# 38: Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Always keen to assign a genre to things I read, I am tempted to classify this as part magical realism and part post-modernism. I am not, in the least, sure that this is a correct assessment of the novel’s (or rather novella’s) genre. Invisible Cities is essentially a group of vignettes describing a series of cities, interspersed with a conversation taking place between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. After visiting various locations in Khan’s vast empire, Marco Polo brings stories of the places he has encountered to Khan. There are cities where houses don’t have walls and one can only distinguish them through the exposed pipes that hang suspended in the air. A cities has an identical copy of itself underground; after a while, no one can tell who’s alive and who’s dead. Polo’s initial tales, the reader learns, were full of gesticulation, objects, and emotions, as the traveller was not fluent in Khan’s language. His fluency gives way to the loss of imagination; as Polo becomes more comfortable with the language, Khan complains of the loss of his descriptions. One thing that is apparent throughout the novel: the cities are what we make of them. 
# 37: Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
This has quickly become one of my favorites. The story focuses mainly on two characters, whom Vonnegut describes as “two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast”—Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover. A science fiction and a Pontiac dealer, respectively, both men appear to be alter egos of the author, who worked as a Saab dealer before becoming an acclaimed author. After providing extensive background information on both of the characters, Vonnegut sets them on a collision path as Trout makes his way to Midland City, the fictional city where Hoover resides, while Hoover’s mental state is rapidly deteriorating. Their meeting at the end of the novel can be best described as disastrous.
The novel takes upon itself to introduce certain aspects of life in the US and the planet to his readers, and frequently does so with the aid of illustrations—which are both hilarious and welcome, since very few “Adult” books come with illustrations. 
My favorite aspect of the novel, however, was the introduction of the author/narrator. Trout is said to be collecting information for his “Creator” but little does he know that the Creator would be appearing minutes before his own encounter with Hoover. The Creator explains his control over the characters and explains why he is doing things as he does them but confesses that the characters are not fully under his control. I loved this because I felt like it was the author’s way of showing that characters have a way of taking lives of their own and surprising the authors.
Vonnegut’s ability to take note of the mundane and make it fascinating makes this book a great read. 
David Sedaris, When You’re Engulfed in Flames
I went off the list again, because it’s not every day that you find a book that is so captivating as this one. With a cover image borrowed from Van Gogh, a title originating from something the author saw while travelling in Japan, and essays many of which were previously published in the New Yorker, this collection is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. 
Sedaris has a great sense of humor. Not the kind of sense of humor that makes you chuckle he says something funny. His sense of humor is wry, silly, and translates perfectly to the page. There are one too many passages that will make you start laughing while reading it before going to sleep and many that you will try to remember to read for people the following day. The humorous passages come together to weave a unique view of an American childhood, surrounded by family members, an adolescence of repressed sexuality, finally coming to terms with being gay, and life with a lifelong partner. 
If I had a rating system, I would give this one a resounding 5. I cannot recommend it enough. 
Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test
Having never read anything by Jon Ronson before, it took me about 3 pages to realize that he’s an amazing journalist. Learning more about psychopaths becomes an obsession of sorts for Ronson and on his path towards learning more about them, Ronson finds both likeminded people, as well as some exemplary psychopaths. There are murderers, institutionalized psychopaths, researchers who have spent their entire lives studying psychopaths, scientologists, and more psychologists than could be counted on 2 hands. 
This book is simultaneously fascinating and creepy. Early on in the book, Ronson has a discussion with a psychologist who studies psychopaths and she tells him of an encounter where she was showing one of her study subjects various emotions and asking him to identify them. After seeing “fear”, the subject responded by saying that he couldn’t identify the emotion but it looked similar to the faces people pulled before he murdered them. Ronson learns more and more about the subject in hand and eventually encounters some fo the foremost researchers in the field.
There does come a point where it is clear that Ronson has learned more than he should and has clearly become obsessed with the topic at hand. In one chapter, he is sitting at the bar of a hotel with one of the psychologists he has interviewed for the book and the two of them catch themselves wondering if the concierge of the hotel is a psychopath, soon recognizing just how ridiculous they are being.
Overall, this book is fascinating. It’s a quick and easy read but it might make you subject friends and loved ones to your own psychological evaluations. But don’t worry; it does go away.
#36: Heather McGowan, Schooling
Thirteen year old Catrine Evans is uprooted from her American life and dropped into the world of Monstead Boarding School, her father’s alma mater. This is truly the story of Catrine’s schooling, her education in a world that is completely different from her own. Catrine is plagued by a number of memories and factors, including her mother’s death, and an accident involving a motorcyclist and a tire. She is frequently taunted by certain classmates, including one that claims to know a secret about her father. But there are also friends and teachers, such as a chemistry teacher that gives her an education on the arts. And more.
