"I've never known any trouble that an hour's reading didn't assuage."
If you haven't gotten me a Christmas present yet, don't fret. My dad has set the bar for worst possible present ever. He got me a computer charger. Not just any charger, a spare one he had lying around. Not just any spare one, a spare one he took from work. Luckily its funny enough that I'm not really bitter about it.
He also got me a first edition copy of In Cold Blood, so it evens out. I had actually been considering starting a rare/special book collection, so I guess it has officially been started. Now you know what to get me for the rest of my life.
It was a pretty good year for books in 2007. Instead of doing that longass meme that everyone else is doing (although who I am kidding, I'll get drunk and do it later) here's a review of my year, in books.
Stars are for exceptional books. And I didn't star any Vonnegut because, duh. Redundant.
January
*Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
*Snow White - Donald Barthelme
A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
February
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Iola Leroy - Frances Harper
March
This Is Not A Pipe - Michel Foucault
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Maud Martha - Gwendolyn Brooks
Mao II - Don Delillo
April
Annie John - Jamaica Kincaid
Mao: A Biography - Ross Terrill
Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
May
*A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
*The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*The Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
June
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
*The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
July
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
*Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
August
*A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
September
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Autobiography of Malcom X - Malcolm X
Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende
October
Happy Birthday Jack Nicholson - Hunter S. Thompson
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
*Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara - Ben Fountain
The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto Che Guevara
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
November
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
*The World According to Garp - John Irving
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coehlo
December
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (in progress)
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer (next on the list)
Yes, thanks to my mild OCD/latent dork tendencies I keep ridiculous track of things like this. January through April was almost entirely books for my Engl 470 and Engl 351 classes so I'm not very proud of them, but the rest of the year was pretty good I think. I liked almost all of them, with the notable exception of On the Road, on which there is a very long and pretentious entry that I will post soon. I discovered my love of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The man can do no wrong. Even though I didn't star all of his books, they are all exquisite.
What were your best literary discoveries of the year?
He also got me a first edition copy of In Cold Blood, so it evens out. I had actually been considering starting a rare/special book collection, so I guess it has officially been started. Now you know what to get me for the rest of my life.
It was a pretty good year for books in 2007. Instead of doing that longass meme that everyone else is doing (although who I am kidding, I'll get drunk and do it later) here's a review of my year, in books.
Stars are for exceptional books. And I didn't star any Vonnegut because, duh. Redundant.
January
*Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Running With Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
*Snow White - Donald Barthelme
A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead - Tom Stoppard
February
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Harriet Jacobs
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Iola Leroy - Frances Harper
March
This Is Not A Pipe - Michel Foucault
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Maud Martha - Gwendolyn Brooks
Mao II - Don Delillo
April
Annie John - Jamaica Kincaid
Mao: A Biography - Ross Terrill
Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
May
*A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
*The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*The Rum Diary - Hunter S Thompson
Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
June
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
*The Dharma Bums - Jack Kerouac
Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
Less than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis
July
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
*Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote
Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
August
*A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
September
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Autobiography of Malcom X - Malcolm X
Daughter of Fortune - Isabel Allende
October
Happy Birthday Jack Nicholson - Hunter S. Thompson
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
*Understanding Power - Noam Chomsky
Brief Encounters with Che Guevara - Ben Fountain
The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto Che Guevara
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Milan Kundera
November
Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
*The World According to Garp - John Irving
Reading Lolita in Tehran - Azar Nafisi
Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coehlo
December
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood (in progress)
Everything Is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer (next on the list)
Yes, thanks to my mild OCD/latent dork tendencies I keep ridiculous track of things like this. January through April was almost entirely books for my Engl 470 and Engl 351 classes so I'm not very proud of them, but the rest of the year was pretty good I think. I liked almost all of them, with the notable exception of On the Road, on which there is a very long and pretentious entry that I will post soon. I discovered my love of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The man can do no wrong. Even though I didn't star all of his books, they are all exquisite.
What were your best literary discoveries of the year?