January-May 2006 Reading List

January 2006

Kimball, by Edward Kimball
Read first half and set aside. The author, former LDS church president Spencer W. Kimball’s son, includes many anecdotes that paint the prophet in a very human light. For example, he mentions that on the rare occasion that President Kimball wasn’t traveling on a Sunday, he would sometimes stay home to rest rather than attend his meetings in his home congregation.

February 2006

Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Joseph Smith by Richard L. Bushman (Knopf, 2005).
I agree with the critics who surmise that this will become the definitive biography of the prophet. The book contains a lot of information that is not yet in the general body of knowledge that most Latter-day Saints know about Joseph Smith.

March 2006

Atonement by Ian McEwan
An excellent novel narrated most creatively. The plot proceeds as the omniscient narrator tells and retells various scenes through the minds of the principal characters. The story, set in England, spans from pre-WWII era to the late 20th century. The best novel I have read since The Kite Runner.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland.
Recommended by Dawn P to Tricia, we contemplated selecting this book for our couples reading group. The story is about a previously unknown Vermeer painting that is revealed by its owner to a colleague. Each chapter follows the “life” of the painting backward in time to the time of its creation by Vermeer. The book was somewhat of a disappointment after McEwan, but still a good, quick read. I found some of the writing a bit prosaic, and some of the mildly titillating love scenes gratuitous.

Crossing to Sunlight by Paul Zimmer
This is a self-selected collection of poems by Paul Zimmer. Zimmer gave a very enjoyable poetry reading on campus this month.

“The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka
I finally read this rather long short story by Kafka. I’m certain that I don’t understand all of the implications but it was a rather entertaining read, if not somewhat disturbing.

The Atlantic
I should note that my monthly reading also includes this interesting magazine. I enjoy this subscription.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
I’ve wanted to read this book for years and finally created the time this past weekend. I borrowed the book from my friend Josh A last Friday night and finished it Saturday afternoon. It’s the first book of McCarthy’s well-known “Border Trilogy.” Set in 1949, it is the story of two young ranchers from Texas who set out on horseback into the Mexican countryside in search of a simpler, vanishing western life on a cattle ranch. McCarthy’s prose is quite interesting. He uses very little punctuation—no quotation marks or “he saids.” He also favors very long sentences, especially when delivering rich descriptions of landscape and other aspects of setting. I’ve already begun reading the second book of the trilogy The Crossing.

April 2006

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage, 1995)
Every bit as engrossing as the first volume, this second installment of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy narrates the life of another young western cattleman protagonist, Billy Parham. The first half of the book deals with Billy’s quest to repatriate to Mexico a wolf that he trapped after it had been feeding on his family’s cattle herd. The second half deals more with Billy’s quest to find his place in the world as well as his relationship with his brother after his parents’ murder. Not unlike John Grady, the protagonist of All the Pretty Horses, Billy Parham is a strong, altruistic character with a strong moral compass. Book three of the trilogy, which I have just started reading, brings John Grady and Billy Parham together as workers on another western ranch.

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
I found this final volume of the Border Trilogy perhaps the best of the three. Since completing this book I’ve picked up a translation of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore. I’m not sure that I will continue with it but so far it is o.k.

May 2006

I have temporarily tabled Kafka on the Shore. I read part of Ma Jian’s The Noodlemaker on the plane to Beijing earlier this month but it seems to have been tabled as well. I am in between books at the moment.