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Recommended Reading: "BookSmart"
December 11, 2007
Last week I mentioned that we're all reading and hearing about a lot of Best of 2007 lists... and there are more to come (TIME magazine even has one for T-Shirt Slogans).
I am not one for following the crowd, even if only because I'm usually the one who didn't notice where everyone else was going (because I was... what else? Reading!), so this week I'm going to feature a couple of books that tell you about the Best of Years Past.
The first one is BookSmart: Your Essential Reading List for Becoming a Literary Genius in 365 Days by Jane Mallison, who was the English department head at New York's Trinity School for over 20 years:
Like Michael Dirda, Jane Mallison is a smart, passionate, and writerly reader, able to communicate her enthusiasm for great books easily. While picks are often standard, why shouldn't they be? After all, there's a reason great singers return to the standards -- those songs have a lot to teach us. So do these books (and, after all, Mallison is a teacher). But Mallison has just enough quirky picks to pique interest: in her biography section she chooses Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. Alongside the usual Great Expectations and The Magic Mountain in "Young Men on A Quest" she includes Cold Mountain. "Crimes of Various Sorts" encompasses both Paradise Lost and Atonement, and "Smiles at the Human Condition" come from Nabokov (Pale Fire), Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest) and David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day).
Of course, there have been plenty of "reading list" books over the years -- and Nancy Pearl's Booklust is a franchise at this point. Why do we need another? Here's my Top Ten list of why BookSmart is a worthy addition to your shelves (and maybe even your holiday shopping lists):
1. I like Mallison's organizing principle: she gives twelve months of book types, and encourages you to read just one book per month (you could do this in a number of ways: alphabetically, chronologically, horizontally... ). Twelve books a year? You could do that!
2. I've often said that everyone needs an editor... and everyone needs a favorite teacher, too. If your English teachers were anything like the Gorgon I had in ninth grade, you might need to replace them with a friendlier voice like Mallison's in your head.
3. Mallison points out that there's a real joy to being well read. You might initially like the feeling of catching cultural references, but eventually you'll start to feel the truth of other people's experience being pumped into your consciousness. Look what happened to the Queen in The Uncommon Reader...
4. She included The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa.
5. If you have any smart, bookish high-school or college students on your holiday gift lists, giving them this book makes more sense than trying to tell them what to read -- and they might surprise you by talking to you about one of the selections. (Mallison's conversational tone helps, too.)
6. Did I mention that everybody needs an editor? And a favorite teacher? Well, we also all need a coach. By providing a framework for reading, Mallison makes it easier and more fun to reach a goal.
7. Thank goodness, she reminds us all that the name of the title character in Willa Cather's great novel is pronounced AN-ton-ee-uh.
8. Mallison includes extremely savvy "Recommended Reading" boxes throughout the book, and I knew I could trust her when she said that after Flaubert's Parrot the next Barnes to read is England, England.
9. If you have any frustrated readers on your list -- busy working parents, retired relatives who always meant to major in English, a friend who needs a hobby -- this is the least pushy yet most focused book to give them.
10. Even if you don't read a single book that Mallison suggests, by reading her informed and good-humored precis of these books, you'll gain a good deal. You may not become a literary genius that way, but you'll be good at literary Jeopardy...
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on December 11, 2007 | Comments (4)
