READING 2009

September 2009
Fiction (8)
The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan (RIP IV)
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (RIP IV)
The Collector of Hearts by Joyce Carol Oates (RIP IV)
Breath by Tim Winton
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (RIP IV)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (Sci-fi Challenge)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Graphic Novels (4)
House of Mystery: Room and Boredom by Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham
Hellboy Library Edition Volume I: Seed of Destruction and Wake the Devil by Mike Mignola
Fables: Storybook Love by Bill Willingham
Fables: The March of the Wooden Soldiers by Bill Willingham

Non-fiction (6)
Misconceptions by Naomi Wolf
The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks
A Woman in Berlin by Anonymous
The Hungry Planet: What The World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D'aluisio
Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
Teacher Man by Frank McCourt


August 2009 (21)
Rubyfruit Jungle - Rita Mae Brown
Lowboy - John Wray
Normal - Amy Bloom
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
The Position - Meg Wolitzer
A Very Long Engagement - Sebastien Japrisot
Angel - Elizabeth Taylor
Eva Moves the Furniture - Margot Livesey
Affinity - Sarah Waters
Border Songs - Jim Lynch
Rainbows End - Vernor Vinge
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower 
Rooftops of Tehran - Mahbod Seraji
Stick Out Your Tongue - Ma Jian
We Never Talk About My Brother - Peter Beagle
Factory Girls: From Village to City in A Changing China - Leslie T Chang
The Secret Life of Lobsters : How Fishermen and Scientists are Unraveling the Mysteries of our Favorite Crustacean - Trevor Corson
Fables: Animal Farm - Bill Willingham
Fables: Legends in Exile - Bill Willingham
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall - Bill Willingham
Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story - Ari Folman

July 2009 (10)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister
The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Austenland by Shannon Hale
Drift by Victoria Patterson
The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller

June 2009
Vagrants by Yiyun Li
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M.T. Anderson
Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Women in their beds by Gina Berriault
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Engagement by Georges Simenon
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Feathered Serpent by Xu Xiaobin

Non-fiction
Nothing To Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone by Mary Morris
Bonk by Mary Roach
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance - and Why They Fail by Amy Chua
The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg

Graphic Novels
Hellboy: Darkness Calls by Mike Mignola
Maus II by Art Spiegelman
Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman
La Perdida by Jessica Abel

Cookbooks
Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics by Ina Garten
Caprial's Soups & Sandwiches by Caprial Pence
Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking from the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia by James Oseland


May 2009
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi - Adichie
De Niro's Game - Rawi Hage
The Razor's Edge - Somerset Maugham
The Tricking of Freya - Christina Sunley
Fear and Trembling - Amelie Nothomb
Good Poems - Garrison Keillor
Cocaine Nights - J.G. Ballard
Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
David Golder, the Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair - Irene Nemirovsky
The Speed of Light - Javier Cercas
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow

(Graphic Novels)
Maus - Art Spiegelman
The League of Extraordinary Gentlement Vol II - Alan Moore

(Non-fiction)
What It Is - Lynda Barry
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda - Philip Gourevitch
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - Helene Hanff
The Widow Clicquot - Tilar J. Mazzeo
Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant - Jenni Ferrari-Adler (ed)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

April 2009
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter - Cesar Aira

Once upon a Quinceanera - Julia Alvarez
The Boat - Nam Le
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Volume I - M.T. Anderson
Intuition - Allegra Goodman
Things I've Been Silent About - Azar Nafisi
The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found - Suketu Mehta
The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
The Bostonians - Henry James
The Blue Girl - Charles de Lint
The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
Later Novels (The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback, Double Indemnity) - Raymond Chandler
The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket
The City of Ember - Jeanne Duprau
Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan
Goldengrove - Francine Prose
Towards Another Summer - Janet Frame
Veil of Gold - Kim Wilkins
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1 - Alan Moore

March 2009
Kill Your Friends - John Niven
The Watchmen - Alan Moore
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
Maps and Legends - Michael Chabon
The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever
The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters - Timothy Schaffert
Slash - Slash and Anthony Bozza
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008 - Dave Eggers (ed)
Oracle Bones: a Journey between China's past and present - Peter Hessler
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson
In Persuasion Nation - George Saunders
Alice, Let's Eat - Calvin Trillin
Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Remains of the day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lazarus Project - Aleksandar Hemon
Waiter Rant - The Waiter

February 2009 (11)
City of Thieves - David Benioff
Memories of my melancholy whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Given Day - Dennis Lehane
The Autobiography of Malcom X
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures - Vincent Lam
The Impostor - Damon Galgut
Beijing Coma - Ma Jian
This Boy's Life - Tobias Wolff
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - Kate Summerscale
Esther's Inheritance - Sandor Marai

January 2009 (12)
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Truth and Beauty - Ann Patchett
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz - Frank L Baum
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - F Scott Fitzgerald
America, America - Ethan Canin
Rabbit-Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time - Doris Pilkington
What is the What- Dave Eggers
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth - Margaret Atwood
No One Belongs here More than You - Miranda July
Ms Hempel Chronicles - Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

READING 2008

December 2008
How the Mind Works - Steven Pinker
Henry and Cato - Iris Murdoch
Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Death of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes
Love - Toni Morrison
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
The Tenderness of Wolves - Stef Penney
The Diving Pool - Yoko Ogawa
The Debt to Pleasure - John Lanchester
Daphne - Justine Picardie
Offbeat bride - Ariel Meadow Stallings
The Story of a Marriage - Andrew Sean Greer
Born Standing Up - Steve Martin
Scoop - Evelyn Waugh

November 2008
The Swallows of Kabul - Yasmina Khadra
The zookeeper's wife - Diane Ackerman
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
The Echo Maker - Richard Powers
Come to me - Amy Bloom
The war of the roses - Warren Adler
Snow flower and the secret fan - Lisa See
Lipstick Jungle - Candace Bushnell
The darkness of Wallis Simpson - Rose Tremain
Living to tell the tale - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

October 2008
The tenant of Wildfelll Hall - Anne Bronte
The Siege of Krishnapur - JG Farrell
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
One perfect day - Rachel Mead
The clothes on their backs - Linda Grant
My mother's wedding dress - Justine Picardie
Master class: lessons from leading writers - Nancy Bunge
A joss stick for my mother - Lienfung Li
Global religions: An introduction - Mark Juergensmeyer
Idea of Perfection - Kate Grenville
20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth - Xiaolu Guo
The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had - Susan Bauer Wise


September 2008
the library at night - Alberto Manguel
In the Country of Men - Hisham Matar
Changing Places - David Lodge
When you are engulfed in flames - David Sedaris
Carry Me Down - M J Hyland
A Good Year - Peter Mayle
A Long Long Way - Sebastian Barry
Gabriel's Gift - Hanif Kureishi
Three cups of tea: One Man's mission to promote peace - Greg Mortenson
At Large and At Small, Confessions of a Literary Hedonist - Anne Fadiman
Sea of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh

August 2008
The City of Falling Angels - John Berendt
The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
Music and Silence - Rose Tremain
Paris Stories - Mavis Gallant
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Geographer's Library - Jon Fasman
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
Gilgamesh - Joan London
The Maytrees - Anne Dillard
The ministry of special Cases - Nathan Englander

July 2008
The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
Magical Thinking - Augusten Burroughs
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
The Sea - John Banville
The Queen of Attolia - Megan Whalen Turner
The Lottery and other stories - Shirley Jackson
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
The Abstinence Teacher - Tom Perrotta
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler
Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones
Signed, mata Hari - Yannick Murphy
The Story of My Face - Kathy Page
Like you'd understand anyway - Jim Shephard
Eva Trout - Elizabeth Bowen

June 2008 (19)
The Wood Wife - Terri Windling
Bitter Sweets - Roopa Farooki
A Winter Book - Tove Jansson
Close Range: Wyoming Stories- Annie Proulx
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
The Gangster we are all looking for - Le Thi Diem Thuy
Civilwarland in Bad Decline - George Saunders
Hope and other dangerous pursuits - Laila Lalami
Loving - Henry Green
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Night - Elie Wiesel
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
Farenheit 541 - Ray Bradbury
Autobiography of a face - Lucy Grealy
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Brave New World Revisited - Aldous Huxley
The Colour - Rose Tremain
Amy and Isabelle - Elizabeth Strout

