Once again, as is the tradition, here is my annual listing of the books I read in the year just ended:
- Dispatches from a Sporting Life, by Mordecai Richler
- Andorra, by Peter Cameron
- The Revolution Script, by Brian Moore
- Paradise, by Donald Barthelme
- Rene Levesque; The Fascinating Life of a Separatist Icon, by Megan Durnford
- Crazy About Lili, by William Wientraub
- Saturday, by Ian MacEwan
- My Invented Country, by Isabel Allende
- Working Identity, by Herminia Ibarra
- Secrets and Lies, by David Southwell
- The Curse of the Appropriate Man, by Lynn Freed
- A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, by Gil Courtemanche (translated by Patricia Claxton)
- Ascension, by Steven Galloway
- The Woman Who Waited, by Andreï Makine
- V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
- The Age of Longing, by Richard B. Wright
- Saving Rome, by Megan K. Williams
- Night, by Elie Wiesel
- Dawn, by Elie Wiesel
- Day, by Elie Wiesel
- Insatiable, by Gael Green
- Brick Lane, by Monica Ali
- 30 Days in Sydney, by Peter Carey
- A Splinter in the Heart, by Al Purdy
- The Human Stain, by Philip Roth
- The Bug, by Ellen Ullman
- Cuba and the Night, by Pico Iyer
- The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Man in my Basement, by Walter Mosley
- The Quitter, by Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel
- DeNiro’s Game, by Rawi Hage
- Rememberance of Things Paris, edited by Ruth Reichl
- Solo, by Wright Morris
That’s 33 books, up from 29 last year. The list can be broken down as follows:
- 22 works of fiction, five works of non-fiction, and six memoirs (which are sort of a mix of fiction and non-fiction).
- 24 books by men and nine by women. (Last year it was 24 by men and five by women, and I made a mental note to read more books by women. I guess it worked.)
- Two “graphic” books (one a serialized novel, one a memoir).
- Eleven of the books had “place” as a major theme.
- Two were about food.
So what can I learn from this? Who cares? I just like making lists!