Book List for 2007

Because I know you've been looking forward to it, here's a list of the books I've read in 2007, set out alphabetically in standard MLA format. Anything marked by an asterisk is a library book.

Adams, Douglas. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide: Five Complete Novels and One Story. New

York: Gramercy, 2005.

Atwood, Margaret. Alias Grace. New York: Anchor, 1996.

Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Penguin, 2002.

de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1953. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, Everyman’s Library, 1993.*

Berridge, Kate. Madame Toussad: A Life in Wax. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.*

Bombeck, Erma. If Life is a Bowl of Cherries—What Am I Doing With the Pits. New York:

Fawcett Crest, 1983.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1953. New York: Del Ray, 1993.

Briggs, Kenneth. Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American

Nuns. New York: Doubleday, 2006.*

Brockmeier, Kevin. Things That Fall from the Sky. New York: Vintage, 2002.

Byatt, A.S. Babel Tower. New York: Random House, 1996.*

Byatt, A.S. The Matisse Stories. 1993. New York: Vintage International edition, 1996.*

Clapp, Patricia. Jane-Emily. 1969. New York: Harper, 2007.

Clark, Clare. The Nature of Monsters. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1902. Mineola: Dover, 1992.

De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 1822. New York: Heritage Press,

1950.*

Drewe, Robert. Ned Kelly. [Orig. Our Sunshine] 1991. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. trans. William Weaver. 1980. New York: Knopf

(Everyman’s Library), 2006.*

Evans, Justin. A Good and Happy Child. New York: Shaye Arehearst Books, 2007.

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair: A Next Thursday Next Novel. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Fforde, Jasper. Lost in a Good Book. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Fisher, Carrie. The Best Awful. 2003. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 1856. Trans. Francis Steegmuller. New York: The Modern

Library, 1992.*

Franklin, Tom. Smonk, or, Widow town: being the scabrous adventures of E. O. Smonk & of

the whore Evavangeline in Clarke County, Alabama, early in the last century…. New

York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1974.*

Grossman, Austin. Soon I Will Be Invincible. New York: Pantheon, 2007.

Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Survive. New

York: Random House, 2007.

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Atreides. New York: Bantam, 1999.*

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Corrino. New York: Bantam, 2001.*

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Harkonen. New York: Bantam, 2000.*

Hornby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek. 1953. Trans. Carl Wildman. New York: Ballantine Books,

1968.

Knowles, Sir James, ed. King Arthur and His Knights. 1923. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

Kostova, Elizabeth. The Historian. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005.

Kushner, Tony. Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. 1995. New York:

Theatre Communications Group, 2003.

Lafayette, Leslie. Why Don’t You Have Kids? Living A Full Life Without Parenthood. New

York: Kensington, 1995.

Millhauser, Steven. Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer. New York: Vintage,

1996.

McEwan, Ian. On Chesil Beach. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

O’Hagan, Andrew. Be Near Me. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007.

Oates, Joyce Carol. The Tattooed Girl. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.*

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.*

Pearl, Matthew. The Dante Club. New York: Random House, 2003. 380 pages*

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1969.

Pynchon, Thomas. V.. 1961. New York: HarperCollins Perennial Classics, 1999.*

Qualls-Corbett, Nancy. The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine. Toronto: Inner

City Books, 1988.

Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society

and Its Youthful Opposition. Garden City: Anchor Books, 1969.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.(7) New York: Scholastic, 2007.

Sedaris, David. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. New York: Little, Brown &

Company, 2004.

Shanghvi, Siddharth Dhanvant. The Last Song of Dusk. New York: Random House, 2006.

Smith, Alisa & J. B. MacKinnon. Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating

Locally. New York: Harmony Books, 2007.

Thomas, Scarlett. PopCo. Orlando: HarperCollins, 2004.*

Thomas, Scarlett. The End of Mr. Y. Orlando: Harcourt, 2006.*

Traig, Jennifer. Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood. New York: Little,

Brown, and Company, 2004.

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007.

White, T. H. The Once and Future King. 1958. New York: Ace, 1987.

Wolfe, Tom. I Am Charlotte Simmons. New York: Picador, 2005.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando: A Biography. 1928. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1993.

Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957.*

November Book List 2007

Atwood, Margaret. The Blind Assassin. New York: Anchor, 2001. This is the second Atwood novel I've read and I love her. She's scary-smart, ultimately depressing, but the story stays with you and you just keep thinking about her stories and her characters and the issues she addresses. I can't really say what it's about because that would kind of give away the twist at the end that can't really be called a twist because you see it coming about two-thirds of the way through.

Bombeck, Erma. If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, Then What am I Doing With the Pits?. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1983. I used to love Erma Bombeck because she's hilarious. Reading it now, I realize the problem with her writing--what makes it funny is that it's true and what makes it depressing is that it's true. The experiences she shares make you realize that so much of what she's talking about is actually funny, it's just absurd. I'm not sure if that's supposed to make you laugh and relieve some tension, or stop and re-examine everything about your life before you find yourself completely wasting the entire thing.

Fforde, Jasper. Lost in a Good Book. New York:Penguin, 2002. This is the second Thursday Next novel that I've read and I love it just as much because it has all kinds of things that I love: literary allusions, British people, time travel/manipulation, genetically resurrected dodos, and all kinds of other crazy stuff. Even though a whole of the plot buildup was pointing to the ending, I was a little surprised by it. I need to find the third book.

Herbert, Brian and Kevin J. Anderson. Dune: House Corrino. New York: Bantam, 2001. Okay, I've finished the prequel trilogy to the Dune series. I'm pretty excited. Watch out now!

Hornby, Nick. High Fidelity. New York: Riverhead Books, 1995. When I first started reading this, I wondered why the movie wasn't set in England. As I got further into it, I realized it was because if everyone was British, they couldn't have used John Cusack and Jack Black and then the movie would've been as bleak and dark as the book. Oh man, that main character is way more charming and funny when he's John Cusack. A good book, but I was unsettled. I don't know how else to phrase this. Breakups do bad things to people. Depressing British stuff.

Lafayette, Leslie. Why Don't You Have Kids? Living A Full Life Without Parenthood. New York: Kensington, 1995. I bought this for a dollar at the library sale. It was in the parenting section and I saw it just briefly as I was headed toward the children's fiction. Odd, right? Not so much. So I got it because we haven't been too harassed about the whole "When are you two going to have kids?" thing because we haven't been married too very long and our parents aren't really pressuring us for grandbabies or anything, but there have been a few awkward encounters where I have to either bite my tongue or give our standard response ("When we can afford to buy one on the black market."). I thought this might help. It didn't really. She had a lot of valid points, but I think this was intended for people who are a little bit older. We're very happy with our life right now as it is, but we haven't made the decision to be childfree, so........I didn't really need all that much validation from this book. I wanted to blog about at length, and I tried a couple of times, but then I'd stop because I worried about offending some people. (Oddly enough, my parents were not among those I was concerned with offending via my lack of offspring.) Cody and I are happy without kids, but some people aren't. Plus, I don't that we'll always feel this way. Plus, I don't want to write out something about wanting to be childfree forever and then be reminded of it 5 years and 3 kids from now. (I doubt that'll happen, but my dad tends to print these things off.) But plans change and people change their minds and you just never know. Moving on to the next book.

Puzo, Mario. The Godfather. Greenwich: Fawcett, 1969. I really liked this book. I want to rent the movie. Not all of them or anything, but this was an amazing story. Terribly violent and disturbing and sometimes I was scared to keep reading because you know horrible things are going to happen, but then I kept reading it. I'm glad I did.

So that's the book list for this month.