Saturday, December 31, 2011

Here it is! As promised, here's the list of books I've read this year. I've been really excited about it because I honestly don't know how many I've read this year--all I know is it felt like a lot. I purposely have not added them up yet, so this is as much a surprise to me as it is to all of you.



So here it goes, the list, in order of completion:
  1. Caleb Williams - William Godwin
  2. Wieland - Charles Brockden Brown*
  3. Radical - David Platt
  4. Letter's from an American Farmer - J. Hector St. John de Crevcoeur*
  5. Charlotte Temple - Susanna Rowson*
  6. The Spy - James Fenimore Cooper
  7. Through a Screen Darkly - Jeffrey Overstreet
  8. Aurelia's Colors - Jeffrey Overstreet
  9. Cyndere's Midnight - Jeffrey Overstreet
  10. Raven's Ladder - Jeffrey Overstreet
  11. The Ale Boy's Feast - Jeffrey Overstreet
  12. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen*
  13. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
  14. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
  15. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen*
  16. Emma -Jane Austen*
  17. Persuasion - Jane Austen*
  18. Sanditon - Jane Austen
  19. Manalive - G. K. Chesterton
  20. Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
  21. A Jesuit Off Broadway - Father James Martin
  22. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
  23. Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
  24. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  25. A Mercy - Toni Morrison
  26. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
  27. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
  28. Agamemmnon - Aeschylus*
  29. Room - Emma Donoghue
  30. Eumenides - Aeschylus*
  31. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
  32. Seven Against Thebes - Aeschylus
  33. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
  34. Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus*
  35. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
  36. Oedipus Tyrannos - Sophocles*
  37. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
  38. Antigone - Sophocles
  39. Philoctetes - Sophocles
  40. History of Love - Nicole Krauss
  41. Hippolytos - Euripides*
  42. Medea - Euripides*
  43. The Gangster We're all Looking For - Le Thi Diem Thuy
  44. Alcestis - Euripides
  45. Bacchae - Euripides
  46. A Gesture Life - Chang-rae Lee
  47. Frogs - Aristophanes
  48. Hard Times - Charles Dickens*
  49. Loneliness as a Way of Life - Thomas Dumm
  50. Surprised by Oxford - Carolyn Webber
  51. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
  52. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
  53. Mockningjay - Suzanne Collins
Key: 
*re-read
___ read for school


Aside from obvious favorites by Austen and the Bronte's, a few of these I'd recommend are:

  • History of Love - A "beautifully sad," multiple-narrator novel about an aged and lonely holocaust survivor named Leopold Gursky and the lives his writing unknowingly changed--including his own.
  • Room - The story of Jack, a precocious 5-year-old, who lives with his mother and has never been outside the Room he was born in. Told in his 1st-person, present tense perspective, this intense and gripping narrative reveals the beauty of a mother's love.
  • Manalive - G. K. Chesterton's hilarious novel about Innocent Smith--a man who defies religion and convention. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates that to do the truly right thing in modernity, we have to "break the law."
  • and Surprised by Oxford - The memoir of a grad student studying English at Oxford, who found herself swept into the deepest Romance she could possibly imagine. Carolyn Webber's original imagery, constant literary allusions, and brilliant prose would be reason enough to read this--the setting and story make it magical.

I'd love to hear what you read this year and here's to many more books in 2012 =)

3 comments:

  1. I love seeing other people's reading lists. I would be interested to know - which of these books were assigned & which were purely for pleasure (and which ones could go in both categories). Also, what are your top recommendations from this list?

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  2. Hi, Rachel. I was wondering about designating which were assigned... I'm going to change it and add a few recommendations =)

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  3. way to rock it with the books Samara :) I see some good ones in there!

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