Time 100 Books Plus Others to Help Me Cope With Them

I am one of a number of people reading books off the Time 100 list. There are great books on that list such as Catch 22, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, Infinite Jest and The Grapes of Wrath. Unfortunately, there are also a number of slimy books, horribly depressing books, decadent books, boring books and ultra-violent books. (Please forgive me if these books are your favorites ...) For these, I have developed strategies to slog through them.

For Lolita, I read about 100 pages until the pedophilia blossomed. Then I started from the back of the book and read sections until it hit the nasty stuff again. Done. Check that one off the list.

For Martin Amis's, Money, (incredibly decadent and "brutally funny"- yuck) I read 120 pages, skipped 160 pages (I only missed one plot development) then read the last 100 or so. Check.

It was impossible to skip text in The Neuromancer (violent and not my style, though I like sci-fi), but I was able to skim read it successfully. His prose is nothing to brag about - it's the concepts that put this book on the list, so I didn't feel I lost anything. It also helped that I read the book at the same time that Robert, the blogger of 101 Books, did. Misery loves company - he didn't care much for it either.

I have dipped into William Burroughs' Naked Lunch any number of times since my youth without success - so I have no idea if I'm going to be successful with finishing this book. However, I have read an entire Burroughs book (and felt slimy for days afterwards). So maybe I'll cheat and check this one off.

I have not the heart to open the cover of Revolutionary Road which many claim is the most depressing book (and movie) ever written. (Is that how it made the list?) That in itself is depressing since I already had to put down The Corrections for the same reason. All my strategies for The Corrections failed. I tried reading 50 pages then reading another book (Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All, worked well.) Then I read another 50 pages followed by yet another book. This was going well, but at some point I was only able to get through 5 pages of The Corrections before I needed another antidote. I gave up and put it aside. I'll trick myself into picking it up later. I'm really betting that I'll love it if ONLY I can get through the background stories of this dysfunctional family.

I had to put aside Gone With the Wind, too. I made it pretty easily through the first half - the Civil War, but  the idea of Scarlett O'Hara and Ashley going through reconstruction was just more than I could stand. I'll pick it up later.

You might suggest that I just throw in the towel. But in fact, I am really enjoying reading books from the list. There are lots of surprises - even in books I've slogged through. For example, after really struggling through 120 pages of  Malumud's The Assistant, which is a very sad book, I fell in love with it. And I truly slogged through the 1000+ page Infinite Jest, but it's in my top-5 favorites.

And this leads me to my latest and favorite strategy: using Book Drum. I am currently reading Jean Rhys's, Wide Sargasso Sea. It is the story of Rochester's mad wife, Bertha ( in Jane Eyre). It's an unusual book and one that I might have read too quickly. I didn't want to do that - I wanted to appreciate why it was on the list. So I started looking up the geography of the area (The Carribean) and before long, I ran into the Bookmarks on Book Drum for this book. The Bookmarks pages are essentially footnotes. I found that they give me more material to absorb and appreciate ...and I am loving the book because of this.

And I now understand that it was the footnotes in Infinite Jest that made it truly work. The good thing about footnotes is that they give a reader pause, they keep me from falling too deeply into a difficult story. Who knows,by using the footnotes I may even be able to get through Revolutionary Road!