December's Reading List

For several years, I've been posting a list of the books I'd read that particular year. The annual book list would be posted either on the final day of the year in which the books were read, or on January first of the year following.

This year, I began posting a monthly list. Today being the final day of 2021, I will post the list for December. Tomorrow, I will do the list for the entire year.

As I mentioned in my post on The Tin Drum , it had been my original intention to read Günter Grass' Danzig Trilogy before years end. With the coming of typhoon Odette early in December, it looked as if I wouldn't be able to do that. Without electricity, it was impossible to keep my Kindle's battery charged, so I was obliged to read two printed books until the power was restored.

When the electricity returned, I wasn't certain I could finish reading Grass' Dog Years in time to make this list. It's a long novel, and not an easy read but I did manage to finish it today.

Within a day or two, I will do a post on the Danzig Trilogy .

So, for what it's worth, here is a list of the books I read in December, 2021.

I Am a Cat                      Natsume Soseki
Republican Rescue         Chris Christie
Norwegian Wood            Haruki Murakami
There Is a God               Antony Flew / Roy Abraham Varghese
His Monkey Wife           John Collier
Buddha                          Karen Armstrong
The Bhagavad Gita       Translated E. Easwaran
The Tin Drum                Günter Grass
Cat and Mouse              Günter Grass
Dog Years                      Günter Grass

On Reading "The Tin Drum".

In his novel, The Tin Drum , Günter Grass notes that attending funerals often reminds one of other funerals attended in the past. I suppose a similar principle might hold up when thinking about, or writing about books one has encountered.

In an earlier post, I wrote of how I came to read His Monkey Wife . While window shopping in a bookstore frequented by a friend and myself, I came upon a collection of short stories by John Collier. The selling point for me were the words on the book's cover - "By the author of His Monkey Wife ". Although I had never heard of Collier or his earlier book, these words intrigued me enough to purchase and read the short story collection. A similar thing happened in the same bookstore around the same time, regarding Grass' novel Cat and Mouse . Again, I was unfamiliar with Grass or his earlier novel, but the words, "By the author of The Tin Drum " was enough to convince me to read Cat and Mouse .

Back in the day (when we didn't even use the phrase "back in the day") it was difficult to get ones hands on every book one might want to read and I had been unable to find a copy of The Tin Drum . It was the blog post on His Monkey Wife that led me to search for The Tin Drum online. It was then that I learned that those two novels by Günter Grass are considered books one and two of his Danzig Trilogy - the third being Dog Years . I downloaded the three books with the intention of reading the three before year's end. I began reading the first book in the trilogy on December 12; certainly enough time left in the year to read all three.

Typhoon Odette had other ideas.

While we were lucky that in our area the typhoon caused few serious problems, we were without electricity for several days and when my Kindle's battery went down, I wasn't able to recharge it until the power returned. During those days, I was forced to read the 20th Century way......books printed on paper - Buddha by Karen Armstrong and The Bhagavad Gita translated by Eknath Easwaran.

The Tin Drum is not an easy read by any means, as a number of reviewers at goodreads.com have pointed out. The protagonist, Oskar Matzerath writes his memoirs while confined in a German mental institution and is viewed by most readers as an unreliable narrator. It is difficult to understand how much of Oskar's account is "real" and how much is delusional. In the end, I had to wonder if Oskar Matzerath was indeed a dwarf (or midget) or if this idea was part of his mental illness.

The novel is bizarre and disturbing, although it finally pulls together (more or less) at the end.That said, I'd like the novel much more if it were shorter.

I'm reading Cat and Mouse now. It's considerably shorter than The Tin Drum so I should be finished soon, though perhaps not soon enough to read Dog Years before the year is out.

His Monkey Wife

It was the mid-1970s.

Sorry, I can't narrow it down any more than that. It was, after all, nearly fifty years ago and my memory isn't what it once was.

My friend Dave and I would frequently be found at a book store located in a shopping center in our small north Georgia town. This store is where I bought such classics as Camus' The Stranger , Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Hermann Hesse' Siddhartha and Steppenwolf . They weren't all high-brow novels; I may have bought a few Conan the Barbarian paperbacks there as well.

It was during one of those many visits that I came upon a very unusual book. It was a short story collection by an author whose name would escape me for a good many years. I now know the name - John Collier. On the cover, Collier was named as the author of His Monkey Wife . Although I was completely unfamiliar with His Monkey Wife , there was something about the title that intrigued me. I purchased the book of short stories. The stories were bizarre and unusual and I enjoyed every one.

Unfortunately, I was never able to locate a copy of His Monkey Wife until recently when I came upon a few of Collier's books online.

To say His Monkey Wife is a strange book would be an under statement. Quite a number of reviewers at goodreads.com gave this book a thumbs down, perhaps having expected this book to be another Bedtime for Bonzo. It is certainly not that.

