Bookworm

This little experiment is inspired by fellow Missoulian Chris La Tray’s article “Bookworms Unite!” for our local online magazine New West. Yes, that’s me in the comments, getting all up in the poor guy’s face and announcing it’s on like Donkey Kong.

I read on average a book a week. So far this year I’ve read two books. Should we each keep a list, compare them at the end of the year, and–just to make it interesting–compete for a prize? Drinks at a favorite bar? Coffee at a preferred coffeehouse? Fame and fortune, or at least a free bookmark from our favorite bookstore?

I’ve never kept track of what I’ve read before. Oh, I generally know just by glancing at my bookshelves or seeing a familiar dust jacket at the library or bookstore. However, I’ve never actually written all the titles down. My obsessive-compulsive personality reveals itself in other pursuits: the daily sweeping of hair on the bathroom floor, wiping down kitchen counter tops in a particular way, scrubbing my heels exactly 100 times with a pumice stone in the shower. I don’t plan on writing reviews of each book. I’m far too lazy. I’ll simply provide links so you can decide if you’d like to read something on my list, or, more likely, ask yourself what the hell kind of mood I’m in this week. If you keep your own list in 2008 we’ll meet back here to compare them a year from now. At that time, after you’ve seen mine, you can say the inevitable:

“Dude, do you even have a life?”

January:

The Terror Dream, Susan Faludi
The Discovery of France, Graham Robb
Saturday, Ian McEwan
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Small Boat of Great Sorrows, Dan Fesperman
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, Michael Pollan
Sway, Zachary Lazar

February:

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
The Reserve, Russell Banks
Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris

March:

The Half-Life, Jonathan Raymond
A Golden Age, Tahmima Anam
Pinkerton’s Secret, Eric Lerner
Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, David Rakoff
Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, Mark Harris
The Silver Swan, Benjamin Black
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Robert Olen Butler

April:

The Painter from Shanghai, Jennifer Cody Epstein
American Food Writing: An Anthology with Classic Recipes, Molly O’Neill
Christine Falls, Benjamin Black
Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky
Lush Life, Richard Price
Resistance, Owen Sheers
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Winter Study, Nevada Barr

May:

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach
Wit’s End, Karen Joy Fowler
The Age of Dreaming, Nina Revoyr
And She Was, Cindy Dyson
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale
Southland, Nina Revoyr
Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk

June:

Mudbound, Hillary Jordan
Independence Day, Richard Ford
Atonement, Ian McEwan
The Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster

July:

Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, Bryan Burrough
Escape from Amsterdam, Barrie Sherwood
City of Thieves, David Benioff