to-read list

This is my to-read list now. Same as old list, with some books removed because I finished or attempted (Devils) them and other books added because they make up Donald Barthelme's syllabus, which I just found out about (numbered ones at the end, some deleted because I've read them already).

History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides
The Tanakh plus Jonah, Isaiah and Job and I and II Samuel
The Nature of Things, by Lucretius
Confessions, by Augustine
Matthew, Luke, Acts, John, I Corinthians, Romans
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Meditations, by Rene Descartes
Paradise Lost, by John Milton
Theologico-Political Treatise, by Baruch Spinoza
Discourse on Metaphysics, by Gottfried Liebniz
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Benito Cereno, by John Melville
Histories, by Herodotus
The Violent Bear it Away, by Flannery O'Connor
The Gay Science, by Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosophy of Right, by GWF Hegel
Between Past and Future, by Hannah Arendt
Anton Chekhov's Short Stories
The Divine Comedy, by Dante
Faust, by Goethe
Go Down Moses, by William Faulkner
Three Tales, by Gustave Flaubert
Psychological Types, by Carl Jung
Rimbaud
Genet
Bartleby, the Scriver, by Herman Melville
Moby Dick
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Moral Man and Immoral Society, by Reinhold Niebhur
The Breaks of the Game, by David Halberstam
Levels of the Game, by John McPhee
The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, by Freedarko
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga
The Big Short, by Michael Lewis
Great House, by Nicole Krauss
Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara
Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas
The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebhur
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
On Heroes and Tombs, by Ernesto Sabato
1. At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien

3. Collected Short Stories - Isaac Babel
4. Labyrinths - Borges
5. Other Inquisitions - Borges
6. One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
7. Correction - Thomas Bernhard
8. Nog - Rudy Wurlitzer
9. Gimpel The Fool - Isaac B. Singer
10. The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
11. The Magic Barrel - Bernard Malamud


13. Under The Volcano - Malcom Lowry
14. Entire - Samuel Beckett (In other words, everything!)
15. Hunger - Knut Hamsun
16. I'm Not Stiller - Max Frisch
17. Man In The Holocene - Max Frisch
18. Seven Gothic Tales - Dineson
19. Gogol's Wife - Tommaso Landolfi
20. V - Thomas Pynchon
21. The Lime Twig - John Hawkes
22. Blood Oranges - John Hawkes
23. Little Disturbances Of Man - Grace Paley
24. I, Etc., - Susan Sontag
25. Tell Me A Riddle - Tillie Olson
26. Hero With A Thousand Faces - Campbell


28. The Coup - John Updike
29. Rabbit, Run - John Updike
30. The Paris Review Interviews - Various
31. How We Live - ed, Rust Hills
32. Superfiction - ed, Joe David Bellamy
33. Pushcart Prize Anthologies (no specific years given!)
34. The Writer On Her Work - ed, Sternburg
35. Manifestos Of Surrealism - Andre Breton
36. Documents Of Modern Art - ed, Motherwell
37. Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag
38. A Homemade World - Hugh Kenner
39. Letters - Flaubert
40. Sexual Perversity In Chicago - Mamet
41. The Changeling - Joy Williams
42. The New Fiction - ed, Joe David Bellamy
43. Going After Cacciato - Tim O'Brien
44. The Palm-Wine Drunkard - Amos Tutola
45. Searching For Caleb - Ann Tyler
46. Thank You - Kenneth Koch
47. Collected Poems - Frank O'Hara
48. Rivers And Mountains - John Ashbery
49. Tragic Magic - Wesley Brown
50. Mythologies - Roland Barthes
51. The Pleasure Of The Text - Barthes
52. For A New Novel - Robbe-Grillet
53. Falling In Place - Ann Beattie
54. In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country - William Gass
55. Fiction And The Figures Of Life - Gass
56. The World Within The Word - Gass
57. Advertisements For Myself - Mailer

