A Year in Books

I decided to put together a list of all the books I’ve read in the past year. You can tell a lot about people by what they choose to read. Going back over this list I can almost recreate how I’ve felt at different times over the past 12 months… my mood, the weather. Here we go, chronologically since the middle of August 2000. I don’t think I’ve left anything off.

Books I’ve read in the past 365 days:

Roger Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician

Jesse Green, The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood

Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

John C. Waugh, Reelecting Lincoln: The Battle for the 1864 Presidency

Richard Posner, An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton

Michael Frayn, Headlong

Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash

Craig Lucas, What I Meant Was: New Plays and Selected One-Acts

Stephen McCauley, The Object of My Affection

Philip Roth, American Pastoral

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King

Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (almost done!)

Books I didn’t finish:

Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

Kenneth George, Mr. Right is Out There: The Gay Man’s Guide to Finding and Maintaining Love

David Potter, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861

Douglas E. Hofstadter, Gödel Escher Bach

Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony

James E. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
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My Acre

Blogging has grown tiresome lately. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

Not writing about my personal life lately has been refreshing and empowering. For a while, I’d been enslaved to the blog. And then last week it became less fun. I felt like I belonged to other people. Not to myself. I felt like a conduit and not a container.

Anne Lamott, in her terrific Bird by Bird (yup, Shadowy, I’ve read it and it’s great), writes that each of us has our own acre. You can do whatever you want with your acre. You can put whatever you want there, you can landscape it, and so on. And if someone comes onto your acre, you have the right to tell them to get off.

Lately I feel like I’ve been letting too many people onto my acre. I’ve thrown a party and people have left a mess of the place. There are crushed plastic cups all over the ground and the keg is empty. And then everyone goes home and I’m left having to clean it all up. But the next day I let everyone onto my acre again. There’s another party. They go home and there are more plastic cups for me to clean up, as well as sticky dried beer on the patio. Do I tell people they can’t come back? No. I let them come again the next day. And the next. One day someone brings her own keg. One day someone brings a kangaroo in a letterman sweater. Hannibal the Elephant comes and tramples the grass. And still the plastic cups everywhere.

One day I decide, screw it. I’m locking the gate and shutting the curtains and taking a nap. But people still come by. They wait at the gate for me to let them in. They start pounding. “Hey! Time for the party! Where the heck are you today?” They’ve forgotten that it’s my acre. My house. And I’ve forgotten, too. But then I remember. Because I don’t feel like throwing a party every day. I need my own time. Go throw your own party on your own acre.

Nevertheless. A few words to describe last weekend.

The cute fratboy showtunes guy. Marie’s Crisis, singing showtunes and drinking beer. Thai food for lunch with my friend Nick. Moviegoing (“Sexy Beast”) with my friend CanadaGirl. We ran into Sparky outside the Phoenix. The three of us hung out there. Then to Starlight, where we saw the guy who had been naked in The Play About the Baby. Up close. With clothes on. From there, CanadaGirl went home and Sparky and I went to the Cock. Finally, finally, finally met Jonno. He was a little different from what I’d expected but just as nice and friendly as I’d thought he’d be. Also the Minx showed up. Got to meet him finally as well. Also seems like a nice guy. Sunday was bookstore-hopping. I’ve already written about that.

Okay.

Please take your plastic cups with you on your way out.

Person Writes Blog Entry

The New Republic is running a Boring Headline Competition.
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