Reading List

What the writers at CAI are reading or have just finished (Sgt. Grumbles will most likely win):

July

• Money, Greed, and God by Jay W. Richards (Mark)

April

• The Resurrection by John Gardner (Elijah)

March

• The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (Elijah)
• Being Arab by Samir Kassir (Mark)

February

• Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality by David Benner (Elijah)
• The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizens Guide by Sally C. Pipes (Mark)

January 2009

• 2666 by Roberto Bolano (it’s like a thousand pages long) (Grumbles)
• The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard by, well, obviously (Grumbles)
• Bad Haircut by Tom Perrotta (author of Election & Little Children, as well as The Abstinence Teacher, all of which I would highly recommend) (Grumbles)
• Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (NG is either a big hit [Sandman, American Gods, Fragile Things] or big miss [Neverwhere, Anansi Boys] with me…this looks like it will be on the “hit” side of the scale!) (Grumbles)

December 2008

• The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien (Sgt. Grumbles…a quote that captures some quality of this seminal phantasy/academic satire: “Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek higher places.”  O’Brien is considered the third great Irish novelist, alongside Joyce & Beckett.  The word ‘pancake’ is used often and in a baffling manner.  Supposedly, this book was influential on the series “Lost” and Desmond can be seen reading it in one episode. )
• Lancelot by Walker Percy (Sgt. Grumbles…Percy is so readable, yet he somehow is still only going on about the same thing in every one of his novels–seesawing on the tension between the now and the eternal, lust and holy longing, caste and equality)
• What is the What by Dave Eggers (Sgt. Grumbles…feels like something I “should” read because of the topic–displaced Ethiopian in urban America–and the influential status of the author on the contemporary literary scene, but I feel a bit like I’m slogging along at best)

November 2008

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (Elijah)
• Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs by Albert Speer (Mark – unique insight into Hitler’s world)
• The Ideas that Conquered the World by Michael Mandelbaum (Pete)
• Democracy in America (Vol. I) by Alexis de Tocqueville (Mark)
• Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI (Elijah)
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Sgt. Grumbles…like 700 pages long, hypnotic madness and brilliance, literally a labyrinth of ideas, a nihilistic Moby Dick without a whale or sea, just darkness and multiple page long footnotes…you’ll never think of the Minotaur in the same way again)

October 2008

• The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (Mark)
• Reason In The Balance by Phillip E. Johnson (Mark)
• Man in the Dark by Paul Auster (Sgt. Grumbles)
• Deaf Sentence by David Lodge (Sgt. Grumbles)
• The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith (Sgt. Grumbles)