Sundown, Yellow Moon - Larry Watson

I started reading this because I took a few classes with the author when I was in school and he is AMAZING. Dr. Watson is an incredibly insightful man. My own writing improved so much during my time learning from him that I decided to read all of his books.

Sundown, Yellow Moon is very interesting so far. I don't know what to make of it. The protagonist's best friend's father murders a senator and then commits suicide and noone really knows why. This novel is the after story: the protagonist, a writer, reflects on the events of that day nearly forty years later, trying to piece together what  happened, and why, and the aftermath of the tragedy. A review in Esquire compares it to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which I haven't read fully, so I can't comment, but the review does make me want to read more Dostoevsky, if that's any indication of how I feel about this novel. It's ridiculously well-written, but it's a different style than what I am used to reading. I'm going to make a big assumption and say that's because Dr. Watson is much older than I am. His writing, and his plot, reflect an America that I have never experienced. I'm about halfway through, and I have a good feeling about this.

Sundown, Yellow Moon reminds me of The Body of Christopher Creed a little bit. In the latter, a boy named Christopher Creed (surprise, surprise) mysteriously disappears and noone knows what to make of it. Throughout the book, the narrator explores different reasons for his disappearance, and ultimately it comes to haunt him constantly. I don't remember what happens at the end - I'm going to have to read it again at some point.

Books to Read

Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky
Some Great Thing - Colin McAdam
A Beautiful Truth - Colin McAdam
Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Unconsoled - Kazuo Ishiguro
When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Torrents of Spring - Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
To Have and Have Not - Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Across the River and into the Trees - Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Islands in the Stream  - Ernest Hemingway
The Garden of Eden - Ernest Hemingway
Anna Karenina
Lolita
Basically everything by Marian Keyes

Introduction

I had the idea to create this blog about two years ago while I was driving around Hawaii. I was trying to decide what ebook I should download next from a fairly long list of the classics, when I realized I didn't even know for sure which ones I had read and which ones I hadn't. I mean, everyone knows what Jane Eyre, or The Secret Garden, or The Picture of Dorian Gray is about. And if you're like me, you've tracked down the movies and read all the scholarly criticism too because it just makes the books so much more interesting. It also makes it a lot more confusing when you're trying to figure out which books you've actually read versus what you've just researched or studied. That's when I decided I needed to keep a reading list. Not just of the books I want to read, which only grows, never diminishes, but of the books that I have read, and what I thought about them.

I'm hoping this will force me to read more. When I was a child you couldn't tear me away from my books, and in college I was an English major (enough said). But sadly the amount I read has significantly decreased in the past few years, and this is my plan to remedy that.

This is my personal diary, my very own book club, my love letter to literature. :)