The Great Big Reads Revisited

Last time I mentioned some of the surprising books missing from “The Great American Read”, the current PBS campaign looking for the best loved novel in America, and the BBC’s 2003 “The Big Read”. In passing I noted that the lists shared 42 books. I find the commonalities interesting. These novels deal with universal ideas and issues we all are struggling to make sense of in classic and powerful prose.

The shared novels -

• 1984 George Orwell
• A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving
• The Alchemist Paulo Coelho
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
• Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery
• Catch-22 Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
• Charlotte’s Web E.B. White
• The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis
• The Clan of the Cave Bear Jean M. Auel
• The Color Purple Alice Walker
• The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
• Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Dune Frank Herbert
• Flowers in the Attic V.C. Andrews
• Frankenstein Mary Shelley
• The Godfather Mario Puzo
• Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
• The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
• Great Expectations Charles Dickens
• The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
• Harry Potter J.K. Rowling
• Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
• Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
• The Little Prince Antione de Saint-Exupery
• Little Women Louisa May Alcott
• The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
• Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
• Moby Dick Herman Melville
• One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Outlander Diana Gabaldon
• The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde
• The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
• Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
• Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
• The Stand Stephen King
• Tales of the City Armistead Maupin
• To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
• War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
• Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

I was struck by how many of the subset I’ve read, how many friend’s favorite books are featured on the list, and how the ideas have been integrated into popular culture. I often wonder - How many people have read the novel which gave us the phrase “It’s a Catch-22.”? Or recognize the dystopian futures developing around them? Or realize some of the most popular TV series actually draw their source material from novels? Regardless, the storylines and protagonists are powerful ones we connect with and live through on both sides of the Atlantic.

Update: Hovering at 60% complete in Quiet. Rough week with what appears to be the annual cold respite requirement. Until then…

How many of these books have you read? Did you read them for school? Or did they find you? If you have children, have they read some of the books on this list? And, are they the same as the books you read as a child/young adult?

The Great Big Reads

Photo by Eugenio Mazzone (Unsplash)

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel… is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

– Ursula K. Le Guin

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami

I’ll admit it… I’m a book browser. I hate prescribed lists of what you SHOULD read or what book clubs ARE reading. I seek out stories that speak to me and what I’m processing at the time. Often the most off-beat covers contain the most unique prose.

Why is there a dodo on a plain red back drop? (The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde)
Will the dove return? (If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, Jon McGregor)
What happened after the astronauts walked on the moon? (Moondust, Andrew Smith)
Why is a guy climbing down stacked trailers? (Ready Player One, Ernest Cline)

As bricks and mortar bookstores disappear, browsing has become a wee bit more challenging...

This week I came across an episode of “The Great American Read” on PBS. Similar to the BBC 2003 “The Big Read”, both projects aim to discover the best loved novels as voted by the public. The premise, although completely unscientific, is an interesting experiment highlighting the stories which shape our collective psyche. Accepting that 15 years have passed - How similar are the lists? What’s missing that I might recommend?

Note: “The Big Read” listed books in a series separately. “The Great American Read” collected series into one listing. I have compared the long list from “The Big Read” to the 100 books on “The Great American Read”. I have not controlled for books published after 2003.

A cursory glance shows how unique the lists are. The British list is heavy on what most would consider classics whereas the American lists contains more social commentary and modern issues relating to race. Without controlling for books published after 2003, 42 books overlapped both lists. 42! That’s amazing. Moreover, some of the books missing between the lists caught my eye.

Having lived in both countries, I tend to favor British novels due to the often dramatic prose and dynamic use of language. Missing from the American list – authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), Roald Dahl, Terry Pratchett (Discworld Series), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials Series), and Bram Stoker (Dracula) among others. I chucked when I realized several of the individual titles trended heavily towards science fiction/fantasy including A Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks), The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco), and The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells). I was stunned not to see On the Road (Jack Kerouac). All amazing stories that will challenge you to think if you haven’t read them before.

Four novels surprisingly missing from the British list – Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand), Foundation (Isaac Asimov), And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie), and Siddhartha (Herman Hess). Again, beautiful storytelling all around.

Projects like these mark a particular moment in history, reflecting what a society values or is struggling to understand. They are fluid as are the choices we make about what we read and why we read. In researching these projects, I may have added a few more titles to my current wish list as they spoke to me.

Update: Hovering at 40% complete in Quiet. Until then…

How many of these books have you read? Which is your favorite? Will you vote for your favorite in “The Great American Read”? Voting continues until 18 October.

Ready Player One

By Ernest Cline (Crown Publishing, 2011)

It’s increasingly challenging to find a good bookstore these days. As a browser, I’m just not a fan of chains after years of dusty, dimly lit rare stacks or small independents. Ernest Cline’s science fiction debut came to me back in April while browsing what books ‘not’ to read (i.e. those on book club lists with excessive amounts of praise on the cover) at a local chain. Intrigued by the strange book with an orange toned cover of stacked trailers, I thumbed the first five pages as usual before buying this summer popcorn read.

