All right, so the year wasn't entirely a protracted struggle between my desire to read well and my insistence on finishing work on my memoir... that was just the first three quarters. I did well to keep my subscriptions from piling up, unread, while sweating to complete that final draft. Undertaking much long-form reading was out of the question. After squaring the page corners on my manuscript, however, it was time to make up for nine months' moderation.
Some very nice people, known and unknown, ordered me titles from my wish list. Big thank-yous to Debbie D., John and Lynn, long-lost Andrew, Bridget S., my dearest Mum, Christine L., Greg W., Javier G., the Pixie, Tom at Prospero's, pseudonymous Amy, Brooklyn Matt, the nice-and-timely folk of the Claremont Forum, Allison H., the incomparable Quimby's, the Rainbow Bookstore in Madison, not-in-the-industry Valerie, Rose T., and the many anonymous others. I'm grateful not only for the books but the privilege to avoid the increasingly depressing Crossroads library for weeks at a stretch. I doubt the malevolent head librarian misses my patronage; a mere six of the books I devoured in 2011 came off her shelves.
In traditional chronological order, they and all the rest follow.
* * * * *
Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
Albert Camus (Matthew Ward, translator), The Stranger
Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style
Chuck Klostermann, Eating the Dinosaur
Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Ray Bradbury, The Cat's Pajamas: Stories
Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing (poetry)
Kevin Wilson, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth: Stories
Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes (editors), Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance
Randolph B. Marcy, The Prairie Traveler
Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Joyce Carol Oates (editor), The Oxford Book of American Short Stories
Hermann Hesse (Joachim Neugroschel, translator), Siddhartha
Neal Stephenson, Anathem
John Brockman (editor), This Will Change Everything: Ideas That will Shape the Future
Jean-Christophe Valtat, Aurorarama
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Herman Melville, "Bartleby"; and, "Benito Cereno"
Howard Dully and Charles Fleming, My Lobotomy: A Memoir
China Miéville, The City & The City
Joe Navarro with Marvin Karlins, PhD, What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People
Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Alan Heathcock, Volt: Stories
Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey
Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
William Golding, Darkness Visible
Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City
Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Franz Kafka (Nahum N. Glatzer, editor), The Complete Stories
Arthur Miller, The Crucible
Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
John Elder Robison, Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers
Victor Hugo (Catherine Liu, translator), The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Jorge Luis Borges (Andrew Hurley, translator), Collected Fictions
Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
William Gibson, Virtual Light
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
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