525,600
Well, it's New Years Eve. A time of reflecting on the year that has gone, and looking to the year which is coming.
It's also a time to examine one critical metric for a successful year. Namely: Literacy.
So, in that spirit, I have complied what is almost without a doubt a highly flawed list of all the books I've read this year. Flawed less in the timbre of the books, which are mostly awesome with some exceptions (exceptions which I persisted in for academic reasons. I'm looking at you, Roxana) then the fact that I'm certain there a bunch of books I've forgotten. Hell, there are several books which I remember reading which I'm not counting because I didn't finish them. Walden, for example. Just couldn't get through long parts of it without my eyes glazing over, and I scraped out a B+ in American Romanticism anyway.
And don't get me started on The Flamenco Academy. I still wake up in chills.
Also, the order is probably wrong, and No Exit is a play, and a rather short one at that, so maybe it shouldn't count?
Anyway: with a proviso that this list was mostly made with a memory supplemented, indeed almost replaced, by the book tag, this is me, measuring my life in books.
- A Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman
- Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, Daniel Defoe
- Shirley, Charlotte Bronte
- Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
- Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
- The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
- Neuromancer, William Gibson
- Crocodile on the Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters
- The Name of the Rose, Umburto Eco
- The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander
- The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander
- The Castle of Lyr, Lloyd Alexander
- Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander
- The High King, Lloyd Alexander
- Westmark, Lloyd Alexander
- The Kestrel, Lloyd Alexander
- The Beggar Queen, Lloyd Alexander
- Sourcery, Terry Pratchett
- Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
- The Curse of the Pharoahs, Elizabeth Peters
- Sandman, Volume 1, Neil Gaiman
- V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd
- Candide, Voltaire
- Huis clos (No Exit), Jean-Paul Sartre
- L’Étranger (The Stranger), Albert Camus
- Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
- The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, Steve Leveen
- On Writing, Stephen King
- Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
- The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters, Gordon Dahlquist
- The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde
- Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner
- The Fourth Bear, Jasper Fforde
- The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein
- Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter, Joe Maguire
- Dune, Frank Herbert
- A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Frederick Douglass
- Schrodinger's Ball, Adam Felber
- He, She, and It, Marge Piercy
- The End, Lemony Snicket
- Moby-Dick, Herman Mellville
- Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
- The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russel
- Children of God, Mary Doria Russel
- The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
- Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- 1776, David McCullough
- Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
The one book which didn't quite become number 55, A Prayer for Owen Meany, is also excellent. But given I've got upwards of three hundred pages to go on it, the situation looks doubtful. I'll let you know.
Anyway: Wow. That's a fine list, I'd say. A good mix of old favorites and new ones, of high literature and more commercial works, and less genre fiction than I'd have expected, if we ignore all the Sci-Fi I read for classes. Well done, 2006.
Now, let's top it.
I won't need to find a Borders in China, I shouldn't think.