Books. Lots and lots of books. A year in review.
Anyway. The List, with comments-
1. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men- David Foster Wallace
Good, but I got tired of it. The writing style is interesting for a bit, clever even, but eventually you just want to smack him and tell him to get over it. He anticipates this, which makes it worse, a little.
2. Tess of the D�Urbervilles- Thomas Hardy
I liked it, but even more so after reading the notes at the end.
3. Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen
Good subway reading.
4. Apathy, and Other Small Victories- Paul Neilan
Fantastic. It's a murder mystery in disguise, and I like those. It's also the first book John gave me to read, and the main character very much reminds me of him.
5. Darkness at Noon- Arthur Koestler
I read a few of russian novels this year, this being the first. They require lots of thinking, and I don't know enough russian history. But it's still interesting to ponder.
6. Cyrano de Bergerac (s)- Edmund Rosland
I like this play a lot. I may go see it next week.
7. 8 Ball Chicks- Gini Sikes
Girl gangs. I particularly liked the bit about learning how to 'palm' a razor in your cheek. Solid and straightforward, though long. Also, I had no idea San Antonio was a gang hot-spot.
8. Ahab�s Wife- Sena Jeter Naslund
Good and pretty and long. In a good way. I keep forgetting that I meant to read Moby Dick after this.
9. Bel Canto- Ann Patchett
The ending is realistic, but not at all what you want it to be. And I have to grudgingly like that.
10. The Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien
I loved this. I always want to know what the 'real' story was. And he disregards that entirely and knows that there is no real story of what happened, and even if there were, it wouldn't matter.
11. The Satanic Verses- Salman Rushdie
I liked some of his other books a lot better, but this was one of the more interesting.
12. Blink- Malcolm Gladwell
Look! I read non-fiction too! This was interesting, but like a lot of books of it's kind, it makes it's point several times over and just keeps going past the point where I care, or where it's saying anything of interest.
13. Bagombo Snuffbox- Kurt Vonnegut
Grab bag of short stories. Slightly unsatisfying, I like his longer stuff better.
14. The Sparrow- Mary Doria Russell
At first thought, I kind of liked it. But then the more I thought about it, the less I did. It's a trashy novel disguised as worthwhile science fiction.
15. The Thought Gang- Tibor Fischer
Lots of fun. And makes me wish I could rob banks.
16. Eve Green- Susan Fletcher
Eh. Good, but listless.
17. Doris to Darlene (s)- Jordan Harrison
This is at Playwrights Horizons right now, unless it just closed. I very much want to see it. It's three stories of various couples entwined. I'm fairly good at reading plays, but there's always so much that I don't see, that I don't think of that gets brought out in the physical performance. I want to see what I may have missed.
18. Sprang Thang (s)- Goldee something
Terrible. Awful. Horrible. I have a hard time judging the play because the experience of designing it was so bad.
19. Just Jane (s)- Some guy
I'm blanking on his name, someone I met through a friend, and I offered to proof-read it. It's weird. I can't tell how much of it is serious, and how much is just being a vehicle for various S&M scenes.
20. Devil in a Poufy White Dress- Susan Gilman
I like stories of people growing up in New York. So this was satisfying.
21. The Third Policeman- Flann O�Brien
Weird and intruiging and impenetrable. I don't know if I liked it, but it was certainly interesting to read.
22. Marley and Me- John Grogan
A man and his dog. Very funny, and of course you cry when the dog dies.
23. The Octopus- Frank Norris
I like this sort of california writing. It's not at all like John Steinbeck, but there is a quality that both writers share, something about the characters and how they're shaped, and the mentality that they have.
24. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- J K Rowling
Well. I'm glad that's finished.
25. The Kite Runner- Khaled Hosseini
I read this at Camp, which was awkward. Also, some of my 12 and 13 year old campers said that it was required summer reading, and I'm not so sure it's really appropriate for them. Am I being too cautionary? It was good, but it's a bit of a punch in the stomach.
26. Peony in Love- Lisa See
Godawful. Last year I read something else by her that was cute and fun to read. This was weird upon weird and not in a good way.
27. Time and Again- Jack Finney
I love time travel fiction. Not the science fiction machine-y type, particularly. My friend Riley recommended this, and it was fantastic. I need to get more of his books.
28. My Sister�s Keeper- Jodi Picoult
It was good, until I read-
29. Vanishing Acts- Jodi Picoult
and got totally few up with the histrionic self-indulgent style.
30. A Man Without a Country- Kurt Vonnegut
Beautiful and piercing. I'm sorry he died.
31. To Say Nothing of the Dog- Connie Willis
More time travel fiction. I loved this. It's also a mystery in disguise, and funny and I hear there are more of them.
