2010: North & South

by Ross Catrow

For the second year now my bookish friend and I — although, by no means is this initiative private or exclusive — have chosen a reading theme for the year; 2010 was The Year of North & South (2009, btw, was Fantasy). The goal is to expose yourself (wait! there is more to this sentence!) to books you would have never read previously. Secondarily you have another person reading along a similar theme, testing the waters, chaffing the chaff, offering suggestions and warnings. Now, the theme is not an iron shackle to your reading list demanding exclusivity. For instance, I read all of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy this year as well. The theme is there to remind you that THE WORLD IS FULL OF BOOKS. Here’s where it took me in 2010:

North

  • A Prayer for Owen Meany — John Irving, *****
  • The Road — Cormac McCarthy, ***
  • The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald, ***
  • The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath, *****
  • The Age of Innocence — Edith Wharton, ***
  • Moby Dick — Herman Melville, *****

South

  • The Help — Kathryn Stockett, ***
  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil — John Berendt, ***
  • Gone With the Wind — Margaret Mitchell, *****
  • The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers, *****
  • The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner, **

Moby Dick and Gone With the Wind were the high points of the year. If there existed more than five stars I would affix them to GWTW with all my might, but alas. I also really enjoyed The Bell Jar. RIP Sylvia Plath, I wish you would have written more than one novel.

The Sound and the Fury was by far the worst book I read in 2010. I really wanted to like this book — or at least understand it, but I cold barely get through it. Maybe I’m not smart enough, which I FULLY ACCEPT. Anyway, no more Faulkner for me.

Now, ON TO RUSSIANS.