Haahnster Reads 2 Books From The '90s!

Let me begin by saying I haven’t read many books that were published after 1975. In fact, many of my favorites were published before 1955. Not trying to be snobbish, I’m just a 'classic lit' kind of guy. Dostoyevsky (I keep seeing “Dostoevsky.” But, most of my old, used paperback copies of his works have the “y” in there.) is probably my favorite author. However, I went through a really heavy Hermann Hesse phase, and an extended J.D. Salinger phase. Hell, a friend and I even hit up a couple of university libraries, digging through the periodical archives for as many of Salinger’s stories as we could find that had never been collected and republished.

I loved Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire. To me, “recent” books are Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have neither the time nor the inclination to keep up with modern literature. I still have plenty of classics left to read. However, I receive books as gifts. They are usually more recent publications than I would otherwise purchase, which is cool. Sometimes, I think they are pretty good literature (e.g., Don DeLillo, Nicholson Baker). Other times, they feel like “fluff.” But, my love for reading takes over, and I get enough enjoyment to call these books guilty pleasures. Here are two examples:

John Grisham's The Firm
This was a gift from my mother, right after it was released in paperback. It was actually Grisham's second book. But, his first, A Time to Kill, didn't sell initially. I enjoyed reading The Firm. Now, when I saw the movie...not so good. I think I can sum it up this way: I found Tom Cruise very believable as a hotshot Navy lawyer in A Few Good Men; I did not find him believable as a top-of-his-class genius in The Firm. Maybe it was just me.



Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County
Once again, I received this as a gift. This time it was still in hardback, just a few weeks after it was unleashed upon the world. I've never watched the Clint Eastwood movie version, preferring not to revisit the fact that I enjoyed reading this book. I must be a romantic softy at heart (or somewhere way down deep).