53 Books

Like most people, I sucker myself every year into making resolutions on New Years. And like most people, I usually fail miserably. You know, the eat less carbs, go to yoga at least once a week, take better care of my teeth (more on this one later), learn to cross-stitch, clean the bathroom once a week with bleach. The regular junk. However, this year, for the first time ever, I was true to myself and accomplished a goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year.

My goal: to read 50 books. I was actually able to read 53 books over the course of 2007. To some people, this might seem like 52 more books than they would ever read in one year, to others I know, this is probably only half of the books they consumed this year. But for me, the number seemed manageable yet challenging, so I settled on an even 50, with a distant hope that I'd reach 52 so I could go into 2008 knowing that I'd averaged a book a week. I was a little worried when I started that I would force myself to read shorter books and I would stifle my "as my whimsy takes me" approach to reading. But I came up with a fool-proof solution: failure. If I wanted to read a 1,000 page book, I would, even if it did push everything back. I would say that I spent the first half of the year tentatively, feeling out whether or not this was possible. I spent the second half of the year like a marathon runner...I was in it for the long haul and I couldn't be stopped.



And so, here are the books I read in 2007:

1. More Than Enough - John Fulton

2. A Contract with God - Will Eisner

3. The Road Home - Jim Harrison

4. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternack

5. Serve It Forth: Art of Eating - MFK Fisher

6. My Antonia - Willa Cather

7. The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

8. The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

9. Rock Springs - Richard Ford

10. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

11. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

12. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

13. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier

14. For Rouenna - Sigrid Nunez

15. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri

16. Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingalls Wilder

17. Nectar in a Sieve - Kamala Markandaya

18. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See

19. Dicey's Song - Cynthia Voigt

20. The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

21. Little Children - Tom Perrotta

22. The Scandalous Summer of Sissy Leblanc - Loraine Despres

23. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

24. The Beggar Maid - Alice Munro

25. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon

26. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

27. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

28. There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom - Louis Sachar

29. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

30. A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett

31. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

32. Marie Antoinette: The Journey - Antonia Fraser

33. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

34. The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

35. Watership Down - Richard Adams

36. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman

37. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

38. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

39. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

40. The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls

41. Through the Safety Net - Charles Baxter

42. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

43. O Pioneers - Willa Cather

44. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

45. Metamorphsis - Franz Kafka

46. Silas Marner - George Eliot

47. The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter

48. A Year in the Maine Woods - Bernd Heinrich

49. Love Among the Chickens - P.G. Wodehouse

50. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer

51. Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee

52. The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe

53. Until I Find You - John Irving


Here are some stats:
Number of Rereads: 9
Non-Fiction: 4
Number Read on Project Gutenberg: 2


Top 5 Books in 2007:

5. Doctor Zhivago - This was surprisingly enjoyable and love-filled. I would say that some wikipedia on Russian History/the Russian Revolution is necessary to fully grasp the historical information that's kind of thrown at you. But it's a really fun book to read in the winter and the PBS version of it is good. I'm still looking forward to watching the older one on a snowy day.

4. David Copperfield

3. His Dark Materials Trilogy - Okay, so I cheated by adding three books, but The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass were just really fun to read. I loved that the first book was set in a cold climate. I know that there is the Milton connection, but much of it also had a bit of Jonathan Swift, especially the weird animals in the last book.

2. Madame Bovary - Really funny and ironic and sad. It's a classic for a good reason, I think. I should read more French Literature, maybe. Every time I do, I love the humor.

1. Cold Mountain - I know! I can't believe it either! It was one of those really guilty reads, like "I'm going to read something really trashy because I just graduated and I can. Here's something...why do I even own this?" Maybe it was just because I was being naughty by reading it, but I was fully engrossed and I enjoyed every minute of it. Often, 100 pages from the end I just want the book to be over, but I didn't want this to end. I really liked it. I can't help it. I could see reading this again, and I guess that's how it ended up here.



Bottom 5 Books in 2007:

5. Everything is Illuminated - It's not that I hated this book and I might be the only person I know who wasn't impressed by it, but I just thought it was a bunch of craft work and style with not much heart. I just kept thinking that the whole thing was a big fat gimmick. I wanted to like it, but I just didn't.

4. Little Children - I feel bad because I really like Tom Perrotta and I like his other stuff, but I just felt like this was a kind of poorly-written, made for Hollywood, rant about living in an upscale Boston suburb. We know, it can suck. Just move away and start writing about things people might care about.

3. Nectar in a Sieve - Not worth it. Read The Good Earth instead, which is barely worth it.

2. The Scandalous Summer of Sissy Leblanc - I knew it would be bad going in, but I felt like I had to read it because this was the book that Aaron read to see what Chick Lit was all about. Sadly, we both learned that it's about not much.

1. Watership Down - I'd been wanting to read this book for 12 years and I'd never gotten around to it. I can finally say that the award for Biggest Let-Down in 2007 goes to Watership Down because it sucked. It was Jonathan Livingston Seagull all over again. The rabbits weren't even cute, they were creepy. It took all the fun out of anthropomorphizing little animals. What a waste of time.

So there you have it. I have set new goals for my reading life in 2008, but like last year, I don't want to say them until I know I can do them.