Another Year Has Passed, and I Still Haven’t Finished Don Quixote: The Book List
Welcome to this, the last book list of 2006. Though this should’ve been published more than a week ago, better late than never, I suppose. I’ve begun new books for 2007, and will create the 2007 Book List after the first one is completed. As soon as I get a bookshelf (the day Target in Wheaton decides to stock them again, that is), I can document every book I have waiting to be read and slowly move them up into first the “Reading” and then the “Finished” categories.
I won’t bore you with the details of every book I’ve read since September—truth be told, I’m unsure that I can remember each one, but I shall do my best. Here goes.
Onto the last 2006 book list:
Finished:
1) The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant by Robert Hutchinson
2) Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
3) Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
4) Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
5) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6) Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
7) The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
8) Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman
9) Saving the World by Julia Alvarez
10) The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
11) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Translated by Lucia Graves)
12) The Golden Ass by Apuleius (Translated by Robert Graves)
13) Night Shift by Stephen King
14) Cell by Stephen King
15) A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
16) Autobiography of Henry VIII: With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George
17) From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
18) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
19) Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World by Sarah Vowell
20) World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
21) Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
22) Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
23) The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: The Most Happy by Eric W. Ives
24) Company by Max Barry
25) Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
26) The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
Re-read:
1) Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
Currently Reading:
1) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Translation by Edith Grossman)
2) The Years with Laura Diaz by Carlos Fuentes (Translation by Alfred MacAdam)
Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Boyfriend, or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):
1) Lost for Words: Hidden History of Oxford English Dictionary by Lynda Mugglestone
2) Whose Bible Is It?: A History of the Scripture through the Ages by Jaroslav Pelikan
3) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
It looks like you managed to read about one book every two weeks, which is not bad considering how crazy the year has been. This is a pretty eclectic list, too. I’ve read 11 of the 26 books on your list, though not all in the past year.
If you’re looking to write more about this, you might post about which of the books you liked best, which you liked least, which will stick with you the longest, which you’ve already forgotten, etc.
I think I’m going to start keeping a list of the books I’ve read this year, too. (I started one a few years ago, but it got destroyed in the Great Hard Drive Crash of ’06.)
Thanks for the idea. I’m currently writing the book awards of 2006, as chosen from the 2006 Book List. I’ve also updated the list since I forgot about one book I definitely read last year—the Anne Boleyn bio I started at Starbucks in Ann Arbor (where those dumb chicks insulted “Ring of Fire”—I’m still pissed about that, have I told you recently? ;) ).
Ah, the Great Hard Drive Crash of ’06. We should write a ballad about it, with the climax of the song being how frightened we were of the Geek Squad.