2010 marks the sixth year of my 52 Books in 52 Weeks meme, where I challenge myself to read a minimum of 52 books in the coming calendar year, and then briefly review each book here on A Modest Construct.

The Others

Other bloggers doing this meme or some variant:

• JMadigan (Not 52-in-52, but reading & reviewing nonetheless)
• Dennis Kennedy

The Books

Fire in the Grove
by John Esposito

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Year: 2005

Pages: 288

№1

Still Life With Woodpecker
by Tom Robbins

Publisher: Bantam Books

Year: 1980/1990

Pages: 277

№2

Last Words
by George Carlin

Publisher: Free Press

Year: 2009

Pages: 320

№3

An Abundance of Katherines
by John Green

Publisher: Speak

Year: 2006/2008

Pages: 272

№4

Ender's Game
by Orson Scott Card

Publisher: Tor

Year: 1985/1994

Pages: 384

№5

Perfect Rigor
by Masha Gessen

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Year: 2009

Pages: 256

№6

Snow Crash
by Neal Stephenson

Publisher: Spectra

Year: 1992/1993

Pages: 480

№7

The Wild Things
by Dave Eggers

Publisher: McSweeney's

Year: 2009

Pages: 300

№8

The Guinea Pig Diaries
by A.J. Jacobs

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year: 2009

Pages: 256

№9

Confessions of an Economic Hitman
by John Perkins

Publisher: Plume

Year: 2004/2005

Pages: 303

№10

I’m afraid I lack the time for a full-featured wrap-up, but I’ve summarized the relevant information into a table of handy stats. In short, the general makeup of this past year’s books was about the same, with slightly fewer re-reads.

1. Andrew Bird – [Weather Systems #02] I
2. Farmakon – [A Warm Glimpse #05] Same
3. The Polyphonic Spree – [The Fragile Army #06] Section 26 [We Crawl]
4. Souvenir’s Young America – [An Ocean Without Water #03] Dark Was the Night Cold Was the Ground
5. Tool – [Undertow #09] Flood
6. The Smashing Pumpkins – [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness CD1 #12] Muzzle
7. Spiritual Beggars – [Ad Astra #12] Mantra
8. Sergei Rachmaninov – [24 Preludes, Sonata No. 2 CD1 #07] Prelude, op.23 no.6 in E flat major
9. Ours – [Distorted Lullabies #01] Fallen Souls
10. Oasis – [(What's the Story) Morning Glory? #05] Hey Now!

1. Radiation 4 – [Wonderland #06] John vs. The Elephant
2. Stars – [Do You Trust Your Friends? #11] He Lied About Death (Metric)
3. VAST – [Visual Audio Sensory Theater #11] Untitled
4. Ulver – [Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven & Hell CD1 #10] A Memorable Fancy, Plates 12-13
5. Té – [It Be The Thinking As 'the Song' Of Realistic Sound From The World Which Resounds #10] Human Being Is Doing The Ability That Destroys Self Oneself By Reason ‘有’
6. Ben Folds – [Ben Folds Live #08] Fred Jones Part 2
7. Atheist – [Piece Of Time #07] Why Brother?
8. Grails – [Doomsdayer's Holiday #01] Doomsdayer’s Holiday
9. Nine Inch Nails – [Purest Feeling #09] Down In It
10. Tori Amos – [Scarlet's Walk #05] Carbon

1. Missy Higgins – [On A Clear Night #09] Peachy
2. Mogwai – [Come on Die Young #02] Cody
3. Opeth – [My Arms, Your Hearse #02] April Ethereal
4. Joaquin Rodrigo – [Concierto de Aranjuez (Romero) #10] Invocation et danse: 2. Allegro moderato: Polo
5. Nightingale – [I #02] Still In The Dark
6. Foo Fighters – [There Is Nothing Left To Lose #09] Headwires
7. Swarm Of The Lotus – [When White Becomes Black #09] Episode Infinity
8. Jason Falkner – [Presents Author Unknown #05] She Goes To Bed
9. Michael Jackson – [Bad #04] Liberian Girl
10. Gustav Mahler – [The Complete Symphonies CD9 #01] Symphony No.7 in E Minor – 1a. Langsam (Adagio)

1. Nine Inch Nails – [The Downward Spiral #04] March of the Pigs
2. Nine Inch Nails – [With Teeth [5.1] #12] Beside You In Time
3. Virgos Merlot – [Signs of a Vacant Soul #12] Disregarding
4. Beirut – [The Flying Club Cup #02] Nantes
5. Sergio – [Swords #02] The Spendthrift
6. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – [Nocturama #03] Right Out Of Your Hand
7. John Vanderslice – [Pixel Revolt #09] Dear Sarah Shu
8. Mogwai – [Happy Songs for Happy People #02] Moses? I Amn’t
9. Mew – [And The Glass Handed Kites #05] Apocalypso
10. Grails – [Doomsdayer's Holiday #01] Doomsdayer’s Holiday