My best bet is that Collier intended this book to be a satire on literature of the Victorian era. Picture one of the Brontë sisters (or Dickens) writing a serious novel of a young girl who is scorned by polite society, either because of race, class, or perhaps even a physical impairment, trying to marry a man of upper middle class England. Then, turn the story on it's head by making the poor young girl a chimpanzee and write it in all seriousness.

There is tragedy and there is humor in the novel, although I would not call the comedy "knee slapping". Google Books describes the novel as "A comic masterpiece about a classic love triangle: a man, a woman, and a chimpanzee." I wouldn't go as far as to call this book a "comic masterpiece"; that would be going a bit too far, but I'm happy to have finally read this book after so many years.

There is A God - Antony Flew

In his book, Is Atheism Dead? , Eric Metaxas frequently references Antony Flew and his book, There is a God. The two had come to much the same conclusion regarding the existence of God, although Flew was less inclined to accept Christianity. Both men had followed the evidence, but Flew did not believe that there was evidence of Christ's divinity.

Flew had been known as a strong advocate of atheism. He shocked his fellow atheists in 2004 when he changed his position regarding the existence of an Intelligent Creator of the universe.

In their books, Metaxas and Flew present compelling evidence for a Creator......a source of creative intelligence, if you will, but the evidence could just as easily lead one to Judaism, Islam or Christianity, not to mention a Creator who has not given humanity any sort of divine revelation. (The book is even available at a website called http://islamicblessings.com). In spite of his not embracing Christianity, he did include an appendix written by theologian and Anglican bishop N.T. Wright which Flew said was the best evidence he had seen regarding the divinity of Jesus.

Norwegian Wood - A Novel

Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel, Norwegian Wood could be described as a "coming of age " novel, or as the German's say, a Bildungsroman. The events in the novel take place in 1969 when Murakami, like his protagonist,Toru Watanabe was 19 years old. Murakami is a few years older than I am - I was 17 in 1969 - and although he grew up in Japan and I grew up in the United States, I can relate to many of the events in the novel. Music played a role in both our lives, and there was a cultural upheaval in both countries at that time. In the novel, many of Watanabe's friends commit suicide. Thankfully, I didn't share that experience.

Naturally, as young men fast approaching adulthood, we took advantage of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Unfortunately, like in his later novel, Kafka on the Shore Murakami goes into far too much detail writing about the sexual activities of the characters. In many ways, Murakami writes as well as the great writers of the 20th century - Hesse, Mann, Joyce - to name a few, but to me, his spending so much time on the sexual aspects detracts from his writing.

After finishing the novel, I watched the documentary series, The Beatles: Get Back which also takes place in 1969. After three days reading the novel and nearly seven hours watching the documentary, I was ready to leave 1969 forever.

Republican Rescue

My original plan, when I first thought of reading, and then writing a blog post on Chris Christie's new book, Republican Rescue , was to entitle the eventual post, I'm Reading Chris Christie's New Book...... So You Don't Have To ,but that plan changed once I began reading the book.

I hadn't actually been aware of Christie's book until I came upon an article about how abysmally awful the sales of the book were. At the time I read the article, Republican Rescue had failed to sell even 3,000 copies. It was those low sales numbers which actually led me to want to read the book.Obviously, if sales were that bad, Christie had pissed off a lot of people. I wanted to find out why.

I wouldn't say that I had ever been a fan of the former New Jersey governor, but I didn't really have any particular dislike for him. When he was running for President, he didn't seem to be someone I'd vote for in the Republican primary, but had he managed to become the Republican candidate for POTUS, I'd certainly pick him over any Democrat.

I'm sure many of the folks angry with Christie are Democrats who would be upset at any Republican.....especially one who might have been in Trump's camp at one time. I was also sure that maybe of the Republicans staying away from his books are those who see him as a turncoat against Trump. I've got my own problems with Trump now, so I wanted to see how Christie saw this need to rescue the Republican party.

Let's go back to the presidential campaign of 2016.

As readers of one of my other blogs may remember from 2016, I often compared the idea of voting for either Trump or Hillary Clinton to the question as to whether one wanted mustard or mayo on their shit sandwich. However, after Donald Trump had won the election, I thought I'd give Trump the benefit of the doubt, and see what he'd do as POTUS.

For the most part, I was happy with most of the things Trump had managed to accomplish, although I wasn't really thrilled with his personality. At the beginning of 2020, like a lot of folks, I was sure Trump was headed for re-election. I feel safe in saying that it was COVID that killed Trump's return to the White House.

One of the reasons I wanted to read Chris Christies new book was to see how he viewed the last days of Trump's presidency. It turns out that Christie and I are in agreement on that. As Trump refused to accept defeat, I became more disillusioned with the President. With Trump's reaction (or rather non-reaction) to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021, I knew I was finished with Trump. Christie appears to be finished with him as well.

The full title to Christie's book includes "Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden". It's Christie's hope, and mine as well, that the Republicans can escape from the really bizarre elements trying to make their way inside the big tent. He does a good job of explaining who these crazies are. Let's all hope the Party is successful.