Poetry Wednesday: Reincarnation

Reincarnation

Who would believe in reincarnation

if she thought she would return as

an oyster? Eagles and wolves

are popular. Even domesticated cats

have their appeal. It’s not terribly distressing

to imagine being Missy, nibbling

kibble and lounging on the windowsill.

But I doubt the toothsome oyster has ever

been the totem of any shaman

fanning the Motherpeace Tarot

or smudging with sage.

Yet perhaps we could do worse

than aspire to be a plump bivalve. Humbly,

the oyster persists in filtering

seawater and fashioning the daily

irritations into lustre.

Dash a dot of Tabasco, pair it

with a dry Martini, not only

will this tender button inspire

an erotic fire in tuxedoed men

and women whose shoulders gleam

in candlelight, this hermit praying

in its rocky cave, this anchorite of iron,

calcium, and protein, is practically

a molluskan saint. Revered and sacrificed,

body and salty liquor of the soul,

the oyster is devoured, surrendering

all—again and again—for love.

by Ellen Bass
Listen to the poet read "Reincarnation"
courtesy of The New Yorker

Fill In the Gap: The 2015 List — New and Improved!

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things...

Which for me usually means books.

It's been years since I mentioned my "Filling in the Gaps" list, and for good reasons. First, I have knocked a few more off my list (including, but not limited to, Ender's Game and Tobacco Road).

Second, the list evolved into an interactive project with Carole regarding Weighty Reads. We chose 20 books to read in the ensuing years, with a few related books included along the way.

For those of you playing along at home, "Filling in the Gaps" is a list of 100 books the reader strives to finish in five years. I first posted my list in 2010. I have not finished all 100 books. 

My list has changed little since 2010, most often because I realized I already read it. A few others fell off the list because I didn't want to read them after all, while others have regained their seat at the table. For example, does Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance really deserve to be on the list after all? How about Love in the Time of Cholera? Three Men in a Boat?

So, without further ado, I give you:

Fill in the Gaps, 2015

1. 1001 Nights / Arabian Nights            
2. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
3. Highsmoor, Peter Ackroyd
4. Foundation, Isaac Asimov
5. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
6. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
7. √ Sundays With Vlad, Paul Bibeau
8. √ The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown
9. The Early Fears, Robert Bloch
10. The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck
11. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett
12. Cold Sassy Tree, Olive Ann Burns
13. √ The Land that Time Forgot, Edgar Rice  Burroughs
14. √  Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
15. √  Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
16. Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather
17. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather
18. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
19. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
20. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
21. The Stories of John Cheever, John Cheever
22. Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
23. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
24. Moll Flanders, Daniel DeFoe
25. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz
26. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
27. Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens
28. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
29. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
30. The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas
31. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
32. Middlemarch, George Eliot
33. So Big, Edna Ferber
34. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
35. Where Angels Fear to Tread, E.M. Forster
36. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
37. In the Woods, Tana French
38. The Talented Mr. Ripley Patricia Highsmith
39. √ Unbroken, Lauren Hildenbrand
40. √ Goodbye, Mr. Chips, James Hilton
41. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
42. The Bone People, Keri Hulme
43. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
44. The  Lost Weekend, Charles R. Jackson
45. √ The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson
46. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
47. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
48. √ Up the Down Staircase, Bel Kaufman
49. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
50. √ Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
51. √  The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
52. The Jungle Books, Rudyard Kipling
53. The Man Who Would Be King, Rudyard Kipling
54. A Separate Peace, John Knowles
55. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John LeCarre
56. The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
57. Sliver, Ira Levin
58. Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis
59. The Monk, Matthew Gregory Lewis
60. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
61. √ The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft
62. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
63. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
64. The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers
65. √ Atonement, Ian McEwan
66. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurty
67. Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
68. Beloved, Toni Morrison
69. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
70. Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky
71. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy O'Toole
72. The Portable Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker
73. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
74. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
75. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig
76. Anubis Gates, Tim Powers
77. Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust
78. All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
79. Home, Marylynne Robinson
80. The Human Stain, Philip Roth
81. The God of Small Things, Arundathi Roy
82. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie
83. √ A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
84. Prayers to Broken Stones, Dan Simmons
85. Enemies, A Love Story, Isaac Bashevis Singer
86. Angle of Repose, Wallace Steigner
87. √ Dracula, Bram Stoker
88. The Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Suzanne
89. The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington
90. The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis
91. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
92. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
93. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
94. Traffic, Tom Vanderbilt
95. All the King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
96. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
97. Night, Elie Weisel
98. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
99. The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
100. The Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

I tried very hard to choose only one book per author, or maybe two. Charles Dickens was an exception with three, but that may change in the future. Narrowing Jane Austen to two was a challenge as well.

There is a dearth of non-fiction, and I may have to include A Brief History of Time. Stay tuned.


I tried to make my list as inclusive as possible. If you have suggestions, please share your ideas with me.

Do you have a Fill in the Gaps list? What's on it? If you haven't compiled such list yet, what would you put on it? Let me know!