Books I've Read (so far this year)

My professor mentioned that she keeps a book journal, just a list of every book she's read and when she read it. I think this is a great idea, and I'm going to one-up her by posting it on my blog. See anything you like? Comment on it. Recommend something. Let's have a discussion. The plan is to eventually post one of these every one or two months, but as I'm just starting this, I figured I would do everything I've read so far this year (as best I can remember). Unless I say otherwise, you can assume I read it for class. Here goes...

January

• Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem. Read it for fun. Epic, difficult, and odd. Totally worth it.
• How I Became a Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely. Read it for fun. Very funny satire of book people. Totally nails the scenes set in an MFA.
• The Shell Collector, by Anthony Doerr. Read two stories out of it for a class last semester, read the rest over the break for fun. Beautiful short story collection. This story is a must read.

February

• Best American Short Stories 2009, edited by Alice Sebold. Awful selections! Avoid at all costs.
• Bringing the Devil to his Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, edited by Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. Didn't read the whole thing, but read a good chunk of the essays within, which were very good.
• Burning down the House, by Charles Baxter. Several essays assigned for class, then read the rest for fun. Some really interesting observations about how fiction works.

March

• OnWriting, by Stephen King. I've read this before, but got to revisit it for class. It's by far the best King book I've read. He should do memoir more often.
• Reading like a Writer, by Francine Prose. Another reread for my form and technique class. An insanely useful book for fiction writers.

April

• The Faith of the Writer, by Joyce Carol Oates. Hated it.
• Day Moon, by Jon Anderson. A poetry collection, recommended to me by the inimitable Andrew "Babypoet" Booth. It was alright, but didn't do much for me (sorry, BP).
  
• The Woman in the Woods, by Ann Joslin Williams. Read it for fun. My professor's collection of linked short stories. This book filled me with an insane jealousy--I wish I could write short stories like this.
• The Pearl of Kuwait, by Tom Paine. Read it for fun. My other professor's novel, written from the first-person POV of a stoned California surfer turned US Marine in Operation Desert Storm. Kind of like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in the Middle East, which is to say, awesome.
• Ron Carlson Writes a Story, by Ron Carlson. Interesting, but I'm not sure if it really helped me all that much.

That's it for full books, although I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff from over the break and from March, which seemed a lot busier than my reading list makes it seem. I've also read several volumes worth of my colleagues' material for my fiction and non-fiction workshops, a folder stuffed to bursting with short stories and essays pulled from books and magazines, and a stack of lit journals I read for fun (mostly I just read the fiction out of them, and the occasional essay, including one by my former professor, Susanne Paola). Notable journals are AGNI, The Northwest Review, Green Mountain Review, Opium, and The Waterstone Review.

This was fun. I have a lot of reading I'd like to tackle over the summer, so hopefully I'll post another list soon. Readers of my blog, you should do this too! Or post it in the comments! It's fun to think about what you've been reading.