A guide for choosy readers
in a distracted world
TO BE READ
Ready-made lists for the ambitious reader
by
Laura Vanderkam
#TBR
TO BE READ
Ready-made lists for the ambitious reader
When I ask people what they’d like to spend more time doing, “reading” comes up a lot. For good reason!
Scales of human happiness nd that people enjoy reading more than watching TV (to say nothing of work
or housework). The problem, of course, is that reading makes more demands of you than TV watching
does. Consequently, it’s always easier to turn on the TV (or start surng the web) when leisure time appears.
To read in a distracted world, you need to make a conscious choice to read.
The good news is that it is quite possible to do that. I believe that even busy people can nd time to read.
And I also believe that when busy people choose the right things to read, they magically start nding more
time to dig into their books!
I know this is true in my life. I’ve been tracking my time continuously since April of 2015. During the
rst year I tracked, I spent 327 hours reading. That’s quite a bit — almost an hour a day — but I was
discouraged, at the end of the year, to realize how few good books that encompassed. Since I read at
a rate of about 60 pages per hour, those 327 hours could have seen me through close to 20,000 pages,
which is enough to have conquered IQ84, War and Peace, Kristin Lavransdatter and all the other books
I keep saying I’m going to read at some point. Instead, I wound up reading a lot of fashion and gossip
magazines.
So in 2017, I made some changes. First, I decided to expand the time available to read. I loaded the
Kindle app on my phone, which oered the possibility of turning bits of waiting time (e.g. at karate
practice) into reading time. Life naturally expanded my reading time as well, as my littlest child turned
2 years old. I know from my research that mothers of babies have signicantly less leisure time than
mothers of older children.
But the bigger change I made is this: Now, I always have a good idea of what to read next.
Good books make me want to read. When I’m reading a good book, I turn what would have been
magazine reading time into book reading time. When I’m reading a good book, I do less of other things
(email checking, puttering around the house), and more reading. The key is just guring out what I would
really enjoy.
I think what had stopped me on this before is that guring out what to read next takes time. If leisure time
is already scarce, who wants to invest some of that leisure time in plotting out the rest of it? But one of my
great discoveries in life is that fun sometimes takes eort. I decided to accept that, rather than ght it. Now
I build in 30 minutes every 2 weeks or so to gure out what should go on my “To Be Read” (TBR) list. I look
at suggestions from blogs (particularly Modern Mrs. Darcy), and from publications (O magazine runs many
reviews, as does the Wall Street Journal). I started reading through lesser known works by authors I’d
enjoyed in the past. Now, if I nd a new author I like, I’ll read through everything she’s written. I’ll look at
Amazon’s algorithms and see which other authors are suggested as being similar. If I’m reading one non-
ction book on a topic, I might read another book on the same topic to give me a dierent perspective. I’ll
also read through books mentioned in other books I’m reading!
Then there are these two keys: I have deliberately chosen to expand my book buying budget. I will err on
TO BE READ: Ready-made lists for the ambitious reader
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the side of buying a book, rather than not. Given that I make my own coee and my own lunch every day,
I think I’m still ahead in the grand scheme of spending. Also, if I decide a book is not for me, I stop reading
it. No guilt. Even if everyone else says it’s fantastic. Being willing to ditch books means I’m more willing to
try books. And since I’m more willing to try books, I’m nding some that I really like.
This brings me to the goal of this little guide. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year guring out what
to read next. I want to save you some of the eort! These seven ready-made TBR lists give suggestions
of books to read in sequence on certain themes. Each of these lists should occupy you for at least two
weeks (unless you read really fast!) and often closer to a month. They explore a concept from multiple
dierent angles. They sometimes stick with an author for a while so you can get a sense of his or her style.
Here are the seven lists, which themselves need not be read in sequence, though I’d suggest reading
each individual TBR list in the order suggested:
— Travel
— Place
— 1925-1927
— American Originals
— Embracing or Escaping the Small Town
— Your Best Life
— Encounters with the Absurd
A few notes on these suggestions. First, I really, really enjoyed reading all of these books (and in two
cases, writing them!). There are plenty of books out there that you might know are important, and
accomplishing something exciting in a literary sense, and yet you still nd yourself counting pages. Those
books are like eating spinach. That is not the case here. I promise that all these books are highly readable.
