2009 Reading Log

Submitted by bbookworm on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 13:26
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  1. January Reading

  2. Flight - Sherman Alexie
  3. A great book to start off the new year. Alexie is magical and always makes me think. "How can you tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys when they say the same things?" p. 56. Recommended reading.
  4. My Dog Tulip - J.R. Ackerley
  5. Who can resist a book that details so eloquently the bodily functions--chapter two is entitled "Liquids and Solids"--and sexual experiences of a beloved canine companion?
  6. 44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith
  7. I love that this was a serialized novel. Very few writers would be capable of publishing as they are still writing and Smith manages to create memorable characters with interesting personalities and experiences--all in bite size chapters.
  8. Anyone But You - Jennifer Crusie
  9. Guilty pleasure romantic comedy reading. A little racy, never dirty. Formulaic but fun.
  10. Nine Horses: Poems - Billy Collins
  11. I find myself laughing aloud in suprise and recognition of the images and thoughts Collins presents in his poetry. A serious and talented poet who doesn't take himself--or his poetry--too seriously.
  12. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
  13. This was really a wonderful biographical novel. It's really sad that Plath wasn't able to survive her depression and write more novels and poetry.
  14. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym
  15. Excellent novel. Funny in that British novel-of-middle-class-manners kind of way.
  16. Listening is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the Storycorps Project - Dave Isay, ed.
  17. Really wonderful reading. I think it is amazing that the storycorps project exists and is recording the stories of ordinary Americans. In a disconnected world, what could be more important than connecting to another human being?

  19. February Reading

  20. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  21. Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
  22. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  23. Reading this was its own odd little experience. I can descibe it only in generalities, and none of it makes any sense. Kind of like a dream--ha! P.S. I didn't really like the book.
  24. Bleeding Hearts - Ian Rankin
  25. Meh. Ten pages in, I guessed a major plotpoint. Not good. I stuck it out because I kept thinking there would be a twist that I hadn't foreseen, that my deducing was wrong, that the author was more clever than I, that the ending would be worth it, that I hadn't wasted a whole afternoon on a suspense thriller that lacked suspense and thrill. No such luck. I'm going back to literary fiction.
  26. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
  27. Oh, wow. Interesting, compelling, really really good. It has the quality of memory--events and experiences that are clear and intense, but also limited to the most significant details for each character.
  28. The Magician's Assistant - Ann Patchett
  29. Well, this was a good, competently written book, but it was not as magical as the premise suggested. Maybe I am just missing something. I read Bel Canto last year because a friend insisted I would love it. I was underwhelmed. I don't really understand why Ann Patchett is a literary star.

  31. March Reading

  32. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
  33. Totally awesome.
  34. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris
  35. Who the Hell is Pansy O'Hara? The Fascinating Stories Behind 50 of the World's Best-Loved Books - Jenny Bond & Chris Sheedy
  36. The Prodigy: A Novel of Suspense - Charles Atkins
  37. Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands - Michael Chabon
  38. True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall - Mark Salzman
  39. Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman
  40. I've never read comic books or been into superheroes and villains, but this is a great read--a smart and funny story of an evil genius who just can't seem to overcome his nemesis despite being "The Smartest Man in the World". Favorite line: "Once you get past a certain threshold, everyone's problems are the same: fortifying your island and hiding the heat signature from your fusion reactor."
  41. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
  42. Decided I'd better get this read before the movie gets released and ruins it for me.

  44. April Reading

  45. The Laws of Harmony - Judith Ryan Hendricks
  46. Good, not great.
  47. The Nice and the Good - Iris Murdoch
  48. November 22, 1963: A Novel - Adam Braver
  49. I've never been all that interested in President Kennedy's assassination or the national obsession with Jackie, but this was an interesting imagining of that day.
  50. 'Salem's Lot - Stephen King
  51. Too long. Too long, Stephen. I don't need you to describe every excruciating detail of every scene and every character. That is what reader imagination is for.
  52. Knitting Rules! - Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
  53. Yes, it totally does.
  54. Saturday - Ian McEwan
  55. Really really good. It has been over a month since I read this and I'm still thinking about the implications for the mind and the soul and fate and choice...
  56. Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  58. May Reading

  59. Little Dorrit - Charles Dickens
  60. Okay, people, have we learned nothing from the Victorian era? Nothing? Unregulated financial systems + greed and avarice = disastrous market crashes and ruination. Let's all try to take a lesson, k? And on a literary note, I think this is an underrated Dickens novel. There are well developed characters, fully explored ideas about (self)-imprisonment and freedom, and plenty of fantastic critique of government offices and policies.
  61. The Yiddish Policeman's Union - Michael Chabon
  62. Funny, AND smart, AND plays around with a sacred idea (the Jewish state)?! Genius.
  63. The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams
  64. Unravelled - Robyn Harding
  65. meh. read the first half, skimmed the second half. didn't miss much.
  66. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
  67. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
  68. Neither Treasure Island nor Jekyll and Hyde are really my cup of tea, but they are interesting and significant in terms of the development of literature, and so I read them. It is like taking a dose of castor oil.
  69. Journey to the Center of the Earth - Jules Verne [in progress]
  70. I think I would rather die than finish this book. Literature should not feel this bad. I don't care if this is considered important literature, it is bad, Bad, BAD!
  71. The Somnambulist - Jonathan Barnes
  72. Hmmm...there was nothing really horrible about this novel, but I didn't love it either.
  73. The Importance of Being Earnest & Lady Windermere's Fan - Oscar Wilde
  74. Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
  75. How can you not love Miss Holiday Golightly?

