Books I Read In 2008
NB: This is a) chronological, b) honest (as in, I didn't remove any embarrassing choices), and c) inclusive of books I read for the first time, in their entirety. The Golden Notebook has about 3 bookmarks in it. The collected stories of both Hemingway and Welty get picked up and put down every couple weeks. Bolded choices are highly recommended.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan
Utopian Entrepreneur, Brenda Laurel
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity, Anne Elizabeth Moore
The John McPhee Reader, ed. William L. Howarth
Who’s Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, Richard Florida
Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee
Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson
Old School, Tobias Wolff
Varieties of Disturbance: Stories, Lydia Davis
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Then We Came To The End, Joshua Ferris
The Second John McPhee Reader
The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College, Jacques Steinberg
The Overachievers: The Secret Llives of Driven Kids, Alexandra Robbins
Poor People, William T. Vollmann
The Autobiography and Other Writings, Benjamin Franklin
The Portable Dorothy Parker, ed. Marion Meade (Penguin Deluxe Ed.)
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, Tobias Wolff
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, Judith Thurman
What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel, Dave Eggers
Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States, George R. Stewart
Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How A 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry, Scott Huler
Arkansas, John Brandon
The Better of McSweeney’s: Stories and Letters
Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East-Young, Sexy, and Devout, Allegra Stratton
Riding Toward Everywhere, William T. Vollmann
It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
Oranges, John McPhee
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories, Raymond Carver
Coming into the Country, John McPhee
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks
The American Way of Death Revisited, Jessica Mitford
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee & Walker Evans
The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell
Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream, H.G. Bissinger
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us), Tom Vanderbilt
The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, Rick Moody
What did you read last year? What should I read this year?
(I wanted to write a little bit about each one of these books but I think that would bore the hell out of you. But I'll take requests.)
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan
Utopian Entrepreneur, Brenda Laurel
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing and the Erosion of Integrity, Anne Elizabeth Moore
The John McPhee Reader, ed. William L. Howarth
Who’s Your City? How the Creative Economy is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life, Richard Florida
Uncommon Carriers, John McPhee
Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson
Old School, Tobias Wolff
Varieties of Disturbance: Stories, Lydia Davis
On Beauty, Zadie Smith
Then We Came To The End, Joshua Ferris
The Second John McPhee Reader
The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College, Jacques Steinberg
The Overachievers: The Secret Llives of Driven Kids, Alexandra Robbins
Poor People, William T. Vollmann
The Autobiography and Other Writings, Benjamin Franklin
The Portable Dorothy Parker, ed. Marion Meade (Penguin Deluxe Ed.)
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories, Tobias Wolff
Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, Judith Thurman
What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng: A Novel, Dave Eggers
Names on the Land: A Historical Account of Place-Naming in the United States, George R. Stewart
Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale, and How A 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry, Scott Huler
Arkansas, John Brandon
The Better of McSweeney’s: Stories and Letters
Muhajababes: Meet the New Middle East-Young, Sexy, and Devout, Allegra Stratton
Riding Toward Everywhere, William T. Vollmann
It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis
Oranges, John McPhee
Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories, Raymond Carver
Coming into the Country, John McPhee
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Oliver Sacks
The American Way of Death Revisited, Jessica Mitford
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee & Walker Evans
The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell
Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream, H.G. Bissinger
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What it Says About Us), Tom Vanderbilt
The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, Rick Moody
What did you read last year? What should I read this year?
(I wanted to write a little bit about each one of these books but I think that would bore the hell out of you. But I'll take requests.)