Summer reading

I'm looking at the photo of my summer reading stack and thinking, "why are there so many men?" Out of ten books, only one is by a woman. I have another photo of even more books I want to read this summer, so I will have to compare them. However, it is disconcerting that I read so much "male literature" since half the people on Earth are female and three out of four people living in my house are female. Two books not pictured that I've read this summer are by women: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich and Book Love by Penny Kittle. Anyway, here is my list of books I want to read this summer:

Books I've Already Started But Not Finished (Yet)
1. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
2. Book Love by Penny Kittle
3. Tenth of December by George Saunders
4. Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
5. The Shallows by David Carr
6. Habibi by Craig Thompson
7. Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher
8. The Shadow of Sirius by WS Merwin
9. Essays After Eighty by Donald Hall
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
11. Girls To The Front by Sara Marcus
12. A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen
13. Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
14. Zazen by Vanessa Veselka
15. The Flight of the Iguana by David Quammen
16. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
17. How Children Succeed by Paul Tough

I have to admit it: I'm one of those scattered, idealist, benevolent-to-my-own-detriment souls: I give too much attention to every book, starting a new one before I've put the last one down. It is difficult for me to abandon a book I've already invested in and begun reading. I live by the words, "lost time is never found." However, I do seem comfortable abandoning a book once I've utterly lost the narrative thread. A few examples: Habibi by Craig Thompson which is so long with so many plot lines and times lines but a lack of investment in the mysterious characters. Also: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. After reading Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, I thought I could plow through a text of any density regardless of my fading comprehension, just reading for the sensation of language. But I knew Gravity's Rainbow was going somewhere. I just didn't know where.

Books I Have Bought But Not Read (Yet)
1. Long Walk To Freedom by Nelson Mandela
2. The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
3. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
4. The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
5. March by John Lewis
6. Fishgirl by David Wiesner
7. Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel
8. The Floodgates of the Wonderworld by Justin Hocking
9. The Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Bermingham
10. The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
11. The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
12. A Separate Peace by John Knowles

I'm just disclosing the type of reader I am as well as my relationship with books. I fetishize books as objects. I lament their disposability and tendency to be discarded. I hoard books. I buy them and I don't read them and feel ashamed. I spend too much time on my phone not reading. However, this summer I am going to change all that. I will donate many of my old books and books I've bought or inherited in my classroom library to our school library, if they are books we lack, need, or that other teachers have requested.

I've also put reading at the forefront of my goals this summer, trying to put in at least an hour if not more every day. It is not easy because I have two toddlers (twin girls) who demand a lot of attention, food, love, discipline, and all those good things children need. But I am not a single parent. However, my wife and I spend time together, not reading, but planning our schedule, finances, and future together. I tend to wake up at six a.m. when my kids get up because I am afraid one of them will climb the kitchen counters looking for chocolate chips or marshmallows and fall off and get hurt. This morning I intercepted her right as she was grasping a sack of chocolate chips and she threw a fit. I compromised by making chocolate chip pancakes. They were more like cookies than pancakes. This is what some teachers do on a Monday morning in the summertime. When my wife and I went to Baja, my saintly mother-in-law watched our girls and forsook their naps in lieu of putting them to bed earlier. The genius of this idea is that a caretaker only puts the children down once, rather than twice (which takes hours), and has more "adult time" since the children are tired and ready for bedtime earlier, having missed their naps. However "adult time" (AKA free time) is a dubious myth because adults are frequently exhausted by caregiving and immediately fall asleep right after the children do.

In any case, here is one more list concerning my progress reading over the last two months:

Books I Have Read So Far This Summer (June and July)
1. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
2. Book Love by Penny Kittle
3. Tenth of December by George Saunders
4. Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie
5. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
6. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
7. Fences by August Wilson

Currently Reading
1. The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig
2. Literary Theory by Terry Eagleton
3. AP English and Literature Teacher's Guide

I will be lucky if I reach my goal of twenty books this summer! I'll have to cheat and read some graphic novels!

Baja

Two weeks ago, my wife and I went to La Bufadora, just south of Ensenada in Baja California. I have never been to Mexico before and I almost feel like this doesn't quite count because Mexico has such a rich history and culture and we hardly scratched the surface. This town in particular has a large number of ex-patriots living in "Rancho La Bufadora" where my wife grew up spending the summers with family and friends who would drive down from Los Angeles and stay here in trailers they parked on the cliffs surrounding the bay. Today many of the trailers are decript and decaying. Our electricity, which comes from a car battery, allows us to the flush the toilet. The non-potable water from the bathroom faucet and toilet comes from a tank that is filled by a guy who drives around in a truck with a huge water tank. My mother-in-law calls it "camping" and it basically is since all other electricity comes from batteries or the sun. 

When the sun sets, we use cheap litle solar-powered lights outside and flashlights inside. We cook (mostly boiled water for coffee) with a small propane camping stove. Our drinking water comes from bottles we brought with us. My main project was using a machete to cut away iceplant that had overgrown some stairs and a walkway. Of course there are numerous other "projects" related to electricity, carpentery, plumbing, fishing, and other trades I know very little about. I can tell when people came down here more often that it was an active, busy place. However, I just chose to sit and read for most of the time. Tourists buses arrive every few days so people can see "la bufadora" or "the blowhole" on the other side of town. A pair of seals followed a large group of kayakers and the bay, and far off, I saw a whale spout. We brought our small black dog, Edie and visited the vendors and restaurants. I also ate the best fish tacos I've ever had.