In some cases, I deliberately chose one book by an author, and not others, because the chosen book is
more accessible and immediately pleasurable than some of the author’s other titles. If you nd you really
like an author, please do go read his or her completed works! Likewise, feel free to supplement any of
these TBR lists with other books (and drop me a line — [email protected] — because I welcome
suggestions). But I know your time is limited. I want reading to be fun. I also know that when reading is
fun, you will spend more time reading.
Here’s to always knowing what to read next —
Laura
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TBR List 1: Travel
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TBR List 1: Travel
Looking to get away? These narrative non-ction books will transport your mind to fascinating places,
even if your body is stuck in the dentist’s waiting room.
Dave Barry: Best. State. Ever
Florida is often in the news for weird reasons: escaped alligators, Vanilla Ice arrests,
the 2000 election. But Pulitzer Prize-winning humor writer Dave Barry wants to put in
a good word for his adopted state. In this ode to Florida, he travels to the Everglades,
roadside attractions, Key West, a Miami night club, and even one of the world’s largest
retirement communities, where the residents have a thing for line dancing. This book
manages to be both giggle-out-loud funny and a good reminder that there’s more to
Florida than Disney and crimes in Wal-mart parking lots.
Bill Bryson: A Walk in the Woods
The Appalachian Trail runs for about 2100 miles from Maine to Georgia. Every year,
a few hundred people manage to hike the whole thing. The irascible travel writer Bill
Bryson sets out to be one of them, with a plot-thickener of a companion: an old buddy
who served 18 months in prison for cocaine possession but now claims to be sober.
What could possibly go wrong? Alas, they do not succeed in making it through to
Maine, but despite their trials and escapades, Bryson still composes quite a love letter
to what is left of the east coast American wilderness.
Bill Bryson: In a Sunburned Country
We’ll stick with Bryson, but hop on a plane for this next book. Australia manages to be
simultaneously familiar (they speak English!) and strange (there are a surprising number
of animals that can kill you). Bryson writes in his curmudgeonly style about all the major
hotspots — Sydney, Ayers Rock, Perth — and also manages to convey the vastness
of the country. He composes songs to entertain himself through stretches of the out-
back where he literally needs to stop at every gas station, because there isn’t anything
else coming until the tank will be empty. I lived in Melbourne for part of 2000, which
is roughly when Bryson visited Australia, and I enjoyed this trip down memory lane. It
made me want to start planning a repeat trip.
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TBR List 1: Travel
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Ernest Hemingway: A Moveable Feast
Back on a plane, and back in time — this time to 1920s Paris for Ernest Hemingway’s
posthumously published memoir of his escapades there. Europe had been ripped apart
by the Great War. All the old rules were changing, and ex-pats ocked to Paris for the
freedom and artistic vibe. Hemingway was a young writer then, working on his rst
novel and marveling at everything around him. He name drops like crazy. His gossip
about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s neuroticism will have you reading his books in an entirely
dierent light. His tales of the parties will make you want to book a hotel somewhere
along the Seine, and then spend an afternoon writing witty dialogue in a cafe. No one
could keep up the lifestyle for long, but that is somewhat the point of youthful travels. You enjoy being
young and happy, knowing that nothing can last.
Frances Mayes: Under the Tuscan Sun
This entry on the travel list moves us forward again in time and in the southern direction
through Europe, to modern Italy. After some glorious vacations, Mayes and her husband
succumb to Tuscany’s charms and buy a xer-upper farmhouse. Thus they begin
a multi-year saga of battling with contractors who celebrate a surprising number of
holidays, and crossing their ngers when digging, knowing that any hole in the ground
might turn up a 2000-year-old Etruscan structure. But the land and the food are so
incredible and so lovingly described as to make such complaints seem irrelevant —
nothing a glass of Tuscan wine can’t solve.
John McPhee: Coming into the Country
After the heat of Tuscany, it’s time to move to the cold wilds of Alaska. John McPhee
(another Pulitzer Prize winner) has a reporter’s eye for facts and a novelist’s sense of
structure. His journey through the land of grizzly bears and grizzled characters will
intrigue the adventurous traveler. Possibly not enough to go there (see the bears part)
but at least to fantasize about it.
