 pounds of books to L.A. when I moved here (including a lesser Irving title and another awesome Irving book), I apparently left that book in New York. 

But while I'm on the topic of Irving, I will link to one of his essays, which I really like: "Trying to Save Piggy Sneed." 

New York City vs. Washington, D.C. (1-0, for now)

"New York is a city of conversations overheard, of people at the next restaurant table (micrometers away) checking your watch, of people reading the stories in your newspaper on the subway train."

On the fridge in my summer dorm room, there is a comparison between the Washington, D.C. Metro and the (by far superior) New York City Subway. At the top of that list is the fact that it is illegal to eat or drink on the Metro (punishable by fine or imprisonment or getting yelled at by a concerned citizen - and I speak from personal experience). It is, or was, legal to eat on the Subway, and it's a huge plus for the wonderful city I call home.

However, the NY Times reports that those blissful days of eating on the Subway are about to change. The rules have changed, and while eating and drinking are still allowed on station platforms (merely to appease vendors), passengers will not be allowed to eat on the trains anymore.

Now, I'm all for having clean public transportation, and I understand that D.C. has good reason behind its rules. But the New York City Subway doesn't stand a chance of ever being clean or even cleaner. And I want to drink my coffee on the train.