Here is a list of all the books that I read this year. I read books by authors from 22 different countries: Russia, France, England, Germany, South Africa, Japan, India, USA, Austria, Persia, Canada, Portugal, Brazil, Columbia, Turkey, Iraq, Peru, Iran, Algeria, Zimbabwe, Hungary, and Chile. Last year I decided that I wanted to read more Latin American writers, and I definitely did so. My reading list has a strong gender bias: only 1/5th of these were written by women. Only about 2/7 were written before the 20th century.
The List
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Candide - Voltaire
Meditations on First Philosophy - Rene Descartes
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Master of Petersburg - J.M. Coetzee
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill
Musui's Story - Katsu Kokichi
Fury - Salman Rushdie
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
Adventures in Missing the Point - Campolo/McLaren
Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis - Sigmund Freud
A Very Short Introduction to Globalization - Manfred Steger
Runaway World - Anthony Giddens
The End of Poverty - Jeffrey Sachs
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
The Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam
First Snow on Fuji - Yasunari Kawabata
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Black Company - Glen Cook
The Vagina Monologues - Eve Ensler
Ceremony - Leslie Silko
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven - Sherman Alexie
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
Blindness - Jose Saramago
The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell -Jorge Amado
Diary of a Mad Old Man - Junichiro Tanizaki
Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
City of Djinns - William Dalrymple
The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
The First Horseman - John Aberth
After the Quake - Haruki Murakami
The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee
Epic of Gilgamesh
Arabian Nights
The War of the Saints - Jorge Amado
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words - Jay Rubin
Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
The Ark Sakura - Kobo Abe
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Baltasar and Blimunda - Jose Saramago
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
If This Be Treason - Gregory Rabassa
Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins
Baghdad Burning - Riverbend
The Makioka Sisters - Junichiro Tanizaki
In Praise of the Stepmother - Mario Vargas Llosa
Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Fantasia - Assia Djebar
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
The Book of Not - Tsitsi Dangarembga
Adam Bede - George Eliot
The Icarus Girl - Helen Oyeyemi
The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle
Personal Knowledge - Michael Polanyi
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
After Dark - Haruki Murakami
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon - Jose Saramago
Top Ten Novels (no order)
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky.
The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolano.
The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Blindness - Jose Saramago
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
This is a pretty unsurprising list, considering what I read. They weren't necessarily the ten best reading experiences, some of them are really frustrating/exhausting books to read (Savage Detectives, One Hundred Years, Black Book). But, this is probably close to the list that I would make in 5 years looking back. I wish that everyone in the world would read Brothers Karamazov. Another reflection: I read fatty books, fatty novels, but they're often the best books I read.
All in all, I think it was a good year for reading. I don't think there's anything on the list that I regret reading. Some of what I read just wasn't very good, but I still think it was worth reading for one purpose or another. Reading ambitions for the coming year: I want to read more non-fiction. Part of this is more reading on diseases and epidemics (the historical and societal side, not the biological side). I'd also like to read more academic theological writing, since most books on Christianity that I've read have been popular inspirational writings, or writing on spirituality and "Christian living." That's fine, but I want something more meaty. And, I want to read some good travel writing. I say that I want to read more philosophy, but I'm not sure how helpful it is to just dive in and read philosophical works, or how realistic it is. Specifically, I want to read more works on epistemology. And, finally, I want to read more linguistic theory.
On the fiction side, I want to keep up with reading Japanese and Latin American authors, as well as more 19th century literature and more American authors. Books that I'm either excited to read, planning to read, or wanting to read in the next year:
- 2666 - Roberto Bolano. I just finished reading The Savage Detectives, and wanted to keep reading his writing. Apparently 2666 is his masterpiece.
- Soul Mountain - Gao Xingjian. I know some of my friends had trouble reading this, but I'd still like to give it a shot.
- Don DeLillo. I'll probably end up reading White Noise, and maybe Cosmopolis.
- All the Names - Jose Saramago. Like Rushdie, or Marquez, Saramago can be a really irritating writer. But, I keep going back to read more, so he's doing something right or I'm just dumb.
- The Unconsoled / When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro.
- Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands - Jorge Amado. Another irritating writer that I like to read.
-Dickens. I'm not sure which of his novels yet, but Oliver Twist is on my shelf, so that's a likely candidate, although this is another book that friends of mine have hated.
-N.T. Wright. I haven't read anything by him, and don't know what to read of his, but I want to read something.
- I am a Cat - Natsume Soseki. Worth it for the title alone.
- The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie.
We'll see what happens.
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4 comments:
You put me to shame, my friend. Better luck for me in 2009, maybe?
thank you for this list alex. your reading list amazes me.
i also have a suggestion for your 2009 reading list.
it is 'provocations' by soren kierkegaard. it is a heavy read, slow going, but worthwhile i think.
my own book obsession is slowly growing (emphasis on slowly there).
thanks for sharing
also, it just struck me as i read the list again, wouldn't it make more sense to make a list of which books you think you will look back on in 5 years as the best of the year in 5 years? how can you know how you will feel about something in 5 years?
i shouldn't tell you what to do i know, but if it was me, i'd make a list of what i liked most now then make a five year retrospective list of 08 in 2013... but whatever. i'm still stoked about the list.
also, i've just decided that i'm going to try and read something every day this year, even if it's just a few pages of whatever book i'm currently reading. i know this may be nearly second nature to you, but like i said, by obsession is only in its infant stages.
alex, what music should i listen to?
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