The Five Book Challenge 2010

Recently I’ve been pondering reading ruts, both getting stuck in them and bouncing out of them. Maybe it was that post at Black Gate on Generalists and Specialists that got me thinking along those lines, but it seems to me even the most eclectic tastes can operate within certain limiting parameters. Of course, that is one thing friends are good for — that and helping you move  — and so I thought perhaps I could enlist the aid of a book-loving friend of mine to shake things up in 2010.

Enter the Five Book Challenge. The premise is that I pick five books for my friend to read next year, and he does the same for me. We do so in the spirit of expanding one anothers reading horizons. It isn’t a race or anything like that, more of a gentleman’s agreement to let our reading be steered a bit outside the typical and expected.

Of course, Nathan Jerpe and I each know what the other likes, and we swore on a copy of Gormenghast not to pick books in a deliberate attempt to sabotage, irritate, or stupefy one anther. Yes, I was tempted to pick a book on the removal and disposal of lead paint written in Romanian just to throw a monkey wrench into Nathan’s intellectual life, but I’m far too nice for that.

Besides, he could always retaliate with something worse.

So, prior to January 1, 2011 I’ll be reading:

• The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
• The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
• The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman
• Life, A User’s Manual by Georges Perec
• Little, Big by John Crowley

All of which are at least somewhat outside what I would probably have chosen for myself to read this year, although Little, Big and The Cyberiad have been on my ‘long list’ for years. Of the five, there are two books I would not have even heard of if they hadn’t been recommended (The Third Policeman and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers) and one that I doubt I would have made much of a priority to read in the next decade or so (Life, A User’s Manual). Nathan wisely picked a few books that skewered my tendency to avoid big, complex novels . . . and books with equations!

Nathan’s ‘to read’ list:

• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
• The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
• Endangered Species by Gene Wolfe
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
• The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam by Edward Fitzgerald (trans.)

So, you might all think me a bastard for saddling poor Nathan with a 500,000 plus word book in the form of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. To that I respond, firstly, what ever gave you the idea I wasn’t a bastard? Secondly, the book seems a much faster read than its 1,200 pages, and is a truly engrossing and gripping look at the overall history of Nazism — a rather crucial chunk of 20th century history. And, thirdly, Nathan and I each get a single veto we can spring at anytime and for any reason — so if Rise and Fall doesn’t work for him he can renege and I’ll assign him something more digestible, like the unabridged Gibbon.

I chose these books using the same principals he used for me — books I think he will like and should read, but might not have gotten to anytime soon. Nathan likes Wolfe’s New Sun books but has yet to read any of his short fiction, so I’ve assigned him Endangered Species so he can find out what a master of the short story Wolfe is.  Vance should be read by everyone that likes science fiction and fantasy for his unique style and sharp imagination, and the tale-like stories of The Dying Earth should go over well with Nathan as I know he enjoys his Bullfinch’s Mythology.

And I don’t believe he’s read much in the hardboiled mystery category, so I started him off with one of my favorites: Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. Possibly the best book from the best practitioner of the form. I rounded the list off with the Fitzgerald ‘translation’ of The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam, with express instructions to find an edition that includes multiple versions of the poem. It’s short, which makes up in part for Rise and Fall, and it’s also amazing stuff. I’m not a big reader of verse, but The Rubaiyat is something I can read again and again.

So, that’s it. Five books, one year, one veto. I’ll of course be talking about the challenge right here, both in my Reading Roundups and other posts, and maybe I’ll hear from some other people that want to try it out, too.