Best Reads of 2012
A writer friend of mine (Coene) did a best reads of 2012, and I think that after such an active year of reading wonderful literature, I ought to do the same. I read a lot last year. A LOT. Nine times out of ten, as soon as I finished the last page of one book, I searching my bookshelves and Kindle for the next read. I hit my goal of 40 books last year, but among them, these stood out as the best:
1. The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse
“The poet who praises the splendors and terrors of life in the dance-measures of his verse, the musician who sounds them in a pure, eternal present—these are the bringers of light, increasers of joy and brightness on earth, even if they lead us first through tears and stress. Perhaps the poet whose verses gladden us was a sad solitary, and the musician a melancholic dreamer; but even so their work shares in their cheerful serenity of the gods and the stars.”
-From The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse
2. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
“Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.”
-From For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway
3. Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
“Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism. To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though ‘one possessed nothing,’ to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favorite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humor alone to make efficacious.”
-From Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse
4. The Toilers of the Sea, by Victor Hugo
“Then overwhelmed by the sense of that unknown infinity, like one bewildered by a strange persecution, confronting the shadows of night, in the presence of that impenetrable darkness, in the midst of the murmur of the waves, the swell, the foam, the breeze, under the clouds, under that vast diffusion of force, under that mysterious firmament of wings, of stars, of gulfs, having around him and beneath him the ocean above him the constellations, under the great unfathomable deep, he sank, gave up the struggle, lay down upon the rock, his face towards the stars, humble, and uplifting his joined hands towards the terrible depths, he cried aloud, “‘Have mercy.’”
From The Toilers of the Sea, by Victor Hugo
5. A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe
“One of the few freedoms that we have as human beings that cannot be taken away from us is the freedom to assent to what is true and to deny what is false. Nothing you can give me is worth surrendering that freedom for. At this moment I’m a man with complete tranquility…I’ve been a real estate developer for most of my life, and I can tell you that a developer lives with the opposite of tranquility, which is perturbation. You’re perturbed about something all the time. You build your first development, and right away you want to build a bigger one, and you want a bigger house to live in, and if it ain’t in Buckhead, you might as well cut your wrists. Soon’s you got that, you want a plantation, tens of thousands of acres devoted solely to shooting quail, because you know of four or five developers who’ve already got that. And soon’s you get that, you want a place on Sea Island and a Hatteras cruiser and a spread northwest of Buckhead, near the Chattahoochee, where you can ride a horse during the week, when you’re not down at the plantation, plus a ranch in Wyoming, Colorado, or Montana, because truly successful men in Atlanta and New York all got their ranches, and of course now you need a private plane, a big one, too, a jet, a Gulfstream Five, because who’s got the patience and the time and the humility to fly commercially, even to the plantation, much less out to a ranch? What is it you’re looking for in this endless quest? Tranquility. You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there’ll be nothing more to worry about, and instead you become a bigger and bigger slave to how you think others are judging you.”
-From A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe
6. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.”
-From East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
