To read: a list

Well, this should be amusing. Folks over at the Knittyboard have been posting their "to read" lists. It makes me chuckle, their four or five books each. But then again, they probably all don't spend their workdays reading book reviews either.

Now I'm not kidding myself that I'll actually read all of these. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was daunted enough by Gary Shteyngart's first book (which I couldn't finish) that I probably won't even attempt his latest. But this list is more of a memory aid than an assignment. If I didn't keep a list, I'd putting all these books on hold so I wouldn't forget about them and then would end up with 12 at a time (ask me how I know this). I do pare down this list now and then, but I also just recently read the new Library Journal AND Booklist, so it's a bit out of control again. Such is life.

In addition to the books below, I'm on hold for the new Ian McEwan book, On Chesil Beach, and A Thousand Splended Suns by Khaled Hosseini.

Fiction

1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2. The Sparrow. Mary Doria Russell
3. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
4. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
5. Jinn by Matthew B.J. Delaney
6. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
7. A God Strolling in the Cool of the Evening
8. Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
9. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
10. Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
11. Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart
12. Adverbs by Daniel Handler
13. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
14. Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
15. Special Topics in Calamity Physics
16. Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald
17. The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
18. The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
19. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver
20. Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
21. Life as we knew it. Pfeffer
22. Walden by Thoreau
23. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies
24. More from the Thursday Next series
25. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
26. Timothy, or Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg
27. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
28. Every Visible Thing by Lisa Carey
29. Time Capsule: Short stories about teenagers through the 20th century
30. Little Stalker by Jennifer Belle
31. Peony in Love by Lisa See
32. Sheer Abandon by Penny Vincenzi
33. Mr. Dixon Disappears by Ian Sansom
34. Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney
35. The Worst Thing I’ve Done by Ursula Hegi
36. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
37. The Eight by Katherine Neville
38. We Go Liquid by Christian TeBordo
39. No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay
40. Not Yet Drown’d by Pet Kingman
41. The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
42. Sammy's Hill by Kristin Gore


Non-fiction

1. People’s History of the United States
2. The Fasting Girl 336p
3. The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Carson 289p
4. Animals in Translation 356p
5. 1776 by David McCullough
6. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
7. The Family that Couldn’t Sleep by D.T. Max 299p
8. The Heartless stone: a journey through the world of diamonds, deceit and desire
9. Devil’s Picnic by Tara Grescoe
10. Better: a surgeon’s notes on performance by Atul Gawande
11. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
12. Mindless Eating: why we eat more than we think
13. The End of the Line: How overfishing is changing the world and what we eat by Charles Clover
14. Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity
15. The Braindead Megaphone: Essays by George Saunders
16. The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
17. Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph; Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw
18. Best American Crime Reporting 2007