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TBR List 2: Place
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TBR List 2: Place
Some novelists create such richly detailed worlds in their books that the landscape itself becomes a char-
acter. Here are some of my favorite ction books with a very strong sense of place.
Wendell Berry: Jayber Crow
Wendell Berry has written over a dozen books set in Port William, Kentucky, a little
farming community that is slowly dying as the young people leave. Still, it’s a gorgeous
and haunting place, lovingly described through characters that grow on you as you
read through these novels. We’ll start with Jayber Crow, since this novel can stand
on its own, whether you read the rest of the Port William saga or not. Lonely Jayber
tries to build a life outside of Port William, but eventually returns to take over the town
barbershop. He provides an outlet for the men of town to chat, complain, console. He
indulges in some wildness on weekends until he begins an unrequited infatuation with
the tragic Mattie Keith Chatham. Her husband isn’t faithful to her, so Jayber decides that he will be, even if
the gesture is appreciated only in his own mind. Port William declines as Jayber grows older, and modern
life seems not to have a place for a town or a man like him, but he still makes his way in the world as he
can. Slow and sweeping, this book so deeply conjures up rural Kentucky that you’ll be able to draw a map
of this little place on earth after nishing this one.
Wendell Berry: Hannah Coulter
We don’t need to leave Port William just yet! Hannah Coulter tells the saga of Port
William from a dierent angle, in this case, through the life of twice widowed Hannah
(whose second husband is an acquaintance of Jayber Crow’s). Hannah loses her rst
husband in World War II, then raises her daughter from that marriage and two sons that
she has with her second husband on their hardscrabble farm. They make a good run of
it, and educate the children, but then the educated children don’t want to come back
and take over the family business. Wendell Berry creates thick nostalgia for a life that
can never be again, but without being overly sentimental about what that life required.
TBR List 2: Place
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Willa Cather: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Our exploration of place now travels westward. Willa Cather became famous for her
sweeping tales of the American west, often featuring strong women. Her best-known
novel, though, is one of the few that centers around a man. Death Comes for the
Archbishop recounts the life of bishop Jean Marie Latour, a French priest sent to the
southwestern United States in the mid 19th century. His mandate: strengthen a church
that, in its isolation, had fallen into recklessness and heresies. Each town brings a new
crisis, and new souls changed in some way by the brave but gentle priest who travels
by mule through a landscape that comes alive in Cather’s descriptions.
Willa Cather: Shadows on the Rock
Cather writes with a deep sense of place, but this book provides evidence that her
descriptive skills could be transferred out of the American west and into any location
she chose. Young Cecile Auclair lives with her widowed father, the town apothecary,
in colonial Quebec, right at the end of the 17th century. The colonists are bold and
ultimately self-reliant, as cold Quebec is so isolated that the ships can’t come in from
Europe between October and July each year. Well-researched and beautifully conjured
up, Cecile’s Quebec is a magical place of hardships, but hardships seen through the
eyes of a child, who is inclined to see them as possibilities. We see a complete year, and why Cecile and
her father ultimately decide to stay and help build what will become Canada.
Edith Wharton: Age of Innocence
Edith Wharton and Willa Cather were contemporaries, and while their styles are quite
dierent, both had a remarkable ability to create complete worlds in their books.
Wharton’s most famous book, The Age of Innocence, is known for many things —
particularly its stunning ending — but perhaps its most under-appreciated attribute
is how well it describes New York in the late 1800s. You can see the lavish parlors,
hear the carriages trotting through Central Park, see the clothes. The world that young
Newland Archer tries to navigate is suocating and hypocritical, but it is lovely and
polished, at least on its glittery surface.
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TBR List 3: 1925-1927
It seems unlikely that, 90 years from now, people will look upon 2015-2017 as a golden age of literature,
but I think that’s a perfectly defensible claim about 1925-1927. Some of the 20th century’s best known
writers were at their peak during those two years, publishing books that are of their time, but somehow
timeless too. You may have been assigned to read some (or all!) of these books in school, but even so,
they’re worth a reread now without the pressure of needing to produce a term paper. These classics can
(should!) be read for pure pleasure.
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Rich and mysterious Jay Gatsby wants the beautiful Daisy, and he wants to change
the past, but ultimately he can have neither. If all you remember from The Great
Gatsby is how it ends, then it’s time to pick it up again. The second time reader can
appreciate how Fitzgerald moves the action from party to party in a compact tale that
can be read in a few hours. Gatsby is still an enigma from start to nish, yet while it’s
hard to truly like any of these characters, their tragic arc is more understandable and
somehow sympathetic than in some of Fitzgerald’s other works (I had a lot of trouble
with Tender is the Night, and This Side of Paradise, precisely because of the lack of
likable characters, but I’ve re-read The Great Gatsby several times).
Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises
Hemingway was working on this novel during the years of A Moveable Feast (see the
“travel” TBR list). In The Sun Also Rises, Lady Brett Ashley, Jake Barnes and friends
drink, and celebrate, and try to make sense of life. Careless, yet weighed down by the
Great War’s cares, they travel through post-war Paris, and Pamplona, Spain, where
the bullghting is described well enough that it becomes possible to understand why
people wanted to watch it (something, I confess, that I had never understood before).
This is an exciting, fast-paced book. Hemingway’s muscular, declarative sentences —
very much on display in these pages — established him as a unique literary voice. For
bonus points, you might read this, and then read The Old Man and the Sea to see how Hemingway had
changed by the end of his career. (But don’t worry — you don’t have to write a paper comparing the two!)
TBR List 3: 1925 – 1927
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Edith Wharton: Twilight Sleep
Long out of print, this satirical novel is now readily available in ebook form, and while
it’s not as famous as Age of Innocence or Ethan Frome, I think it’s one of Wharton’s
best. Heiress Pauline Manford is a paragon of productivity, lling every hour of every
day with self improvement and philanthropic endeavors. She banishes anything
unpleasant from her life. Still, her second marriage and her son’s marriage start
unraveling around her in a way that comes to a violent climax during the family’s
summer vacation. This book moves fast, but manages to ask deeper questions
about suering, and what makes us human.
Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
The Ramsay family, with its studious father, saintly mother, and eight earnest children,
spends summers on the Isle of Skye. The young children want to visit the nearby light
house as the family is preparing for a dinner party, but their father thwarts them. Time
passes, and then they re-enact the scene years later, seeing what doesn’t change, but
also, the miracle of what does. This lyrical book — which is ostensibly about a few
days in family life, but is really about Woolf’s vision of art, and human nature, and so
much else — is more accessible than many of Woolf’s other novels. It is a good rst
stop for anyone considering exploring more of her work.
TBR List 4: American Originals
TBR List 4: American Originals
These biographies of quintessential American types not only recount the epic lives of their subjects, they
show the country at pivotal moments in history.
Witold Rybczynski: A Clearing in the Distance
Most people know of Frederick Law Olmsted because he designed Central Park.
But his career took him in all kinds of dierent directions in a way that showed the
expansiveness and restlessness of the late 19th century. Olmsted farmed, and wrote,
and ran a sanitary commission, and even did a stint running a gold mine after Central
Park happened — an event that in most professional lives might seem to inform all future
endeavors. Rybczynski takes some curious risks in this biography, occasionally writing in
Olmsted’s voice, but it mostly works, and the upside of getting in Olmsted’s head is that
you can’t help but root for him as he gures out his place in a country testing its limits.
David McCullough: The Wright Brothers
Speaking of a country testing its limits: Heavier-than-air ight went through an
exhilarating evolution in the U.S. from 1900 to 1920. In a mere blink of human history,
it went from being an impossibility to being an indispensable technology. Orville and
Wilbur Wright were the rst to make it work, and their small town ingenuity captures
something very energetic about the turn of the last century. This is a short book, but
McCullough creates a compelling narrative about the Wright brothers’ various test
ights, and the unsung accomplishments of their sister, Katharine.
Laura Hillenbrand: Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit, the
race horse, didn’t seem to be born for great things, but he accomplished
them anyway. Hillenbrand’s meticulously researched, yet highly readable, saga of the horse
and his human entourage is one of the best sports biographies of all time. I forced myself
to slow down through the last pages, to savor Seabiscuit’s last race, just as he savored his
last run against his rivals. A key part of the backstory of this book: Hillenbrand wrote
Seabiscuit while nearly incapacitated by chronic fatigue syndrome. Her sympathy for the
underdog horse perhaps comes from the perspective that nothing has been easy for her
either. No matter. Strong people — and horses — do what they need to in order to win.
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TBR List 4: American Originals
John McPhee: A Sense of Where You Are
Before he became a U.S. senator, Bill Bradley enjoyed an illustrious basketball career
with the New York Knicks. Before that, he played for Princeton University, producing
the kind of lopsided wins that Princeton isn’t exactly known for now. John McPhee,
also a Princeton alum, followed Bradley around, and discovered the details of his
grueling practice regimen, and how he could literally see wider distances than other
people. While knowledge of basketball is a plus, it’s not necessary to enjoy this story
of a young man just starting his journey to stardom. As a side note, McPhee was
quite early in his career too at the time, and part of the fun of this book is seeing two
men who would become masters of their crafts engage with each other before either
became the stars they’d later be.
Zac Bissonnette: The Great Beanie Baby Bubble
In the late 1990s, plush, adorable Beanie Babies soared to fame and incredible
valuations. Just as quickly, they crashed as people realized they were parting
with the mortgage money to acquire stued animals. Behind the millennial craze?
Ty Warner, an eccentric toy tycoon who would lie about his past, drive everyone
around him crazy, be convicted of tax crimes, and yet still create one of the most
successful product lines ever. Warner refused to speak to Bissonnette, who exacted
his journalistic revenge by talking with absolutely everyone who knew Warner, even
befriending a former girlfriend, and getting access to her unpublished memoir, shortly
before she died in mysterious circumstances. This book is wickedly funny, with
perfect comedic timing from start to nish. Not all American originals are heroes in the normal sense, and
Ty Warner nicely illustrates the larger-than-life shadier sorts we will always have among us.
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TBR List 5: Embracing or escaping the small town
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TBR List 5: Embracing or escaping the small town
Small towns can be nurturing or suocating. Whether one chooses to ee, to stay, or to fold the place into one’s
life story is a complicated question. These books come to dierent conclusions about life in the forgotten places.
Willa Cather: Song of the Lark
Song of the Lark is the middle entry of Willa Cather’s Prairie Trilogy (which includes O
Pioneers! and My Antonia), but all three novels stand alone, so you can read this one
separately from the others. Thea Kronborg has musical gifts, and an incredible work
ethic. With a few steady mentors who help her and — more importantly — know when
they cannot help her anymore, she rises from a small Colorado town to the heights of
operatic fame in New York City. This book is a fascinating blend of 19th century gritty
realism (many of Kronborg’s classmates die when a tramp drowns himself in the town
water supply, quickly spreading disease), lyrical descriptions of the American west, and
insights into the lives of professional musicians.
Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping
Ruthie and Lucille, young sisters, have a tough life in their rural northwest town of
Fingerbone. Their grandfather’s train plummets o a bridge into the glacial lake that
denes the area’s landscape. Their mother abandons them and drives her car into
the same lake. Their grandmother raises them until she dies, leaving them in the care
of bewildered great aunts, and nally their eccentric Aunt Sylvie. Sylvie’s care angers
Lucille, who wants a normal existence, but enchants Ruthie, who is more taken with the
idea of the wandering lifestyle. While this plot sounds incredibly depressing, Robinson’s
style is more lyrical, detached, accepting — and ultimately intriguing, as the reader
realizes that Ruthie, the narrator, is not entirely sane. This was a risky debut, but Robinson manages to
make Sylvie and Ruthie’s strangeness believable.
Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
Robinson waited decades after writing Housekeeping to release this gem of a novel,
and the maturity gained in those years shows, especially if you read Gilead immediately
after immersing yourself in the world of Fingerbone. Her protagonist, Rev. John Ames,
became a father very late in life. Knowing he is dying, he writes a long letter to his
almost 7-year-old son, explaining his life in Gilead, Iowa, his ancestors, and the truth
that you never truly know what anyone else is going through. Much more religious than
Housekeeping, Gilead moves slowly but uidly — and ends with a much more upbeat
TBR List 5: Embracing or escaping the small town
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view of the world. Sample quote: “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of
them sucient.” (If you like this book enough, Robinson continues with the Gilead saga in her books Lila,
and Home, which center on the two other main characters in Gilead).
