Reading List 2008

According to a recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts, Americans have pretty much stopped reading books. Well, there are still a few of us book lovers left, and, thankfully, there are plenty of terrific books to read.  The Boston Globe has published its annual reading list, so it is also time for me to put together my list for the year.  Looking back at last year's list I note that I did not get to Herman Broch's masterpiece, Tod des Vergil, so that goes back on the list for this year. I did have a productive reading year, however, even without Broch: I read Wolfgang Koeppen's post-war trilogy, which was the best fiction have read in years. Last January I had the chance to meet the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford, who live just up the Maine Coast from me, and that led me to his most recent novel, The Lay of the Land - a rich work of fiction (even though his novel The Sportswriter is still my personal favorite).  In terms of non-fiction, Amos Elon's history of the Jews in Germany, The Pity of It All, was a high point for me.

So here is my list for 2008:

1) Walter Kempowski: Deutsche Chronik. I recently finished Tadellöser & Wolff which means I have only seven more novels to go. At Hella's suggestion, I have also started Letzte Grüße an autobiographical novel about the writer's (mis)adventures in America.

2) Orlando Figes: The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. As an admirer of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and a fan of Anne Applebaum's history Gulag, I am interested in how the terror of the period became internalized by ordinary citizens. Evidently Stalin remains - after Putin - the most popular figure in Russia today.

3) Donna Cassidy: Marsden Hartley: Race, Religion, and Nation. Marsden Hartley was a modernist painter and writer, who worked and lived in Maine for much of his life.  He also had a complex relationship to Germany, absorbing both the avant garde of Expressionism as well as later völkisch impulses.

4) Roberto Bolaño: The Savage Detectives The last major work of this brilliant but enigmatic Chilean writer.

As always, any recommendations welcome in the comments.

Comments

[Hattie]

Isn't *The Pity of It All* an incredible read!
I invested in a Sony Reader and am downloading and reading wonderful things, such as the great travel book, *Quer Durch Borneo,* by Dr. A.W. Nieuwenhuis, published in the late 19th Century.

[David]

Hattie,

Many thanks for your recommendation. Yes, "Pity of It All" should be required reading; it is heartbreaking...

A companion novel to Elon's book is Sybille Bedford's "The Legacy", about wealthy Jewish family in late 19th century Berlin. Bedord was British-German and died in 2006,

Since you are a Kempowski expert, I would love to compare notes on "Letzte Gruesse"....

[Hattie]

I found this rather complete summary of Letzte Gruesse,
http://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Kempowski_letzte_gruesse.htm
It sounds too funny for words. The poor hero suffers from guilt and dyspepsia to a tragic degree. And he's a regular Borat about America, which is hilarious!
I will definitely read it, though probably not right away, since I have several novels and travel journals to get through first.