Reading List 2012
Whoops... It's November. This is much later than I usually post, but NaNoWriMo and work has sort of taken up permanent residence in most available space in my mind, soo.... not much else is retained. For October, I wanted to follow a Halloween theme, hence all the vampires and zombies. It seemed that the late-September and October months contained overall themes of autism, the Civil War, and vampires. Go figure. So this brings me up to 90 for the year with a month and a half to go. I can't believe it's so late... Because I'm participating for the first time in NaNoWriMo, I don't have much time for reading. Usually my evenings are spent writing while Mike plays Halo 4 after dinner. It's a nice arrangement. It's right before bed and the weekends that I designate to reading, now.
I'm trying to get through Dreams of Terror and Death by H.P. Lovecraft, but he's so dense and so much packs into one page, all expository writing, that reading it is taking a looooong time. I wanted it to be part of my October reading and planned to put it back on the shelf for next year after I finished a lengthy novella in it. But... now I'm just past half-way... and I can't bring myself to put it down. I have too many unfinished novels, I don't want to add it to them. So... I'm suffering through it for the rest of the year. Because of that, reading Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier has also been put on hold. I'm barely 25 percent through it. I'm also dabbling in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (we can add slavery to the October themes list, I suppose) on my Android Kindle. If I devoted time to it, I might finish it in a weekend. It doesn't seem to be long and I'm already almost halfway through. Still, it's just for the occasional read while I'm out somewhere and bored. I'll be lucky if I finish these three books by the end of the year. Sad, but true.
I am continuing the autism theme with Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. It reminds me of something, some other author's style, but I can't remember who or what story...
January:
1. Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail
2. Dave Eggers - The Wild Things
3. Anne McCaffrey - If Wishes Were Horses
4 Jose Saramago - Death with Interruptions
5. Farley Mowat - Never Cry Wolf
6. Anne Bishop - The Invisible Ring
7. John Green - The Fault in Our Stars
8. Stephen R Lawhead - Tuck
9. Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry - Peter and the Starcatchers
February:
10. Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
11. Chuck Palahniuk - Damned
12. Michael Cunningham - The Hours,
13. Lewis Carrol - Through the Looking-Glass
14. Matthew Cody - Powerless
15. Charlaine Harris - Definitely Dead
16. W. B. Yeats - Collected Poems
17. Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
March:
18. Margaret Atwood - Lady Oracle
19. Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love
20. Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
21. Julia Glass - Three Junes
22. T. S. Eliot - Old Possom's Book of Practical Cats
23. Frances Hodgson Burnett - A Little Princess
24. M.T. Anderson - The Feed
25. Barry Lopez - Of Wolves and Men
April:
26. Michael Morpurgo - War Horse
27. Cherie Priest - Boneshaker
28. George R. R. Martin - Game of Thrones
29. Nancy Farmer - The House of the Scorpion
30. John C. Hull - On Sight and Insight
31. Robert Gibb - Sheet Music
May:
32. Mary Crockett Hill - A Theory of Everything
33. Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen - Out of Africa
34. Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues
35. Jennifer Egan - A Visit From the Goon Squad
36. Judith Vollmer - The Water Books
37. Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife
June:
38. Giovanni Arpino - Scent of a Woman
39. M. T. Anderson - The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1 The Pox Party
40. Robert Busch - The Wolf Almanac
41. Gailmarie Pahmeier - Shake It and It Snows
42. Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
43. Matt Terhune - Bathhouse Betty
44. Gigi Marks - Shelter
45. Joanne Greenberg - Of Such Small Differences
46. Thomas More - Utopia
47. Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
July:
48. Sophocles - Oedipus at Colonus
49. Sophocles - Antigone
50. Shirley Ann Grau - Keepers of the House
51. Robert Kurson - Crashing Through
52. Julie Otsuka - The Buddha in the Attic
53. Peter Blair - Farang
54. Charlaine Harris - All Together Dead
55. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games
56. Eric Boyd - Whiskey Sour: Short Stories
August:
57. Emily Dickinson - The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
58. Susan Sontag - In America
59. Yann Martel - Life of Pi
60. Annie Dillard - Teaching a Stone to Talk
61. Israel Centeno - Bamboo City
62. Luis Alberto Urrea - Sonoran Desert Sutras
63. Jan Beatty - Ravage
64. Katherine Ayers - One-eyed Cat
65. Chauna Craig - Eden Way
66. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
67. Samuel Hazo - Song of the Horse
68. Liane Ellison Norman - Roundtrip
69. Thom Dawkins - After Alluvium
September:
70. Clamp - Chobits
71. Eds. Leni C. Wiltsie and Emily R. Cerrone - The Thing With Feathers: An Anthology of Writing from Words Without Walls
72. Jim Henson - It's Not Easy Being Green
73. Toni Morrison - Home
74. D. H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl
75. Susan Orlean - My Kind of Place
76. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
77. Matthew S. Moore - Chalk & Fire
78. D'Arcy Fallon - Hot Monkey Love
79. Carlton Mellick III - Red World
80. John Lithgow - Drama: An Actor's Education
81. Geraldine Brooks - March
82. Wendy Pini - ElfQuest: Hidden Years
October:
83. Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth
84. Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
85. Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
This is one of those 100 Books to Read before You Die entries that usually gets a lot of attention. This is the book that caused Rushdie to have a bounty on his head by a country's government, and caused him to go into hiding under a false name in London. The theme in here is "It did and didn't happen," which is apparently a device used by Indian folktales. It discusses how Islam and the Koran came about, but questions them by presenting them as "conveniences" that Mohammad created for himself or others, and how angels and devils and good and evil does exist, but there's not much difference between them, and how the present and the past coincides through two people. It's witty with a bunch of cultural commentary of different regions, and it was an entertaining read. In utilizing stories and the "it did and didn't happen, it was and it wasn't" repetition, the author turns around and silently points to religious history and says the same thing about it. Maybe that's why people wanted to kill him. Maybe suggesting that it was all lies and conveniences and maybe didn't happen a certain way was the blasphemous comments that people took such offense to.
86. Antoine de Saint Exupery - The Little Prince
I always see this story referenced in literary tattoos. I never understood why, and still kind of don't... This story is like The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. It is simple, the lessons are obvious, and somehow people think it's a work of masterful wisdom. I think I finished it in a day. It might have held more significance for me if I'd read it as a child, when it is meant to be read.
87. Matthew Dicks - Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Professional review to come... It was amazing. Go read it. Gushing reviews are so hard to write.
88. Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
I wanted to read something Halloween-y for October this year. In fact, I wanted to get to most of my “scary” or supernatural reads. It was a good theme for this month. So, I tried this out. I’d heard many good things about it, and my attention was first drawn to it when I saw the movie’s trailer. It is a shame that the movie turned out so poorly. I haven’t seen it yet, though I’ve heard that the author wrote the screenplay as well, and tried to incorporate as much from the book as possible (despite some scenes not translating well onto screen) as well as Hollywood-izing it with all those explosions and massive battles. He even adds a character, I noticed from the IMDB page. The story itself is intriguing and well researched. I liked the overall concept, and the book, and could certainly see how it got so much attention. There were moments that were a bit amateurish, though, and moments that seemed to drag on and on… But otherwise it kept my attention.
89. Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire
It took me far too long to read (listen to) this book. After Jackie's love of it during high school and watching the movie who-knows-how-many times, I should have read this way back then instead of now. I've had The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned on my shelf for a few years, but I wanted to read this book first before I got to them. Laura (and maybe Jackie, too) told me that the movie is rather faithful to the story, and that I could delve into The Vampire Lestat without worry. Still... the book provided some insight. And really... I don't like Louis. I don't know why. Maybe it was the voice actor, who droned out his "French" accent that sounded a bit too eastern European for my tastes... Or maybe it's the fact that Louis is ruled by those around him; he doesn't actually do anything himself until the end, and even then he just drifts through his afterlife. He has no personality aside from "woe is me, woe is life, woe is death." The voice actor tried to give Claudia her own voice (despite reading the whole thing as if Louis was telling the whole thing, which was interesting). He gave the journalist his own voice, too, because he actually was separate from the rest of the story. But Lestat? Lestat is supposed to be maliciously playful and a bit crazy (on the surface) and instead he was just... there. That said, I did enjoy the story. I have dubbed it "dark seduction." My neighbor, when I told this to her, pointed to her supernatural/vampire romance novels and said, "Like that?" And I just said no at the time, but should have said, "No. That's sex. Seduction is not sex."
November:
90. Seth Grahame-Smith - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The last of my Halloween reading. When people say that this story just takes the original Pride and Prejudice and inserts zombies, they weren't wrong. The differences in sections are so striking that the characterization changes. The story itself is interesting, I suppose... Lizzie and the other Bennet sisters are fearless warriors who were trained in Shaolin temples. And though Darcy is considered to be a master in the most difficult Japanese styles, we never see him fight. Ever. We do see his wrinkled aunt fight with Lizzie, which is a bit absurd. This whole story was absurd, and I found myself wanting to get through all the zombie nonsense and back to the original story. I may watch the movie again... And it was fun listening to this book while watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries vlog on YouTube. Aside from that, Graham-Smithe has significant mainstream value, but no literary value. He tries, but... falls short. He's good for a shut-off-your-brain read/listen.
