When I was in grade school, my mom cut out a big felt capital "E" and hung it on the bulletin board in the living room. (She cut out a similar Z for my brother.) Every time I read a book, I got to put a star on that E, and every time I had a certain number of stars I got a prize from the school Treasure Chest. However, after a while it was no longer about the prizes: it was about putting up one more star on that E, making the aggregation of stars more and more impressive. Sometimes, when I keep my annual book list, I feel as though it's only a leftover psychological manifestation of the giant E, as though all I am doing every time I finish a book is putting another star on that thing. Oh well. It's still a satisfying feeling.
This list to be updated throughout the year. Everybody be excited.
Book List 2011
1. Steampunk II (Anthology), edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer [Steampunk 1]
2. Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
3. Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande
4. Human Narration as Communication, by Walter Fisher
5. The Story of the Irish Race, by Seamus MacManus
6. Everyman's McLuhan, by W. Terrence Gordon, Eri Hamaji & Jacob Albert [Media Ecology 1]
7. Mr. Mani, by A.B. Yehoshua
8. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
9. Blood Wedding, by Federico Garcia Lorca
10. Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya
11. Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe
12. 1000 Years of Irish Poetry, ed. by Kathleen Hoaglund
13. Understanding Media, by Marshall McLuhan [ME 2]
14. Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them, by Marjorie Taylor
15. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, by Jerome Bruner
16. The Court of the Air, by Stephen Hunt [SP 2]
17. Looking for Alaska, by John Green
18. Saint, by Ted Dekker
19. Larklight, by Philip Reeve [SP 3]
20. Going Bovine, by Libba Bray [Partial]
21. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
22. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
23. Chinese Cinderella, by Adeline Yen Mah
24. Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman [ME 3]
25. The Golden Age, by John C. Wright
26. The Phoenix Transcendent, by John C. Wright
27. An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green
28. House, by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti [Partial]
29. The Devil Knows Latin, by E. Christian Kopff [Classics 1]
30. Alchemy: Its Science and Romance, by the Right Rev. J. E. Mercer, D.D. (Sometime Bishop of Tasmania) [Alchemy 1]
31. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
32. Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger
33. The Sorceror's House, by Gene Wolfe
34. Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, tr. George Thomson [Classics 2]
35. Going Out, Getting Dumped, and Playing Mini-Golf on the First Date, by Rev. Tim Pauls
36. The Greeks: Cosmology and Cosmogony, ed. by W.H. Auden
37. Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson
38. Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!, by Edmund Carpenter [ME 4]
39. Audrey, Wait!, by Robin Benway
40. Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett
41. De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. Cairo: a Graphic Novel, by G. Willow Wilson
44. Alice in Sunderland: An Entertainment, by Brian Talbot
45. Popgun: a Graphic Mix Tape, Volume One, edited by Mark Andrew Smith and Joe Keatinge
46. The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness
47. The Ask and the Answer, by Patrick Ness
48. Paper Towns, by John Green
49. Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto [ME 5]
50. Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness
51. Good Masters, Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village
52. Stories, by Oscar Wilde
53. A House of Pomegranates, by Oscar Wilde
54. Lady Windermere's Fan, by Oscar Wilde
55. A Woman of No Importance, by Oscar Wilde
56. The Gutenberg Galaxy, by Marshall McLuhan (ME 6)
57. Serenity: Those Left Behind, by Joss Whedon and Brett Matthews
58. Serenity: Better Days, by Joss Whedon
59. Digital McLuhan: a Guide to Understanding the Information Millenium, by Paul Levinson [ME 7]
60. Behemoth, by Scott Westerfeld [SP 4]
61. The Empire of Ice Cream, by Jeffrey Ford
62. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
63. Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer, 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright, by Steven Millhauser
64. Persuasion, by Jane Austen
65. Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, by M.T. Anderson
66. National Monuments: Poems, by Heid Erdrich
67. Dangerous Laughter, by Steven Millhauser
68. The Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function: Poems and Paintings, by Eric Gansworth
69. Millions, by Frank Cottrell Boyce
70. Lady Audley's Secret, by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
71. Carmilla, by Joseph Le Fanu
72. The Medium is the Massage, by Marshall McLuhan et al. [ME 8]
73. Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick
74. The Failure of Certain Charms: and Other Disparate Signs of Life, by Gordon Henry, Jr.
75. Freedom & Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull
76. The Failure of Certain Charms: and Other Disparate Signs of Life, by Gordon Henry, Jr.
77. King Solomon's Mines, by H. Rider Haggard
78. Fugitive Anne, by Rosa Praed
79. The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch
80. The Grass Dancer, by Susan Power
81. Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest [SP 5]
82. The Good Soldier, by Ford Maddox Ford
83. Underground Christmas, by John Hassler
84. The Painted Drum, by Louise Erdrich
85. Mason and Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon
86. The Early Church, by Henry Chadwick
87. Steampunk!, ed. by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant [SP 6]
88. The Sandman Papers, ed. by Joe Sanders
89. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller
90. Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
91. Not Less Than Gods, by Kage Baker [SP 7]
92. Laws of Media, by Marshall and Eric McLuhan [ME 9]
93. Masters of Atlantis, by Charles Portis
94. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
95. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabakov
96. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, by Stephen Millhauser
97. Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan
98. The Justification Reader, by Thomas Oden
99. Extraordinary Engines, ed. by Nick Gevers
4 comments:
I'm breathless.
Actually, my mother did the same thing to her recalcitrant young reader. I remember being tripped up repeatedly by the word "THE". Duh. Just couldn't guess my way out of it. So she instituted the Summer Reading Program, complete with a graduated list of rewards according to the numbers of books I read. I could go for the instant candy bar, or save up my books to cash in on some serious bling. Once I read my way to this sort of canvas thing with a string tightener that fastened over an innertube. Float it on the water and it became, according to which side was up, either a platform or a boat. It was simply too cool. And it was MINE!
Shouldn't the reading of Fitzgerald's unfinished novel remain....unfinished?
My mom did the same thing for me.. except with practicing violin. I never did have a problem with reading.
Agree with Pater. Don't bother finishing it. The ending's such a cliffhanger, anyway.
I think the best I ever got was a package of water balloons! Not that I can complain too much. Those won me the Great Water War of '99.
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