Eudora Welty: One Writer’s Beginnings
Eudora Welty, the great chronicler of the American South, began her life as a girl
in Jackson, Mississippi. She describes her childhood in this place of victrolas and
verandas, and how it taught her to see more clearly, to hear more carefully, and to
nally nd her voice. This slim, yet evocative memoir is a good place to start before
exploring Welty’s ction.
J.D. Vance: Hillbilly Elegy
After the surprising election of Donald Trump, many people began wondering exactly
what was going on in the American heartland that led to such anger and a sense of
American decline. Vance (whose memoir came out before the election, and who
thus manages to look amazingly prescient) attempts to explain the sentiment through
his own family story in Kentucky and Ohio. Life as a “hillbilly” is often violent, full of
substance abuse, and men who come and go out of his mother’s life with shocking
frequency. With the help of a few people who believe in him, he escapes to the Marine
Corps, and eventually to Yale Law School and an upper class life. But none of this was
inevitable, and the reader quickly sees how easy it would be not to make it out.
Laura Vanderkam: The Cortlandt Boys
A small town high school boys basketball team wins the Pennsylvania state
championship on a last second 3-point shot. This improbable victory plays out in the
players’ lives over the course of two decades, forever tying them to their little town in
the Poconos that has its ways of never letting them go. While I know my writing is not
on the same literary level as the other books here, I will say this about my novel: I loved
writing it and I still love reading it. It’s the kind of novel I wished existed, so I created it.
I hope you will like it as well.
TBR List 6: Your Best Life
TBR List 6: Your Best Life
Self-help gets a reputation for imsiness, but at its best it asks deep questions of what it means to live a
good life. These books are self-helpful in the search for answers.
Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
While Benjamin Franklin could certainly t in the “American originals” category, this
autobiography has more in common with the self help genre than most memoirs. Franklin
is eager for any young kin reading this book to understand how he learned self-discipline,
and to win friends and inuence people (indeed, I thought about putting How to Win
Friends and Inuence People on this list, but Dale Carnegie quotes so extensively from
Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography that I thought why not go to the source?) Franklin is
funny, self-deprecating, and honest. He describes how he conquered his bad habits,
and quit the temptation of arguing just to feel righteous. Better to be eective, and with
credits to his name including the Free Library of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, electricity, and
diplomatic relations with France, he seems to have found the secret of success.
Stephen Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Eective People
If you never read another book on personal productivity, but you read this one, you’ll
probably get the gist. Covey teaches readers simple truths that are powerful when
practiced: take responsibility for your life. Begin with the end in mind. Put rst things
rst. Seek to understand other people, and nd ways for them to win as you win. Keep
“sharpening the saw” to preserve your mental and physical health. This book came out
in 1990, so it’s got various 1980s buzz words (“synergize!”) and his productivity tips
predate email and social media temptations, but the advice is still solid. Spend time on
things that are important, but not urgent (rather that the urgent, but not important) and
you will be hard-pressed not to succeed.
Gretchen Rubin: The Happiness Project
Going into 2006, Gretchen Rubin knew she had a good life: a strong marriage, two
healthy children, a solid writing career. So why wasn’t she happier? Seeking answers,
she undertook a year-long project to boost her level of bliss, looking at everything from
how much she slept to her spirituality. Compulsively readable, this book has inspired
thousands of happiness projects among readers looking to enjoy their own lives more too.
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TBR List 6: Your Best Life
Laura Vanderkam: 168 Hours
People always lament that there aren’t enough hours in the day. And maybe there aren’t.
But what if we look at a week? In this guide to holistic time management, I ask readers
to look at life more broadly, gure out their core competencies, jettison what isn’t worth
their time, and discover that they’re only as busy as they think they are.
Alain de Botton: The Course of Love
What happens after “happily ever after?” In this novel (which has enough philosophizing
that I’m willing to categorize it as self-help), de Botton tells the story of a young couple
who fall in love, wed, and proceed to ght about money, childrearing, and each others’
neuroses. One even has an aair. And yet they are as in love at the end of the novel
as they are at the beginning because of their sheer desire to make their relationship
work. This is the real course of love, with a lot of wisdom on how to actually achieve
a happy marriage.
