I’m not investing any effort into writing about books that I don’t want to, but I do still want to keep a list of what I’ve read so I know not to dip into them again.
January
- The hard tomorrow by Eleanor Davis;
- Tony Greene Era by Kevin Killian;
- sharks in the rivers by Ada Limón;
- Rethinking positive thinking: inside the new science of motivation by Gabriele Oettingen (WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan);
- Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana;
- Calling a wolf a wolf: poems by Kaveh Akbar;
- Leaves of Grass (1855 edition) by Whitman;
- I lost my girlish laughter by Jane Allen (Silvia Schulman and Jane Shore)
February
- Tin man by Sarah Winman;
- The man who saw everything by Deborah Levy;
- How we fight for our lives : a memoir by Saeed Jones (that last line killed me, “Our mothers are why we are here.”);
- Topics of conversation by Miranda Popkey;
- The true history of the first Mrs. Meredith and other lesser lives by Diane Johnson;
- A life discarded : 148 diaries found in the trash by Alexander Masters (“A nice day in general; just enjoying myself. No particular thoughts, except perhaps I’d like to change my life.”);
- All this could be yours by Jami Attenberg;
- Drinking : a love story by Caroline Knapp;
- Astronomy : a self-teaching guide by Dinah L. Moché;
- A first year in Canterbury Settlement by Samuel Butler
March
- Sanditon by Jane Austen
April
- Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (re-read);
- Siddhartha by Herman Hesse (re-read)
May
- The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge;
- The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World
June
- Hidden San Francisco by Chris Carlsson;
- Harry Potter Book 1;
- Harry Potter Book 2;
- The Sherwoood Anderson Reader (sections 1-5)
July
- Harry Potter Book 3;
- Harry Potter Book 4;
- My Fault: Poems by Leora Fridman;
- The Roar of Silence by Don Campbell
August
- Harry Potter Book 5;
- The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine
September
- The office : the untold story of the greatest sitcom of the 2000s by Andy Greene;
- Return to Romance: The Strange Love Stories of Ogden Whitney;
- Harry Potter Book 6;
- Alta California : from San Diego to San Francisco, a journey on foot to rediscover the Golden State by Nick Neely;
- The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
October
- Labor of love : the invention of dating by Moira Weigel (I loved her on The Feminist Present podcast);
- Book of numbers by Joshua Cohen (I liked his Kafka preface but not this fiction);
- Harry Potter Book 7 (finally finished this horrendous series);
- How we keep spinning: selected writings from SF Chronicle columns by Kevin Fisher-Paulson;
- So far, so good by Charles Towne (pub: 1945);
- 101 essays that will change the way you think by Brianna Wiest;
- Americana by Luke Healy;
- Julia, a portrait of Julia Strachey by herself & Frances Partridge;
- This brilliant darkness : a book of strangers by Jeff Sharlet.
November
- Shapes that pass: memories of old days by Julian Hawthorne;
- Autobiography of a Chinese woman, Buwei Yang Chao put into English by her husband Yuenren Chao;
- Screwball!: The Cartoonists Who Made the Funnies Funny, by Paul Tumey;
- What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell;
- Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell;
- One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry;
- Journey around my room : the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic by Ruth Limmer.
December
-
- A tale for the time being by Ruth Ozeki;
- Alice James, a biography by Jean Strouse;
- William James: in the maelstrom of American modernism, a biography by Robert D. Richardson;
- The craving mind by Judson Brewer;
- I knew a phoenix : sketches for an autobiography by May Sarton (includes recollection of meeting Woolf in 1937);
- Females by Andrea Long Chu (homage to Valerie Solanas);
- A libertarian walks into a bear : the utopian plot to liberate an American town (and some bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling (this was a terrible book);
- Sontag : her life and work by Benjamin Moser;
- Essays of the 1960s and 70s by Susan Sontag (the Uncollected Essays where she focused on feminist issues);
- Glass Town by Isabel Greenberg (graphic novel about the Brontës);
- The 99% invisible city : a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design (ugh, incredibly boring execution of what could have been great, had to force myself to skim through);
- The movie brats : how the film generation took over Hollywood by Michael Pye and Lynda Myles;
- Reeling by Pauline Kael (I took another romp through this book since I’ve watched several of these 1970s films since last I peeked into it; love her spicy take on the major films of the decade).
F: 35; M: 28; Fict: 25; Non: 40