Biblio Baggins's 2011 Reading List

“You always read too many books . . . That can’t lead to any good.”

 --Arturo Perez-Reverte

“I care about the reader . . . That one person, alone in a room, whose time I’m asking for. I want my books to be worth the reader’s time . . . The novels I love are novels I live for. They make me feel smarter, more alive, more tender toward the world.”

--Jeffrey Eugenides
in an interview in The Paris Review

I read 135 books in 2011, midway between the 114 in 2010 and the 161 in 2009.

A few highlights:

• I read Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind for the first time.
• I read my very first Stephen King novel, Under the Dome.
• I read, finally, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.  Absolutely the longest book I've ever read.
• And after reading lots of non-fiction by Larry McMurtry, I finally read one of his novels, Lonesome Dove.

Because some of you will want to know, of those books, I liked Lonesome Dove the best. It is a great yarn and destined to be an American classic. 

Here's all the books for 2011. 

January

1.         A Rule Against Murder, Louise Penny

2.         The Brutal Telling, Louise Penny

3.         The Long Ships, Frans G. Bengtsson

4.         The Spot, David Means

5.         Guitar, An American Life, Tim Brookes

6.         The Anniversary Man, R.J. Ellory

7.         Four Fish, Paul Greenberg

8.         Zero History, William Gibson

9.         The Sherlockian, Graham Moore

10.       Andrew Johnson, Annette Gordon-Reed

11.       Star Island, Carl Hiaasen

12.       The Sentry, Robert Crais

13.       Al Jaffee’s Mad Life, Mary-Lou Weisman

14.       I’d Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman

15.       Mockingbird, Kathryn Erskine

February

16.       Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry

17.       Swamplandia!, Karen Russell

18.       Running the Books, Avi Steinberg

19.       Known to Evil, Walter Mosley

20.       The Darkness That Comes Before, R. Scott Bakker

21.       The Warrior Prophet, R. Scott Bakker

22.       The Thousandfold Thought, R. Scott Bakker

23.       Faulks on Fiction, Sebastian Faulks

March

24.       A Red Herring Without Mustard, Alan Bradley

25.       Bury Your Dead, Louise Penny

26.       Human Croquet, Kate Atkinson

27.       The Death of King Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, retelling by Peter Ackroyd

28.       The Killing of Crazy Horse, Thomas Powers

29.       Sunset Park, Paul Auster

30.       Blood, Bones & Butter, Gabrielle Hamilton

31.       The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, Dan Fesperman

32.       Jerry Robinson, Ambassador of Comics, N.C. Christopher Couch

33.       Kraken, China Mieville

34.       The Bricklayer, Noah Boyd

35.       The Girl in the Green Raincoat, Laura Lippman

April

36.       Winter in the Blood, James Welch

37.       The Georges and the Jewels, Jane Smiley

38.       The Hangman, Louise Penny

39.       Tomato Red, Daniel Woodrell

40.       The Lost Gate, Orson Scott Card

41.       Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee, Allen Barra

42.       The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell   

43.       Townie, Andre Dubus III

44.       The Welsh Girl, Peter Ho Davies

45.       Run!, Dean Karnazes

46.       The Fifth Witness, Michael Connelly

47.       Bird Cloud, Annie Proulx

48.       The Death of Sweet Mister, Daniel Woodrell

49.       Wonder, Robert J. Sawyer

50.       When the Killing’s Done, T.C. Boyle

51.       Flyover People, Cheryl Unruh

May

52.       Twice A Spy, Keith Thomson

53.       Just Kids, Patti Smith

54.       The Waters Rising, Sheri S. Tepper

55.       The Uncoupling, Meg Wolitzer

56.       Agent X, Noah Boyd

57.       Moon Over Manifest, Clare Vanderpool

58.       Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff

59.       Lost Souls, Michael Collins

60.       Selected Stories, William Trevor

61.       Millard Fillmore, Paul Finkelman

62.       The City and The City, China Mieville

June

63.       The Widower’s Tale, Julia Glass

64.       You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon

65.       Embassytown, China Mieville     

66.       A Well-Paid Slave, Brad Snyder

67.       The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips

68.       Rizzo’s Fire, Lou Manfredo

69.       The Alchemist, Paolo Bacigalupi

70.       Bradbury An Illustrated Life, Jerry Weist

71.       The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie

72.       The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman

73.       The Greater Journey, David McCullough

74.       State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

75.       It’s All About The Bike, Robert Penn

July

76.       The Snowman, Jo Nesbo

77.       Rodin’s Debutante, Ward Just

78.       A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

79.       Lockdown, Walter Dean Myers

80.       Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger, Lee Smith

81.       Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

August

82.       The Dewey Decimal System, Nathan Larson

83.       A Good Fall, Ha Jin

84.       A Cold Day in Paradise, Steve Hamilton

85.       Rule 34, Charles Stross

86.       Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson

87.       The London Train, Tessa Hadley

88.       All the Time In The World, E.L. Doctorow

89.       Winter of the Wolf Moon, Steve Hamilton

90.       Disturbance, Jan Burke

91.       The Fort, Bernard Cornwell

92.       Washington, Ron Chernow

93.       Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling

94.       Not the End of the World, Kate Atkinson

September

95.       Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling

96.       The Cut, George Pelecanos

97.       Reservation Road, John Burnham Schwartz

98.       The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

99.       A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny

100.     Homicide Survivors Picnic, Lorraine M. Lopez

101.     Supergods, Grant Morrison

102.     Before the Poison, Peter Robinson

103      Just My Type, Simon Garfield

104.     Northwest Corner, John Burnham Schwartz

105.     The Hunting Wind, Steve Hamilton

October

106.     The Affair, Lee Child

107.     Stan Musial An American Life, George Vecsey

108.     The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

109.     Luka and the Fire of Life, Salman Rushdie

110.     Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward

111.     Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard

112.     White Noise, Don DeLillo

113.     The Baseball Codes, Jason Turbow w/Michael Duca

114.     Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser

115.     Under the Dome, Stephen King

116.     Train Dreams, Denis Johnson

November

117.     Death of Kings, Bernard Cornwell

118.     The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt

119.     The Apothecary, Maile Meloy

120.     Death in the City of Light, David King

121.     The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides

122.     Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

123.     The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka

124.     King of the Badgers, Philip Hensher

125.     The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

126.     Emotionally Weird, Kate Atkinson

127.     I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Alan Bradley

December

128.     The Sojourn, Andrew Krivak

129.     Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks

130.     The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst

131.     Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman

132.     War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

133.     Tales of Burning Love, Louise Erdrich

134.     Alpha Better Juice, Roy Blount Jr.

135.     The Drop, Michael Connelly