May 2008 (14)
First Snow on Fuji - Yasunari Kawabata
Ex Libris - Anne Fadiman
The Picador book of Contemporary Chinese Fiction- David Su
Lust/Caution - Eileen Chang
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka
Saving Agnes - Rachel Cusk
The Complete Borrowers - Mary Norton
Schindler's Ark - Thomas Keneally
La Cucina - Lily Prior
The Migrant Painter of Birds - Lidia Jorge
Morvern Callar - Alan Warner
The Commissariat of Enlightenment - Ken Kalfus
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer - Steven Millhauser
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami

April 2008 (12)
The Falls - Joyce Carol Oates
This Side of Brightness - Colum McCann
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
So I am Glad - A.L.Kennedy
Comfort Woman - Nora Okja
Reading like a Writer - Francine Prose
The Translator - Leila Aboulela
A Family Daughter - Maile Meloy
Like Life - Lorrie Moore
Travels of Jamie McPheeters - Robert Taylor
Water For Elephants - Sara Gruen
The keepers of the house - Shirley Ann Grau


March 2008 (13)
Oh the glory of it all - Sean Wiley
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Gossip Girl - Cecily von Ziegesar
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright - Steven Millhauser
Quicksand and Passing - Nella Larsen
The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
The Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
Hexwood - Diana Wynne Jones
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories - Susanna Clarke
All Aunt Hagar's Children - Edward P Jones
The Mistress's Daughter - A.M. Homes
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl - John Colapinto

February 2008 (6)
Louise Erdich - The Master Butchers Singing Club
Barbara Kingsolver - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Karen Joy Fowler - The Jane Austen Book Club
Jim Crace - The Pesthouse
Anthony Kiedis - Scar Tissue
Marjane Satrapi - The Complete Persepolis


January 2008 (11)
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
The Gathering - Anne Enright
Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
Gateway - Frederik Pohl
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
The Stolen Child - Keith Donohue
Good in Bed - Jennifer Weiner
The Indian Clerk - David Leavitt
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

Six Billion People by Tom Chandler

And all of you so beautiful
I want to bring you home with me
to sit close on the couch.

My invitation inserted in six billion bottles,
corked with bark from the final forest
and dropped in the ocean of my longing.

We would speak the language of no words,
pass the jug of our drunken joy
at being babies growing into death.

Sometimes, I know, life is stupid, pointless,
beside the point, but here's the point —
maybe we would fall

in love, settle down together,
share the wine, the bills,
the last of the oxygen and the remote.

"Six Billion People" by Tom Chandler, from Toy Firing Squad

Rebecca

Packing up. The nagging worry of departure. Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor. I hate it all. Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes. Even today, when shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss. Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy. This has been ours, however brief the time. Though two nights only have been spent beneath a roof, yet we leave something of ourselves behind. Nothing material, not a hair-pin on a dressing-table, not an empty bottle of Aspirin tablets, not a hankerchief beneath a pillow, but something indefinable, a moment of our lives, a thought, a mood.
This house sheltered us, we spoke, we loved within those walls. That was yesterday. Today we pass on, we see it no more, and we are different, changed in some infinitesimal way. We can never be quite the same again. Even stopping for luncheon at a wayside inn, and going to a dark, unfamiliar room to wash my hands, the handle of the door unknown to me, the wallpaper peeling in strips, a funny little cracked mirror above the basin; for this moment, it is mine, it belongs to me. We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.

- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

READING 2007

December 2007
Pankaj Mishra – The Romantics
Keith Donohue – The Stolen Child
Mary Gaitskill – Veronica
Anthony Bourdain – The Nasty Bits
Leiths Baking Bible
Heather McGowan - Schooling
Alberto Fuguet - Bad Vibes
Alice Munro - The View from Castle Rock
Hella S. Haasse – Forever A Stranger and Other Stories

November 2007
Gertrude Stein – The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Alain de Botton – How Proust Can Change Your Life
Ursula Le Guin – Voices
Don DeLillo – Falling Man
James Salter – Light Years
James Elroy – The Black Dahlia
JM Coetzee – Elizabeth Costello

October 2007
Peter Ackroyd – Lambs of London
Iain Sinclair – Dining on Stones
Bill Buford – Heat
Patricia Duncker -Hallucinating Foucault
Anais Nin – Henry and June
Joseph Heller – Something Happened
Hanif Kureishi – Intimacy
Victor Pelevin – The Life of Insects

