One of my favorite things about the summer is all the free time I have now that all my most immediate and consequential problems are generally solved. The one thing I really want to do with this newfound free time is knock out some of the books on my To-Read list. Because I am an unapologetic nerd. I wanted to try something called Infinite Summer last year, which is where a bunch of people got together and decided they were going to take on the leviathan novel by David Foster Wallace entitled Infinite Jest. Which I think is referential to my favorite bit of Shakespeare, from my favorite bit of Shakespearean work. You know, the whole "Alas poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, etcetera, etcetera." Actually, I'm not sure that that's my favorite Shakespeare. It is the one I remember most, though.
Er, coming back from THAT digression. I didn't think I was ready for Infinite Jest then, and I don't think I'm ready for it now. Instead, this summer I plan on spending my time building a sort of tolerance for DFW's characteristically colloquial writing. So I picked up Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, which is astonishingly good so far. Some of the other books I plan on reading, if any of my friends feels like reading along, so we can discuss them and stuff:
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno (...tentative. I didn't like an excerpt I read, but maybe the book as a whole will change my mind)
What is the What by Dave Eggers
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
And I'm hoping I'll pick up some other good reads along the way. I'll be blogging about them as I read them, mostly just to help me mentally digest the books. Hooray, reading!
