Eight nonfiction
Literary Analysis, History, Cultural Studies:
Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague
Dan Chiras and Dave Wann, Superbia! 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods
Richard Ellman, Ulysses on the Liffey
David Gifford, Annotated Ulysses
Daniel Pool, Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters: The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novels
Grammar Geekery:
Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Well-Tempered Sentence
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Memoir:
David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
Sixty novels, including nine audio and six onscreen
Joan Austen-Leigh, A Visit to Highbury: Another View of Emma
Beryl Bainbridge, Every Man for Himself
Pat Barker, Another World (audio)
Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (PG)
Antonia S. Byatt, Little Black Book of Stories
Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (audio)
Tom Carson, Gilligan's Wake
Tracey Chevalier, The Virgin Blue
Carolyn Chute, Beans of Egypt, Maine
Douglas Coupland, All Families Are Psychotic
Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!
Robertson Davies, What's Bred in the Bone
Robertson Davies, The Lyre of Orpheus
Don DeLillo, Underworld (audio)
E.L. Doctorow, Billy Bathgate (audio)
Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (PG)
William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
Jasper Fforde, Well of Lost Plots
Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
Molly Gloss, Wild Life: A Novel
Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life
Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
Sarah Orne Jewett, Country of the Pointed Firs (audio)
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
Edward P. Jones, The Known World (audio)
James Joyce, Ulysses
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love (PG)
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (PG)
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Jack London, The Call of the Wild (PG)
Gregory Maguire, Mirror, Mirror
Robin McKinley, Sunshine
Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove (audio)
Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
Edna O'Brien, House of Splendid Isolation
DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
Mary Renault, The King Must Die
Philip Roth, American Pastoral (audio)
Geoff Ryman, Was
José Saramago, The Stone Raft
Cathleen Schine, She Is Me
Juliette Shapiro, Excessively Diverted
William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron, Sophie's Choice
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (audio)
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius
Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (PG)
Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of the San Luis Rey
Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons (audio)
Other:
Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, 1950-1952
Charles Schulz, The Complete Peanuts, 1953-1954
Forty-one children's books
Joan Aiken, Nightbirds on Nantucket
Laura Adams Armer, Waterless Mountain
Marion Dane Bauer, On My Honor
Joan W. Blos, A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-32
L.M. Boston, Children of Green Knowe
Bill Brittain, The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree
Ellen Conford, A Royal Pain
Caroline B. Cooney, What Janie Found
Sharon Creech, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup
Sharon Creech, Heartbeat
Roald Dahl, Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes
Kate Dicamillo, The Tale of Despereaux
Olivier Dunrea, Peedie
Jeanne DuPrau, People of Sparks
Walter Edmonds, The Matchlock Gun
Nancy Farmer, A Girl Named Disaster
Nancy Farmer, House of The Scorpion
Rachel Field, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years
Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain
Paula Fox, One-Eyed Cat
Jackie French, Diary of a Wombat
Jean Fritz, Homesick: My Own Story
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
Cornelia Funke, Thief Lord
Ruth S. Gannet, My Father’s Dragon
Virginia C. Hamilton, M.C. Higgins The Great
Charles Hawes, Dark Frigate
Karen Hesse, Just Juice
Carl Hiaasen, Hoot
Polly Horvath, Everything On A Waffle
Irene Hunt, Up A Road Slowly
E.L. Konigsburg, The Outcasts of Schuyler Place
Lois Lowry, Messenger
Katherine Paterson, Preacher's Boy
Katherine Paterson, The Same Stuff as Stars
Francine Prose, After
Willo Davis Roberts, Girl With the Silver Eyes
Ruth Sawyer, Roller Skates
Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
Armstrong Sperry, Call It Courage
Lawrence Yep, Dragonwings
Of the 25 adult novels that I read not by reason of award or list, and not because their medium (audio or Project Gutenberg, which both allow me to fill otherwise bookless time) constrains my choice, what were my reasons?
Five were by favorite authors or authors of favorites--Byatt and Saramago the former, Chevalier, McKinley, and Schine the latter; another two were for Davies becoming a favorite author. Coupland and Maguire were more for completion than for favoritism. Two were Austen complements; Fforde was purely escapist; and Kidd was to ease my brain after Ulysses but also sent me haring back to better fare. Four were direct recommendations, Bray from Melissa, Gloss from Jessie, Hosseini from the UConn Co-op, Updike from ÜberBoss. Carson and Foer were Suspect mentions, and because of Suspect love I read my second Murakami. Of course, without the Suspects I wouldn’t’ve read Ulysses either, or got as much out of Faulkner as I did. Bainbridge was a combination: I began it at some friends' house while catsitting, napping with a cat in the sun, and when Beth read it I thought to borrow it to finish while napping with my own pet. The Chute I had meant to read since a Phoebe book club discussed it during my tenure, and the LeGuin because it is a seminal sf title. And Brown I read for hype.
Twenty-one of the 41 children's books won Newbery Medals or Honors. Of the others, only the Conford wasted my time, though the Cooney is also trashy. Roberts I read because of Eliza; the Dunrea because it is adorable, ditto the French; Dahl was there, but of course also worth reading; for Hesse’s Newbery I have read two but will not read additional others. Aiken, Creech, Konigsburg, Lowry, Paterson, and Snicket are favorite authors of favorites. Boston and Funke could be new favorites. DuPrau milks the sequel beast, which I should resist, and the Prose could have been decent but wasn't. I might continue to think that because I have read all the best of the Golden Age for my favorite age range (1960 to 1985, for 10- to 12-year-olds, except that 1959 gave me Witch of Blackbird Pond and 1986 Sarah, Plain and Tall (which is perfect despite being younger)) that children's books are all used up for me, but then Creech and Curtis and Sachar give me hope.