Lists Are Fun

Because I am a strange and obsessive creature of habit I always start the list of books I’ve read each year over in the Spring. I began doing this in college because the end of April/beginning of May was when school let out and it just seemed like an appropriate time for renewal and fresh starts or something. Anyway, here is the list of books I’ve read in the past year. I have it in my head that I should have some kind of specific objective in mind as I begin my new list, “Shoot for a book a week!” or “Try to tackle some of the classics that are always referenced in your writing workshops and that you have been too lazy to actually pick up.” At the moment I’m not feeling very creative however, so I’m going to tell myself that keeping a list at all is ambitious enough . . .

Books Read 2008-2009 (Favorites are in purple. Meaning they either made me cry or I
forced my boyfriend to listen to me read passages aloud to him.)

* Blankets by Craig Thompson (Heartbreaking graphic novel that I read in a few hours. It's amazing.)
* Magic For Beginners by Kelly Link
* Little Children by Tom Perrotta
* Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
* A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
* Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
* Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno
* The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
* Samuel Johnson is Indignant by Lydia Davis
* The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
* Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
* White Noise by Don DeLillo
* The Girls in 3-B by Valerie Taylor
* Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
* Farewell Navigator by Leni Zumas
* Tyrants by Marshall N. Klimasewiski
* You Must Be This Happy to Enter by Elizabeth Crane
* Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
* The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal by J. Patrick O'Connor
* Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx
* The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich
* Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
* Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
* The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
* Vox by Nicholson Baker
* Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
* The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns
* Against Love by Laura Kipnis
* AVA by Carole Maso
* Museum Pieces by Elizabeth Tallent
* So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
* The Female Thing by Laura Kipnis
* The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker