After breaking my ankle earlier this month, I suddenly find myself completely bed-ridden with copious amounts of time on my hands.
To that end, I find myself writing again, rummaging through old letters, documents, and computer files long forgotten. Making lists happens to be one of those activities where I almost feel productive while exerting little effort. Such is life under the influence of Percocet.
Below, I've managed to compile, from memory, a list of books that I have read in the past year. They are listed in no particular order. The nice surprise, for me, is that I somehow managed to read about one book every two weeks. I guess all that time spent commuting on the bus paid off in some small way. I'm sure that I have left a few off of the list. One of my New Year resolutions will be trying to keep better track of my reading choices.
Book List for 2006:
- Apathy and other small victories by Paul Nielan
- Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1) by Neil Stephenson
- Heathern by Jack Womack
- Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester
- The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester
- The Fifth Child by Doris Lessing
- I Promise to be Good: the Letters of Arthur Rimbaud by Arthur Rimbaud & Wyatt Mason
- The Trial of Gilles de Rais by Georges Bataille
- Marcel Duchamp: The Bachelor Stripped Bare: A Biography by Alice Goldfarb Marquis
- Dylan Thomas: A New Life by Anderew Lycett
- A Mouthful of Air: Language, Languages...Especially English by Anthony Burgess
- Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris
- Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan
- A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler
- I am Legend by Richard Matheson
- Post Office by Charles Bukowski
- David Bowie's Low (33 1/3) by Hugo Wilcken
- Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century by Greil Marcus
- Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad
- On Poetry and Poets: Essays by T.S. Eliot
Useless trivia:
Percentage of non-fiction books: 70
Percentage of female authors: 15
Percentage of books that were on the NY Times Best Seller List in 2006: 0
I thought, for about a second, of writing my own little, witty reviews for each one of the books on my list. But, then, I decided that I wasn't feeling very witty, and just linked to the books' listing on Amazon, instead. I will have to say, however, that "Apathy and Other small victories" has to be one of the funniest books I have ever read.
