Time Enough At Last: Part Deux

Well, A Confederacy of Dunces is all behind me now.  Not a bad novel, but I can't really say that it blew me away.  Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood.  Maybe, coming off of reading The Road, and before that Kavalier and Clay, my expectations for Pulitzer-winning novels is just too high.  Whatever the reason, it wasn't really the book for me.  Still, I'm glad I read it.

So, back to the list.  Just to refresh our collective memory, here it is:

1) 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke
2) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
3) Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
4) And the Ass Saw the Angel by Nick Cave
5) Better Than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson
6) Casino Royale by Ian Flemming
7) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind by Chuck Barris
8) Danse Macabre by Stephen King
9) Dracula by Bram Stoker
10) Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Palahniuk
11) Gates of Eden by Ethan Coen
12) Ghosts of the Fireground by Peter M. Leschak
13) Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert
14) How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
15) I, Claudius by Robert Graves
16) Imajica by Clive Barker
17) Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
18) Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
19) Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
20) Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way by Bruce Campbell
21) Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
22) My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due
23) Otherland: Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams
24) Portrait of a Killer by Patricia Cornwell
25) Psycho by Robert Bloch
26) Roanoke by Lee Miller
27) Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman by Walter Miller, Jr.
28) Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card
29) Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock
30) Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
31) The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
32) The End of the World: A History by Otto Friedrich
33) The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez Reverte
34) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
35) The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny
36) The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
37) The Hobbit (Annotated) by J.R.R. Tolkien
38) The Incredible Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
39) The Kid Stays In the Picture by Robert Evans
40) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
41) The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zambardo
42) The Monk and the Riddle by Randy Komisar
43) The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
44) The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
45) The Sicilian by Mario Puzo
46) Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
47) Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
48) Tyrannosaurus Sue by Steve Fiffer
49) Valis by Philip K. Dick
50) Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore

Dunces was a long one, so I'm looking for something short and punchy, maybe some sci-fi or some breezy nonfiction.  C'mon dice, don't fail me now...

21) Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

Great.  Nothing better to wash down a long, slightly-depressing pseudo-comedy than a really long, ostensibly depressing gothic novel!  Don't get me wrong; it wouldn't be on my list if I didn't want to read it, but I was really hoping for something lighter.  It doesn't help that my wife, who is brilliant and better read than me by an order of magnitude, calls it "One of the most boring-ass novels I've ever read."

If I wasn't so slavishly devoted to my dice and my self-imposed restrictions, I would have rerolled.  But, much like the loom in the movie Wanted, fate has given me my target, and it's up to me to curve the bullets of my attention around the hanging dead pigs of boredom.  (Not much of a metaphor, I know, but you have to agree that that movie kicked a fair amount of ass.)

So, I'm off to see what Mr. Maturin has in store for me.  But on my next roll, if Ann Radcliffe comes up, I'm calling a Mulligan.

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