Sunday, January 01, 2012

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            

1 comment:

  1. I have printed this out, because I see many great titles here to enjoy. Loved Trick of the Light by Louise Penny.

    ReplyDelete