September 2007
Richard Florida – The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure and Everyday Life
George Saunders – Pastoralia
Marguerite Duras – Four Novels
George Maxwell – See You Tomorrow
Sarah Vowell – Assassination Vacation
Michael Dirda – Book by Book
George Saunders – The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
Italo Calvino – Hermit in Paris
Marion Nestle – What to Eat
Haruki Murakami – Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
Julian Barnes – The History of the World in 10½ Chapters
Carl Sagan – Contact
James L. McClain – A Modern History of Japan
Pico Iyer - Abandon


August 2007
Henry Miller - Sexus
Karen Russell – St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad
Steven Sherrill - Visits from the Drowned Girl
Nigel Slater – Appetite
Michael Pollan – The Omnivore’s Dilemma
Michael Faber – Fahrenheit Twins
David Malouf – Remembering Babylon

July 2007
Pico Iyer- Video Night in Kathmandu
Sybil Kathigasu – Not a Dram of Mercy
Lee Kip Lee – Amber Sands
Chin Kee Onn – Malaya Upside Down
N.I. Low – Recollections
Phillip Pullman – His Dark Materials

June 2007
Donna Tartt – The Little Friend
Somerset Maugham – Far Eastern Tales
Jay McInerney – Bright Lights Big City

May 2007
Donna Tartt – The Secret History
John Updike - Couples

April 2007
Don Delillo – Cosmopolis
Alain de Botton – The Art of Travel
Marjane Satrapi – Chicken with Plums
Elliot Perlman – The Reasons I Won’t be Coming
Madhur Jaffrey – Climbing the Mango Trees
Kurt Vonnegut – Cats Cradle
Gary Shteyngart – The Russian Debutante’s Handbook
Truman Capote – The Complete Stories
Amy Tan – Saving Fish from Drowning


March 2007
Marjane Satrapi – Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return
Banana Yoshimoto – n.p.
Bill Granger- Simply Bill
Kiran Desai – The Inheritance of Loss
Muriel Spark – Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography
Andrea Levy – Small Island
Eva Hoffman – Lost in Translation
Heston Blummenthal – In Search of Perfection
Edward St Aubyn – Mother’s Milk

February 2007
Jane Austen – Sanditon and other Stories
Gustave Flaubert - November
Alain de Botton – The Architecture of Happiness
Alice Hoffman – The Ice Queen
Bill Granger – Every day
Nancy Stepan – The Idea of Race in Science
Greta Jones – Social Hygiene in 20th Century Britain
Dru Gladney – Dislocating China
Kenan Malik – The Meaning of Race

January 2007
Salman Rushdie – Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Sara Ahmed et al – Uprootings/Regroundings
Stephen Jay Gould – Mismeasure of Man
Maxine Hong Kingston – China Men
Maxine Hong Kingston – Woman Warrior
V.S.Naipaul – Among the Believers
Iris Chang – Rape of Nanking
Lila Abu-Lughod – Veiled Sentiments
James Fenton – All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of Southeast Asia
Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking
Donna Hay – Off the Shelf
Craig Thompson – Blankets
Gina Mallet – Last Chance to Eat
Aldo Buzzi – The Perfect Egg
Katy Fox – Watching the English
Gregory Maguire – Son of a Witch
McSweeney’s Issue 13
Gary Shteyngart – Absurdistan
Simon Hopkinson – Second Helpings of Roast Chicken

BOOKS READ

December 2006
Hilary Mantel – Learning to Talk
Jeremy Mercer – Time was Soft There
Alice Sebold – Lucky
Mike Dash – Thug
Kevin Rushby – Children of Kali

November 2006
Rudyard Kipling – Something of Myself
Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild – Global Woman
Declan Quigley – Interpretation of Caste
Marjane Satrapi – Persepolis
E.M. Forster – A Passage to India
Lionel Shrive – We Need To Talk About Kevin
Edward Said – Orientalism
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang – Bound Feet and Western Dress
C.M. Turnbull – A history of Singapore 1819-1975
Niall Ferguson - Empire

October 2006
Jeanette Winterson – Tanglewreck
Joyce Carol Oates – Rape: A Love Story
Mary Roach – Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Maile Meloy- Half In Love
Jim Crace – Six
Anne Donovan – Hieroglyphics and other stories

