my summer book report, so far

Several posts ago I declared that one of my summer ambitions was to read a book a week. I haven't exactly met that goal (what a shock) as this has been a summer seemingly lazier than others. But whatever. Isn't summer by its nature supposed to be lazy?

Even though I haven't read as much as I intended, I have been reading. Here's the quick report of books I've finished (since I apparently have nothing else to blog about):

American Pastoral, Philip Roth: This is the first of Roth's books that I've read. It generated lots of thoughts about narrative voice, but it's been so long since I finished the book, I can hardly recall. I am curious though about Roth's continued use of Zuckerman as his narrator. In American Pastoral, the narrative is at least in part a psychological biography of Zuckerman (his imagined recounting of the Swede's life reflecting his own insecurities). Even though every book reflects something of its author, it's rare to have a consistent narrator constantly acknowledging that fact.

Flight Maps, Jennifer Price: I was compelled to read this after reading Price's compelling essay on nature in LA in The Believer. The book was adapted from her dissertation about American environmental history, focusing specifically on how nature was incorporated into urban contexts. She covers plastic pink flamingos, the Nature Company, and so on and argues for our need to understand nature through an urban lens in order to effect lasting change. The idea of the book is interesting, but the prose gets a little tedious. And she narrows her analysis by focusing too much on the Baby Boomer response to nature. Certainly Boomers have impacted the way we view nature, but they aren't the only story. No offense to Boomer types who may be reading this blog, but I think I'm suffering from Boomer fatigue.

Rainbow Bridge, Charles Bernheimer: A recounting of several anthropological expeditions in Southern Utah between Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge. Mostly I read this one because my great grandfather was one of the guides. Bernheimer was a funny character, a definite city dweller, trying to assert his ruggedness. Interesting descriptions of landscapes that are now partially hidden under Lake Powell.

Atonement, Ian McEwan: I loved this novel. I have a tendency to read ahead in most books and I did here, but not quite to the end. Because I read the almost-end twice, I thought things turned out one way, I really believed it. And I never bothered to consider who was telling the story. And then the last chapter and what I thought was truth was crafting/ editing (and I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to the realization). Of course, every story has been crafted and doesn't necessarily tell the truth. But we forget about that, we forget that there is always a narrator choosing what to tell, what to ignore, what to alter. This is what I liked most about the book, that I was so unaware of the narrator. I never asked myself who was telling the story. Then at the end, the narrator is revealed and we get an insight into the narrative choices. Even though I was distraught by the story not turning out the way I had thought, I found the reason for the alteration even more compelling and emotionally satisfying.

About Looking, John Berger: Theories of visual perception and art criticism. I like the way Berger gives art criticism a personal turn, trying to articulate his own response to a piece of art and trying to get at what the artists were thinking, feeling as they created.