50-book challenge COMPLETE

I finished book number 50 on December 31. Here is the final list.

1. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
2. Room by Emma Donoghue
3. Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
4. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
5. The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
6. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
7. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
8. The Book of Tea by Kakuro Okazawa
9. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
10. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
11. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
12. A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
13. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
14. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
15. Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
16. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
17. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
18. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
19. The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
20. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
21. Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell
22. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
23. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
24. Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
25. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
26. LIAR by Justine Larbalestier
27. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
28. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
29. Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
30. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
31. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
32. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
33. A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
35. Island beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende
36. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
37. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
38. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
39. Holes by Louis Sachar
40. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
41. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
42. The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto
43. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
44. The Time of Their Lives by Al Silverman
45. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
46. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
47. The Niigata Sake Book by the Niigata Sake Brewers Association
48. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
49. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
50. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Some statistics:

• I read a total of 13566 pages
• 32 were by male authors; 18 were by female authors
• 27 were by American authors, eight were by Japanese authors, five were by British authors, three were by Canadian authors, two were by African authors (one Nigerian and one Zimbabwean), and one each were by Russian, Swedish, Australian, Brazilian and Irish authors. (Hey, I read at least one book from every continent!)
• The number of nonwhite authors I read is embarrassingly low. How low depends on what you consider nonwhite, but if we're talking people who actually face oppression (ie not Isabel Allende or Japanese from Japan), then I would count two. Yes, two. Something to focus on this year. 
• 12 books were translated from other languages (mostly Japanese; also Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and Swedish); the rest were written in English. 
• 41 were fiction; 9 were nonfiction
• 41 were post-1950, five were written between 1900 and 1950, three were written in the 19th century, and one was written in the 17th century
• 32 were print books; 18 were ebooks
• I reread 3 books (This Side of Paradise, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Fahrenheit 451); the rest were new
• I read more than one book by the same author in six cases: Mark Twain (2 books), Ernest Hemingway (2 books), Suzanne Collins (3 books), Haruki Murakami (2 books), Yukio Mishima (2 books), and Terry Pratchett (2 books).
• My favorite books I read this year: Revolutionary Road, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Hunger Games, The Left Hand of Darkness, East of Eden, LIAR, Holes, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

So that concludes the challenge, I guess. I'm hoping to get back to writing about Japan here; I thought about continuing to blog about the books I'm reading by doing short summaries 5 to a post or so, but instead I think I want to start using Goodreads. One of my favorite parts of doing the book challenge (both this year and when I last did it in 2007) was tracking the books I read and being able to see what the breakdown was at the end of the year on genre, fiction vs. nonfiction, etc. I certainly don't need to read 50 books to do that, but it's the only time I've bothered to, so this year I'll try to keep doing it no matter how few or many books I read. Now that the challenge is over I'm letting myself read all the long books I've been putting off--I'm almost done with The Girl Who Played With Fire (which is fantastic) and next am going to read Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Excitement!

50. We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson
Penguin Books, 169 pages, 1962

I kind of think of this as the surprise ending to my book challenge. I bought the ebook edition from Green Apple Books back when I first got my Kindle because someone had recommended it on Ask Metafilter, and then I never got around to reading it until finally I found myself on a train to Hiroshima on December 30 with 49 books read and thought "well hell, this one is only 169 pages long." And it ended up being the most original, atmospheric, and imaginative book I've read all year. The story, about two sisters who live with their uncle in a house outside the village after the rest of their family was poisoned to death, is brilliantly creepy. Constance, the older sister, who was accused of murder after the poisoning but eventually acquitted, is agoraphobic and never ventures beyond the garden, but far more unsettling is her obsession with housework and placid refusal to acknowledge any unpleasantness (of which there is plenty in the Blackwood household). When someone complains about her sister Merricat's antisocial behavior, she smiles and offers them a piece of onion pie. Uncle Julian is obsessed with documenting and solving the murders, and babbles on about the topic to anyone who will listen, far beyond the point of decency. However, it's Merricat, the narrator, who's the most disturbing. Eighteen but childish, she shows a slavish devotion to Constance, but imagines everyone else's deaths in graphic detail for offenses like knocking on the door. Despite her magical protections on the household (which resemble OCD more than anything), the Blackwoods' cousin Charles comes to visit, and that's when everything comes tumbling down. I seriously cannot say enough good things about this book--being inside Merricat's world is terrifying in a completely original way.

49. Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Del Rey (Ballantine), 1953, 179 pages

I read this when I was in the 10th grade, and revisiting it was kind of a bummer, because it just wasn't that good. (Well, it did win the National Book Award.) I've always remembered it as one of the best books I was required to read in high school. I can see exactly why it appealed to my 15-year-old self--ornate, overblown language that I considered literary and a clear message that was delivered largely in impassioned speeches by various characters--and those are exactly the reasons I dislike it now. The plot is flimsy, the characters one-dimensional, and the author clearly has an axe to grind. Bradbury also rants (in the book itself and in his various afterwords) about the tyranny of minorities and how objections to works of literature on the grounds of racial/gender/religious sensitivity will be the downfall of aesthetics and society. Which is, you know, real cute, but off-putting. He refers to "women's libbers" in a supplementary interview (also included in the book) that was conducted in 2003, which is just plain embarrassing. The "women's libbers" have a point: the only roles women play in this book are brainwashed wife (Mildred) or non-threatening catalyst (sort of a muse) for the male character's important revelations (Clarisse). I found it especially striking that the nomads at the end of the book, the ones who have memorized various works of literature and now represent the repository of human knowledge in the book-burning era, are all specifically referred to as men. Perhaps Bradbury thought that a mixed-gender nomad camp would provide too many distractions.

A funny side note: For quite a while, in my support for ebooks as a medium, I had in the back of my mind a moment in Fahrenheit 451 where Faber tells Montag that it's the message that matters, not the medium, and that in fact even the TV parlors could serve the same purpose as literature if they would project "the same infinite detail and awareness." Turns out that Bradbury has refused to allow ebook versions of his books for years, and has only in the past year or so been forced into accepting an ebook deal with the realization that no publisher would renew his print contract without an ebook component. I have as much fondness for the physical components of a book as anyone, and I do think there's a debate to be had about what modern technology has done to our attention spans, but I find most arguments against ebooks to be hopelessly sentimental. A book is so much more than just paper and ink and glue.

48. Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Anchor Books, 209 pages, 1959

One funny consequence of my awful procrastination on the 50-book challenge is that to clean up, I ended up reading lots of short but wonderful books that I would never have otherwise gotten around to. Somewhere I had gotten the idea that this book was highbrow, difficult, and maybe a little male-focused (which I tend to find tedious), but it was just the opposite.

Things Fall Apart is a portrait of Ibo tribal life at the end of the 19th century, and Achebe's plain, rhythmic writing style gives it the power of myth. Although parts of the culture portrayed in the book (such as the custom of leaving twins to die in the forest, or the murder of Okonkwo's adopted son, Ikemefuna, on the order of the village oracle) will seem brutal to modern readers no matter what, it's a far cry from Heart of Darkness*, which Achebe was in part responding to and refuting when he wrote his novel. The top review on Amazon says that Achebe gives the wild, "savage" drumbeats in Heart of Darkness a story and a context, which I think is the main function of the novel--the average American has a backwards view of Africa and its people, but Achebe gives us an intimate look at the customs, traditions, personalities, and daily life in one Ibo village. It's also an interesting look at power and how it affects social change--Okonkwo, the village strong man, upholds customs he finds repellent because he is afraid of appearing weak, while those at the bottom of the social food chain who have nothing to lose are the ones who  most readily join the Christian missionaries when they come and eventually upset the balance of tribal life.

*Heart of Darkness was saved from earning the title of worst book I was required to read in high school only due to the presence of Lord of the Flies.  Dear Folsom Cordova Unified School District, get with the fucking program. Throwing in The Joy Luck Club and calling it a day does not a female minority perspective make.