Oh, this is pitiful. I’ve been blogging since 2006, and I have never gone so long without posting, or gone so late in the year without a year-in-review round up. The culprits are pictured above, but still, I am ashamed. So, in the interest of 2011 blogging, I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
Book Resolution -
My goal was to finish all the ML Top 100. Didn’t do it - I still had 9 to read and an additional 14 to re-read and write about as of 1/1/11. I should be able to put that to bed this year, though.
Best/Worst Books I read this year. So late that I present them only in list form.
Best Books: The Children’s Book, AS Byatt; Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann; The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy; The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, Charlotte Mosely, ed.; The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed; Horns, Joe Hill; This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust; The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, E. Lockhart; A Room With A View, EM Forster; All Clear/Blackout; Connie Willis; At Home, Bill Bryson; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
Worst Books: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe; American Lightning, Howard Blum; Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell; Justine, Lawrence Durrell; Henderson, The Rain King, Saul Bellow; The Murder Room, Micheal Capuzzo; A Farewell To Arms, Ernest Hemingwa
The Total List (which is, by the way, the smallest number in blogging history, which depresses the hell out of me, to quote Holden)
1. The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt
2. The Rottweiler, Ruth Rendell
3. Talking To Strange Men, Ruth Rendell
4. Let The Great World Spin, Colum McCann
5. Eye Contact, Cammie McGovern
6. The Bolter, Frances Osbourne
7. Gallowglass, Ruth Rendell (as Barbara Vine)
8. Agatha Christie: An Autobiography, Agatha Christie
9. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
10. The Rainbow, D.H. Lawrence
11. A Guilty Thing Surprised, Ruth Rendell
12. The Girl Who Played With Fire, Steig Larsson
13. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Steig Larsson
14. The Life of Graham Green, Vol, III, Norman Sherry
15. Not In The Flesh, Ruth Rendell
16. John Lennon: The Life, Philip Norman
17. The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy
18. The Birthday Present, Ruth Rendell (as Barbara Vine)
19. Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman
20. Which Lie Did I Tell? William Goldman
21. The Big Picture, William Goldman
22. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
23. The Monster in the Box, Ruth Rendell
24. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
25. The Writing Class, Jincy Willet
26. A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George
27. Poirot Loses A Client, Agatha Christie
28. The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, Charlotte Mosely, ed.
29. The Ambassadors, Henry James
30. The Bridesmaid, Ruth Rendell
31. Beowulf on the Beach, Jack Murnigham
32. The Transit of Venus, Shirley Hazzard
33. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
34. Playing for the Ashes, Elizabeth George
35. The Great Shame, Thomas Keneally
36. Emily Dickinson Is Dead, Jane Langton
37. American Lightning, Howard Blum
38. A Question of Blood, Ian Rankin
39. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
40. When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson
41. Pardonable Lies, Jacqueline Winspear
42. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
43. The Hemingses of Monticello, Annette Gordon-Reed
44. Some Lie and Some Die, Ruth Rendell
45. Justine, Lawrence Durrell
46. Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
47. Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Philips
48. Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner
49. Horns, Joe Hill
50. A High Wind in Jamaica, Richard Hughes
51. Looking for Alaska, John Greene
52. Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
53. Loving Frank, Nancy Horan
54. One Day, David Nicholls
55. Hunting Eichmann, Neal Bascomb
56. The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer
57. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters
58. Live Flesh, Ruth Rendell
59. I Claudius, Rupert Graves
60. The Third Angel, Alice Hoffman
61. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
62. The Guy Not Taken, Jennifer Weiner
63. Little Earthquakes, Jennifer Weiner
This Republic of Suffering, Drew Gilpin Faust
1984, George Orwell
66. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks, E. Lockhart
67. Changing My Mind, Zadie Smith
68. Tales, Speeches, Essays and Sketches, Mark Twain
69. Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
70. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, John Greene & David Leviathan
71. One Across, Two Down, Ruth Rendell
72. Henderson, The Rain King, Saul Bellow
73. The Radioactive Boy Scout, Ken Silverstein
74. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, David Leviathan & Rachel Cohn
75. Nobody's Perfect, Anthony Lane
76. The Guinea Pig Diaries, AJ Jacobs
77. Winesberg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
78. Scepter of the Ancients, Derek Landy
79. Playing With Fire, Derek Landy
80. A Room With A View, EM Forster
81. The Mistress's Daughter, AM Holmes
82. The Murder Room, Micheal Capuzzo
83. Suite Scarlett, Maureen Johnson
84. Justice, Dominick Dunne
85. I Hated, Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, Roger Ebert
86. The Lake of Darkness, Ruth Rendell
87. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
88. Dead End Gene Pool, Wendy Burden
89. What Was Lost, Catherine O'Flynn
90. Showtime, Larry Stempel
91. A Passage to India, EM Forster
92. The L-Shaped Room, Lynne Reid Banks
93. At Home, Bill Bryson
94. Blackout, Connie Willis
95. The Killing Doll, Ruth Rendell
96. Howards End, EM Forster
97. The Help, Kathryn Stockett
98. Busman's Holiday, Dorothy Sayers
99. Fables, Vol. 1, Bill
100. Life Sentences, Laura Lippman
101. Aiding and Abetting, Muriel Spark
102. The Family Man, Elinor Lipman
103. A Farewell To Arms, Ernest Hemingway
104. Grasshopper, Ruth Rendell
105. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
106. The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain
107. The Sunday Philosophy Club, Alexander McCall Smith
108. Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, Joe Hill
109. Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett
110. The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
111. The Noel Coward Reader, Noel Coward
112. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
113. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling
114. The Absolutely-True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
115. Invisible Boy, Cornelia Reed
116. The Replacement, Brenna Yovanoff
117. All Clear, Connie Willis
118. Juliet, Naked, Nick Hornby
119. Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, Connie Willis
120. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
121. The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Ok, onwards and upwards to 2011.