September 2006
Diana Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle
Garrison Keillor – Good Poems for Hard Times
Mark Bittman – The Best Recipes in the World
Julie Powell – Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Gael Greene – Insatiable: Tales From A Life Of Delicious Excess
Philippa Gregory – The Other Boleyn Girl
Jane and Michael Stern – Two For The Road: Our Love Affair with American Food
Harvey Pekar – The Best of American Splendor
Jose Saramago – The Double
Isabel Allende – Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses
Dodie Smith – I Capture The Castle
Zadie Smith – On Beauty
Nicole Krauss – The History of Love
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto – Near A Thousand Tables: A History of Food

August 2006
Tom Perrotta – Joe College
Tom Perrotta - Little Children
Alex Garland - The Coma
Anthony Giddens - Runaway World

July 2006
Jeffrey Steingarten - The Man Who Ate Everything
Ian McEwan – Saturday
Lauren Weisberger - Devil Wears Prada
Steve Martin - The Pleasure Of My Company
Ursula Le Guin - The Earthsea Quartet

June 2006
Luis Alberto Urrea - The Hummingbird's Daughter
Ariel Levy - Female Chauvinst Pigs
Maureen Dowd - Are Men Necessary?
Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness
Donald Antrim - The Verificationist
James Agee - A Death In The Family
Ian McEwan - Saturday
Rick Bragg - All Over But The Shoutin
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Jamie Oliver - Jamie's Italy
The River Cafe Year
Nancy Mitford - Love In A Cold Climate

May 2006
Steven Millhauser - The Knife Thrower and other stories
Best of McSweeney's Vol 1
Barbara Ehrenreich - Bait And Switch
Melissa Banks - The Wonder Spot
A.M. Homes - Things You Should Know
Bao Jiemin - Marital Acts: Gender, Sexuality and Identity Among The Chinese Thai Diaspora
Julian Barnes - Lemon Table
PJ O'Rourke - The CEO of the Sofa

April 2006
John Berendt - Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil
Alice Steinbech - Educating Alice

March 2006
Rattawut Lapcharoensap - Sightseeing
Curtis Sittenfeld - Prep
Charles Bukowski- Post Office
Richard Ford - Women With Men
TC Boyle - The Inner Circle
Orhan Pamuk – Istanbul

Feburary 2006
Nathaneal West - Miss Lonelyhearts; The Day of the Locust
Rudolph Chelminski - The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine
Johana Sinisalo - Troll: A Love Story
Oliver Sacks - Seeing Voices: A Journey Into The World of the Deaf Jim Crace - The Devil's Larder
F Scott Fitzgerald - The Last Tycoon
Jasper Fforde - The Big Over Easy
Sy Montgomery - Journey Of The Pink Dolphins

January 2006
Zoe Heller - Notes on a Scandal
Elliot Perlman - Seven Types of Ambiguity
Mark Salzman - True Notebooks
James Salter - Last Night

Addicted

I was a bit early for my lunch with a friend at Bugis Junction so I took a slow walk through the mall, noticing several men in the perfume section buying last-minute Valentine's Day gifts. The store was abuzz with life, despite it being a Tuesday early afternoon. Couples gazed adoringly into each others' eyes over $22 VDay set lunches, young couples strolled hand in hand, the girl often cradling a small bouquet of roses swathed in a multitude of crepe paper used to make the bouquet look larger than it really is. A good number of people were doused in pink. One girl even wore a pink tube top (with the most hideously dead-looking faux fur trim on the top), carried a pink bag and had a thick layer of pink eyeshadow. I had to quickly walk away before I upchucked my lunch.
Even more strange I find is that friends wish me Happy VDay, like its new year or something. One of them explained that it's a day for friends to express friendship as well.
I'll say it back, just don't expect me to actually wish you first!
I'm a VDay cynic.
I'd like to be the antiCupid, shooting my black arrows at those love bubbles above adoring couples' heads.


Anyway, new haul:

1. Oliver Sacks - Seeing Voices: A Journey Into The World Of The Deaf
(Wanting to read some nonfiction, I was trying to find his other book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, which wasn't available at the library.)

2. Rudolph Chelminski - The perfectionist : Life and Death in Haute Cuisine (which DSD recommended)

3. Johanna Sinisalo - Troll: A Love Story (Translated from Finnish, this book is a recommendation off Powell's)

4. Nathanael West - Miss Lonelyhearts, and The Day Of The Locust
(West died a few years after writing these two books, then virtually unknown. Today they are considered American classics)

I was also tempted to get several cookbooks but decided that lugging them around until I got to work would be too much of a pain.

