Also reading this week

"The Yankee Years: Joe Torre" by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci. It was a birthday gift from my wife. I've only just begun it, but I'm already fascinated by the contrasts between Torre's tenatious, glove-tight four World Series teams early in his stint in New York and the confederacy of contract players in pinstripes today.

"A Field Guide to Monsters," by Dave Elliott. A terrific throwback to my youth, where nothing was better than watching "Monster Movie Matinee" on WSYR on a Saturday afternoon.

"Recipe for Disaster: The Formula that Killed Wall Street," by Felix Salmon in Wired.

“Howard’s End” is an old friend

Some books are like good friends from high school. You look them up every now and again because you know them so well and they never fail to make you happy. “Howard’s End” is one of those books for me.

It is a particularly important book for me because of the way I first encountered it. Not as the book, and not as the movie, but as a two-person show presented (it seemed at the time) in the middle of the night in a seminary in southern Indiana.

Let me explain.

Waaaaay back in 1989, I spent almost a week visiting St. Meinrad College in tiny St. Meinrad, Indiana. I was considering going to the school, where I would consider going to the seminary there. As a married man with six kids, I guess it’s pretty clear it wasn’t my destiny to be a priest, but at the time, I wasn’t so sure.

The day I arrived, I met some students, toured the beautiful campus and archabby and went to Mass a good half-dozen times. And that night, I joined the students and a good number of the Benedictine monks who lived there in watching a husband-and-wife duo perform “Howard’s End.”

Now, there are probably a dozen characters in the book, and keeping track of who the actors were supposed to be at any moment was hard at first. Still, I was very impressed with their performance, and enjoyed the night immensely.

It seemed very late at night, and it was scorching hot. I sweltered in my best suit. I was far away from home for the first time, in a strange land of priests and monks, and the whole thing took on a very surreal feel.

After, I was introduced to the performers at a quaint little reception. I remember how pleased they seemed at being treated so well by their small, strange audience. It occurred to me there may not be many venues for their kind of work.

Anyway, I read the book shortly after returning home (convinced I was no priest-to-be), and loved it.

I would love to know the name of the duo that performed that night. I wonder if they’re still on the road someplace. Anybody know?

Next Up: "Howard's End"

My next read on the Modern Library's top 100 novels list is No. 38, E.M. Forster's "Howard's End." It's probably my favorite Forster, and one of three of his novels on the list. "A Room With a View" is No. 79 and "A Passage to India" is No. 25.

Waiting for me at the Steele Memorial Libary is No. 99 on the Modern Library's non-fiction ranking, "Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott.

"Ambersons:" Something less than magnificent

Tarkington, Image via Wikipedia

I enjoyed Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons," No. 100 on the Modern Library List of the top 100 fiction books of the 20th century. Here's my evaluation:

Title: "The Magnificent Ambersons."
Author: Booth Tarkington, 1869-1946.
Published: 1918.
One-Sentence Plot summary: Aristocratic, arrogant George Minifer, last scion of an old-money family at the heart of a growing Midwest city, endures the decay of the society he was expecting to inherit.
Opening line: "Major Amberson had 'made a fortune' in 1873, when other people were losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then."
The message: There's hope for everyone, even an insufferable snob.
My rating: 3 out of 5, entertaining, but not particularly moving.
My ranking: 50 out of 100 (rankings will change as I complete more books on the Modern Library list).

No reading this morning

There’s a “Brady Bunch” marathon on TVLand.

I am such a loser.

Other good reads

Other things I’m reading this week:

“Attaching in Adoption” by Deborah D. Gray and “Parenting the Hurt Child” by Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecksy, for a paper in my psychology class at Corning Community College.

The article on blue whales in the March issue of National Geographic.

Former USA Today reporter and editor Jim Hopkins’ most excellent Gannett Blog, at http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/, charting the fall of a once-great company.

Hits and Misses at www.stargazette.com.

How to rate the books?

As I’m finishing up “The Magnificent Ambersons,” I’m beginning to wonder how I should rate each book.

My initial thought is I should consider them in two ways. First, I want to measure my own enjoyment of the book, and secondly, I want to rank it against all the other books on the Modern Library lists. That is to say, does “The Magnificent Ambersons” belong on a list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century, and if so, where?

So there will be a two-pronged system. I’ll rate the books on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being an unqualified masterpiece and 1 being a book I’d not recommend to anyone. Then, I’ll place the book on my own top 100 list. As I read and add books to the list, each title will move up or down, depending on my reactions to the others.

I will post a static page with the rankings and the ratings, to keep it easy to find.