Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Books Read 2007

I was a miserable failure as a blogger in 2007 and so far 2008 isn’t looking much better. Be that as it may, there is one thing I want to do here and that is compile a list of all the books I read in 2007. This is the first full year I have actually kept track of the books I read—which was part of a resolution to just read more in general. I ended up finishing 66 books during the year, but if you look at the monthly breakdown, I read over 70% of those before August. That coincides with the arrival of a new baby in our household. The reading time suffered dramatically from that point.

Curiously, only one of the books I read was nonfiction (and even that one, Songlines, is only marginally nonfiction.) I usually read a handful of nonfiction, I’d say somewhere between 4-8 books per year, but I was really pushing to read more books in 2007 and nonfiction just takes more time. I did read a decent chunk of Herodotus, but didn’t finish it last year—still haven’t. I intend to address that lack this year, although I’ll still heavily favor genre fiction. So here it is, in more or less chronological reading order:

January
On Stranger Tides, Tim Powers
Overtime, Tom Holt
Three Days to Never, Tim Powers
The Drawing of the Dark, Tim Powers
Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn
Farthing, Jo Walton

February
Black Swan Green, David Mitchell
The Scar, China Miéville
Looking for Alaska, John Green
A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
Pobby and Dingan, Ben Rice
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
The Trial of Flowers, Jay Lake
The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly
An Abundance of Katherines, John Green

March
The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford
The Exquisite, Laird Hunt
Homunculus, James P. Blaylock
The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian

April
Number9Dream, David Mitchell
Grey, Jon Armstrong
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Lord Kelvin’s Machine, James P. Blaylock
Syrup, Max Barry
You Suck, Christopher Moore
Already Dead, Charlie Huston
The Circus of Dr. Lao, Charles G. Finney
In Persuasion Nation, George Saunders

May
Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
No Dominion, Charlie Huston
Majestrum, Matthew Hughes
Hard Boiled Wonderland, Haruki Murakami
The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi
13 Bullets, David Wellington

June
The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, Catherynne Valente
The Fourth Circle, Zoran Živković
Un Lun Dun, China Miéville
Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
Farewell, My Lovely, Raymond Chandler

JulyThe Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
The High Window, Raymond Chandler
The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler
Playback, Raymond Chandler
The Little Sister, Raymond Chandler
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Soon I Will Be Invincible, Austin Grossman
Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett

August
Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delaney
Mr. Thundermug, Cornelius Medvei
Stardust, Neil Gaiman

September
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett
Spaceman Blues, Brian Francis Slattery
The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester

October
Bad Monkeys, Matt Ruff
Land of Dreams, James P. Blaylock
Declare, Tim Powers
Making Money, Terry Pratchett

November
Little People, Tom Holt
Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders

December
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Pastoralia, George Saunders
20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill
One For Sorrow, Chris Barzak