A Month in Siena 10/16/2023
About Scott: Reading
This photo was not staged
Dijon, France, November 2018.
Reading time: 2 minutes
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I try to read twice as much as I write.
That doesn't always work out.
Serious Literature™
I spent six years in a PhD program for French literature. Some of what I read was strange, and some was lamentable. A lot was challenging. Most of it was interesting. Here are some of my favorite books from those years.
- Perceval, Chrétien de Troyes. Note to self: if a guy walks through the house with a bleeding lance, ask someone what's going on.
- Le quart livre, François Rabelais. Among other things, a fat flying pig shits mustard over an army of sausages. Love it or leave it, I guess...?
- La princesse de Clèves, Madame de La Fayette. One of the first modern novels in the West, published in 1678. It's difficult for us to understand how revolutionary it was.
- La vie de Marianne, Pierre Marivaux. Style so perfect (or precious) that le marivaudage was coined to mean "light, seductive, gallant language."
- Les liaisons dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. An astonshing novel to which the splendid films don't do justice.
- Splendeurs et misères des courtisans, Honoré de Balzac. Nothing short of a masterpiece. So often, I shook my head: Lucien, what are you doing?!?
- Salammbô, Gustave Flaubert. Taking the city via the aqueduct—and the battles! They didn't make a graphic novel out of L'éducation sentimentale, I can tell you that.
- Le balcon, Jean Genet. This play is similar to Jaws: most spellbinding when we don't see the shark.
There are many English language books, both classic and contemporary, that I "should've read" but haven't. My knowledge of Shakespeare is meager. I've read no Whitman, Keats, or Yeats, Tom Wolfe is a void, nothing by Toni Morrison. Etc, etc.
It doesn't matter that I've read all of Rabelais, Racine, and Flaubert, among others, or that I can still recite poems by Baudelaire, Apollinaire, and Villon. I will never get around to so many popular or important works in my native language, and every once in a while that embarrasses me.
Travel Writing
Travel writing is easily my favorite genre.
There are many English language books—classics and contemporaries—that I "should have read" but haven't. I will never get around to them...Sometimes it embarrasses me.
In grade school, Miroslav Šašek's "This Is" series enthralled me, in particular, This is New York and This is London.
Later, I read Kon-Tiki, which I found captivating. Scary, too: it was all the sharks they pulled onto the deck of the raft. And the whale shark, of course.
As an adult, the first travel book I remember picking up for pleasure was in late 1991, Keath Fraser's anthology Bad Trips.
Since then, I've read hundreds more. I started working my way through the travel section of the Westerville Public Library, an award-winning institution in my hometown, but then I decided to focus on my own curated list.
I'm also writing my own travel book, Backseat Cities.
Other genres
Occasionally, I read historical novels, spy novels, and police procedurals (mostly Wetering and Simenon); history, biographies, and intelligence community memoirs.
Recent non-travel literature I have enjoyed:
- Grant, Ron Chernow. Definitive. Grant was almost certainly not drunk all the time.
- Waterloo, Bernard Cornwell. At the very end, Napoleon still could have won the battle, but a final unclear message sealed his fate.
- A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers. Content was good, form was perfect. Every single sentence was butter.
- A Woman of No Importance, Sonia Purcell. Virginia Hall was a fascinating woman and tremendous spy.
- The Big Burn, Timothy Egan. Some horrifying scenes about a wildfire. Starts enthralling, then peters out a little. Still worth it.
- Good Kids, Bad City, Kyle Swenson. A crazy story. This is exactly why we should abolish the death penalty.
Note to self: if a guy walks through the house with a bleeding lance, ask why.
Newspapers and Magazines
My subscriptions, FWIW:
- The Columbus Dispatch
The EconomistIn June of 2020, I let the subscription lapse. I couldn't make the commitment every week.- Esquire
- Vanity Fair
- Condé Nast Traveler
- AFAR Magazine
- Travel + Leisure
France MagazineIt was fun reading this, but, sadly, the quality just wasn't there. Time to say goodbye.Poets & WritersI did not look forward to reading a single issue.Writer's DigestI'm never going to publish traditionally, I'm never going to care about the industry, I'm never going to query an agent. This magazine was either too basic or not related to anything I wanted to do.
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