All the Books I’ve Read And All the Good It’s Done Me

Toward the end of 2003, beginning of 2004, I had reached the conclusion I was reading an extraordinary (by Alabama standards) amount of books and had nothing to show for it except a profound intellect and a shaky grasp of grammar. Sure there were shelves teeming with books, piles of books stacked on every available surface, but my marriage complicated any attempts to bring women home to preen my choices of literature.

So I hit upon the idea to start a book diary. Actually, I think I decided to start a book diary after reading Art Garfunkel’s book diary from the last several decades. I was wholly unimpressed with his choices in reading material. How many tomes of Jack Kerouac’s digressive ramblings can a man read in one year? My history with literature was far sexier than that curly-headed moppet’s.

The first book listed in my literary diary begun twelve years ago was Paul Theroux’s slight novel “Saint Jack”. What I remember most about that book is that it is the first book in my book diary. Three entries down is one of my all time favorite novels, John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces”. Have you ever read it, internet peruser? If not, get thy ass to Amazon and order it. It’s the book that led to my decision to become a writer, eighteen hours after having sworn to give up the business due to lack of fame, fortune and cult status.

2004 was a good year for books. Beside Dunces, some of the highlights included “Last Exit to Brooklyn”, “Carter Beats the Devil” and “Chinese Takeout” by a criminally underrated writer going by the name of Arthur Nersesian.

Funny thing, I don’t keep a regular journal, for fear anything I write may later incriminate me (a nice thin veneer of fiction gives past infractions a lovely plausible deniability shine), but reading the title and author of any book in any given year takes me back to that moment in life and what I was doing or not doing.

I know in 2005 I broke my foot in a horrendous volley ball accident. I was out of work a couple months and managed to read over sixty books for the year including Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” which showed me there’s more than thirty names for shit you can find in a desert.

I remember 2008 as the year of Philip Roth. Read a lot of his books that year. Haven’t read much of his stuff before or since. Don’t know why. I still have plenty more Philip Roth books piled up where no one can see them.

Iceberg Slim’s “Pimp” was the twenty-fourth book I read in 2009. I remember that as the ill-fated summer I styled a fedora to everyone’s general amusement.

Dan Brown’s “Inferno” was the book I was reading in August of 2013 when my wife passed away. I remember that as an exceptionally trying time because the book is so poorly written I could scarcely get through it.

On a happier note, another Paul Theroux book, the much more memorable “My Secret History” was the book I was reading when I met the love of my life. “The Seville Communion” written by the great Arturo Perez-Reverte instantly reminds me of one of the happiest days of my life, sitting on the balcony of the newly rented apartment I shared with my beautiful Donna. It was late spring and the weather was exquisite, the sort of day that instantly becomes nostalgia almost before you’re done living it. We sat on the balcony for hours, reading, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee. I’m still riding the languid crest of that sweet wave.

One thing I’m somewhat ashamed of is the utter lack of African American authors represented in my book diary. There may be an Ernest Gaines collection of essays I read a year or so ago, mostly because it was a short book. I’m not racist. I have black books. I just don’t read them. I can’t relate. Or I won’t relate. I blame black people for this. Actually, I blame white folks. The root of this problem lies somewhere in my past and doesn’t even involve literature.

Back in the late 80’s I liked this group  that went by the name NWA. You may or may not remember these fellas, they had this popular song pertaining to this crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube and also a song voicing a very urban disenfranchisement with law enforcement, back before cop violence against minorities was so prevalent.

Anyway, they had fresh rhymes and delicious beats and I enjoyed them. My fandom, however, was met with derision from every corner of the old Polish neighborhood I hailed from to the point I couldn’t wear my Raiders gear on the mean streets without being openly mocked. Those fools couldn’t be bothered to check themselves and I did not have the capacity to wreck themselves. So I gave up black culture. The fear of being ridiculed is too much to cope with. Thank god for Kid Rock is all I got to say about that.

I don’t have any cute stories to explain why there are so few female authors in my book diary.

What do I have to show for it? In the end, a small notebook of meaningless entries and a fear of books over three hundred pages long. A library of books I would rather burn to the motherfucking ground than give away as “loaners” and two children with zero interest in reading. All right, zero interest in reading books I recommend. They read African American and women writers like it’s going out of style.

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