Book List - The Final Cut

Depending on the amount of space that I actually have, here's what I'm cramming into my backpack, with a brief rationale for each:

Don Quixote by Cervantes
My huge honkin' piece of classic literature for this trip. I've long aspired to read it, and it's pertinent to my academic interests, so I won't feel like a total academic schlub whilst bumming around and drinking wine in Latin America. Though I'm cheating (for now) and reading the Oxford Classics English translation, I'm hoping this will be a springboard into reading the original Spanish version. And, deep down, I'm partly hoping that this will be a conversation starter with some Argentine literati, who will see me reading this in a street café and will then sit down and talk to me and Jessie about trends in world literature and we'll become best friends and they'll invite us to stay at their beach house in Puerto Madryn whenever we want...and...and... (Well, you get the idea.) Edifying in any number of ways.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
I've started this book three times but never read past page 20, mostly because those three times I started it were between the ages of 16 and 18. So help me god, I'm finishing it this time. Another "literary" work, but arguably more entertaining than typical literary fare. And it'll make EV happy to have someone else who gets his obscure references. (There you go, champ.)

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
I have a deep and undying love for Murakami. It's a bit upsetting, but I'm almost done with his catalogue. I went on a bedtime reading kick and made it through a number of his works in the last year (Kafka on the Shore being the best, I'd say). HBW is the last long novel of his I have yet to read. And while Murakami tends to linger on the border between pure entertainment and intellectual puzzling - I have trouble categorizing his work in that way - he is perhaps my favorite living author. And this book looks awesome.

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Though SH's Bolaño recommendation, the recently-translated 2666, was a bit too big to fit into my pack, I opted for an earlier work. Bolaño was born in Chile (and returned there to support Allende), so that seems fitting - despite the fact that he had a somewhat vexed relationship with his homeland. More to the point, he's one of the main Latin American literary figures of the last twenty years and, according to some critics, his work evokes Borges (but with a sharper edge).

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
This is my "if I have space" book. I doubt I will, and I think I can easily pick up editions of Borges (in both English and Spanish) while down there, but this is one of the best books I've ever owned. Hurley's translation here is virtually seamless - he renders Borges's work in limpid prose. And Borges's "stories" (I use that term loosely - he does some odd generic things in here) are a delight on any number of levels. I could probably read and re-read his stories endlessly, but - alas - even as a paperback this thing is pretty sizable (and I'm not even factoring in the fact that JR and I need to fit three guidebooks in our packs as well). Le sigh.


That's it for now. I'm pretty sure this is what I'll be bringing, but I also know my own caprice. I should probably write my term papers now, huh?