Pathos Soils Everything

                                                                                                                                           For Eric.

In Robin Schulman’s Eat The City, she gives a fascinating account of the ins-and-outs of food production in NYC. My favorite anecdote is about the time the bodies of bees, and their honey turned, red due to getting into maraschino cherry syrup, and red dye no. 40 in it. My friend, Eric, called this the stuff of horror movies.

My friend Eric says a lot of things, and if you know him you know that this is a good thing. Consider the following exchange. This was following a discussion on the Book Parties I have. Eric, a voracious reader, always wants book recommendations, and I promised a blog post for him on that.

The conditions, clearly: What is Vital/Worth Reading, From My List of 2017, and Based on Nothing More Than My Personal Determination. Cuteness warning, #bookselfies with #souphound to follow.

Here’s the deal about Eric The Reader. He can be picky. That’s putting it gently, he has high standards. He needs books to have formidable, intellectual standards, to push current narrative forms, to stay away from pathos (sentimental, feely-ing, emotions o noes!!!!.... unless it’s Dear Sugar), and a book must keep all the promises it suggests at the beginning.

My recommendations to Eric often fly in the face of the things he likes, because I think I can change him. Sometimes it works (see above example of Dear Sugar. Eric likes Dear Sugar, Eric likes Dear Sugar! (Of course he does, he has a soul!)). Sometimes it doesn't (think Buffering by H. Hart. Boo. I love that book.).

This post isn't just for him, or for that type of reader alone. But these are the highest of the high standards. Take these suggestions seriously!

There have been many “reading lists for surviving 2017” circulating, I can’t do better than those. This is based on “even the pickiest readers should read them based on nothing more than my sheer personal determination.” So, dear Eric, these were the best of the best of my 2016.

1. A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara (#5)

2.       The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

3. Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins (#20)
4. Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson (#22)

5.       Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich (#109)

6.       The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood (#133)

7. Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward (#138)
8. Zone One. Colson Whitehead (#146)
9. I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman (#147)
10. The Sellout. Paul Beatty (#152)

Books I’m pretty sure Eric The Reader will automatically love:

The Flame Alphabet. Ben Marcus (#12)

Gold Fame Citrus. Clare Vaye Watkins (#20)

Welcome To Braggsville. T. Geronimo Jackson (#22)

The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood (#133)

Zone One. Colson Whitehead (#146)

The Sellout. Paul Beatty (#152)

Why? They all have formidable intellectual standards, push current narrative forms, they stay the heck away from pathos, and they keep all the promises they suggest at the beginning.  

Books I think Eric should read anyway and he is likely to resist me on:

              A Little Life. Hanya Yanagihara (#5)

              Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich (#109)

              Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward (#138)

I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman (#147)

Why? The pathos. These books abosultly maintain high intellectual standards, push formal boundaries and take themselves very seriously. They also break your heart. No promises to put it back together. So maybe these four books are actually my suggestions of survival-books for 2017.

Eric, my dear, you have a kind soul, and a warm heart. You aren’t a toxic-masculinity-unfeeling-hardass. Yet, you know you aren’t drawn to the stories where Love is a character, or a major plot device. Which is why I think, out of my sheer determination, I posit that you read the last 4 here before the other 6. Sheer Determination!

In conclusion, here’s the painting we made at the last book party—a palimpsest of the book list of 2017. Everyone should have book parties! Wish you could have been there! Love you man.

For the first 100 in the reading list of 2016:

http://storiesofsoil.blogspot.com/2016/08/dirty-books-iii.html 

Follow Eric on Twitter @LinkTheorist

Follow the cuteness of #bookselfies with #souphound @FarmsWatson

The other 59 books that followed the first 100 of 2016:

1.     An Untamed State. Roxane Gay

2.     Dept. of Speculation. Jenny Offill

3.     A Spot of Bother. Mark Haddon

4.     We Have Always lived in the Castle

5.     Heavy. The Obesity Crisis in Cultural Context. Helene Shugart

6.     The Post Birthday World. Lionel Shriver

7.     This I Believe II.

8.     Bait and Switch. Barbara Ehrenreich

9.     Shadow Tag. Louise Erdrich

10.  Spark Joy. Marie Kondo.

11.  The Dirt Cure. Maya Shetreat-Klein

12.  Vinegar Girl. Anne Tyler

13.  Secondhand World. Katherine Min

14.  Heartburn. Nora Ephron

15.  The Taming of The Shrew. Shakespeare.

16.  Luka and the Fire of Life. Salman Rushdie

17.  Love Loss and What We Ate. Padma Lakshimi

18.  The Rum Diary. Hunter S. Thompson

19.  Women. Charles Bukowski

20.  I, Etcetera. Susan Sontag

21.  Family Matters. Rohinton Mistry

22.  The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Housin Hamid

23.  Sous Chef. Micheal Gibney

24.  The Giver. Lois Lowry

25.  Go Ask Alice. Anonymous

26.  The Body in The Library. Agatha Christie

27.  The Red House. Mark Haddon

28.  Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty. Ramona Ausubel

29.  The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047. Lionel Shriver

30.  The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy. Douglas Adams

31.  Dear Mr. M. Herman Koch

32.  Little Nothing. Marisa Sliver

33.  The Heart Goes Last. Margaret Atwood

34.  After The Plague. T. C. Boyle

35.  The Cat’s Table. Michael Ondaatje

36.  Eat Pray Love Made Me Do it.

37.  An Artist Of The Floating World. Kazuo Ishiguro

38.  Salvage The Bones. Jesmyn Ward

39.  An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England. Brock Clarke

40.  The Underground Railroad. Colson Whitehead

41.  Truth, Justice, and the American Whote

42.  We Should All Be Feminists. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

43.  Tenth of December. George Saunders.

44.  A Room of One’s Own. Virginia Woolf

45.  Trans: a Memoir. Juliet Jacques

46.  Zone One. Colson Whitehead

47.  I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This. Nadja Spiegelman

48.  Nutshell. Ian McEwan

49.  Buffering. Hannah Hart

50.  Troubling Love. Elena Farrante

51.  The Wonder. Emma Donoghue

52.  The Sellout. Paul Beatty

53.  Hag-Seed. Margaret Atwood

54.  The Fire This Time. Ed. Jesmyn Ward

55.  The Days of Abandonment. Elena Ferrante

56.  Toots in Solitude. John Yount

57.  Flash Fiction. Ed. James Thomas

58.  Lady Chatterly’s Lover. D. H. Lawrence

59.  House of Leaves. Mark Z. Danielewski