Michael Pollan: The Omnivore’s Dilemma
While food seems like a pedestrian topic, we spend a lot of our lives eating, and fuel-
ing our bodies, of course, enables everything else. Unlike many animals, humans face
diverse choices about what to eat. Ideally we can think about ethics and sustainability
in addition to taste. Pollan immerses himself in the food chain, and tells the tales of
fascinating people, from farmers to hunters, to foragers. This rigorous journalism (also
evident in Cooked, another great book), makes this book more readable than some of
Pollan’s polemics (e.g. Food Rules, and In Defense of Food — feel free to skip those).
14 | #TBR
www.LauraVanderkam.com
TBR List 7: Encounters with the absurd
Novels — and sometimes even non-ction! — can take us to very strange places. These books push the
boundaries of believability in the pursuit of a good story.
Don DeLillo: White Noise
Jack Gladney teaches Hitler studies at a liberal arts college in the midwest. He and
his fourth wife, Babette, are raising four precocious ospring in a confusingly blended
family. All is tolerable until an industrial accident unleashes a chemical cloud over their
small town, pushing the adults to probe deeply, and bizarrely, into their fears about
death. This book is shorter and more accessible than some of DeLillo’s other work (e.g.
the wonderful, but ponderously long Underworld), and manages to be grim, poignant,
and incredibly funny at the same time.
Joan Lindsay: Picnic at Hanging Rock
A pleasant outing for boarding school girls who live in the Australian bush turns tragic
when three students and a teacher disappear. One girl is later found, improbably alive
after a week, but completely clueless about what happened. The widening circle of this
mystery starts sucking more and more people in, leading more and more toward their
dooms. Entirely creepy, this book also slyly gets readers to question the more accepted
strangeness of people trying to live proper English lives in that sunburned country on
the opposite side of the world.
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Moments before Earth is destroyed, Arthur Dent is whisked away by Ford Prefect, a
friend who is revising a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The two travel
through space meeting various bizarre characters, and trying to gure out the secret
of life, the universe, and everything (which turns out to be a bit more pedestrian than
one might think). Whimsical and hilarious, this book raises interesting questions without
being overbearing. Humor can make much work that earnestness does not.
TBR List 7: Encounters with the absurd
15 | #TBR
www.LauraVanderkam.com
Christopher McDougall: Born to Run
M
cDougall, a frequently injured runner, sets off into the Mexican hills to learn the secrets
of an indigenous tribe whose members can run for days. He winds up recruiting several
big name ultra-runners for one of the strangest 50-mile races ever. This 2009 book —
which purports to be non-ction, but stretches the conventions of the genre — basically
set o the barefoot running craze. Though short-lived, that craze continues to inuence
how people think about human motion and what the human body is capable of.
Eudora Welty: The Optimist’s Daughter
Laurel, a middle-aged, widowed woman, returns to New Orleans to care for her father
after surgery. He never recovers, though, throwing her into forced dealings with his
second and much younger wife, Fay. Shrill and absurd, Fay makes no sense in the
various memories of the judge’s life, but as Laurel returns to the Mississippi commu-
nity where she grew up, in order to bury her father, she explores all parts of her past,
and nds herself understanding her life’s griefs, and other people’s griefs, more and
more. Welty wrote The Optimist’s Daughter toward the end of her long career, and she
manages to pack a lot of power into this slim novel.
Haruki Murakami: After Dark
No list of encounters with the absurd would be complete without a Haruki Murakami
novel. While there are plenty to choose from, I’ll throw After Dark in here, since it
moves swiftly, and features a time motif (a topic, you may have gathered, that I am
obsessed with). Mari, a 19-year-old student, is spending the night reading in Denny’s
when she is asked to translate for a Chinese prostitute who has been assaulted in a
nearby rent-by-the-hour hotel. Mari, the hotel’s owner, and a trombone-playing friend
try to track down the culprit through late night Tokyo with all its neon and wildness.
Meanwhile, Mari’s sister Eri, exists in a parallel narrative, immersed in a deep, magical
sleep, and haunted by some sort of menacing gure — a theme that weaves in and out of the other
action. Each chapter advances a little later into this fortuitous night.
TBR List 7: Encounters with the absurd
16 | #TBR
www.LauraVanderkam.com
