The Laughing Maus

Short stories are bathtub work, and so this is a working post. I’ll add to it as I work my way through the book.

The Destructors

Dissect the word “destruct”, add one lonesome craftsman, a gang of twelve boys and the sentence:

“There’s only things Blackie,” and he looked around the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things.

and enter the author’s horrible, comic vision of unsocialized instinct running loose in the neighborhood.

Special Duties

William Ferraro foreshadows the latest financial crisis with his implicit assumption that a faulty execution does not necessarily mean The Plan is bad.

The Blue Film

A clever portrait of how the addition of one Spot of information changes an entire relationship.

The Hint of an Explanation

A complicated story which to my eyes only hinted at what the author might have been trying to say. In the end the character motivations were unclear for me.

When Greek Meets Greek

He had really only meant to make conversation, but as soon as he had spoken the old two crooked minds began to move in harmony.

Two old swindlers don’t see any harm in taking one another for a ride.

The stopped by mutual consent on the top step: they nosed towards each other like two old blind sharks who each believes that what stirs the water close to him is tasty meat.

Busily circling one another, they don’t notice the next generation of beast swimming in their waters…

I’m enchanted by Project “Filling In The Gaps” over at Moonrat’s blog and I’m totally impressed by people who can decide in advance which one hunderd books they will read over the next five years as a gap filling project. As if, at one hundred books in a measly five years, I will have any gaps! But, no risk, no fun as my best friend says so I have mustered my courage and declare myself “in” – but with heavily edited, (ahem. as in nearly totally re-written) rules. Most of the books on the list today are ones that have been sitting in my bookshelves staring at me, sometimes for years. They have been dusted, they should be read. I will mark them with a * to make sure I remember which were originally among the chosen ones and which latecomers were read first in a desperate desert before my veggies action.

The Rules

First Rule #1: Because I am so afraid of failing, that I can’t bear to start without having already started, I hereby roll the dates around a bit from 1 January, 2009 to 31 December 2014. Ok, that’s dumb. I know it is; fudging in four months like that. Courage, right? Hmmm.

Second Rule #1: Because it’s my last and only chance to improve my grammar without actually studying the rules (let’s avoid that, why don’t we?), I need to read more German. At least 10% will be books with either original language German, or German translations of some other language I can’t read (French, anyone?).

Third Rule #1: I’ll write and post a review for each book I read. Gulp.

The Rest of the Rules

Rule #2: Because I am a writing writer, and I am writing a novel, and (new) writers writing novels should be reading novels recently published by new writers, at least 15% will be post-2005 debut novels.

Rule #3: Because I am a writer, and there are other writers I cannot bear to think of breathing in and out again, five long years without reading anything they have written, I’ll take 30 previously unread novels by previously read authors.

Rule #4: Because I am a writer and I am writing a novel, and all work and no play makes for dull mauses I will read 10% short story collections, and 5% poetry collections in their entirety. That sounds serious doesn’t it? Well, lacking in a collection, I reserve the right to choose 10-15 stories by a writer and read those. This applies to V.S. Pritchett

Rule #5: Because there are a multitude of authors I have never read, 30% of my list will attempt to whittle down that list a bit.

Rule #6: Because I am unable to even consider choosing all these books now, this moment, I will leave spaces for additions.

Rule #7: Because of the empty spaces on the list, made necessary by my ongoing inability to see into the future, or to make up my mind, I am allowed to move a book from one category to another as long as the move represents the truth. For instance: Isabel Allende’s The House Of Spirits – I have not read any Isabel Allende, and therefore she is a Previously Unread Author, The House of Spirits is her debut… (She remains a PUA for me because 1984 (when The House of Spirits was published) is clearly outside the realm of “recent debut” as is stipulated in Rule #2.) But – if it were published after 2005, I would be allowed to move it if the going gets tough, and I find – years from today that I have too many PUA’s. Ok?

Ok.

And Finally, the Final Rule

Because I have made all these rules, and twisted the odds, left doors and windows standing wide open and generally done everything in my power today to ensure my own success in this venture, I must be fair and reduce the dropout rate from 25% to 5%. No more than 5 books will be left tried and unfinished by midnight 31 December, 2014.