Written in 2009-2010, Ready Player One is set in a dystopian world thirty years in the future not unlike our present society. Ravaged by energy and climate issues Earth’s inhabitants escape the crushing disappointment of life via the OASIS. In the OASIS, part virtual reality utopia part video game junkie paradise, access to information and community is universal and the world is your oyster. The story follows Wade Watts and his group of friends on their quest to find Halliday’s [creator of the OASIS] Easter egg hidden within the simulation and win the grand prize… Halliday’s fortune and ownership of the OASIS. Wade and the gunters are up against IOI and the Sixers, a massive corporation that will use any means possible to win the prize then monetize and restrict the OASIS. IOI’s goal seemed reminiscent of current transformations within entertainment content and distribution companies. A runaway New York Times bestseller, described by USA Today as “Willy Wonka meets the Matrix”, reviewers either loved it or hated it. I bought the compelling storyteller’s tale… to a point.

Cline hooks the audience with his distinctly American premise – find the ‘Easter egg’ or ‘golden ticket’ (Roald Dahl) and win the pot of gold. Littered with popular culture references from the 1980s, I quickly found myself remembering TV series and video games I hadn’t thought of in a decade. I was sucked in by the nostalgia of when the world seemed innocent and optimistic. Wade comes across as a straight shooter when he describes the human condition. “I started to figure out the ugly truth as soon as I began to explore the free OASIS libraries. The facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren’t afraid to be honest. Artists and scientists and philosophers and poets, many of them long dead. As I read the words they’d left behind, I finally began to get a grip on the situation… Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born.” (p16-17). This protagonist gets it. Watching the world change around me, and not always for the better, this resonated with me.

To access in the OASIS, Cline borrowed ideas from the Matrix and evolving virtual reality technology. Players don a minimum of visors and haptic gloves before logging in and seeing the magic words, “Ready Player One”. As the story progresses, Wade is almost consumed by the OASIS as his obsession with finding Halliday’s Easter egg takes over his entire existence. He becomes an anti-social recluse who literally suits up from head to toe, plugging into the machine, to better enhance his immersion in the quest (p190-199). This evolution disturbed me tremendously as I watch humans connect more and more with their devices and less and less with each other.

Although initially a nostalgic jaunt through popular culture via a popcorn quest, this novel quickly deteriorated to a farcical chore. Cline’s debut unsuccessfully mashes romance, adventure, and over the top whimsy all under the guise of science fiction. The wheels come off the quest at the start of the third section when Wade is forced to infiltrate IOI to save the day. Initially using his intelligence and intuition to solve the puzzles set by Halliday, Wade succumbs to the same weaknesses as his Sixer opponents thereby losing his luster. From there I honestly couldn’t read fast enough to get through the ridiculous final battle scene involving iconic Japanese monsters.

Cline over uses just in time information by introducing characters or play-through scenarios literally as they were needed. A well-constructed plot should have these connections mapped and introduced evenly throughout the story. Without spoiling the “chance” event that leads Wade to winning, I found it impossible to believe that other gunters had not stumbled upon the side quest and winning artifact. Finally, the vulgar language throughout really soured the reading experience for me… Swearing is base and a cop out, period.

During an interview with Adrian Liang for Amazon, Cline was asked about his thoughts on the immersiveness and escapism of the OASIS and whether it has parallels to social media. Cline observed, “Right now, in 2018, billions of us carry small hand-held computers that keep us connected to the Internet every second of every day. We already have virtual conversations and relationships with people we've never met. And we communicate through our social media profiles, which are just like Oasis avatars—idealized versions of ourselves that are often more representative of who we would like to be, rather than who we truly are. So yes, I always had those parallels in mind when I created the Oasis, and they only seemed to have deepened in the years since the book was first published.”

If you can take one thing away from this novel, I challenge you to consider the ramifications of digital escapism. How ‘plugged in’ are you? But more importantly, why?

Next on the reading pile is Susan Cain’s game changing exploration of introversion

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.

Slow down, you read too fast.

When a pair of bibliophile holidays caught my attention this week - National Read a Book Day on September 6^th and UNESCO’s International Literacy Day on September 8^th ; I wondered, in an age of decreasing attention spans, does how fast you read matter?

©xkcd

Over the past few weeks I’ve touched on a several alarming trends. Distilled - Fewer American’s are reading than ever, often for less than 20 minutes a day, that may be fueling a decrease in empathy (due to the lack of engagement in storytelling).

Is our super-charged world moving too fast for reading? Are most people slow readers and not achieving the instant gratification they expect? In Kevin McSpadden’s piece “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish”^[1] he dug into research conducted by Microsoft for answers. Canadian researchers “found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds [shorter than a goldfish]” according to the 2015 Microsoft report.^[1] Neuroscientists suspect this may be our brain evolving in response to the rise of rapid bursts of information and our fragmenting mobile society. ‘Ooooo shiny’. Cue ‘squirrel’ from Disney’s UP.

