Totally didn’t even make my minimum reading quota for this year. I blame this on having one and a half break downs. The half one, I guess I’ll call it a mini break; I’m still having, YAY for break downs!
I’m only going to finish twenty-one books this year I’m supposed to read at least twenty-four.
Yesterday I had an epiphany thinking of sneaky ways I could pull off three more books in under two days, I’ve never really been able to decide when people ask me what super power I want because they all sound pretty cool and all but call me crazy I have decided I want to be able to speed read. How is this even a super power? Easy, I could also work undercover for anyone who needed it reading documents and intelligence super fast helping catch serial killers and environmental terrorists and those other freaky terrorists. I’d even get to be on Heroes Season Five. Not to mention I could read 100′s of books a year. I am so sinfully jealous of fast readers.
There is one exception to what will be the final count. Adam agrees with me that technically I should get one extra credit for The Turn of the Screw, Henry James. I did not finish this book but I attempted to read it twice, I read the first sixty-three pages two times. That would put me at twenty-two.
These are the books I did read.
1. Animal Farm, George Orwell
2. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
3. Dry, Augusten Burroughs
4. The Last Days of Socrates, Plato
5. The Undomestic Goddess, Sophie Kinsella
6. Tori Amos Piece by Piece, Tori Amos and Anne Powers
7. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
8. Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
9. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
10. Under the Skin, Michel Faber
11. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
12. sTORI telling, Tori Spelling w/Hilary Liftin
13. On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
14. A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs
15. Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk
16. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, Eva Rice
17. The Definitive Edition, The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
18. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
19. Stiff, The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach
20. The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold
21. The Condition, Jennifer Haigh
In July I did a mass review that covered a random selection of books on the above list, my review of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger appeared in the zine Estella’s Revenge and I did a full on review of my Sony eBook as well as the book Stiff, Mary Roach because it was probably the number one book of the year. Because of that book I just recently discovered having watched it twice over this horrid holiday season that the scene in Love Actually where Liam Neeson HAS to play, at his late wife’s funeral, the montage of photos set to the Bay City Rollers version of Bye Bye Baby (Baby Goodbye) now bugs me A LOT. Both times I yelled at the TV. I still seriously love that movie; that particular book just happened to change my life.
I am really looking forward to what books 2009 brings, I’m back in a book club which I love, I’ve missed two meetings but I’ve still read two of the three books read by the group since joining and have the book for the next meeting in my reading pile.
Just a couple of books that I already have in my possession that I hope to read next year are;
Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland
Attachment, John Bowlby
The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb
Rant, Chuck Palahniuk
I am particularly eager to start The Hour I First Believed I read that it apparently references his other two books, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much is True; I can’t wait to see how those characters play into the eight hundred page book that is ninety six pages shorter than his last book.
I did not like Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels, seriously stick to poetry please. Under the Skin, Michel Faber was horrid, I read it because I found it on the 1001 books to read before you die list and I already owned it and I can not for the life of me figure out WHY it is on that list, maybe to free up bed space in hospitals? I also despised YES DESPISED The Time Traveler’s Wife. But I’ve bashed it enough this year. The rest I would highly recommend. Other than Stiff if I had to pick a favourite this year it would have to be Tori Amos Piece by Piece, Tori Amos and Anne Powers and Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk which equals three favourites because I can’t pick one of anything except one Adam Bradley Carlson.
Please feel free to leave your favourite reads of 2008 in the comments because I am always looking for great new reads.
