List All the Books You Read in 2008

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
Twilight
Bleak House
Martin Chuzzlewit
The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.d. James
Unraveling by Lynn Biederman
Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion
In the Woods by Tana French
And a whole bunch of others that I can't remember right now.
And The Fiction Class by Susan Breen!

I keep a list on my blog right here. 115 so far, although technically 114 as one was a repeat-read when I bought my own copy.

Slow year for me. 120 is my baseline with 150 being more common.

Hmmm...too many to list here. Besides, I'd have to go find my list and retype it here....

You have no idea how daunting a task this is. lol

Uh, are we supposed to count first time reads only?

I don't have list. I'll probably keep one for 09 now.

I've only read about half as many as Scarletpeaches, but that's still too many to list. But here are a few of the good ones I've read this year:

- The Door by Magda Szabo
- The Museum of Unconditional Surrender by Dubravka Ugresic.
- Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Pessl
- Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Hoeg.
- Reef by Gunesekera
- Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

scarletpeaches said:

I keep a list on my blog right here. 115 so far, although technically 114 as one was a repeat-read when I bought my own copy.

Slow year for me. 120 is my baseline with 150 being more common.

Click to expand...

I really like this idea. I'm totally going to try it for 2009.

Of course... would rereads count? A year wouldn't be complete without rereading Austin and Bronte and Briggs and de Lint (my books are falling apart >.<).

Or what about half books? Those books you just can't finish without gouging out your eyes?

Obviously this future list will need categories.

Heh. I just list books I complete. Rereads as well, even if I re-read within the same year. But I have to read from the first page to the last for it to count; no half books here.

I didn't keep a list, I know I didn't read nearly as many as scarletpeaches...let's see what I can remember:

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
Pilgrim, Sara Douglass
Watchers, Dean Koontz (can't help it, I love this book and have read it dozens of times)
A few more Harlequin novels than I care to admit (hey, if you're gonna write it, you gotta read it...)
Several books on writing, the titles of which escape me right now

That's all I can remember off hand, but I know I read more than that.

Hey. We both read the same Atwood novel. Yay us!

(It's only the second of her books I've managed to get through, the first being The Penelopiad).

scarletpeaches said:

Hey. We both read the same Atwood novel. Yay us!

(It's only the second of her books I've managed to get through, the first being The Penelopiad).

Click to expand...

It's the only Atwood book I've ever read. How DO we keep doing that? Reading the same stuff, thinking the same stuff...

It's like we're...


TWINS...

thethinker42 said:

How DO we keep doing that? Reading the same stuff, thinking the same stuff...

It's like we're...


TWINS...

Click to expand...

*cue dramatic music*

Crime and Punishment
Blood Meridian
Tropic of Cancer
Farenheit 451
Slaughterhouse 5
Ender's Game
All the Pretty Horses
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
The Road
The Crying of Lot 49*
Watchmen
Cyrano de Bergerac
The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus


*Favorite of the bunch.

Cannot do it. I read 600 - 800 pages a day typically - more on weekends - 3 books a day on Fri/sat/sun - even more on a binge of no sleep for several days in a row.

Slowed recently, but I read 338 books from January through April 2008 (they are boxed and sitting in donation pile, had to count them for donation - so I know the accurate total).

I cannot think anyone wants to read such a list...

Christine

I've been listing all the books I read since 1971.

Best reads of 2008 are:

Penguin lost by A. Kurkov
The ballad of the sad café by C. McCullers
The god of small things by A. Roy
Housekeeping and Gilead by M. Robinson
Embers by Sándor márai
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Sleeping voice by Dulce Chacón
Husbands by Ángeles Mastretta
The virgin suicides by J. Eugenides
The time traveller's wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Ghostwritten by David Mitchell
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
The elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I've never kept a list, but will start one tomorrow . This year (2008) probably around 100.

MM

I don't have a list like this, but I think I'm going to do one for 2009. I do enjoy making lists. I think I tried to do this one year, but for some reason it didn't last.

I'm not a fast reader, and much of my reading gets done in lunchbreaks and/or train journeys.

I set myself a target of fifty books to be completed in 2008, and made it to 51 it earlier this afternoon. Long or short, if it's a book it counts - which includes issues of magazines with ISBNs, and also beta-reads. 2008 got off to a good start with two books I began in 2007 completed on New Year's Day.

Here's the list. Everything is a novel and for adult readers unless otherwise indicated.

Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Simon Garfield (ed.), Our Hidden Lives [non-fiction]
David Gullen, Ace Timewaster and the Cat from 40,000 Fathoms [beta-read]
Peter Crowther (ed.), Postscripts issue 10 (the World Horrorcon special - 320+-page hardback!)
Aidan Chambers, Postcards from No Man's Land [YA]
David Almond, Skellig [MG]
Stephenie Meyer, Twilight [YA]
Anne Cassidy, Looking for JJ [YA]
Lisa Jewell, Vince and Joy
Andrew Humphrey, Other Voices [collection]
Siobhan Dowd, A Swift Pure Cry [YA]
Matt Whyman, Boy Kills Man [YA]
Celia Rees, The Wish House [YA]
David Almond, Heaven Eyes [MG]
Stephenie Meyer, New Moon [YA]
David Stratton, The Avocado Plantation: Boom and Bust in the Australian Film Industry [non-fiction]
Margo Lanagan, White Time [YA collection]
J.G. Ballard, Miracles of Life [non-fiction]
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
J.G. Ballard, The Drought
Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant (eds.), Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection
Tom Pollock, The Devil's Party [beta-read]
J.G. Ballard, Concrete Island
Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse [YA]
Andrew Humphrey, Alison
Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
J.G. Ballard, High-Rise
Mal Peet, Tamar [YA]
Patrice Sarath, Gordath Wood
John Burnham Schwartz, Reservation Road
Jenny Valentine, Finding Violet Park [YA]
Meg Rosoff, What I Was [YA]
Nina Allan, A Thread of Truth [collection]
Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl [non-fiction - believe it or not I hadn't read it before]
Jenny Downham, Before I Die [YA]
Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage [collection]
Anthony McGowan, The Knife That Killed Me [YA]
Helen Callaghan, Mephistophela [beta-read]
Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey
John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas [YA]
Earl Butler, The Cut That Binds [beta-read]
Dan Simmons, The Terror
Helen Garner, Monkey Grip
Siobhan Dowd, Bog Child [YA]
Joyce Carol Oates, My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike
M.J. Prior, An Uncertain City [MG - beta-read]
Sarah Singleton, Century [YA]
Melissa Marr, Wicked Lovely [YA]
Aleksandra McGuinnes, In the Name of Honour [beta-read]
Gary McMahon, All Your Gods are Dead [novella]
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis [graphic novel]

So that makes 51, of which 41 were novels or novellas, four short-fiction collections and two anthologies. The graphic novel and all but one of the non-fiction books were autobiographies, memoirs or made up of Mass Observation diaries.

Of the 48 which were authored as opposed to edited, 25 were by women and 23 by men. I also noticed three authors I'd not read before where I read more than one book by them - three from Stephenie Meyer, two each from David Almond and Siobhan Dowd.

I keep a spread sheet with all the books I read and little blurb about what I thought of each one. I just had to cut and paste my list here.

The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson
Lullabies for Little Criminals, Heather O'Neill
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston
Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham
Eat, Pray, Love: One woman's journey…, Elizabeth Gilbert
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
Saving Fish from Drowning, Amy Tan
Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Small Island, Andrea Levy
A Star Called Henry, Roddy Doyle
The Friends of Meagre Fortune, David Adams Richards
The Whirlpool, Jane Urquhart
Lottery, Patricia Wood
The Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill
Turtle Valley, Gail Anderson-Dargatz
I Know This Much Is True, Wally Lamb
How to Talk to a Widower, Johnathan Tropper
Helpless, Barbara Gowdy
A Spanish Lover, Joanna Trollope
The Jade Peony, Wayson Choy
Remembering the Bones, Frances Itani
All That Matters, Wayson Choy
Exit Lines, Joan Barfoot
Joyland
Mean Boy, Lynn Coady
The Flying Troutmans, Miriam Toews
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I use a piece of scrap paper as a bookmark and when I finish a book I write the title down on said bookmark. I keep using it until it's completely filled up front and back.

That said, all the books I've read (and finished) in 08 in chronological order are as follows:

Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
Haunted, Chuck Palahniauk
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
Rabbit Run, John Updike
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
Native son, Richard Wright
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs
Papillion, Henri Charriere
No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
The Red Pony, John Steinbeck
Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
The Little Friend, Donna Tartt
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass
The Red and the Black, Stendhal
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
Tortilla Flat, John Steinbeck
All The King's Men, Robert Penn Warren
Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges
Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
V. Thomas Pynchon

Top ten favorites bolded.

In reverse order:

The Christmas Train by David Baldacci
State of Fear by Michael Crichton
Stone Cold by David Baldacci
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Blindsight by Robin Cook
Small Steps by Louis Sachar
Simple Genius by David Baldacci
Airframe by Michael Crichton
The Secret of Platform 13 By Eva Ibbotson
Toxin by Robin Cook
A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
Obedience by Will Lavender
Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen
Timeline by Michael Crichton
The Camel Club by David Baldacci
Dead Wrong by J. A. Jance
4th of July by James Patterson
Saving Faith by David Baldacci
The Choice by Nicholas Sparks
The Pacific Between by Raymond Wong

I had a bad year. Really bad. So I can actually list the books I read.

DeNiro's Game, Rawi Hage
THe Curious Case of The Dog at Night-Time, Mark Haddon
American Gods, Neal Gaiman
Some book about horses trained to lead people to someplace in the desert and a woman gets kidnapped to gentle the horses so they will actually lead people blah blah, Iris Johanssen, not one of her best, I was in the hospital I barely remember half of it
Crossfire, Andy McNab
Hell's Belles, Jackie Kessler (I read it last night but I'm sneaking it in cause i read the first four pages last week)