  77. June Reading

  78. The Old Man and The Sea - Earnest Hemingway
  79. Karnak Cafe - Naguib Mahfouz
  80. Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains - Jon Krakauer - Krakauer always does an amazing job of making me feel like I'm right there with him hanging out on the side of a mountain, and always includes enough hair-raising details to make me glad I'm sitting at home where it is safe.
  81. The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
  82. Watchers - Dean Koontz
  83. Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon
  84. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
  85. The Glass Key - Dashiell Hammett
  86. Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
  87. The Dain Curse - Dashiell Hammett - Obviously, I am having a bit of a literary obsession with Hammett at the moment. I'm a bit sad to have finished all of his novels. Oh, well. On with the next thing on my to be read pile.
  88. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
  89. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - Been trying to finish this for a while. For some reason, I really didn't like the final chapter. I don't know why. It just felt false to me.
  90. Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho - Huh. This was a disappointing read for me on several levels. I was promised insight and dazzle and I got neither. And it seems to me that the topic of creative, sensitive individuals being labeled "crazy" by society has been covered before.
  91. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark - This is the first novel of Spark's that I've read; I think I might be a fan.

  93. July Reading

  94. The Comforters - Muriel Spark - Yep. I'm a fan. In this case, for the characters more than the plot, although with characters this entertaining, who needs plot?
  95. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
  96. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
  97. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - I wouldn't think it possible to sustain such a long meditation on duty, but this is a really lovely novel.
  98. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee - While I think that Coetzee is one of the more interesting novelists working today, and I really appreciate how he plays with the novel form and the issues that he explores, I did not really like this book. There was nothing likeable or engaging about any of the characters, which made it difficult to care about any of the hardships or suffering they face. Which may have been part of the author's point, but I had to expend real effort to finish the book.
  99. Who Moved My Cheese? - Dr. Spencer Johnson - Not really anything new here for me, but for those who really struggle with the shifting sands of business, who freak out every time the world around them changes, this is a neat and helpful little book of wisdom. Of course, if you are at all sensitive about being compared to a rodent in a maze, this is not the book for you.
  100. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Really really liked it.
  101. How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art - Kathleen Meyer - Both funny and informative.

  103. August Reading

  104. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger - Liked very much.
  105. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
  106. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
  107. When the Emperor Was Divine - Julie Otsuka
  108. The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster
  109. Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb
  110. Silk - Alessandro Baricco
  111. The Only Problem - Muriel Spark
  112. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark

  114. September Reading

  115. Memento Mori - Muriel Spark
  116. The Informant - Kurt Eichenwald - Two days of compulsive reading--even knowing the outcome, this was very entertaining. Some really great personalities, infuriating anti-trust and fraud crimes, and an intricate enough plot to rival a Grisham novel. Pure greed on embarrassing display. I look forward to the movie.

  118. October Reading

  119. Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
  120. Living Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris
  121. Club Dead - Charlaine Harris
  122. Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris
  123. Dead as a Doornail - Charlaine Harris
  124. Definitely Dead - Charlaine Harris
  125. All Together Dead - Charlaine Harris
cmonster08/20/2009

Ooh! What did you think of Dean Koontz' Watchers? And True Notebooks, the juvenile hall book?

I was similarly underwhelmed by Veronika Decides, and am glad it's not just me being crazy: that book really was a whole lot of nothing much.

bbookworm08/23/2009

Watchers was okay. Kind of a Frankenstein story. It was entertaining, although a little (a lot) far-fetched in terms of its science. It had interesting characters and a pretty good plot. I enjoyed reading it, but wouldn't read it again.
True Notebooks was interesting and engaging, and really kind of depressing. We have some very serious problems in this country with damaged families and communities, youth violence, and prison systems that offer nothing but more violence, segregation, gang wars, and hopelessness. On the one hand, it is amazing how quickly the kids in this writing program blossomed because one guy listened to them, encouraged them, and saw their potential. They knew that he didn't think of them as throw aways. On the other hand, it is totally depressing because most of them will spend the rest of their lives behind bars, so you wind up asking yourself, what is the point of sending a guy into a youth prison to teach creative writing? But you know not one of those kids will forget the experience, no matter what happens to them. And maybe that is the point--that even when the outcome is unchangeable, there is grace and hope to be found.
On the topic of Veronika--I'm glad I'm not the only one putting a big question mark next to it. Thanks for your questions and comments:)