2009 Book List

January

1. Nick Hornby: Slam (This is average Hornby.)

2. Dagny Scott: Complete Book of Women's Running

3. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (I really really loved this book. Young Japanese couples. For some reason I'm totally into reading and watching movies about marriage lately. I guess I've got in on the brain.)

4. Alice Munro: The Love of a Good Woman (I've only read one other collection by Munro, Carried Away, and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed this book far more than that one. Interestingly, it was one of the books I'd picked out to take out this summer while I was home, even had my slip of notes still in it, although I didn't end up checking it out at that time. Weird.)

5. Dave Eggers: How We Are Hungry (I'm pretty sure I've read this before, but I think I enjoyed it a lot more this time. I like Eggers, and his style didn't make it difficult for me to read the stories all at once, which sometimes happens with short story collections. None of the stories in particular stick out in my mind, which might say something, but overall I enjoyed it. 

6. Cormac McCarthy: No Country for Old Men (I liked this novel a lot, although I didn't have very high hopes for it. It's a crime thriller, which I didn't realize. Now I'll definitely see the movie. And I'd also like to read more by McCarthy, especially Child of God.) 

7. Choi Yun: The Last of Hanako/The Grey Snowman (These are actually two short novels that Tim lent to me in translation. This was part of "The Portable Library of Korean Literature." #21, to be exact. I'd like to read more of this collection, or more by this woman, but I don't imagine I will. I liked the stories well enough, and it was just nice to be able to read something written by a Korean. I'd like to read more.)

February

8. John Irving: The 158-Pound Marriage (I don't know why I haven't read this book before. I think I started it when I was much younger and didn't get into it right away, then I just forgot about it. Apparently there's a lot of early Irving novels that I forgot about, thinking I'd read them all, so I'll try to catch up on those this year. This was interesting, especially because of the subject matter (swingers!), and I liked the characterization as well as the end. I sided with the wrong character though, which surprised me.)

9. Haruki Murakami: After the Quake (It really surprised me how much I loved this book. I mean, I knew I liked him, but I especially like reading short stories by him. He has fantastical, or at least, surrealist elements in his novels, and those are what usually bother me. The short stories have elements too, but they're usually not as important. Plus, I get tired of his characters sometimes in novel length, but with short stories, I don't have the chance. This is the first time I've ever liked short stories by a novelist better than a novel, and it's kind of exciting. I think he has another collection... I hope I can find it.) 

10. Richard Russo: The Whore's Child (Weird, that's two books in a row of short stories by authors I'd only previous read as novelists, and I loved both collections. Richard Russo is a good novelist, good enough that I'd read everything he wrote, but he's another one that I tend to get a little bored of before the end of the books. I know they're good, and that I will want to reach the end and won't be disappointed, but I'm not enthralled every minute. Thus, short stories are the perfect solution, and I really liked these. I was highly confused by one, because I'm sure I've read it before. I tried Googling to find out if it became part of a novel I read by him, but I didn't find anything, and I can't remember it. Is it possible that I read this whole collection before? I really don't think so. Confusing!)

11. Alice Munro: Runaway (Another awesome collection from her. She's a genius. All these ideas. I'm never going to be able to write a book.)

12. Dave Eggers: What is the What (This novel was really weird. It's a fictional autobiography written by Eggers but based on the life of Valentino Deng, a Lost Boy survivor from Sudan who was transplanted to the United States. I intend to write a full review of this sometime later, because it made me so conflicted.)

13. Alain Bottom: The Art of Travel (I really liked this book. It's theoretical, a bit historical... a guide for how to appreciate traveling. I'm actually going to re-read it, and write more about it, because I liked it so much.) 

14. Kate Chopin: The Awakening (I'm glad I finally read this. Others who weren't in AP read it in 10th grade, but it's one of the many books I missed out on. The Scarlet Letter is another one I'll have to read at some point. This book is, I guess, really interesting to gender people. I'll have to talk about it with Tim, I guess. To me it was... not boring, but old-timey, and the story just wasn't that remarkable.)

15. Young-Ha Kim: I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (This novel was a surprisingly quick read. Interesting in a general way... just nice to read something Korean. The concept was intriguing and original enough, but I didn't really find any of the characters that remarkable. The brothers were supposed to be really different, but they just weren't, and not knowing the narrator's motivations, or really anything about him, made it hard to get into the book. It felt sort of like it was just trying to be too many things.)

March

16. Junot Diaz: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (This book was pretty... disappointing, actually. I think I really liked his short stories, I think, although I remember only one. But the novel was kind of boring, actually. I mean, I enjoyed reading it as I was reading it, mostly, but I didn't ever have a hard time putting it down when something else came up, and I wasn't dying to pick it back up. Oscar is a pathetic character, uninteresting. The author comes off as pretentious and insulting at times. There's just so much going on in the book, and I didn't think it worked.)

17. bell hooks: Teaching to Transgress (I started this book, and read about half of it, before I left for America. It was kind of slow reading at first, but I guess theory is supposed to be that way. Some of the essays were more interesting than others, but I can credit this book with getting my juices flowing and rekindling my interest in educational theory.)

18. Ian McEwan: Saturday (I really hated this novel. It was the first one she chose for me and Carrie's book club, but she really dropped the ball. :) I get what it was trying to do, but I think it didn't work. The first 120 pages and the last 20 were completely boring. I hated the main character, and not in an interesting way. I really liked one by him, On Chesil Beach, and I was going to give Atonement a try, but this just sucked.)