"What have you been reading?"

Friend EL asks the inevitable and sometimes dreaded question, What are you reading?, and of course this blog is a daily response to that question, but I am always amazed at how difficult it is to answer that question, other than by referring to what I read today, or yesterday maybe. So it's just past halfway through the year and time to look back for a moment to answer: What am I reading but What have I been reading? So, yes, without peeking at my index, here's what sticks with me about what I'm reading, not reading, ought to be reading, and recommend for reading in first half of 2013: Once again, I find myself drawn primarily to classic literature - most contemporary books, no matter the clamor and the hype, just cannot measure up to the best of all time, always so readily available as well. Among new books, the only two that stand out for me at this point are Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds, a terrific and evocative novel about a the Iraq War (far better than the year's other highly touted war novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, which I couldn't finish) and George Saunders's story collection, Tenth of December. Saunders is a unique talent, perhaps not for everyone, but I find his work both funny and eerie and perhaps strangely prophetic. Among classics I've read this year, Wharton's The Custom of the Country is definitely worth adding to anyone's list - not as great as her masterpieces House of Mirth and Age of Innocence, but another unscathing look into her vanished social order. Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End was very challenging, with its leaps in time and unmediated narration - I read only the first volume of the quartet - but it's an impressive work and I'm appreciating (and understanding) it more as I watch the excellent HBO miniseries - and I may go back for a try at the other three volumes. As for the rest of the summer and for my travel reading, I almost always try to bring along a pb edition of classic novellas - I find short stories very suitable for traveling, when I have too much else happening to maintain the extended concentration and acts of memory that a novel entails - so last summer read Mann short stories and the summer before that a small edition of Henry James. Not sure what I'll travel with this year, perhaps one of the Russians.