The Bell Jar/Things Fall Apart/The Pleasure of my Company

First off, I did these out of order. Second, I am really cutting back on the reading. When I made the list I wasn't planning on doing any writing this summer. Then a few days ago I got an idea in my head that I just had to go with. And the reason for the out of orderedness is I made a trip up to Santa Fe, and I figured since I wasn't reading I could use the whole time in the car to listen to some of these books on tape. Cheating? I don't know. Really doesn't seem to be in the spirit of 10,000 Pages of Summer, but who cares.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath; 244


Wow, this one took a depressing turn! Started out all normal, and I was really wondering if there was a point or plot at all, and then WOW. I did feel the ending was too abrupt, and my worse fear was realized when the name was not referring to a jar full of bells, but the scientific apparatus, and metaphorically at that!


Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe; 209

I have never seen a humorist more committed to a joke in my like that Achebe in Things Fall Apart. So, he started with the whole "I'm writing a serious novel that focuses on life in Nigeria in the late 19th Century, and it's going to describe the hardships in life and the effect on Christian missionaries coming in..." And let me tell you, this setup took a long time. A REALLY long time. He was committed, and then, almost at the end, he gave us the punchline. A guy who instead of saying "myself" or "yourself" he said "my buttocks" and "your buttocks." I tell ya, when he said "Your buttocks said he had a son," I lost it. Long setup, but awesome delivery.

The Pleasure of my Company - Steve Martin; 163


Loved it. For some reason, neurotics whose obsessions are so prominent that they can't carry out their normal lives are my favorite characters. And I realize that sounds sarcastic, but I really am being serious. It was short, quirky, funny, (not "Your buttocks said he had a son" funny, but still pretty funny.  I think it would translate very well into a movie, and I am very disappointed it is not one.

3,928 pages in 37 days (because I finished them yesterday) for an average of 106.16.


1. Swine Not? - Jimmy Buffett; 256 
2. Moby Dick; or The Whale - Herman Melville; 870
3. The Stranger Beside Me - Ann Rule; 1,542 
4. Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said - Philip K. Dick; 1,773
5. Duma Key - Stephen King; 2,384
6. Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself - Alan Alda; 2,608 
7. Greenwich Killing Time - Kinky Friedman; 2,774
8. Murder in the White House - Margaret Truman; 3,009
9. Dexter in the Dark - Jeff Lindsay; 3,312
10. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky; 4,080 
11. The Taking - Dean Koontz; 4,544
12. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe; 4,753
13. Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris; 5,025 
14. Middlemarch - George Eliot; 5,761
15. Beloved - Toni Morrison;6,036
16. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne; 6,228
17. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood - Howard Pyle; 6,368
18. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath; 6,612
19. Gadsby - Ernest Vincent Wright; 6,768
20. Pulp Fiction Selections - L. Ron Hubbard; 7,456
21. The Final Testament of the Holy Bible - James Frey; 7,856
22. Chili Dawgs Always Bark At Night -Lewis Grizzard; 8,125
23. The Greek - Pierre Rey; 8,573
24. The Pleasure of my Company - Steve Martin; 8,736
25. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates - Tom Robbins; 9,200 
26. Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs; 9,504
27. In Cold Blood - Truman Capote; 9,847
28. The Daybreakers - Louis L'Amour; 10,000