In other news, please welcome the official bookstore of the Lioness Den Nobel Reading Project, Encore Bookstore. Located right here in Winston-Salem's West End neighborhood, you can drop by and peruse, or e-mail Mark for help in locating hard-to-find volumes. He's featuring Nobel prizewinning books (and this project) in the middle of the store, and people are grabbing them! When you've selected your books, head next door to Morning Dew and enjoy yourself over a nice cup of coffee. Mild Miles Mondays are your best bet--Miles Davis all day, every day. Try the featured Bitches Brew. Darn good cup o' joe. Tell Jim that Kim sent you.
Alright, about my little project. By August 5 of 2002 (my birthday), I'm aiming to read at least one book by each of the Nobel Prize for Literature Laureates. Thankfully, I've already read a few of these authors. Even more thankfully, one of them was Ernest Hemingway. No offense to you Ernie fans, but at page 80, I'd had just about enough of him and that fish. I'll tackle another one of his books if and when I finish everyone else.
So here's my call to you--join me! On this and the next pages, I've listed each laureate, and a link to the work that I've selected. A few notes about that:
- If there is nothing listed next to the author's name, my initial search came up with "out of print" or "not in translation". I'll keep looking, and keep you posted.
- As to the message board, keep it clean and friendly. In case of no-goodniks, messages can be deleted, and IP addresses blocked. I have faith in you, Denizens.
- When I read a book, I'll change the font color to green. Tranquil green. You-may-now-pass-go green. Aah.
- Finally, as this gets rolling, I'll post short reviews of each book as I finish. This includes books I've completed before beginning the project.
At the moment, I'm reading Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain , but I won't necessarily move in a particular order. Why am I doing this in the first place? I can't say that I know for sure, but maybe it's a need to pull back a little from our constant infiltration with the hip, the trendy, the sexy, and the now. While I certainly read that stuff, too, sometimes I wonder if we're losing touch with our world literary heritage. I certainly don't go into this convinced that these are the definitive best writers of all time. Awards and competitions are inherently political, forgetful, and sometimes even unjust. They sometimes overlook the meek but great.
But let's face it, these folks won the Nobel. Not exactly "chopped liver" material, okay? If you get confused and find yourself unable to pronounce things on occasion...well, good. It's probably something important that we lost consciousness of somewhere between Danielle Steele and John Grisham. Either way, consider this a year around the world...literally.
So, grab your library and/or credit cards, and let's see how far we can get by August 5, 2002. Or, set your own date and keep in touch. Now go
read stuff.
