winterbadger | (no subject)

34/50: Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon. I don't seem to have listed this as ongoing, and I don't think I've reviewed it before, but I've been reading it for so long that I had to go back and re-read some sections to be sure I had read all of it. It's a great collection of essays by one of my fast-becoming-favourite writers; the theme binding them all together is pretty much what the subtitle says--an exploration of the borders of writing. The border between truth and lies and between fact and fiction; the border between literature and genre writing; the border between creation and autobiography; between one perspective, one culture, one worldview and another. I find myself, even now as I flip through it to find points to summarise it, drawn into re-reading each of the essays, to remind myself of the intricate and detailed pattern that Chabon lays out in it and to simply enjoy again the pleasure of his prose. I've started to try to take a look at my library critically and start divesting myself of books that, however interesting I found them on first reading, I will probably never read or refer to again. I will certainly re-read this many times.

Guest of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz