I was feeling pretty good until I read that Sir William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), a member of the British Parliament for 63 years and four-term Prime Minister under Queen Victoria, read 20,000 books over the course of his lifetime. We know this because he kept a diary from the age of 16 and recorded every book he read. How does a person do this without spending every waking hour reading? Perhaps he was one of those speed readers who can read a book like War and Peace in four hours. I'm not taking up speed reading so I guess I should be happy with my 52 books a year.
And so, to the list. I like to give the books I read a grade, it isn't very scientific and is often an emotional, gut feeling kind of grade, but when has any book review ever been objective and scientific? In case you're wondering what the grading guidelines are, an "A" means excellent, "B" pretty darn good, "C" nothing special, "D" terrible, "F" not worth the paper it was printed on. I was planning on linking every book title to Barnes and Noble, but that would take too darn long, so I'm only linking the books I feel most attached to. If any of the other books look interesting to you, I'm sure you can figure out how to look them up yourself. I also linked the books I have mentioned in a so many books post to the posting in which they were mentioned. Those links I attached to the grade. Drum roll please...
Patience & Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture by Nicholas Basbanes. Nonfiction. A-
Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos Edited by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil. Anthology. A (especially good if you have your own tattoos)
Virginia Woolf by Mary Ann Caws. Nonfiction. A
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Fiction. A (this was a really fun book)
Knit Lit: Sweaters and Their Stories...And Other Writing About Knitting Edited by Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf. Nonfiction essays. B+
Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron by Robert Bryce with in introduction by Molly Ivins. Nonfiction. A-
Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn. Fiction. A
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda, translated by W.S. Merwin. Poetry. B+
Lost Classics: Writers on Books Loved and Lost, Overlooked, Underread, Stolen, Extinct or Otherwise Out of Commission Edited by Michaels Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding and Linda Spalding. Nonfiction essays. A (a dangerous book if you already have a too long reading list)
A Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt. Fiction. A (the cover is really cool)
Colors Passing Through Us by Marge Piercy. Poetry. A
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Fiction. A+(one of the strangest, most interesting books I've read in a long time)
Hunger by Elise Blackwell. Fiction. A
Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth by Alice Walker. Poetry. D+(can you say refrigerator poetry?)
Nonrequired Reading by Wislawa Szymborska. Nonfiction essays. A
The Reformation by Will Durant. Nonfiction. B (I'm not really a history buff, this was for research for a book I'm writing)
A History of Handknitting by Richard Rutt. Nonfiction. A (this is because I like knitting and I'm weird, just ask my sister)
Sources by Adreinne Rich. Poetry. A+ (a re-reading of my favorite poet on the face of the earth)
Shaman of Obertsdorf: Conrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night by Wolfgang Behringer, translated by H.C. Midelfort. Nonfiction. A (this too was research but much more interesting than the Reformation)
Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life edited by Sharon Bryan and William Olsen. Nonfiction essays. A
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. Fiction. C (Recommended by my husband. He liked it much more than I did)
Sixpence House, Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins. Nonfiction. A (It'd be a dream come true to live in Hay-on-Wye, Wales)
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Fiction. A
War Talk by Arundhati Roy. Nonfiction. A+
The Secret History by Donna Tart. Fiction. A (Yeah, I know she had a new book out this year, but I hadn't gotten around to reading this one yet)
Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser. Nonfiction. A (makes me glad I'm vegan)
Cemetery Nights by Stephen Dobyns. Poetry. A (this has the best poem ever written about chickens in it)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling. Fiction. A+
Reading Lolita in Tehran, a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Nonfiction. B+
Aspects of the Novel by E.M. Forster. Nonfiction. A
What Do We Know, Poems and Prose Poems by Mary Oliver. Poetry. A-
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. Fiction. A (difficult but well worth the time)
Carlyle's house and Other Sketches by Virginia Woolf, edited by David Bradshaw. Nonfiction essays. A
How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton. Nonfiction. A
On Histories and Stories, Selected Essays by A.S. Byatt. Nonfiction essays. A+ (an excellent and interesting read)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Fiction. A (a must read for anyone who loves books)
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Fiction. B-
Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett. Fantasy fiction. A (gotta love that British humor!)
Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp. Nonfiction. A
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Fiction. A+ (I couldn't put this down, it was that good)
Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content by Biz Stone. Nonfiction. A
Bushwhacked by Molly Ivins. Nonfiction. A
So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson. Nonfiction.A-
The Giver by Lois Lowry. Fiction. A
The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera. Nonfiction. B
Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood. Nonfiction essays. A
The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood. Nonfiction. B
Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore. Nonfiction. A
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken. Nonfiction. B+
Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time by Paul Rogat Loeb. Nonfiction. B+
K, the Art of Love by Hong Ying. Fiction. C-
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954 by Steven Mullhauser. Fiction. C
I'm going for another 52 books in 2004. I'm not Gladstone, but maybe if I win the lottery this year I can quit my job and read more. It's good to have goals.
