Reading List 2008

To read the review and comments about a specific book, note the number in parentheses after the author, click on the Book Journal button, and scroll to that number. You can also enter the book’s title in the Search box to the right.

Fiction:

  1. Middlemarch, George Eliot
  2. Stories, Katherine Mansfield
  3. Forty Signs of Rain, Kim Stanley Robinson
  4. The Gathering, Ann Enright
  5. Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster
  6. Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
  7. Fall of Frost, Brian Hall
  8. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
  9. Night Soldiers, Alan Furst
  10. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon
  11. The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett
  12. The Ghost Writer, Philip Roth
  13. Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth
  14. The Anatomy Lesson, Philip Roth
  15. The Prague Orgy, Philip Roth
  16. The Counterlife, Philip Roth
  17. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
  18. The Human Stain, Philip Roth
  19. Exit Ghost, Philip Roth

Non-Fiction

  1. Better, Atwal Gawande
  2. Chasing Daylight, Eugene O’Kelly
  3. The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond 60, Carolyn Heilbrun
  4. Two Lives, Janet Malcolm
  5. The Insanity Defense, Woody Allen
  6. Boom, Tom Brokaw
  7. In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
  8. Writers at the Movies, Jim Shepard
  9. Critical: What do we do about Health Care Crisis, Tom Daschle
  10. Slightly Chipped, Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
  11. Used and Rare: Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
  12. What is History, Edward Hallett Carr
  13. The Nine: Inside the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin
  14. Havanas in Camelot, William Styron
  15. Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik
  16. How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman
  17. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Michael Lewis
  18. Lamentations of the Father, Ian Frazier
  19. How Fiction Works, James Wood
  20. Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
  21. On Photography, Susan Sontag
  22. The Yellow Lighted Bookshop, Lewis Buzbee
  23. Spiral Jetta, Erin Hogan
  24. The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama
  25. Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama
  26. Hallelujah Junction, John Adams
  27. Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
  28. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,Haruki Murakami
  29. Dreaming up America, Russell Banks

Drama/Poetry

  1. Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
  2. Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
  3. The Art of Reading Poetry, Harold Bloom
  4. The Modern Element: Essays on Contemporary Poetry, Adam Kirsch
  5. In the Next Galaxy, Ruth Stone
  6. In the Dark, Ruth Stone
  7. The Book of Nightmares, Galway Kinnell
  8. Mortal Acts, Mortal Words, Galway Kinnell
  9. Sleeping it off in Rapid City, August Kleinzohler
  10. Eyeshot, Heather McHugh

Gardening/Nature/Science

  1. A Walk Through the Year, Edwin Way Teale
  2. Wintering, Diana Kappel-Smith
  3. In the Company of Stone, Dan Snow
  4. The Granite Landscape, Tom Wessels
  5. Reading the Forested Landscape, Tom Wessels
  6. The Myth of Progress, Tom Wessels
  7. A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson
  8. Reading the Mountains of Home, John Elder
  9. The Wild Trees, Richard Preston
  10. The World Without Us, Alan Weisman
  11. The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump, Sandra Hempal
  12. Journey to the Ants, Bert Holldobler & EO Wilson
  13. The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives, Leonard Mlodinow
  14. Dry Storeroom #1, Richard Fortey

Mystery:

  1. Spare Change, Robert Parker
  2. Now and Then, Robert Parker
  3. Good Morning, Killer, April Smith
  4. T is for Trespass, Sue Grafton
  5. Christine Falls, Benjamin Black (aka, John Banville)
  6. Stranger in Paradise, Robert Parker
  7. North of Montana, April Smith
  8. Salt River, James Sallis
  9. The Silver Swan, Benjamin Black (aka John Banville)
  10. Maigret in Montmarte, Georges Simenon
  11. Revolution, Robert Parker
  12. Rough Weather, Robert Parker
  13. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson
  14. The Catch, Archer Mayor