Books I’ve finished in 2009:
1. New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond, edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas (finished 1/3/09). Does it count as my first book of 2009 if I actually started it a few days before 2008 ended? Anyway, I liked it a lot.
2. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (finished 1/5/09). I was all excited to finally read an Agatha Christie novel. And then it was over. And I was like, eh. I guess mysteries just don’t do much for me.
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (finished 1/5/09). Very very good. An overweight nerd from the Dominican Republic who’s into sci-fi books and role-playing games, looking for love and haunted by the fuku.
4. Food Matters by Mark Bittman (finished 1/8/09). Good book, not as profound as I’d expected, but I guess I already knew (and agreed with) most of what he was saying. Still, I’m excited to play around with some of the recipes he suggests, and overall I’m glad I bought and read it.
5. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (finished 1/10/09). Excellent excellent excellent. I love her writing.
6. Learning in the Museum by George E. Hein (finished 1/21/09). I did not enjoy this book.
7. The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West (finished 1/26/09). I had been reading this for nearly a month. But it’s GOOD so that’s okay. Lots of new authors, a handful of authors I already know and appreciate, some selections from novels and some short stories.
8. Honolulu: The First Century by Gavan Daws (finished 1/29/09). Here’s the general idea: take a Pacific History PhD dissertation first written in the 1960s, don’t revise or rewrite ANYTHING apart from adding diacritics to the Hawaiian words, and publish the sucker. Recipe for a long-winded boring disaster, right? Wrong! I read this for class – I should actually be working on my review of it right now – and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And learned a bunch.
9. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (finished 2/1/09). Winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize – first book I’ve ever bought because it won a prize, but I’m glad I did. Good story. Balram escapes the Rooster Coop.
10. Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith (finished 2/6/09). Third book about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I love this series. An easy read but pleasant and satisfying. And Mma Ramotswe says the most profound things! Time to start scouring the used book store for number four…
11. The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad (finished 2/22/09). Fantastic book – I want to write more about it but that will have to wait. My first book for the Lost in Translation Reading Challenge.
12. Folks You Meet in Longs and Other Stories by Lee Cataluna (finished 2/23/09). Fun and touching pidgin-laden short-short stories, or monologues, or something, straight from the aisles of Longs Drugs. My favorite? A two-page rant from “Grandma” urging her grandkids, “No treat old folks like we know more just cause we older than you. We not smart. We just old. . . So you gotta go find one nodda old lady for be your kupuna because I lived long time but I neva figure out shit”.
13. Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy (finished 2/25/09). Creepy, in a good way. And it’s about a linguist! Translated from Hungarian . . . don’t know if I’ve read anything translated from Hungarian before!
14. Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (finished 3/17/09). Excellent.
15. Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov (finished 3/20/09). Sweet and sad.
16. My Little Red Book by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff (finished 3/26/09). This is an awesome little book, and I would recommend it to anyone. I might send my copy to my sister.
17. The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories by Louis Erdrich (finished 3/29/09). Good book.
(Just a note, I’m trying to link these to publishers’ websites rather than Amazon whenever possible.)