59. Journey To The End Of The Night - Celine
60. The Box Man - Kobo Abe
61. Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino
62. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - Peter Handke
63. Kaspar And Other Plays - Peter Handke
64. Nadja - Andre Breton
65. Chimera - John Barth
66. Lost In The Funhouse - John Barth
67. The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
68. Black Tickets - Jayne Anne Phillips
69. Collected Stories - Peter Taylor
70. The Pure And The Impure - Colette
71. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please - Carver
72. Collected Stories - John Cheever
73. I Would Have Saved Them If I Could - Leonard Michaels
74. Collected Stories - Eudora Welty
75. The Oranging Of America - Max Apple
76. Collected Stories - Flannery O'Connor
77. Mumbo Jumbo - Ishmael Reed
78. Song Of Solomon - Toni Morrison
79. The Death Of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
80. The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting - Milan Kundera
81. The Rhetoric Of Fiction - Wayne C. Booth

possible ambien side effect

Increased irritability with respect to stupid fucking things over which I have no control. For example, the Transportation Safety Administration and the useless sign in West Hyattsville Metro, which keeps repeating the same service advisori es about West Falls Church over and over without a break to tell me something worthwhile like when the next train is coming. Felt similar sense of stupid impotent petty rage in the hotel in Maputo. Probably just general tiredness but maybe the ambien didn't help. Who knows. Don't feel any other side effects, fwiw.

chao maputo, ate logo

Writing this from my gate at OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg. The day started with a wee hangover thanks to a late night, first for a really fun dinner at Emma and her husband's place, with Aman, Padran (sp?), who runs the handicrafts project in Pemba and another couple that Emma and Gary are friends with. Cuttlefish stew and caprese salad with lots and lots of wine.

Gary is a big-time African music enthusiast and even saw Fela Kuti play a number of times. Apparently he was drugged out of his mind (Fela, that is) so the shows weren't that great. Oh well. But he shared a bunch of CD's with me, which I've now burned and am looking forward to listening to on the way home. The first one I put in, by Franco and TP OK Jazz, is awesome.

Aman, Padran and I went out after that to a bar that's open at night in the main train station. It was a good time. They are both very funny and interesting and we mostly just stood around and chatted. Got back to the hotel around 3 and drank a bottle of water.

This morning I went with Aman down to the annual national craft fair, held in part in an old colonial fort in downtown Maputo. There were some lovely things and some ugly things, and I think some genuine ivory carving, which may or not have been legal or ethically obtained. It's true that the hassling here isn't as persistent as elsewhere. People come up to you and try to sell you their shitty magnets or whatever but if you say no they go away. Other places I've been, people are a lot more insistent about stuff like that.

The AKF-wide rural development director, Tom, was on my flight from Maputo to Johannesburg this afternoon, so I had a chance to talk with him for quite a while. He had been in town for the AKAM Mozambique board meeting, which was this week. It's very refreshing to meet someone who's been in development a long time but isn't at all cynical about it. My cynicism is sometimes just knee-jerk at this point, probably in large part because Washington is such a cynical town, so speaking to someone in the same business but with a different attitude gave me pause. Cynicism is easy and sometimes right, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be taking a look at the things I feel that way about. God that's an ugly sentence. Tom also told me straight-up he could get me a job in Afghanistan or Tanzania tomorrow: the overt poaching Jo is always warning me about when I travel. I'm not ready to go yet but it's nice to get such a blatant offer.

Alright, think that'll do for now. Busy, short week, now gonna start a relaxed, long plane ride. Here's hoping for a couple of seats to myself again.

cesaria evora

What a voice.





Aman and I were talking about her today. The morning has been pretty quiet. Hanif, Aman and I went over the budget template, which is a little confusing but really more so for us than them. This is thanks to USDA's mind-bogglingly, insanely, pathetically convoluted and inefficient application system. AKF Moz won't have to touch the system, so no problems for them, but it does mean we need the budget to be in a very specific format when we get it from them. Hanif reiterated his desire to see the AKF Mali USDA budget, finally explaining that he's really most interested in seeing the personnel for that project. AKF Moz has never done a USDA project before, so they're not sure what the organigram should look like. Leanne has been very reluctant to share it with them so I've repeatedly said no to Hanif, but I just asked her again because I really don't understand what her resistance is.

Otherwise, things have been relaxed. Most everyone is out at meetings so it's just been Aman and me in the conference room. I've been answering some emails from the last couple of days and chatting. Aman is cool.

The real work starts up again at 2, when Jake from TechnoServe comes back to finish up the project frameworks and set next steps. TBC...

j. press

Bought a pair of nice khakis from there in May. On sale but still not cheap. The stitching is wearing apart along the bottom of the front pockets, one of the belt loops is totally worn out, and holes appeared today on the front right pocket and in the crotch. Poor, poor showing from what's supposed to be a nice brand. Gonna try to get my money back or at least exchange them when I get home, although my hopes are not high.