Sorry for the long break. I was off to a rough start, but I'm back on track.
As promised by Amazon, the books arrived late on Tuesday and I spent the whole evening just staring at them and picking up each one for a minute, just to get distracted by another's cover. To make the matters even worse, Swafford's biography of Brahms and Magic Mountain came in the Wednesday mail. That pretty much ensured that I won't be able to properly focus on reading anything for days. Luckily, by now I'm all organized and settled.

Tevye is beautiful. It's simultaneously hilarious and filled with the kind of melancholic sorrow and longing for the days long gone. His folksy humor and greatly informative, if surprising, interpretations of the passages from the Torah ("Without wisdom and a good idea--you might as well ride a dead horse." or "Respect him and suspect him--in Ashkenaz that means a man can't trust his own dog.") make one laugh and wonder at the same time.
He is not a hero of our times; his parochial ignorance blatantly defying everything for which the XXI century stands. Tevye's faith in God is absolute, if blind. It provides him with a handy explanation (and excuse) for all his life's failures, which would have been laughable if it wasn't so honest.
I'm wondering to what big of an extent my understanding of this book is altered by the fact that I'm Eastern European. I might not be Jewish and, therefore, lack the insight into the spiritual musing of Tevye and his brethren, but my own childhood is a living proof that the Tevye-like mentality is not the artistic creation of Solem Aleichem, but the daily reality of many a rural communities in eastern Poland/western Ukraine. To an American reader, specifically to a gentile reader, it might be yet another example of the Eastern European backwardness, but I believe it to be more real, more human than many of the lives lived here.

But I think I'm getting carried away. I need to read deeper into the book and organize my thoughts somehow. More to come; this time with less of a break, hopefully.

Sholem Aleichem it is...

Today is the big day. The decision has been made. My first book is...

Sholem Aleichem Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son!



I have also decided to pick up two other 'A' books, Anna Akhmatova's Selected Poems and Hannah Arendt's The Portable Hannah Arendt, both from the Penguin Classics series.
According to Amazon, they will be here Wednesday.

In the meantime, please contribute to the Saul Bellow discussion below.

Saul Bellow

So the decision will be officially made and announced tomorrow, followed shortly (probably by the end of the coming week) by the publication of the 'B' list.
I've already started working on it, but I encountered some unexpected obstacles in the person of Saul Bellow. I've decided that I won't put more than one book by a particular author on the top 10 list and I'm completely baffled by Bellow--what should I read?

You have a couple of days to make your recommendations. Let's start by posting a list of some of his works alongside their GoodReads rankings.

1. The Actual: A Novella 3.24
2. The Adventures of Augie March 3.87
3. Dangling Man 3.59
4. Henderson the Rain King 3.72
5. Herzog 3.76
6. Humboldt's Gift 3.80
7. Mr. Sammler's Planet 3.62
8. To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account 3.51

I admit I was most driven to Dangling Man, Herzog or Humboldt's Gift (mind you I have never read anything by Bellow before), but I'm totally open to the other options so please, share your preferences.

You can also follow the discussion here:

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/56967.A_Z_Penguin_Classics_Challenge

I tried to set up a Facebook group, too, but I'm clearly not intellectually sophisticated enough for that.

I've decided to make Monday my deadline, so hurry up if you want your votes counted.
So far Sholem Aleichem is clearly leading, with Kingsley Amis and Aristotle tied in the second place. But there is still enough time for a complete reshuffle!

Todd (the husband), came up with a great idea on how to make my choices after the preliminary selection.
For each letter, I will choose ten titles (he believes that having to choose a set number each time will make this challenge more structured) and list them along with their rankings on GoodReads.com.
These rankings will be significant only if your posts, suggestions and the overall discussion don't stir me in some other direction. In other words, it is your 'job' to try and convince me to read something other than the title ranked highest by GoodReads.com.
And your motives may vary--from recommending your favorite book to making me read something really hard and challenging, to suggesting a novel you've always wanted to read but never had a chance to. So please, do argue with the GoodReads community (by the way, I'm currently working on making the users of this great website involved in this project, too).

Also, I promise I make my preliminary selections without looking at any rankings in advance. I find out how a particular book is ranked only after it makes it to the final ten.

Below you'll find the 'A' list updated to ten positions with each titled followed by its GoodReads ranking (on a 0.00 to 5.00 scale with 0.01 increments):

1. Edwin A. Abbott Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions 3.75
2. Andy Adams The Log of a Cowboy 3.66
3. James Agee A Death in the Family 3.86
4. Sholem Aleichem Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son 4.41
5. Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre Fantomas 3.71
6. Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim 3.83
7. Mulk Raj Anand Untouchable 3.55
8. Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio 3.78
9. Henry Adams Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres 4.04
10. Aristotle Poetics 3.70

And let the real festivities begin!

It's always hardest to start. So here we go. I'm already two sentences in.

I'm at an intriguing point in my life right now. I just started a new family, just graduated from college, just lost a job, just applied to a new school, just turned 25. In all those 'justs', I have recently realized that I'm in a desperate need to keep learning, discovering, exploring. And what's a better way to learn, discover, and explore than reading?

These noble thoughts coincided with three other events.

1. I just married one of the most brilliant and intellectually fascinating people I have ever met in my life, who also happens to be an avid reader of everything from sci-fi to Pynchon, to Dostoyevsky.

2. I accidentally discovered an awesome forum for those not only into reading, but also into classical music and philosophy. (Check it out at www.amazon.com under Customer Discussions > Classical Music forum > What books are you reading right now?)

3. Just as accidentally, I came into possession of Penguin Classics: A Complete Annotated Listing, which is a bordering-on-perfect ultimate reading list for those of us who aspire to calling themselves intellectuals.

And this is how this project came into being.

I have decided to read my way through the Penguin Classics collection. One book at a time. Starting with the letter A, I will read one book which author's name starts with each letter of the alphabet. (I want to believe that once I reach Z, I will be so inspired and my curiosity so awakened, that without taking a break, I will jump right back to the beginning and start a second cycle. But I'm not going to hold my breath.)

The problem is, I really don't know where to start. And that's where you come in handy. I've made a preliminary selection, but I'm far from deciding on the book. Please, have a look at what follows and help me figure out what would be the most splendid of beginnings for such an undertaking.

1. Edwin A. Abbott Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
2. Andy Adams The Log of a Cowboy
3. James Agee A Death in the Family
4. Sholem Aleichem Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son
5. Marcel Allain & Pierre Souvestre Fantomas
6. Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim
7. Mulk Raj Anand Untouchable
8. Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio

I am currently finishing Gogol's Dead Souls, so I still have a couple of days to make up my mind as to what to read next. I'm also waiting for two books I have just ordered on Amazon (Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain and the biography of Johannes Brahms) that might distract me from immediately starting on the Classics. But I'm determined not to postpone it for too long (I'm definitely not waiting till I finish Magic Mountain, which I already read once years ago).

Knowing me, this blog (by the way, I just hate the word 'blog') will soon turn into a more general rambling on books, music, movies, culture, and politics. But for now, please have a look at the list above and let me know what you think. All contributions to my little project (criticism, both constructive and not, included) are welcome.

And by the way, what books are you reading right now?