Bibliofreakblog

Taking on Newsweek with My Friend Amy

About a decade ago, I took A.P. English.  For our final project (final used loosely, as we started this project half way through the year), I had to write a 12 paragraph (paragraph used loosely as the average paper was around 20 or 25 pages) argumentative essay on whether or not my chosen book held up a mirror to the time in which it was written according to vision, genre, and style.  Looking back, it’s a remarkably easy topic.  Much harder is the question of relevance today.  What is a book of our own time.  

Be it old classics or new award-winners, Newsweek has recently chosen 50 books that they feel you should read.  Each book, allegedly, has some sort of relevance for us right here, right now.  

The problem is, nobody seems to have read them.  

We book bloggers pride ourselves on being well-read.  Some of us will read 100 books this year.  And yet, we’ve all been scratching our heads, because most of us can count on one hand how many of these books we’ve read.  Sure, we read Whitman and Twain in college.  A lot of people have read Roth and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is on my TBR right now.  But in both fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, we all seem to be coming up short.

Which begs the question, just how relevant can these books be?  

Admittedly, Newsweek does preface their article.  ”The fact is, no one needs another best-of list telling you how great The Great Gatsby is,” they profess.  ”What we do need, in a world with precious little time to read (and think), is to know which books—new or old, fiction or nonfiction—open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways.”

Amy over at My Friend Amy decided that we should Take On Newsweek in order to decide for ourselves if these books really are up to snuff.  

Her idea was an instant hit.  Each book blogger (there are so many of us, aren’t there?) has chosen to read one book, and review it on his or her blog, in order to realize the potential claim.  

An hour after Amy began discussing her idea on Twitter, I nabbed up God: A Biography by Jack Miles.  About fifteen books had already been claimed, and I figured that with my penchant for reading books about religion, and minor scholarly claim, I could aptly review it at let you know what I think.

There are, however, a few books remaining.  Most of them are nonfiction, but remember, you have until the end of the year to review the book (we’re not sadists!).  And, if people are still interested, Amy has said that perhaps two people should read each book.  A second (or third if you count Newsweek) opinion isn’t bad, after all.

So far the list stands:

1) The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope – Becky’s Book Reviews
2) The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright – Reader Buzz
3) Prisoner of the State by Zhao Ziyang – Wordlily
4) The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr – Medieval Bookworm
5) The Bear by William Faulkner – This Too…
6) Winchell by Neal Gabler – The Betty and Boo Chronicles
7) Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc – Sophisticated Dorkiness
8 ) Night Draws Near by Anthony Shadid – The Things We Read
9)Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely – Library Queue
10) God: A Biography by Jack Miles – Biblio Freak Blog
11)The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry – Rebelling Against Indifference
12) A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor – My Friend Amy
13) Underground by Haruki Murakami – Things Mean a Lot
14) Disrupting Class by Clayton Christenson – Bedtime Booktalks
15) Air Guitar by Dave Hickey – Fizzy Thoughts
16) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman – Literate Housewife
17) The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin – A Striped Armchair
18) City: Rediscovering the Center by William H. White
19) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick –Whimpulsive
20) Benjamin Franklin by Edmund S. Morgan – Chele’s Treasures
21) The Mississippi Books by Mark Twain – Book Journey
22) Among the Thugs by Bill Buford – Linus’s Blanket
23) Brooklyn by Colm Tumlin – The Brain Lair
24) Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’?
25) Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman – Devourer of Books
26) Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden – Musings of a Bookish Kitty
27) Whittaker Chambers by Sam Tanenhaus
28) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie – The Book Girl
29) American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin – Just A (Reading) Fool
30) The Lost by Daniel Mendlehson – Maw Books Blog
31) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – Lit and Life
32) Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris – 3rs Blog
33) Kim by Rudyard Kipling – She is Too Fond of Books
34) Walking with the Wind by John Lewis
35) The Line of Beauty of Alan Hollinghurst – Books I Done Read
36) The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper – Vasilly/1330v
37) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi – Bermuda Onion
38) Underworld by Don DeLillo – Trish’s Reading Nook
39) Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne – Stuff As Dreams are Made On
40) American Pastoral by Philip Roth – Book Magic
41) The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan – Passion for the Page
42) The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker – Just Add Books
43) Senator Joe McCarthy by Richard H. Rovere
44) Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks – Beth Fish Reads
45) The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery –Booking Mama
46) Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child – Jenn’s Bookshelf
47) Things Fall Apart by Chinue Achebe – Worducopia
48) American Journeys by Don Watson
49) Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes – Rhapsody in Books
50) The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson – Heidenkind’s Hideaway

If nothing else, we’ll all at least get a comprehensive review of each of these books.  Seriously, the NW article only gave a 2 sentence blurb about each (they didn’t even mention Whitman’s homosexuality in “Leaves of Grass”–highly relevant to our times, I think).  

If you want to get in on this, visit Amy’s post and leave a comment mentioning which book you’d like to review.  Remember, no doubling up on books until all of them are taken!