1. Zao – [Legendary #04] Suspend Suspension
2. Pain of Salvation – [Entropia #12] Plains Of Dawn
3. Cave In – [Perfect Pitch Black #09] Tension In The Ranks
4. Paul Hindemith – [The 3 Piano Sonatas #03] Sonata No.1 III.Lebhaft
5. Ben Folds – [Ben Folds Live #11] Army
6. Leaves – [The Angela Test #04] As We Walk
7. Feist – [Let It Die #09] Secret Heart
8. Five Pointe O – [Untitled #05] Freedom?
9. Nine Inch Nails – [The Fragile CD1 #11] La Mer
10. Enslaved – [Below The Lights #04] Queen Of Night

Downtown Owl
by Chuck Klosterman

I’m familiar with Chuck Klosterman’s work from reading Chuck Klosterman IV and Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I have not, however, read what is probably the most pertinent work in this case—Fargo Rock City—though I am familiar with Klosterman’s predilection for the Midwest (North Dakota especially) as a narrative theme. His consistent juxtaposition of the urban sensibilities of the hyperliterate and the trendy with the inherent backwardness of small Midwestern towns is both a little old and still remarkably effective.

Downtown Owl is Klosterman’s first full-length work of fiction. He doesn’t suffer from the sort of stilted or overwritten prose that afflicts so many budding writers, mostly because he isn’t a budding writer. In fact, it’s surprising—though it shouldn’t be—how Klosterman manages to make his narration feel so similar to one of his many cultural commentaries from previous books and magazines. There was some small part of me that expected him to turn into Patrick Bateman and start reviewing 1980s albums in the middle of the rising action.

What I can’t quite shake about Downtown Owl is Klosterman’s practiced insouciance as a narrator. He is, he’s taken great pains to show us over the years, painfully hip. He manages in this book to hold the characters at arm’s length so that he can describe them and pontificate (in a roundabout, expository way) about their archetypes. In this way, he creates characters that are two-dimensionally complex, but which have no apparent depth and inspire no empathy on the part of the reader. If Klosterman doesn’t appear to care about any of the characters, then I can’t either.

Perhaps that’s the point. Downtown Owl was never a story so much as a tableau of Klosterman’s reimagined North Dakotan town. There’s a collection of characters who do thing and think things, but there’s no central plot, no narrative movement toward something; it’s a limited character drama that ends with a single shared event that ties—loosely and impersonally and by virtue of location only—these disparate characters together. Actually, think of the movie Magnolia; now set it in a small North Dakotan town in the 1980s and you’ve got Downtown Owl. The movie, however, managed to create much more likable and interesting characters (at least their personal dramas were somehow resolved or mutated by the movies events).

Despite it being, technically, a fictional book, Downtown Owl was much more a series of interwoven vignettes that simply served as a vehicle for Klosterman to talk about subjects he’s already covered—North Dakota, 80s rock and metal, social archetypes, &c. I feel a bit cheated, as there was really nothing in this book was wasn’t in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs in some form or another. Klosterman’s a good writer, but I don’t understand what motivated him to write a work of fiction: he’s a much better essayist than he is a storyteller.

1. The Dillinger Escape Plan – [Ire Works #13] Mouth Of Ghosts
2. Sentenced – [Frozen #03] Dead Leaves
3. Nick Drake – [Five Leaves Left #06] Cello Song
4. Giants – [Demo #02] Berlin Rooftop
5. Tenhi – [Kauan #02] Huomen
6. Sergei Rachmaninov (Vladimir Ashkenazy; André Previn, London Symphony Orchestra) – [Complete Piano Concertos, Rhapsody CD1 #05] Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18: 2. Adagio sostenuto
7. Conor Oberst – [Conor Oberst #01] Cape Canaveral
8. The Tea Party – [TRIPtych #12] Gone
9. Metallica – [S&M CD2 #08] One
10. The Decemberists – [The Tain #01] The Tain

1. Sondre Lerche – [Don't Be Shallow #03] I Know I Know
2. Paco de Lucía – [Antología CD1 #01] Almoraima
3. Fiona Apple – [Extraordinary Machine (Brion version, unmastered) #05] Oh Well
4. Paragon of Beauty – [Comfort Me, Infinity #01] This Impossible Moment
5. Cave In – [Jupiter #06] Requiem
6. Ben Folds – [Songs for Goldfish #05] Weather Channel Music
7. Mogwai – [Rock Action #01] Sine Wave
8. Sigur Rós – [( ) #02] Fyrsta
9. Fastball – [All the Pain Money Can Buy #08] G.O.D. (Good Old Days)
10. Darkane – [Rusted Angel #06] A Wisdoms Breed