Mark Movic reads during the long winter months

And they are so long! Mark Movic, guitarist, Drake Alumnus, Des Moines resident, and friend of the Grinnell College Libraries read David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest during the summer of 2009. He read it along with others through Matthew Baldwin's Infinite Summer blog. As Baldwin said, "June 21st to September 22nd. A thousand pages¹ ÷ 92 days = 75 pages a week. No sweat."

Mark recently let me know about another online book group who began reading Roberto Bolaño's 2666 during the last week in January. They are currently in their third week--it might not be too late to catch up. This reader/reviewer would like to read 2666 but didn't get going with the group in time and will have to wait until she is ready to read on her own. Bolaño, a Chilean poet and novelist, who died at the age of 50 in 2003, has become much talked about and translated in recent years. The book review is also aware of another Grinnellian who read Moby Dick through with an online reading group. If you are reading this and have participated in an online reading group, tell us what you read and what the experience was like (bookreview@grinnell.edu). We'll share the information with our reading community.

Finally, this winter, Mark read Chronic City, versatile writer, Jonathan Lethem's latest novel. Mark writes that he liked the novel, but wasn't prepared to say what it was about. So, although it wouldn't have made the list of 1001 books to read before you die (having been written three years after that book, which became immediately out of date upon publication!), but it might be a good one to read before the winter ends. You have a couple of months to fit it in.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1996.
Burling Library 3rd Floor PS3573.A425635 I54 1996.

Bolaño, Roberto. 2666. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
Burling 3rd Floor PQ8098.12.O38 A12213 2008

Lethem, Jonathan. Chronic City. New York: Doubleday, 2009.
Burling 3rd Floor PS3562.E8544 C47 2009