The end of reading
. . . this year
.
I read a bunch of comics yesterday, largely because I'm sleeping on the couch as Lady Steed covids. I left all my books in our room and didn't want to disturb her. Otherwise, this list would probably end with the new Beowulf people are crazy in love with. We'll talk about that next year, I guess?
And brace yourself! I'll likely send the year-end movies list before bed (couch) tonight. See you then?
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124) Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler, finished December 7
I loved this book so much.
It's been the car book for a while, but even longer it has been in the car. And I kept almost getting rid of it, but then the back copy or the cover art or the first couple paragraphs would change my mind and it would stay.
Finally, I finished some other car book and started Breathing Lessons and I am so glad I did. It's a beautiful, wonderful book. Officially it takes place over a single day, but the flashbacks take us through entire lives.
Maggie and Ira are going the funeral of Maggie's lifelong best friend's husband. As they travel to and fro, they meet people from their distant past, folks they've never met before and will never meet again, and people they dearly miss—people whose absence still tears at them.
By the end, you know Maggie and Ira so well they seem like friends you've had for decades. Or maybe even like you are they. And you hope for the happy ending the book is setting you up for—even though you know that happy ending is unlikely to last. You have so much hope for them. As much as you have for yourself and your own family.
But how often is hope, how often are good intentions, how often is love—enough?
Anyway, I own over a hundred copies of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and I am filled with so much regret that I've never read it. Anne Tyler is amazing.
UPDATE: I was thinking about this novel again twenty days later and I realized that for all their seeming "dysfunction," Maggie can read Ira's whistles in a way that strikes me as the sort of evidence of simpatico I fantasized about premarriage. So for all their silliness and misunderstandings, #relationshipgoals.
months, probably over a year, possibly more than two
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125) Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction by David. F. Holland, finished December 29, 2024
I hope future me, returning to this volume, doesn't think it's lesser because I made fewer pencil marks. I also hope future me isn't too upset at me for . . . subpar writeups, viz.: 1 Nephi, 2 Nephi, Jacob, EJO, Mosiah, Alma 1, Alma 2, Helaman, 3/4 Nephi, Mormon, Ether.
Anyway, I met my goal of reading all twelve volumes this year at roughly the pace of Come, Follow Me. Overall, these "briefs" added up to over a thousand pages of theology. And let me tell you: I feel edified.
(Incidentally, if you can make it to Provo in time, the Kershisnik show is awesome.)
One thing I appreciated about this volume is how Holland brings the Calvinist notion of determinism (which is also a modern notion) and makes it matter to a Latter-day Saint audience. That's the kind of broadening perspective I expect from book-publishing LDS theologians.
He also had great things to say about the shape of Moroni's book et cetera, but what I liked most was its unrelenting serious of proofs that Jesus is what matters. That's valuable stuff there. Thanks to Brother Holland for opening up Mormon and Moroni's manner of preaching.
Anyway, these were excellent. If the Maxwell Institute is on schedule, there should be a new D&C-centered series this year (I'd check to see if there's an announcement but, as I type this, their site is down; may you have better luck). Rosalynde Frandsen Welch (author of the Ether book) told me they're going by topics this year which makes sense in a way the Book of Mormon breakdown would not for the sort of book the Doctrine & Covenants is.
about a month
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126) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen—Century: 1910 by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill, finished December 30
Ends up it's the one I didn't like.
The funny thing is, although all the criticisms I make there are still fair, I liked it much better this time. Perhaps because I'm so far separated from the original amazing experience of discovering book one.
Maybe I should finish the Centuries series. Maybe not. I dunno. Give me the next one for free and you're on.
one too-long sitting
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127–129) Madwoman of the Sacred Heart Vols 1–3: Madwoman of the Sacred Heart, The Trap of the Irrational, The Sorbonne's Madman by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius, finished December 30
So if I understood these stories correctly, you take the most intellectual man available and he will fail to appreciate living through a sexual fantasy, fail to recognize encounters with the divine, and must shed the mind entirely to find happiness.
Only the coda goes against all that, so who knows.
a few midday hours
final bookposts of
2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024
over on thutopia