I'm trying to get through Dreams of Terror and Death by H.P. Lovecraft, but he's so dense and so much packs into one page, all expository writing, that reading it is taking a looooong time. I wanted it to be part of my October reading and planned to put it back on the shelf for next year after I finished a lengthy novella in it. But... now I'm just past half-way... and I can't bring myself to put it down. I have too many unfinished novels, I don't want to add it to them. So... I'm suffering through it for the rest of the year. Because of that, reading Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier has also been put on hold. I'm barely 25 percent through it. I'm also dabbling in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (we can add slavery to the October themes list, I suppose) on my Android Kindle. If I devoted time to it, I might finish it in a weekend. It doesn't seem to be long and I'm already almost halfway through. Still, it's just for the occasional read while I'm out somewhere and bored. I'll be lucky if I finish these three books by the end of the year. Sad, but true.
I am continuing the autism theme with Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. It reminds me of something, some other author's style, but I can't remember who or what story...
January:
1. Charlaine Harris - Dead as a Doornail
2. Dave Eggers - The Wild Things
3. Anne McCaffrey - If Wishes Were Horses
4 Jose Saramago - Death with Interruptions
5. Farley Mowat - Never Cry Wolf
6. Anne Bishop - The Invisible Ring
7. John Green - The Fault in Our Stars
8. Stephen R Lawhead - Tuck
9. Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry - Peter and the Starcatchers
February:
10. Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle in Time
11. Chuck Palahniuk - Damned
12. Michael Cunningham - The Hours,
13. Lewis Carrol - Through the Looking-Glass
14. Matthew Cody - Powerless
15. Charlaine Harris - Definitely Dead
16. W. B. Yeats - Collected Poems
17. Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows
March:
18. Margaret Atwood - Lady Oracle
19. Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat, Pray, Love
20. Rudyard Kipling - The Jungle Book
21. Julia Glass - Three Junes
22. T. S. Eliot - Old Possom's Book of Practical Cats
23. Frances Hodgson Burnett - A Little Princess
24. M.T. Anderson - The Feed
25. Barry Lopez - Of Wolves and Men
April:
26. Michael Morpurgo - War Horse
27. Cherie Priest - Boneshaker
28. George R. R. Martin - Game of Thrones
29. Nancy Farmer - The House of the Scorpion
30. John C. Hull - On Sight and Insight
31. Robert Gibb - Sheet Music
May:
32. Mary Crockett Hill - A Theory of Everything
33. Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen - Out of Africa
34. Esi Edugyan - Half-Blood Blues
35. Jennifer Egan - A Visit From the Goon Squad
36. Judith Vollmer - The Water Books
37. Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife
June:
38. Giovanni Arpino - Scent of a Woman
39. M. T. Anderson - The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, #1 The Pox Party
40. Robert Busch - The Wolf Almanac
41. Gailmarie Pahmeier - Shake It and It Snows
42. Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending
43. Matt Terhune - Bathhouse Betty
44. Gigi Marks - Shelter
45. Joanne Greenberg - Of Such Small Differences
46. Thomas More - Utopia
47. Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
July:
48. Sophocles - Oedipus at Colonus
49. Sophocles - Antigone
50. Shirley Ann Grau - Keepers of the House
51. Robert Kurson - Crashing Through
52. Julie Otsuka - The Buddha in the Attic
53. Peter Blair - Farang
54. Charlaine Harris - All Together Dead
55. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games
56. Eric Boyd - Whiskey Sour: Short Stories
August:
57. Emily Dickinson - The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
58. Susan Sontag - In America
59. Yann Martel - Life of Pi
60. Annie Dillard - Teaching a Stone to Talk
61. Israel Centeno - Bamboo City
62. Luis Alberto Urrea - Sonoran Desert Sutras
63. Jan Beatty - Ravage
64. Katherine Ayers - One-eyed Cat
65. Chauna Craig - Eden Way
66. Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
67. Samuel Hazo - Song of the Horse
68. Liane Ellison Norman - Roundtrip
69. Thom Dawkins - After Alluvium
September:
70. Clamp - Chobits
71. Eds. Leni C. Wiltsie and Emily R. Cerrone - The Thing With Feathers: An Anthology of Writing from Words Without Walls
72. Jim Henson - It's Not Easy Being Green
73. Toni Morrison - Home
74. D. H. Lawrence - The Lost Girl
75. Susan Orlean - My Kind of Place
76. Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
77. Matthew S. Moore - Chalk & Fire
78. D'Arcy Fallon - Hot Monkey Love
79. Carlton Mellick III - Red World
80. John Lithgow - Drama: An Actor's Education
81. Geraldine Brooks - March
82. Wendy Pini - ElfQuest: Hidden Years
October:
83. Joseph Campbell - The Power of Myth
84. Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
85. Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
This is one of those 100 Books to Read before You Die entries that usually gets a lot of attention. This is the book that caused Rushdie to have a bounty on his head by a country's government, and caused him to go into hiding under a false name in London. The theme in here is "It did and didn't happen," which is apparently a device used by Indian folktales. It discusses how Islam and the Koran came about, but questions them by presenting them as "conveniences" that Mohammad created for himself or others, and how angels and devils and good and evil does exist, but there's not much difference between them, and how the present and the past coincides through two people. It's witty with a bunch of cultural commentary of different regions, and it was an entertaining read. In utilizing stories and the "it did and didn't happen, it was and it wasn't" repetition, the author turns around and silently points to religious history and says the same thing about it. Maybe that's why people wanted to kill him. Maybe suggesting that it was all lies and conveniences and maybe didn't happen a certain way was the blasphemous comments that people took such offense to.
