1001 Books to Read Before You Die Challenge

Here are the books I completed for the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die Challenge hosted here. I do this every year just on my own and I love it. I don't make a list in advance. Instead, at the end of December I get out my giant 1001 Book and a highlighter. I go through the whole thing and check off all the books I read that year. It's fun because I'm usually surprised by a lot of the books that are in there. Turns out I completed the top level, PHd: 16+ books. I've discovered so many great books from this list.

I've now read 141 books from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

Here's my completed list from 2011:
Robinson Crusoe
David Copperfield
War & Peace
Middlemarch
The Portrait of a Lady
King Solomon’s Mines
The Yellow Wallpaper
Jude the Obscure
The Invisible Man
Kim
The Hound of the Baskerville
The House of Mirth
Babbitt
The Garden Party
Tender is the Night
Absalom, Absalom!
A Home at the End of the World
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
The God of the Small Things
The Blind Assassin

Reading the States: Alabama

Welcome to the first post of my Read the States series! Every Friday I will be posting books and authors that are great representations of a different state. If you have any additional suggestions for this week’s state or any other states, leave them in the comments!

Alabama is known for the Talladega Speedway and the Civil Rights movement, but there are some wonderful literary connections as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived there while writing Tender is the Night. Harper Lee and Truman Capote grew up side-by-side in the tiny town of Monroeville. A state so rich with famous authors provides some fascinating reading possibilities.

State: ALABAMA 

Fiction:

- To Kill a Mockingbird* by Harper Lee

- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café* by Fannie Flagg

- Other Rooms, Other Voices by Truman Capote

- Forrest Gump* by Winston Groom

- Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
- Boy's Life by Robert McCammon 
- Gods in Alabama* by Joshilyn Jackson 
- Go Set a Watchman* by Harper Lee 

Nonfiction:

- All Over but the Shoutin’* by Rick Bragg

- The Story of My Life* by Helen Keller

- Scout, Atticus, and Boo* by Mary McDonough Murphy
- The Watsons Go To Birmingham* by Christopher Paul Curtis 
- The Mockingbird Next Door* by Marja Mills
- Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans 
- Ava's Man* by Rick Bragg

Authors Who Lived Here:

- Harper Lee

- Truman Capote

- Zelda Fitzgerald
- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Great Bookstores:

Alabama Booksmith - Known for its first edition club.
Beehive Coffee and Books

Literary Places to Visit:
Fitzgerald's House and Museum
To Kill a Mockingbird Museum
Harper Lee and Truman Capote's Homes

*Books I've Read 
Photo by moi.

In the Garden of the Beasts

In the Garden of the Beasts
Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin
by Erik Larson
★★★☆

I’ve really enjoyed Larson’s other nonfiction works. The Devil in the White City was interesting (and is being made into a movie) and I loved Isaac’s Storm. His newest, In the Garden of the Beasts, details Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s. There are some remarkable details about this era and those carried bits of the book, but as a whole it felt slow.

I think my main problem with this book was the lack of sympathetic characters. This is nonfiction, so that’s not the author’s fault. Obviously you won’t be feeling sorry for any Nazis or for Hitler himself, but there were few others who were worthy of those feelings. The American family, the Dodds, is made up of a strange group. The father is painted as a miserly, self-important man. No one, even his co-workers, seemed to like him very much. The daughter, Harriet, was apparently fascinated by the Nazis and was passed around like a call girl. Despite being married, she had relationships with multiple Germans in the party and someone even tried to fix her up with Hitler.

My favorite part of the book was learning about the Jewish resistance in America. When we look back on World War II it’s so easy to ask why no one did anything to stop it, but in reality, there were many people who tried to stand up against Htiler’s regime. Even if they weren’t able to bring an end to the horrors before they got out of control, at least they recognized what was happening and stood up in opposition to it.

It’s not Larson’s best work, but I did learn more about Hitler’s rise to power and I’ll look forward to his next book. If you’ve never checked out his account of the Galveston hurricane in 1900, Isaac’s Storm, I would highly recommend it as a good place to start with his books if you like nonfiction.

Image from here.