Reading Lists

I was reading my New Yorker again and ran across an article about Art Garfunkel. Remember him? The other half of Simon and. It turns out that Mr. Garfunkel has been keeping a list of every book he's read since June 1968. That's 40 years worth of reading, over 1,000 books, and an average of just over two books a month. The list is not wimpy as it seems Mr. Garfunkel has a taste for classics, non-fiction, and good literature. Always excellent to see what other people read and, if you're Notablogger, grin a little to yourself.

I've kept a list of every book I've read since January 1997. Among other things, it's nice to know that other people share my little penchant for keeping track of things. When I finish reading a book, I make a note in the back of my journal and when I finish the journal, I copy over the list into a book journal. It's just dates, authors, and titles, but I quite enjoy giving it a glance once in a while. Last year I realized it had been ten years of list keeping and did some math that I updated this morning.

Between January 1997 and December 2007, I read 486 books. That's around three and a half books a month. The list is less impressive than Mr. Garfunkel's, but he started his list at age 29. Having only (relatively) recently passed that year, I guess it's time to start getting serious. In the meantime, here's my list for 2007, with a star behind those titles I found especially good for whatever reason. (Kluun's Komt een vrouw bij de dokter is available in English now!)

January 2007
Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
John Grisham, The Broker
Ian Buruma, Death in Amsterdam

February 2007
Salman Rushdie, Shalimar the Clown
Tibor Fischer, Under the Frog
Frederick Forsyth, Icon
David Maine, The Flood
Frederick Forsyth, The Afghan

March 2007
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook*
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
Thronton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey*

April 2007
Ruth Prawer Jhabyala, The Householder
A.S. Byatt, The Game
Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries
Kluun, Komt een vrouw bij de dokter*

May 2007
Pamela Duncan, Plant Life
Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca*
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Ha Jin, Waiting
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics

June 2007
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman

July 2007
John Irving, A Son of the Circus
John Updike, Gertrude and Claudius
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis I*
Ian McEwan, Saturday
Ann Patchett, Bell Canto*

August 2007
Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair*
Khalid Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns*
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man*

September 2007
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Lee Smith, Oral History
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Gabriel Brownstein, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492 – Present*

October 2007
Penelope Lively, The Photograph
Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal*
Kate Mosse, Labyrinth
Peter Elbling, The Food Taster*
Robert Ludum, The Prometheus Deception
David Baldacci, The Camel Club

November 2007
Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met
Ian McEwan, Amsteradm*
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis II*
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Khalid Hosseini, The Kite Runner

December 2007
Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of a Murder*
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct*
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre*