Jordan Mattox

1. Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine Alan Lightman 

Lightman is one of my favorite science writers. He also wrote a great novel called Einstein’s Dreams that I’d recommend as well. This book is really a collection of essays around different themes like certainty, truth, atoms, etc. He approaches the subject from a scientific and humanistic perspective that draws you toward mystery. 

2. Stoner John Williams 

I’ve heard about this book from many people and sources. And it enjoyed some popularity a few years ago and I meant to get around to it, but didn’t. Truly, this may be one of the most beautiful novels I’ve read. It follows the story of a farmer’s boy who becomes a professor and his seemingly trivial trials in love, work, parenthood, and death. The book is riveting in the mundane, an achievement of the writing. 

3. Ninety-Nine Stories of God Joy Williams 

Williams is a wonderful writer I discovered a few years ago. She captures failure’s poetry more beautifully than any writer that I know of. This book though is different. It is essentially a series of Koans about the most random things that all have some seeming metaphysical underpinning. Or not. Who knows. Read this at your own risk. You may be disoriented or enlightened. Who knows…

4. Swann’s Way Marcel Proust 

Along with Ulysses and Middlemarch,  In Search of Lost Time is one of those books that’s on a lot of people’s bucket-lists.  It was beautiful and many passages were poetry, but it was certainly a challenge. I assumed though that when I finished reading, I would feel a sense of accomplishment. I did not feel that. Instead, I felt how inadequate one reading a challenging book is. The story is complicated to explain, but essentially is two stories: one about a boy’s memories and a complicated love story of a man he remembers. This book is full of flourishes, insights, and the ordering of words rarely seen. Lydia Davis is the translator and she is wonderful. 

5. The Mayor of Casterbridge Thomas Hardy 

As you can tell by my list this month, my challenge this year was to read more classics. Hardy is someone on the list to read for a long time. This book is a story about a man who continues to hurt people for no reason, people who continue to help him and give him chances. That’s just the rough overview, but it captures the English countryside better than most books I’ve read from the era. Recommended if you like 19th century Victorian stuff.