32. Into the Forest- Jean Hegland
My mom really likes 'After the apocalypse' novels, so she gave me this one. I like that it isn't really concerned with the why. They're gradually more and more cut off communication-wise, and supplies get fewer and fewer, and it's about them, and how they deal with it.
33. On Beauty- Zadie Smith
I like her narrative voice. And I like that she neither shies away from, nor glorifies her characters faults.
34. The Autograph Man- Zadie Smith
I probably shouldn't have read this right after. It was still good, and I still enjoyed the style, but I thinhk I would have liked it more if I had read something else in between.
35. The History of Love- Nicole Krauss
Lovely. Tenaya recommended it, one of the most well constucted and beautiful books, while not being over-complicated.
36. Minimum Wage (s)- Jeff and his brother
I lit this, and it was good and colorful and entertaining, but not quite there, somehow.
37. Everything is Illuminated- Jonathon Safron Foer
I very much liked the opening, but then it bogs down and I almost stopped reading it. It got better, but that was a pretty bad falter to have that early on.
38. Slapstick- Kurt Vonnegut
I may have actually read this before, at least the beginning. It's the closest thing he wrote to an autobiography, until Man Without a Country. It felt good to read.
39. Tallgrass Gothic (s)- Melanie Marnich
Eh. Good. But.. Eh.
40. The Just (s)- someone
About a small group of revolutionaries in russian. I liked the questions it brought up, and how it handled them. I think I'd like to see this as a full production.
41. Wild Ducks Flying Backwards- Tom Robbins
Short writings for various magazines and such. Perfect on the subway. And I love his descriptions.
42. Jane Eyre- Charlotte Bronte
This was really good, which surprised me a bit. It's typically english of the times, but it's very subtley clever.
43. Edward II (s)- Christopher Marlowe
I was the ALD on this. I think it was good. But it's hard to tell. John liked seeing the show, thought it was good. I liked that Edward is not very likeable.
44. Kiss me Kate (s)- Cole Porter
Another that I worked on. Very fun, though sometimes too tangled. That may have been the acting, though.
45. Something Happened- Joseph Heller
It's weird that this is so good. It's repetitive and long and self absorbed, but somehow it help my attention and I wanted to keep reading it. The end is perhaps predictable, but that doesn't matter. I didn't predict it. And it keeps it's steady tone throughout.
46. Fight Club- Chuck Palahniuk
Good. But I hate that ultimately, it was all about fighting over a girl. It's pretty realistic, but somehow that cheapens it. I wanted more meaning. But that's life.
47. Morality Play- Barry Unsworth
This was assigned in one of my classes in college and I never read it. Now that I have, it was very good. But I have no idea why he had us read it. It's barely tangentially related to what we were talking about.
48. The Artamonovs- Maxim Gorky
Russian. Long. Good, but I felt a bit tricked into reading an allegory that I don't know enough about the history to understand.
49. Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte
Good grief. I don't understand why this is supposed to be such a landmark piece. It's a good ghost story. But the histrionics! The melodrama! I got so impatient with the characters. Perhaps I just need to study it more.
50. The Picnic- Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
A short story, really, that the game Stalker is based on. It's very good, though the translations was a little awkward, I felt.
51. I Am Legend- Richard Matheson
I liked this very much. It's very complete and compact. The writing is really effective. It's totally different from the movie, the only thing in common really is that the main characters were named Robert Neville, and they had had a wife and daughter, and that everyone had been turned into vampires. End of similarities. Which I kind of liked, it allowed me to not judge the movie by the book. Both were pretty excellent.
52. Contact- Carl Sagan
Eh. Fun to read. Lots of fairly interesting religious discussion. I liked the effect that the message had on the world in general.
53. Me Talk Pretty One Day- David Sedaris
I had heard a lot of this already, on the radio and such. Very fun to read. I like him a lot. There is something added by hearing his voice, but reading it myself was still good.
54. Dr. Zhivago- Boris Pasternak
I clearly know nothing of russian history. I was so lost politically for much of this, but it was excellent.
55. The Witch�s Boy- Michael Gruber
Good fairy tale. It referenced and retold a lot of fairy tales within it (and of course the 'real' story is quite different from the ones generally known), and I've been trying to think of what fairy tale that whole book might have been a retelling of, but I can't think. Perhaps it isn't. My mom gave it to me, saying that one has to have a book to read christmas day. It was a very good one for that.
56. Wicked- Gregory Maguire
Wow. Totally different from the show. Very good, though dragged in parts. Interesting discussions of the nature of evil. But it took a little too long to make points.
57. Eyes of the Dragon- Stephen King
John gave this too me, for some reason. It's a stretched out story, and it concludes a little too neatly. Given the style I expected a whole huge revolution and battle. But it was a good quick fun read.
SO. Good year for reading. I need to read elsewhere than the subway. Also, it's time to take a shower.
