Summer Reading

I've written before about the peculiarities of my summer reading situation, so I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice to say, this year I made a log sheet to record whatever I started reading, with a space for noting the date when I finished. Since June 1, I have read the following:

How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard (which I'm reviewing for Comment)
The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad, by Stacy Horn (research)
Presbyterian Creeds, by Jack Rogers
The Viceroy of Ouidah, by Bruce Chatwin
Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee
The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien
Dr. Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party, by Graham Greene
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (yes, for the first time -- no more bragging about not having read it)
Small World, by David Lodge
The Praying Mantises, by Hubert Monteithet

The only one of these books I brought with me on the road for the past two months was Stacy Horn's. The rest I've scavenged here and there at bookstores along the way, from Waco to Seattle. Everything on the list has fascinated me in one way or another. Lodge was, as always, delightful (Bayard quotes him, which is what prompted me to snatch the book from my wife, who originally picked it out). The Third Policeman was recommended by my friend Jeff Baldwin, who'd just finished it, and is well worth reading. I finally broke down and read Gatsby after overhearing a conversation about it that I couldn't very well participate in, not knowing anything about the book. I've always been happy to admit to not having read it -- when you've read Ulysses, you feel like you've earned the right not to have read a lot of other famous stuff -- and I even thought this lacunae might prove useful if I ever found myself playing Humiliation, a game introduced by one of Lodge's characters and described by Bayard. But now I'll have to find another "classic everyone but me has read."

Biggest revelation? Chatwin. I'm reading In Patagonia now.