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Reading Lists:
A Matter of Opinions

LAST YEAR, Nancy Pearl's Booklust made a tremendous splash nationally, but perhaps not as big a splash as it did in Reader's Territory, a.k.a. the Pacific Northwest.

Rumor has it that Seattle sells more books per capita than anywhere in the nation, and new titles and first-time authors in particular focus on Seattle as a testing ground for new literature. Seattle competes with San Francisco for the highest numbers of existing, even thriving, independent booksellers. Seattle perhaps has the busiest, most centralized independent media coalition in the world. And lucky for us, we have all the Starbuck's and rainy days one needs to keep up with the piles of books waiting in our homes to be read.

Seattle is also the home of bibliothécaire extraordinaire Nancy Pearl, the author of Booklust and the Seattle Public Library's famous model for the librarian action figure that no doubt you've noticed for sale at bookstores everywhere (press the button on its back and the doll's finger raises to its lips in a pantomimed shhhhh!).

Ms. Pearl covers lots of ground in her book of "recommended reading for every mood, moment, and reason." Naturally, among the variety of categories and menus, she suggests a list of 17 recommended magical realism titles to read.

She includes some heavyweights in that list: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Imagining Argentina, Texaco, Nights at the Circus, Immortality, Midnight's Children, So Far From God, The House of the Spirits. There are other titles, however, that don't come up in most conversations I have with others regarding magical realism, such as:

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
At the Sign of the Naked Water by Amy Herrick
Bailey's Cafe by Gloria Naylor
Waterland by Graham Swift
Loon Lake by E.L. Doctorow
The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell

Do I think these titles work? Yes, for the most part. I'm pleased to see some new names associated with magical realism. Not that I don't appreciate its vanguard of mostly Latin American authors, because I love them as well. But the idea that magical realism translates across geographic and cultural boundaries is an important distinction in Pearl's list.

I'm not sure that McEwan's The Child in Time really belongs here—its shifting temporal qualities are likely the only reason it might be considered magical realism—nor would I lobby for Swift's Waterland. And for me, some of the texts seem more popular than exemplary of magical realism, such as Alice Hoffman's Illumination Night and Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues, which, while incorporating some elements of magical realism, aren't probably the strongest examples of the style. Certainly they are not as definitive as others I can think of, like Nalo Hopkinson's The Salt Roads or practically anything by José Saramago.

Which is a good reminder: listmaking is merely a public manifestation of opinion. Anyone asked to cite a canon is going to come up with a list that reflects their tastes and reveals what books they've actually read (or one would hope that they have read the books on their list!). No doubt Nancy Pearl has read every book there ever was, so I'm certain her list is based upon her own tastes and perhaps a (rightful) leaning toward a global list of magical realism, rather than the Latin American list so many automatically expect.

Related to this discussion is a reflection on Alberto Manguel's newly released A Reading Diary. Here, Manguel picks a 12-title list of books in which to reread and reflect upon. Please scroll down to learn about a new Margin project inspired by one of the world's foremost readers.

As for lists, students of literary criticism might find our Listmania! "canon" especially helpful. Margin's magical realism for students provides a good entry point for those who are either part of the academic landscape or self-driven to learn more about magical realism.

Here's a smattering of reading lists that identify, for various purposes, texts of magical realism. While we believe our own reading list to be the most comprehensive and accessible one out there, we also suggest that you review these offerings as well for their more specific themes.

Endicott Studios: A Mythic Fiction Reading List

Evelyn Leeper's The Magical Realism Page: "A Long List"

The Arapahoe Library District: Magic Realism ~ The Fantastic Meets the Everyday

Alberto Rios' text list for his class

from EZ2find.com: Nonfiction MR texts

For Listmania!: "So you'd like to... explore other cultures through magical realism" list, by "speyeke"

Do you have your own list of favorite MR titles? Send us an e-mail, we'd love to hear from you!

More about reading lists
I recently had the pleasure of hearing Alberto Manguel read from his A Reading Diary at the fabulous Vancouver Public Library complex. I was inspired by his project. Manguel essentially selected a book he'd already read in the past and decided to reread it again and keep a reader's diary of his responses to the text as he read each book.

In January 2005, I will offer a small reading diary addressing my own experiences rereading various works of literary magical realism in a new monthly column. This will probably take on a more personal, perhaps "bloggish" quality. We'll see what comes of it. I'm excited by the idea—I'm always trying to find ways to concentrate my reading time. A reader's diary seems like the perfect way to do this. I hope you'll enjoy the thoughts and notes and links that arise from this project. It's just one of many ways we plan to celebrate Margin's 5th anniversary as an electronic anthology.

Below, please find our Reading Diary lineup for 2005. All of these titles currently reside on my home bookshelf:

January ~ "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel García Márquez (short story from Leaf Storm and Other Stories)
February ~ "The Skin of our Teeth" by Thornton Wilder (play)
March ~ The Sand Child by Tahar Ben-Jelloun (world literature)
April ~ The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (children's literature)
May ~ Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (classic novel in translation; I presently own the Norton Critical Edition edited by Diana de Armas Wilson and translated by Burton Raffel, but could easily be talked into reading the newest Edith Grossman translation instead)
June ~ The Woman Who Fell From The Sky by Joy Harjo (poetry)
July ~ Seven Nights by Jorge Luis Borges (lectures)
August ~ To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (novel)
September ~ James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (children's literature)
October ~ The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (novella)
November ~ "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce (short story from Civil War Stories)
December ~ Tigrela and Other Stories by Lygia Fagundes Telles (short story collection)

Once the diaries go live, subscribers will be automatically notified of these new additions to Margin. Those interested in responding to the diary entries will be invited to share their own thoughts through links contained within the feature.

As you begin to anticipate the coming year, you might also think about creating a diary of reread books. Consider this an experiment for the coming seasons of reading. It could make for interesting commentary in your book group, for instance, or it could be just the ticket you need for keeping up your annual reading resolution. It might also force you to read books that matter (who would reread books that didn't?)

At any rate, I don't believe any book is read the same way by any one reader the second time around. Rereading is not only about encountering the words again, but about interacting with books on a new, more personal level. The words of familiar books can become memory, emotion and intellectual experience when encountered again.—Tamara Kaye Sellman is founding editor and publisher of Margin.

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Rev'd 2004/10/21