©Giffon Webstudios

Technology is reprogramming how we collect and collate information while introducing myriad distractions. How do diminishing attention spans gristle against the biology of reading? In Mark Seidenberg’s piece “Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More”^[2] he uses excerpts from his book to explore the biological limitations of reading. Back of the napkin, Seidenberg estimates your eyes can only process 280 words per minute. “The exact number of words per minute is far less important than the fact that the value cannot be greatly increased without seriously compromising comprehension.”^[2] On average, adults read 200 to 300 words per minute with a 60% comprehension rate depending on the material.^[3&4] Given the physical processing limits of our eyes and brain, Seidenberg went further and dispelled most of the popular speed reading modalities.

I have always been a ‘slow’ reader. I read all the words. I create the environments. I like my immersive escapism. I get a bit grumpy when someone bothers me while I’ve got a book open. I am totally at odds with a society demanding I answer every e-mail, direct message and Tweet the second it arrives. I can’t change the physical processing limits of my biological supercomputer, yet. Attention spans will continue to dwindle in response to increasingly fragmented information. How does the slow reader thrive? 

Brett Nelson observed, “The most successful people I know don’t just read – they inhale information… manag[ing] to fit in what amounts to an extra work days’ worth of reading every week.”^[4] Like any skill, reading takes practice and delayed gratification. Seidenberg further drives the point home. “The serious way to improve reading – how well we comprehend a text and, yes, speed and efficiency – is this: Read… As much as possible… Mostly new stuff.”^[2] But maybe turn off the predictive timer on your eReader… Those things are creepy and only reinforce how much longer you’ll be engaged in your current read.

Update: Hovering at 60% complete, I’d expect to collect my thoughts on Cline’s Ready Player One next week. Until then…

How long is your attention span? How fast do you read? Does it matter? And thank you for 2 minutes and 15 seconds of your time.

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1: McSpadden, Kevin. “You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish” Time, Time Inc., 14 May 2015, http://time.com/3858309/attention-spans-goldfish/

2: Seidenberg, Mark. “Sorry, But Speed Reading Won’t Help You Read More” Wired, Condé Nast, 24 January 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/01/make-resolution-read-speed-reading-wont-help/

3: Nowak, Paul. “What Is the Average Reading Speed?” Iris: Reading at the Speed of Thought, Iris Reading LLC, 29 May 2018, https://www.irisreading.com/what-is-the-average-reading-speed/

4: Nelson, Brett. “Do You Read Fast Enough to be Successful?” Forbes, Forbes Media LLC, 4 June 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettnelson/2012/06/04/do-you-read-fast-enough-to-be-successful/#9ac8760462e7

Twain and a Liberal Arts Education

Life as an independent contractor is unique; ebbing and flowing to its own rhythms rather than the agrarian calendar. I had an unexpected deadline-driven opportunity this week that reminded me of the season’s changes. The first red leaves and autumnal light are hard to ignore. Cooler weather is coming and I am less than impressed.

Local Mark Twain Statue. Olympia, WA. ©MTHough

While researching for work, I paused Tuesday evening to process the information I was collating and analyzing. Dry, bloodshot eyes shied away from further reading despite my love of it. A quick flip through PBS on demand landed me at Ken Burn’s 2001 documentary Mark Twain. At the intermission, I found myself wondering about 'the classics' and my liberal arts education.

As a child, I vividly remember wall mounted shelves containing hard bound volumes of 'the classics'. My parents insisted on collecting them. As times change, books tend to be redacted or abridged to reflect the evolving social attitudes. They wanted my brothers and me to have access to the originals 'as they were meant to be read’. After musing for several days, I can’t honestly remember the names of any of the volumes and find it harder still to recall reading them.

Everyone remembers reading Shakespeare and a few others in high school, an empire of Cliff’s and Sparks Notes depend on it. What other classics did we read? As an undergraduate, I pursued a ‘well-rounded liberal arts education’ because connections often lie in desperate ideas. I recall reading Fitzgerald, Steinbeck and Kerouac. It was only when I returned to the authors as an adult that I understood or enjoyed them. Mark Twain, I am sad to report, has not been thumbed other than his fantastic wit and pointed quotes.

Born Samuel Longhorn Clements, Mark Twain arrived (1835) and departed (1910) with Halley’s Comet and was himself almost a tall tale spun for his readers. Keenly observed and sharp witted, his stories and novels transformed the literature landscape through the use of American vernacular and humor. I often snicker at Twain quotes! He was pitch perfect in his observations. Although owning The Innocence Abroad, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; my connection with Twain really is his quotes, an off-beat Claymation film from 1985 – The Adventures of Mark Twain, and a local statue celebrating his lecture tour stop here in 1895. This week, that changed. I dusted off the story collection which launched Twain onto the national scene - The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches (1867). Although tough to find the vernacular groove, it is 2018 rather than 1865 after all, I immensely enjoyed these tall tales after Ken Burns’ documentary provided the context for their creation.

Even if you only have a few minutes, I suspect you’ll chuckle. Full text available.

As I return to Cline’s Ready Player One…

What makes a book a classic? What classics have you loved? What classics do you wish you’d read?