bibliophile.

I have just been informed that the Bay Area is either having or about to have a Massive Winter Rainstorm of Epic Proportions.  (I can hear it raining outside, so we may already be in the midst of it, but it doesn't sound like it's raining all that hard yet?  I don't know.)  I don't mean to diminish the importance of the Massive Winter Rainstorm, if only because I live in a part of the country where people build their houses on the sides of steep hills, and bad rainstorms can wash those houses right off.  In my life, though, the rain mostly only means that the mail in my mailbox gets wet and I have to juggle my umbrella and my coffee when I walk to my campus office. 

I know that we're a few days into 2008, but I have one last 2007 wrap-up to do, and that's a book list.  2007 was, among other things, the year that I started reading again.  I've always been a compulsive reader, but I got so worn down at the end of the dissertation process that I wasn't able to process anything more complicated than trashy romance novels and well-worn half-memorized favorites.  I stopped reading new books entirely, it seemed like, and that felt wrong.  About a year and a half ago, I emailed a lot of my friends and asked them for reading suggestions, old books, new books, fiction, nonfiction, genre, literary, whatever.  Tell me the names of some books you like, and I'll try to read them, I said. 

And that's what I've been doing.  I've been reading a lot of books that I hadn't read before, and it's such a good thing for me.  I haven't liked all of them, but I've liked most of them, and I've loved a few.  I tried to reconstruct the list of books I've read in the last year or so, and it's hard, because I don't really keep lists or records.  The list that follows is a reconstruction based on a few sketchy documentary sources and a quick scan of the bookshelves.  (I've gotten most of these from either BookMooch or the library, so it's been a pretty cost-effective reading surge.)  Almost every book on this list I've meant to blog about, even just a brief reaction, and kept not getting around to.  I may still try and do that, at least brief reactions, but for now I'm just going to list them.  If anyone's particularly curious about what I thought of any of these, though, let me know, and I'll try to get to those first.

• Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai.
• Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. (I may not have read all of them, but I think I got most of them.)
• David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas.
• David Mitchell, Black Swan Green.
• Robertson Davies, Rebel Angels and What's Bred in the Bone.  (still trying to track down a copy of The Lyre of Orpheus, the third book in the trilogy.)
• John McPhee, Annals of the Former World.  I don't think I've actually finished this yet, though.  It's just so hard to carry around.
• John McPhee Coming Into the Country. 
• Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild.  Particularly interesting read as a set with Coming Into the Country.
• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.
• Julie Phillips's Tiptree biography.
• Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep.
• Kate Chopin, "Pale Horse Pale Rider" and "The Awakening"
• Mary McCarthy, The Group.
• Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave and a few of the sequels
• Joan Vinge, Snow Queen (and World's End, and Summer Queen, which I haven't finished yet)
• Naomi Novik's Temeraire books.
• All of Kate Wilhelm's Barbara Holloway books (except I think the most recent one, which I haven't found a copy of yet)
• Michael Chabon, Summerland.
• Walter Mosely, Devil in a Blue Dress
• Bill Buford, Heat
• Janet Kagan, Uhura's Song
• Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon
• Augusten Burroughs, Running with Scissors and Dry, A Memoir
• James Halperin, The First Immortal
• Stephen Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park
• Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
• David Halberstam, The Teammates
• Ben Mezrich, Bringing Down the House
• Leon Lederman, The God Particle
• Allegra Goodman, Intuition
• Jane Smiley, Duplicate Keys
• Alexandra Ripley, On Leaving Charleston
• Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance
• Willo Davis Roberts, The Girl with the Silver Eyes
• Caleb Carr, The Alienist
• Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist
• Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
• Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy
• Kate Wilhelm, Juniper Time
• Charles Stross, The Clan Corporate
• David Halberstam, The Summer of '49
• J.D.Robb, Innocent in Death
• Tess Gerristen, Bloodstream
• Nora Roberts, Angel's Fall
• John Scalzi, Old Man's War
• John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades
• Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy

I may have forgotten a couple, but I did resist the urge to not list the books that I think will make me look less smart.  There's no shame in reading mass-market thrillers and romance novels.  Also, some of these are books I've read  before, but long enough ago that I didn't really remember them that well.

And that's 2007 in books.

Comments

[Benjamin Rosenbaum]

My 2007 list has only a couple of overlaps with yours -- Cloud Atlas (which I thought was brilliant), and The Awakening (which I rather liked)

[tacithydra]

Oh, I'd love to hear what you thought of The Last Samurai. I read it about the same time I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, so I feel like my impression of the book was sullied by the parallels that kept bumping me on the head.

I'd also be interested in seeing what you thought of the Krakauer, Mitchell, and Davies stuff. I was really pleased with the Deptford trilogy, but I haven't read anything else of his.

[krystyn]

Oh, man, I loved The Last Samurai.

[Jessie]

Oh my god, The Girl With the Silver Eyes! I read that book in the library when I was ten, and found a copy again twenty years later. Really defines the particular YA 80s SF genre, huh?

(Also some other books are your list were great.)

[Renee]

Thanks for your book reviews. Just read Intuition & thoroughly enjoyed it. You might like "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. It's way more than it looks.