I am fully convinced that I will never re-read this one again. That being said, I didn’t hate it. While the book is only about 300 pages, the text is quite dense; probably more dense than many other novels that I have ever encountered. I could easily classify this as a stream-of-consciousness novel and add it to the same shelf as Woolf and Joyce, but McGowan’s prose is not crafted as elegantly and naturally as the previous texts mentioned. While there are elements of the style present throughout, McGowan rarely ever takes off on a truly expressed chain of thought. Her prose can probably be more accurately described as disjointed than stream-of-consciousness. 
I did, however, enjoy it. There are page long sentences and sentence long chapters. If not for the plot, there are always the moments of self-congratulation when the plot has been followed for the duration of 10 pages. 
Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay
I took a break from reading off of my 1001 reading list to see what all the rage regarding the Hunger Games was about. I will admit right away that I am not ideally suited for reading a Young Adult series. The only other YA series I have ever read besides this one is the Harry Potter series, and I have some very unpopular thoughts about that. 
I have to say that I did quite enjoy this series. It had the things that I predicted it would have: cliched expression about the older generation’s inability to “fix” things in an obviously wrong world,  unbelievable abilities of teenagers and young kids to accomplish the unattainable, cliffhangers (some good and some quite bad), etc. But I think the biggest compliment that I can give to this series is that I finished the whole thing in a week. While meeting many other obligations. It is quite captivating and has moments that force you to keep reading to find out what happens in the next part, the next chapter, the next book. I was also quite captivated by the author’s ability to deliver social commentary regarding our general obsession with a form of “reality television.” What can be deemed as a life or death event for some, becomes mere entertainment for other and the novels are quite successful at blurring these lines. 
In short, if you have a weekend or two to spare, do pick these up.
Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry
Despite the alarming lack of posts, I am still alive and reading. 
I have had experiences when I read a book and after finishing it, I catch myself thinking “I wish the author was a tiny bit better at writing or constructing this story.” There are many works that are just  so close to being excellent, but don’t quite make the cut, leaving readers disappointed. This is definitely not the case with Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry. The Blakean reference in the title, combined with my previous appreciation for the author’s The Time Traveller’s Wife, was what prompted to pick up this novel at first and I am very glad I did.  If you’ve read Niffenegger’s Time Traveller’s Wife, you might be familiar with her prose and her fascination with the supernatural. Like Time Traveller’s Wife, this novel is full of supernatural elements, but it also includes not one but two sets of twins, a cemetery, London, and even ghosts! I find Niffenegger’s prose captivating, as her works are very well thought out and intelligently composed. She constructs characters that while deeply flawed and problematic are also incredibly lovable, making this novel a very enjoyable read. 
#35: Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
I have the ultimate love/hate relationship with Jonathan Franzen. I read Freedom when it first came out and my opinion of Franzen has not changed after reading The Corrections. While thinking that he is an immensely talented writer, I vacillate between classifying Franzen as a misogynist and a misanthrope, but I have come to conclude that he creates deeply flawed characters who try their best in every situation but ultimately only succeed when they have given up on trying to succeed. The Corrections revolves around the Lamberts, a Midwestern family. All five members of the family are going through their unique set of problems, and working hard to resolve their problems only intensifies them. Franzen’s excellent command of language makes it hard to put this book down. 
Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
Baker’s The Mezzanine has been on my reading list for a while, and I cannot recall how I first came across it. The Mezzanine is a somewhat tough but great read. Plot-wise, it can be reduced to a single statement—the protagonist rides an escalator to the mezzanine level of a building (and trust me, I did not spoil anything for you there). What makes this book special is the intricate narrative and mental back and forth the protagonist goes through. The best adjective I can find to describe this book is by characterizing it as “Joycean”; Baker crafts a narrative that is simultaneously complex, has a healthy dose of stream-of-consciousness, and is full of footnotes, which seem to narrate a different story on their own. A bit challenging, yet very enjoyable read.
Emma Donoghue, Room
Despite having a 1001 book long reading list, I do quite a lot of outside of the list reading, and have decided to add these books on my blog as well. I am not going to number them, as to not clash with the list. After deliberating for a while, I decided to add some works that aren’t on the list because I love discussing the books I read with people and there is really no better place than here.

That being said, this novel had a lot to do with this decision. After I started reading it, I wasn’t able to put it down until I finished it, and was itching to talk to someone about it. This novel is definitely one of the best things I have ever read. I first heard about it in an NPR review and the information that I gathered is what I am about to present you with. Five year old Jack lives in the Room with his mother. The world, as he knows it, is the room and he doesn’t know that there is anything beyond it. The circumstances and the events leading up to his existence in the room are what makes this novel the remarkable piece of work that it is. This work simultaneously delighted me and tore me to pieces and I cannot say enough about it.