The Books

30 Authors Previously Read

1. I Am The Messenger * – Markus Zusak => My Review
2. A Long Way Down * – Nick Hornby
3. The House of Spirits * – Isabel Allende => No review yet
4. The Ground Beneath Her Feet * – Salman Rushdie
5. Far From The Madding Crowd * – Thomas Hardy
6. Alias Grace * – Margret Atwood
7. The End of the Affair * – Graham Greene
8. The Hotel New Hampshire * – John Irving
9. The Brothers Karamazov * – Fydor Dostoyevsky
10. The Pickwick Papers * – Charles Dickens
11. A Handfull of Dust * – Evelyn Waugh
12. 1x * – Haruki Murakami
13. 1x * – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
14. 1x * – Richard Russo
15. Divisadero – Michael Ondaatje
16. 1x Iris Murdoch
17. True Notebooks – Mark Salzman
18. Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson
19. 1x Tom Robbins
20. The Children’s Book – A.S. Byatt => No review yet
21. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
22. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger => No review yet

10 Short Story Collections

1. 10 Short Stories * – V.S. Pritchett
2. The Stories of John Cheever * – John Cheever
3. Collected Short Stories * – Graham Greene
4. A Belfast Woman * – Mary Beckett
5. The Lost Stories * – Louisa May Alcott
6. Heat * – Joyce Carroll Oates
7. Interpreter of Maladies * – Jhumpa Lahiri
8. St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves * – Karen Russell
9. Difficult Loves * – Italo Calvino

15 Debut Novels

1. The Girl She Used to Be * – David Christifano
2. The Jewel of Medina * – Sherry Jones
3. The Spanish Bow * – Andromeda Romano-Lax => No review yet.
4. The Crash of Hennington – Patrick Ness
5. The Twelve – Stuart Neville
6. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen * – Paul Torday => My Review

5 Poetry Collections

1. Collected Poems * – Wendall Berry
2. The Book of Longing * – Leonard Cohen
3. Liebesgedichte * – Erich Fried

30 Novels – Never-Before-Read Authors

#1x * – Philip Roth

1. Beauty and Sadness * – Yasunari Kawabata
2. The Brief and Wonderful Life of Oscar Wao * – Junot Díaz => No review yet.
3. An American Dream * – Norman Mailer
4. On Beauty * – Zadie Smith => No review yet.
5. The Hive * – Camilo Jose Cela
6. The Republic of Wine * – Mo Yan
7. Lolita * – Vladimir Nabukov
8. The Orange Tree * – Carlos Fuentes
9. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love * – Oscar Hijuelos
10. The Velvet Bubble * – Alice Winter
11. The House of Seven Gables * – Nathaniel Hawthorne
12. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranianian* – Marina Lewycka => No review yet.
13. The Vatican Cellars * – Andre Gide
14. Water Music * – T.C. Boyle => Read: Dec. 2009 – My Review
15. Mason & Dixon * – Thomas Pynchon
16. The God of Small Things * – Arundhati Roy
17. The Labyrinth of Solitude * – Octavio Paz
18. The Bostonians * – Henry James
19. Accordion Crimes * – Annie Proulx
20. Soul Mountain * – Gao Xingjian
21. One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg * – Duncan Fallowell
22. 1x * – Michael Chabon (because he is, after all Moonrat’s secret boyfriend)
23. The Flying Troutmans – Miriam Toews (recommending review)
24. 1x Ian McEwan
25. Arsene Lupin – Maurice Leblanc => No review yet
26. The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon – Tom Spanbauer => Read: Jan, 2010 – My Review

10 Roman (auf Deutsch)

1. Mieses Karma * – David Safir (Original: Deutsch) => My Review
   English Title: as yet untranslated
2. wie der Soldat das Gramaphone repariert * – Sasa Stanisic (Original: Deutsch )
   English Title: How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
3. Die Insel der Linkshänder * – Alexandre Jardin (Original: French) => No review yet.
   English Title: as yet untranslated
   French Title: L’Ile des Gauchers
4. *Der Vorleser – Bernhard Schlink (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: The Reader
5. Maria, Ihm schmeck’s nicht – Jan Weiler (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: as yet untranslated
6. Die 13 1/2 Leben des Kapt’n Blaubär – Walter Moers (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear
7. Das Parfum – Die Geschichte eines Mörders – Patrick Süskind
   English Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
8. Katz und Maus – Günter Grass
   English Title: Cat and Mouse
9. Irisches Tagebuch – Heinrich Böll (Original: Deutsch)
   English Title: Irish Journal