I'm a dork

I’m a dork. I freely admit this. But I am a dork in a very specific way. No BiMonSciFiCon attendance here. No dressing up as characters from videogames. No Elf ears hidden in my closet. But I do like trivia. I rage at Trivial Pursuit (Genus edition only, not the dumbed-down new version). I fall within the range of what I like to call “hipster dork.” We dress well, we hang out at dive bars, and we know a ridiculous amount of Simpsons trivia (bonus points if you get the above Simpsons reference). Luckily for me, I found a fellow dork to wed. This works out well, since we don’t have to hide our dorkiness from each other. We can let it all hang out.

For example, what I like to call the Battle of the Books. A few years back, the Modern Library published a list of the 100 greatest books (in English) of the 20th century (*). It’s a somewhat subjective list, of course, but it’s not a bad place to start if you’re looking to read some modern classics. When I first discovered the list, I had read about 16 of the 100 books. I am now up to 27. Not bad. Well, it would be if it weren’t that Brian has read 31 of them. Here’s the thing: I’m not just a dork; I’m a competitive dork. This whole list competition started about three years ago, not long after Brian and I started going out. I got all crazy and was trying to read everything. At a certain point, I reached critical mass and couldn’t read another well-written word for a while. I started a couple of books on the list and just couldn’t motivate myself to finish them. I went through a phase of reading nothing but mysteries and thrillers, definitely of the beach variety. During that time, Brian pulled ahead. Then a few weeks back, I picked up a book on the list, not because it was on the list, but because I had always wanted to read it and it had been in my to-read pile for months. This got me back in the game. In the last month, I have read six books on the list. I read three of them in a four-day period (I have to add here that I was sick over the 4th of July weekend, which gave me lots of reading time).

The list is both a competitive pursuit and an incredibly valuable thing to spend time on. I’ve read some wonderful books, and some of the ones I had read before I ever saw the list are among my all-time favorites.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Lolita (list ranking = #4) by Vladimir Nabokov. Yes, it’s about a dirty old man. But once you get past that, it may be the most beautiful book ever written in the English language (and it was written by a nonnative speaker). I took a class on Nabokov in college. It was amazing. (And I had a wicked crush on the professor, but I like to think that my love of all things Nabokov isn’t just based on that.)

Appointment in Samarra (22) by John O’Hara. O’Hara is often overshadowed by his contemporaries Fitzgerald and Hemingway, but this story of a man’s disintegration and inevitable fate is probably my favorite book of all time. It’s not exactly uplifting. (The list isn’t really big on uplifting.)

Brideshead Revisited (80) by Evelyn Waugh. Just brilliant. I won’t say anything else, except to point out that the rather low ranking is ridiculous, particularly given that Waugh’s far inferior Scoop is #75.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey (37) by Thornton Wilder. I just read this one, and I’m surprised I hadn’t read it years ago. The story of five people who die when a bridge collapses in 18th century Peru. Amazing.

Wide Sargasso Sea (94) by Jean Rhys. One of relatively few works by women on the list, it’s the backstory of Jane Eyre. Who is the mysterious madwoman and how did she come to be locked away.

I’m not sure who’ll win this game in the end, but I’m certainly getting a lot out of it.

*I should add that there are plenty of people who think the list is a crock, and it's certainly rather arbitrary. However, I do find it useful.