And so I did it again. Added more books to my (Too Many) To Be Read pile. I should actually write up a (TM)TBR list so that I can live up to reality and admit I have a problem.

Now playing: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Let Me Know

Reading 2005

December 2005
Rick Moody - The Black Veil
Joan Didion - Where I Was From
John Irving - Until I Find You
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
William S Burroughs - Junky
Charlotte Moore - George And Sam
ZZ Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Siri Hustevdt - What I Loved
Paul Auster - Timbuktu
Stephen Chbosky - Perks Of Being A Wallflower

November 2005
Ruth Reichl Comfort Me With Apples
Richard Perez The Losers Club
Truman Capote In Cold Blood
James Villas Stalking The Green Fairy
Nick Hornby Polysyllabic Spree
William Trevor A Bit On The Side
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray
Bret Easton Ellis American Psycho October 2005
Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
James Villas Between Bites
Anthony Bourdain A Cook's Tour
Iris Murdoch The Bell
Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Andrew Sean Greer The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Mimi Sheraton Eating My Words
Salman Rushdie Step Across This Line

September 2005
Elizabeth Kostova The Historian
8 J J Connolly Layer Cake
Ruth Reichl Garlic and Sapphires 9
Ruth Reichl Tender At The Bone 8.5
Nigel Slater Toast 9
Aimee Bender An Invisible Sign Of My Own 8.5
Shoba Narayan Monsoon Diary 9
Sandra Tsing Loh u/c

August 2005
Courtney Febbroriello Wife of the Chef 8
Jonathan Coe The Rotters' Club 8.5
Douglas Coupland Eleanor Rigby 8
Nigel Slater Real Fast Food 8
Maile Meloy Liars and Saints 9
Nell Freudenberger Lucky Girls 8.5
Laura Hillenbrand Seabiscuit 9.5
Betty Fussell My Kitchen Wars 6

July 2005
Henry Sutton Flying 8.5
Alice Munro Runaway 7.5
Jonathan Lethem Fortress of Solitude 8
Michael Crichton Travels
Colm Toibin The Master June 2005
Graham Greene The Quiet American 9
Gao Xingjian Buying A Fishing Rod For My Grandfather 8
Martin Amis Experience: A Memoir 7.5
Cormac McCarthy The Orchard Keeper NA
Julie Orringer How to Breathe Underwater 9
Kingsley Amis Lucky Jim 7.5
William Trevor The Story of Lucy Gault 9
Barney Hoskyns The Sound And The Fury 8
Michael Crichton Travels 7.5
Colm Toibin The Master 8.5 May 2005
Bret Easton Ellis The Rules Of Attraction 8
Ethan Hawke Ash Wednesday 7.5
Martin Amis Visiting Mrs Nabokov 8.5
Consuelo de Saint-Exupery The Tale Of The Rose 8
Andrea Levy Small Island 8.5

April 2005
Elizabeth Young Pandora's Handbag: Adventures in the Book World 8
Jonathan Safran Foer Everything Is Illuminated 7.5
David Sedaris Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim 8.5
Dave Eggers You Shall Know Our Velocity 9
Toby Young How To Lose Friends & Alienate People 8
Julia Alvarez Something To Declare 7.5
Philip Roth Ghost Writer 7.5
David Foster Wallace The Broom of the System 7

March 2005
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex 7.5
Leif Enger Peace Like a River 8
Amy Tan The Opposite of Fate 7.5
Augusten Burroughs Dry: A Memoir 8.5
Chuck Palahaniuk Stranger Than Fiction 8
Jim Carroll White Apples 8.5

February 2005
Steven Sherrill The Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break 8.5
Hanif Kureishi Buddha of Suburbia
Halldor Laxness Independent People u/c
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran 9
Pete Hamill Forever 4.5
Don Delillo White Noise 8.5

January 2005
Eric Schlossel Fast Food Nation 8.5
Joyce Carol Oates Beasts 8
Ethan Canin The Palace Thief 7.5
Philip Roth Portnoy's Complaint 8
Chang-Rae Lee Native Speaker
Jim Crace Arcadia 8
Audrey Niffenegger Time Traveler's Wife 9.5
Geoff Dyer Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It 7.5
Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 7