86. Antoine de Saint Exupery - The Little Prince
I always see this story referenced in literary tattoos. I never understood why, and still kind of don't... This story is like The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. It is simple, the lessons are obvious, and somehow people think it's a work of masterful wisdom. I think I finished it in a day. It might have held more significance for me if I'd read it as a child, when it is meant to be read.
87. Matthew Dicks - Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend
Professional review to come... It was amazing. Go read it. Gushing reviews are so hard to write.
88. Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
I wanted to read something Halloween-y for October this year. In fact, I wanted to get to most of my “scary” or supernatural reads. It was a good theme for this month. So, I tried this out. I’d heard many good things about it, and my attention was first drawn to it when I saw the movie’s trailer. It is a shame that the movie turned out so poorly. I haven’t seen it yet, though I’ve heard that the author wrote the screenplay as well, and tried to incorporate as much from the book as possible (despite some scenes not translating well onto screen) as well as Hollywood-izing it with all those explosions and massive battles. He even adds a character, I noticed from the IMDB page. The story itself is intriguing and well researched. I liked the overall concept, and the book, and could certainly see how it got so much attention. There were moments that were a bit amateurish, though, and moments that seemed to drag on and on… But otherwise it kept my attention.
89. Anne Rice - Interview with the Vampire
It took me far too long to read (listen to) this book. After Jackie's love of it during high school and watching the movie who-knows-how-many times, I should have read this way back then instead of now. I've had The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned on my shelf for a few years, but I wanted to read this book first before I got to them. Laura (and maybe Jackie, too) told me that the movie is rather faithful to the story, and that I could delve into The Vampire Lestat without worry. Still... the book provided some insight. And really... I don't like Louis. I don't know why. Maybe it was the voice actor, who droned out his "French" accent that sounded a bit too eastern European for my tastes... Or maybe it's the fact that Louis is ruled by those around him; he doesn't actually do anything himself until the end, and even then he just drifts through his afterlife. He has no personality aside from "woe is me, woe is life, woe is death." The voice actor tried to give Claudia her own voice (despite reading the whole thing as if Louis was telling the whole thing, which was interesting). He gave the journalist his own voice, too, because he actually was separate from the rest of the story. But Lestat? Lestat is supposed to be maliciously playful and a bit crazy (on the surface) and instead he was just... there. That said, I did enjoy the story. I have dubbed it "dark seduction." My neighbor, when I told this to her, pointed to her supernatural/vampire romance novels and said, "Like that?" And I just said no at the time, but should have said, "No. That's sex. Seduction is not sex."
November:
90. Seth Grahame-Smith - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The last of my Halloween reading. When people say that this story just takes the original Pride and Prejudice and inserts zombies, they weren't wrong. The differences in sections are so striking that the characterization changes. The story itself is interesting, I suppose... Lizzie and the other Bennet sisters are fearless warriors who were trained in Shaolin temples. And though Darcy is considered to be a master in the most difficult Japanese styles, we never see him fight. Ever. We do see his wrinkled aunt fight with Lizzie, which is a bit absurd. This whole story was absurd, and I found myself wanting to get through all the zombie nonsense and back to the original story. I may watch the movie again... And it was fun listening to this book while watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries vlog on YouTube. Aside from that, Graham-Smithe has significant mainstream value, but no literary value. He tries, but... falls short. He's good for a shut-off-your-brain read/listen.