What I Read 2012

Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Open City by Teju Cole

Runaway by Alice Munro

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Light in August by William Faulkner

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

End in Tears by Ruth Rendell

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Inferno by Dante Alighieri

This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman

Indignation by Philip Roth

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

Jade Green by Phyllis Reynold Naylor

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Tinkers by Paul Harding

Breaking News: What I Read in 2011

Well, while I am disappointed with myself for not posting a single thing on this blog for all of 2014, and most of 2013 for that matter, there's nothing I can do but move forward and hope to post more in 2015. I'm starting with my list of books read in 2011, as a way to archive that list and make more room in the layout for a 2015 list. 

As always, it is interesting to look back over what I read a few years ago, and see what has stuck with me and what has not. There are many books I really liked on this list; I think my favorites are The Marriage Plot, The Rules of Civility, Await Your Reply, Bitter in the Mouth, The Fran Liebowitz Reader, the Chekhov stories, and (most of all!) A Visit from the Goon Squad.

• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
• Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans
• Zippermouth by Laurie Weeks
• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Whisperers by Orlando Figes
• Havana Real by Yoani Sanchez
• The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
• Like You'd Understand, Anyway by Jim Shepard
• The Crazed by Ha Jin
• Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
• The Blessing of a B Minus by Wendy Mogel
• Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black
• Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong
• Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
• The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
• The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
• The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler
• The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa
• Sold by Patricia McCormick
• The Fran Lebowitz Reader
• Unbroken by Lauren Hillibrand
• My Life in France by Julia Child
• Ward No. 6 and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• The Zero by Jess Walter
• American Woman by Susan Choi
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
• The Call of the Wild by Jack London
• This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

At It Again

I saw the Philip Roth Unmasked film at Film Forum the other day. FOR FREE! I highly recommend it, of course. However, there were just a couple odd moments that I continue to puzzle over.

1. Roth's attempt to convince the viewer that Nathan Zuckerman has practically no sexual experience throughout the Zuckerman trilogy. He does so in the context of arguing that he is no more sex-obsessed as a writer than your average joe. In that I happen to agree. It's just that, having read The Anatomy Lesson fairly recently, I can think of three women with whom Zuckerman has sex in the course of the novel. In fact, there are several references to his "harem." There might have been more than three; I'll have to go back and check.

2. The sequence re writers committing suicide. First, Roth has not committed suicide, so the relevance was not clear. Second, besides Hemingway and Woolf, I did not recognize any of the other names. I'm no great scholar, but I did find that odd.

3. Mia Farrow

P.S. Adam Gopnik wrote recently in The New Yorker about PR's 80th birthday. I liked his idea re Roth's retirement sounding like a plot for a new novel. He even attempts a short imitation.

Books I've Read 2010

In reverse chronological order

• Leaving a Doll's House by Claire Bloom
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg
• All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
• Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
• Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
• RIght Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
• Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
• Richard Yates by Tao Lin
• In the Woods by Tana French
• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
• The Ecstatic by Victor LaValle
• The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel
• Schooled by Anisha Lakhani
• The Coral Sea by Patti Smith
• Just Kids by Patti Smith
• A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
• Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
• The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
• The Pyramid by Henning Mankell
• Stitches by David Small
• How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
• 2666 by Robert Bolano
• The Foreign Student by Susan Choi
• Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin
• Summertime by J.M. Coetzee
• My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
• Music for Torching by A.M. Homes
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Humbling by Philip Roth

Books I've read 2009 (give or take)

I'm changing my books read lists from years past to posts as a way to archive them. Now I can move them off the sidebar where they take up too much space. If I knew how to change them into links, I'd do that, but whatever.

• Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
• My Lobotomy by Howard Dully
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
• The Believers by Zoe Heller
• Amazonia by James Marcus
• The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison
• Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
• Smotherhood by Amanda Lamb
• The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout
• City of Refuge by Tom Piazza
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
• Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout
• Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
• The Night Gardener by George Pelecanos
• Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt
• Wonderful Tonight by Patti Boyd
• Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin
• The Best American Mystery Stories 2008
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells
• Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
• The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
• Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell
• The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell
• The Alchemyst by Michael Scott
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart