Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2014)

1.) the Pleasure of the Text - Barthes (7/1)
2.) Like Life - Moore (7/1)
3.) the Remains of the Day - Ishiguro (7/6)
4.) Daytripper - Moon (7/8)
5.) Oryx & Crake - Atwood (7/12)
6.) A Universal History of Iniquity - Borges (7/14)
7.) Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Boo (7/18)
8.) Summer Sisters - Blume (7/21)
9.) Lost in the Funhouse - Barth (7/25)
10.) Honored Guest - Williams (7/30)
11.) Ice - Kavan (8/4)
12.) Betrayed by Rita Hayworth - Puig (8/9)
13.) the Passage - Cronin (8/20)
14.) A Naked Singularity - De La Pava (8/31)
15.) Lipstick Traces - Marcus (9/9)
16.) the Pure & Impure - Colette (9/11)
17.) the Hour of the Star - Lispector (9/12)
18.) Northline - Vlautin (9/14)
19.) Nadja - Breton (9/15)
20.) Anthropology - Rhodes (9/16)
21.) Falling in Place - Beattie (9/22)
22.) Ubik - Dick (9/26)
23.) Criminal Vol. 1- Brubaker (9/29)
24.) the Magus - Fowles (10/7)
25.) Role Models - Waters (10/8)
26.) In Persuasion Nation - Saunders (10/15)
27.) Bad Behavior - Gaitskill (10/21)
28.) I, Etcetera - Sontag (10/23)
29.) Petersburg - Bely (10/29)
30.) Asterios Polyp - Mazzucchelli (10/30)
31.) Evidence of Things Unseen - Wiggins (11/5)
32.) the End of the Affair - Greene (11/11)
33.) Chimera - Barth (11/17)
34.) From Hell - Moore (11/22)
35.) Vanishing Point - Markson (11/25)
36.) the Savage Detectives - Bolano (12/11)
37.) Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Bangs (12/21)
38.) A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - Handke (12/24)
39.) Reasons to Live - Hempel (12/26)
40.) Don't Kiss Me - Hunter (12/29) 

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2014)

1.) Transatlantic - McCann (1/5)
2.) Maus I - Spiegelman (1/8)
3.) Airships - Hannah (1/12)
4.) Hero - Moore (1/17)
5.) This Is Running For Your Life - Orange (1/25)
6.) It Happened in Boston? - Greenan (1/29)
7.) Emperor of the Air - Canin (1/31)
8.) Vampires in the Lemon Grove - Russell (2/4)
9.) Teaching a Stone to Talk - Dillard (2/7)
10.) the Maid's Version - Woodrell (2/11)
11.) Locas - Hernandez (2/15)
12.) Men We Reaped - Ward (2/20)
13.) the Lime Twig - Hawkes (2/24)
14.) City of Night - Rechy (3/4)
15.) the Assistant - Malamud (3/8)
16.) Baron in the Trees - Calvino (3/13)
17.) the Nearest Exit May Be Behind You - Bergman (3/18)
18.) the Heart That Bleeds - Guillermoprieto (3/26)
19.) the Sandman Vol. 1 - Gaiman (3/30)
20.) Amusing Ourselves to Death - Postman (4/1)
21.) Kentucky Straight - Offutt (4/4)
22.) Henderson the Rain King - Bellow (4/9)
23.) A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Marra (4/14)
24.) the Little Friend - Tartt (4/21)
25.) the Goldfinch - Tartt (4/29)
26.) the Isle of Youth - Van Den Berg (5/2)
27.) Palomar - Hernandez (5/7)
28.) Our Lady of the Flowers - Genet (5/13)
29.) Mumbo Jumbo - Reed (5/19)
30.) Omensetter's Luck - Gass (5/26)
31.) Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat - Sacks (5/30)
32.) Let the Right One In - Lindqvist (6/5)
33.) Remember Why You Fear Me - Shearman (6/11)
34.) Encyclopedia of Early Earth - Greenberg (6/15)
35.) Pee on Water - Glaser (6/15)
36.) Searching for Caleb - Tyler (6/20)
37.) Ballad of the Sad Cafe - McCullers (6/23)
38.) Ayiti - Gay (6/24)
39.) the Boys of My Youth - Beard (6/26)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2013)

1.) Gemini - Tournier (7/1)
2.) This is Where I Leave You - Tropper (7/1)
3.) the Book of My Lives - Hemon (7/2)
4.) Pastoralia - Saunders (7/5)
5.) Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts On Violence, Freedom, and Urgent Means - Vollmann (7/19)
6.) the Changeling - Williams (7/23)
7.) the Emigrants - Sebald (7/28)
8.) Motherless Brooklyn - Lethem (8/4)
9.) Black Power - Carmichael (8/8)
10.) A Clockwork Orange - Burgess (8/11)
11.) Concrete - Bernhard (8/13)
12.) They Don't Dance Much - Ross (8/18)
13.) 253 - Ryman (8/22)
14.) Homesick - Berlin (8/28)
15.) the History of Luminous Motion - Bradfield (9/1)
16.) Middle C - Gass (9/11)
17.) Purple Hibiscus - Adichie (9/22)
18.) Life After Life - Atkinson (9/28)
19.) the City in History: Its Origins, Transformations, and Prospects - Mumford (9/29)
20.) Man in the Holocene - Frisch (9/30)
21.) Story of the Eye - Bataille (9/30)
22.) Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go - Pelecanos (10/4)
23.) Long, Last, Happy - Hannah (10/23)
24.) Americanah - Adichie (10/31)
25.) Suttree - McCarthy (11/8)
26.) the Ocean at the End of the Lane - Gaiman (11/10)
27.) Where'd You Go Bernadette - Semple (11/13)
28.) Dear Mr President - Hudson (11/17)
29.) the Son - Meyer (11/24)
30.) Mysterious Skin - Heim (11/26)
31.) World Within the Word - Gass (12/3)
32.) Speedboat - Adler (12/6)
33.) the Graphic Canon, Volume 1 (12/6)
34.) the Book Thief - Zusak (12/11)
35.) Going After Cacciato - O'Brien (12/17)
36.) the Burglar - Goodis (12/19)
37.) My Dark Places - Ellroy (12/27)
38.) A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - Li (12/31)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2013)

1.) What Is Cinema? - Bazin (1/3)
2.) For A New Novel - Robbe-Grillet (1/12)
3.) Life: A User's Manual - Perec (1/16)
4.) A Million Heavens - Brandon (1/19)
5.) the Art of Fielding - Harbach (1/24)
6.) Give Us a Kiss - Woodrell (1/27)
7.) Consider the Lobster - Wallace (1/31)
8.) Seven Gothic Tales - Blixen (2/12)
9.) Altmann's Tongue - Evenson (2/18)
10.) Flying Leap - Budnitz (2/20)
11.) Hunts in Dreams - Drury (2/25)
12.) Black Skin, White Masks - Fanon (3/5)
13.) Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt - Hedges & Sacco (3/11)
14.) the Palm-Wine Drinkard - Tutuola (3/12)
15.) See Under: Love - Grossman (3/20)
16.) American Salvage - Campbell (3/22)
17.) Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Chabon (3/30)
18.) the Sisters Brothers - DeWitt, P. (4/2)
19.) At the Mouth of the River of Bees - Johnson (4/9)
20.) Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York - Sante (4/16)
21.) City of Thieves - Benioff (4/19)
22.) Black Swan Green - Mitchell (4/25)
23.) the Magic Barrel - Malamud (4/28)
24.) Paris Trout - Dexter (5/2)
25.) the Third Policeman - O'Brien (5/8)
26.) Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 - Reynolds
27.) the Wavering Knife - Evenson (5/21)
28.) Leaving the Atocha Station - Lerner (5/23)
29.) Zazen - Veselka (5/28)
30.) the Last Samurai - DeWitt, H. (6/5)
31.) Gender Trouble - Butler (6/11)
32.) V. - Pynchon (6/22)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2012)

1.) Too Loud a Solitude - Hrabal (7/1)
2.) Ice at the Bottom of the World - Richard (7/7)
3.) Monstress - Tenorio (7/16)
4.) Herzog on Herzog - Cronin (7/18)
5.) Bastard Out of Carolina - Allison (7/22)
6.) Pedro Paramo - Rulfo (7/23)
7.) Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Didion (7/25)
8.) Self Help - Moore (7/26)
9.) Translations - Friel (7/27)
10.) Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning - Nelson (8/1)
11.) Devil in the White City - Larson (8/10)
12.) Babel: Collected Stories (8/16)
13.) Hero With a Thousand Faces - Campbell (8/22)
14.) Kitchen Confidential - Bourdain (8/26)
15.) the Rings of Saturn - Sebald (9/2)
16.) What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - Englander (9/6)
17.) Little Disturbances of Man - Paley (9/12)
18.) Suddenly, A Knock on the Door - Keret (9/16)
19.) Columbine - Cullen (9/22)
20.) Telegraph Avenue - Chabon (9/30)
21.) Stay Awake - Chaon (10/3)
22.) Pork - Freddi (10/8)
23.) A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again - Wallace (10/15)
24.) the Collected Stories of Peter Taylor (10/23)
25.) This is How You Lose Her - Diaz (10/26)
26.) Conversation in the Cathedral - Vargas Llosa (11/7)
27.) Farming of Bones - Danticat (11/12)
28.) Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? - Moore (11/14)
29.) Our Band Could Be Your Life - Azerrad (11/23)
30.) Gimpel the Fool - Singer (11/28)
31.) the Map and the Territory - Houellebecq (12/3)
32.) Habibi - Thompson (12/5)
33.) Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation - Chang (12/13)
34.) Tell Me a Riddle - Olsen (12/17)
35.) the Lime Works - Bernhard (12/21)
36.) Room - Donoghue (12/24)
37.) Knockemstiff - Pollock (12/30)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2012)

1.) JR - Gaddis (1/3)
2. ) My Last Sigh - Bunuel (1/9)
3.) the Instructions - Levin (1/26)
4.) the Marbled Swarm - Cooper (1/28)
5.) Madame Bovary - Flaubert (1/31)
6.) Wide Sargasso Sea - Rhys (2/4)
7.) Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? - Carver (2/7)
8.) Are Prisons Obsolete? - Davis (2/12)
9.) Birds of America - Moore (2/15)
10.) Omeros - Walcott (2/27)
11.) This Shape We're In - Lethem (2/28)
12.) the Lost Books of the Odyssey - Mason (3/3)
13.) Memory Wall - Doerr (3/7)
14.) the Leftovers - Perrotta (3/8)
15.) Ready Player One - Cline (3/16)
16.) American Gay - Murray (3/24)
17.) Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (4/17)
18.) Death on the Installment Plan - Celine (4/24)
19.) the Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven - Alexie (4/26)
20.) the Driver's Guide to Hitting Pedestrians - Prunty (4/30)
21.) the Chronology of Water - Yuknavitch (4/30)
22.) Runaway - Munro (5/3)
23.) Pulphead - Sullivan (5/8)
24.) the Night Circus - Morgenstern (5/18)
25.) Farther Away - Franzen (5/23)
26.) the Stories of John Cheever (5/26)
27.) Hot Pink - Levin (5/30)
28.) Motorman - Ohle (5/31)
29.) the Devil All of the Time - Pollock (6/6)
30.) Matterhorn - Marlantes (6/18)
31.) Black Tickets - Phillips (6/20)
32.) Nog - Wurlitzer (6/30)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2011)

1.) Ten Thousand Saints - Henderson (7/1)
2.) Orientation - Orozco (7/7)
3.) the Yiddish Policemen's Union - Chabon (7/10)
4.) You Don't Love Me Yet - Lethem (7/12)
5.) Everything Matters! - Currie (7/20)
6.) Visit From the Goon Squad - Egan (7/22)
7.) Crash - Ballard (7/27)
8.) the Boat - Le (7/28)
9.) Log of the SS the Mrs Unguentine - Crawford (7/29)
10.) Subculture: the Meaning of Style - Hebidge (7/30)
11.) the Tiger's Wife - Obrecht (8/3)
12.) All the Living - Morgan (8/9)
13.) the Ask - Lipsyte (8/20)
14.) the Secret History - Tartt (9/5)
15.) Starman Omnibus, Vol. 1- Robinson (9/9)
16.) Locos - Alfau (9/17)
17.) C - McCarthy (9/27)
18.) Anagrams - Moore (10/2)
19.) Invisible Cities - Calvino (10/4)
20.) Q Road - Campbell (10/7)
21.) Selected Works of T.S. Spivet - Larsen (10/18)
22.) Black Hole - Burns (10/19)
23.) Girl with the Curious Hair - Wallace (10/20)
24.) Transparent Things - Nabokov (11/1)
25.) Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It - Meloy (11/14)
26.) Retromania - Reynolds (11/15)
27.) the Tenant - Topor (11/20)
28.) I Would Have Saved Them If I Could - Michaels (11/26)
29.) Notable American Women - Marcus (12/5)
30.) We're in Trouble - Coake (12/18)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2011)

1.) I'm Not Stiller - Frisch (1/4)

2.) Freedom - Franzen (1/10)

3.) the Voice Imitator - Bernhard (1/13)

4.) Super Sad True Love Story - Shteyngart (1/21)

5.) Jesus' Son - Johnson (1/24)

6.) Flowers in the Attic - Andrews (1/30)

7.) Girls to the Front: the True Story of the Riot Grrl Revolution - Marcus (2/2)

8.) the Lover's Dictionary - Levithan (2/4)

9.) the Stories of Breece DJ Pancake - Pancake (2/4)

10.) Ghostwritten - Mitchell (2/11)

11.) We Need to Talk About Kevin - Shriver (2/26)

12.) Our Circus Presents - Teodorovici (3/9)

13.) Moby Dick - Melville (3/11)

14.) Scorch Atlas - Butler (3/15)

15.) the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Skloot (3/22)

16.) Correction - Bernhard (4/3)

17.) Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - Sorrentino (4/9)

18.) Heart of a Dog - Bulgakov (4/12)

19.) Fugue State - Evenson (4/14)

20.) the End of Vandalism - Drury (4/19)

21.) Sixty Stories - Barthelme (4/20)

22.) the Cannibal - Hawkes (5/3)

23.) Bonsai - Zambra (5/4)

24.) Negative Space - Farber (5/11)

25.) the Film That Changed My Life - Elder (5/17)

26.) the Stain - Ducornet (5/17)

27.) Nobody Move - Johnson (5/18)

28.) Ablutions - DeWitt (5/19)

29.) Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen - Shary (5/22)

30.) the Shell Collector - Doerr (5/24)

31.) the Vagrants - Li (5/25)

32.) Interpreter of Maladies - Lahiri (5/26)

33.) Bossypants - Fey (5/28)

34.) the Empty Family - Toibin (6/2)

35.) the Other City - Ajvaz (6/6)

36.) War Trash - Jin (6/16)

37.) St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves - Russell (6/23)

38.) We - Zamyatin (6/29)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2010)

1. the Corrections- Franzen (7/8)

2. American Rust - Meyer (7/8)

3. Orientalism - Said (7/17)

4. Atmospheric Disturbances - Galchen (7/22)

5. the Ruins - S. Smith (7/28)

6. Just Kids - P. Smith (8/3)

7. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections - Benjamin (8/11)

8. Light in August - Faulkner (8/13)

9. Remainder - McCarthy (8/17)

10. For the Relief of Unbearable Urges - Englander (8/19)

11. the Year of Magical Thinking - Didion (8/19)

12. I Am Not a Serial Killer - Wells (8/24)

13. Let the Great World Spin - McCann (9/4)

14. the History of Love - Krauss (9/11)

15. Europeana: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century - Ourednik (9/19)

16. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Tower (9/21)

17. Bump City: Winners and Losers in Oakland - Krich (9/26)

18. the White Tiger - Adiga (10/2)

19. Under and Alone: the True Story of an Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America's Mst Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang - Queen (10/9)

20. Blow-Up and Other Stories - Cortazar (10/13)

21. Little Bee - Cleave (10/18)

22. Absurdistan - Shteyngart (10/23)

23. Generation Multiplex: the Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema - Shary (11/4)

24. Rainbow Stories - Vollmann (11/4)

25. Moravagine - Cendrars (11/8)

26. the Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - Mitchell (11/18)

27. the Bathroom - Toussaint (11/19)

28. Conquest of the Useless - Herzog (11/19)

29. the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz (11/27)

30. Chronic City - Lethem (12/4)

31. Love and Other Obstacles - Hemon (12/13)

32. Decoded - Jay-Z (12/15)

33. Song of Solomon - Morrison (12/23)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2010)

1.) Winesburg, Ohio - Anderson (1/26)

2.) Paris Review Interviews, Vol. 1 (1/31)

3.) Olive Kitteridge - Strout (2/02)

4.) Film Form: Essays in Film Theory - Eisenstein (2/07)

5.) the Question of Bruno - Hemon (2/07)

6.) Success - Amis (2/13)

7.) the Halfway House - Rosales (2/17)

8.) Tales of the City - Maupin (2/27)

9.) Omon Ra - Pelevin (3/07)

10.) the Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe (3/16)

11.) Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Bangs (3/21)

12.) the Sluts - Cooper (4/01)

13.) Blood Meridian - McCarthy (4/12)

14.) In Defense of Food - Pollan (4/13)

15.) Mythologies - Barthes (4/18)

16.) the Lazarus Project - Hemon (4/26)

17.) Thank You, Jeeves - Wodehouse (5/02)

18.) Doctor Glas - Soderberg (5/06)

19.) A Tomb for Boris Davidovich - Kis (5/11)

20.) the People of Paper - Plascencia (5/19)

21.) Last Exit to Brooklyn - Selby (5/25)

22.) Butterfly Stories - Vollmann (6/01)

23.) Cloud Atlas - Mitchell (6/08)

24.) Last Evenings on Earth - Bolano (6/18)

25.) Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Chabon (6/22)

26.) CivilWarLand in Bad Decline - Saunders (6/24)

27.) Lost City Radio - Alarcon (6/29)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2009)

1.) the Vulture & the Nigger Factory- Scott-Heron (7/14)

2.) the Invention of Morel- Casares (7/23)

3.) Under the Volcano - Lowry (8/10)

4.)  Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Biskind (8/12)

5.) Drown - Diaz (8/22)

6.) Gravity's Rainbow - Pynchon (8/28)

7.) Switch Bitch - Dahl (9/8)

8.) Underground - Murakami (9/13)

9.) the Art of the Story - Halpern (9/16)

10.) Graceland - Abani (9/17)

11.) Ten Little Indians - Alexie (9/19)

12.) Gogol's Wife - Landolfi (9/29)

13.) the Bark Tree - Queneau (10/15)

14.) As She Climbed Across the Table - Lethem (10/16)

15.) Real Cost of Prisons Comix - Ahrens (10/19)

16.) Difficult Loves - Calvino (10/29)

17.) Quantity Theory of Insanity - Self (11/11)

18.) Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Dick (11/19)

19.) Harvest of Empire - Gonzalez (12/5)

20.) Thanksgiving Night - Bausch (12/5)

21.) Born in Flames - Hampton (12/10)

22.) History of Sexuality - Foucault (12/25)

23.) Divisadero - Ondaatje (12/25)

24.) High Rise - Ballard (12/28)

Highlights for the Year

Invention of Morel (Casares), Nowhere Man (Hemon), Death and the Penguin (Kurkov), Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kundera), the Guiltless (Broch)

Highlights in Nonfiction

Kill All Your Darlings (Sante), Born in Flames (Hampton)

Total Books: 45

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2009)

1.) In the Heart of the Heart of the Country - Gass (1/5)

2.) Murphy - Beckett (1/11)

3.) Bottomless Belly Button - Shaw (1/19)

4.) Kill All Your Darlings - Sante (1/21)

5.) the Group - Mary McCarthy (1/27)

6.) Out Stealing Horses - Petterson (2/3)

7.) Watchmen - Moore (2/4)

8.) Helen and Desire - Trocchi (2/4)

9.) Real Life of Sebastian Knight - Nabokov (2/16)

10.) Death and the Penguin - Kurkov (2/22)

11.) the New York Trilogy - Auster (3/18)

12.) the Guiltless - Broch (3/23)

13.) Book of Laughter and Forgetting - Kundera (4/5)

14.) Plainsong - Haruf (4/26)

15.) Midnight's Children - Rushdie (5/18)

16.) Spring Snow - Mishima (5/25)

17.) At Swim-Two-Birds - O'Brien (5/28)

18.) Pussy, King of the Pirates - Acker (6/3)

19.) the Immoralist - Gide (6/10)

20.) Cosmicomics - Calvino (6/15)

21.) Nowhere Man - Hemon (6/26)

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (July - December 2008)

With only about a week left in the year, it's time for another summary of the books I have completed in the last six months (which worked out nicely symmetrical: 35 books for each half-year)

1. the Quick and the Dead - Joy Williams (July 4)

2. the Collected Stories - Amy Hempel (July 6)

3. Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges (July 16)

4. Other People's Children - Lisa Delpit (July 15)

5. Midnight Movies - Jim Hoberman (July 18)

6. American Pastoral - Philip Roth (July 27)

7. the Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (July 24)

8. Snows of Kilimanjaro - Ernest Hemingway (July 28)

9. the Killer Inside Me - Jim Thompson (Aug 3)

10. the Talented Mr Ripley - Patricia Highsmith (Aug 11)

11. My Sister's Hand in Mine (Collected Works) - Jane Bowles (Aug 12)

12. Pick-Up - Charles Willeford (Aug 16)

13. Down There - David Goodis (Aug 24)

14. the Real Cool Killers - Chester Himes (Aug 27)

15. the Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born - Ayi Kwei Armah (Aug 27)

16. Jakob von Gunten - Robert Walser (Sep 3)

17. Zazie in the Metro - Raymond Queneau (Sep 11)

18. Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin (Sep 17)

19. Hopscotch - Julio Cortazar (Sep 28)

20. the Widow - George Simenon (Sep 28)

21. In Youth is Pleasure - Denton Welch (Oct 5)

22. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities - Delmore Schwartz (Oct 7)

23. Wonderful Wonderful Times - Elfriede Jelinek (Oct 12)

24. Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger (Oct 19)

25. the Ruined Map - Kobo Abe (Oct 23)

26. Amok - Stefan Zweig (Oct 26)
27. Up Above the World - Paul Bowles (Oct 29)
28. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson (Nov 9)
29. Best African American Essays: 2009 (Nov 15)
30. Tidewater Tales - John Barth (Nov 19)
31. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: an Introduction - JD Salinger (Nov 28)
32. 2666 - Roberto Bolano (Dec 14)
33. Whatever It Takes - Paul Tough (Dec 14)
34. Nine Stories - JD Salinger (Dec 20)
35. the Glass Bees - Ernst Junger (pending)

Highlights for the year: Raise High the Roof Beam... (Salinger), If on a winter's night a traveler (Calvino), Snows in Kilimanjaro (Hemingway), Zazie in the Metro (Queneau), the Sheltering Sky(Bowles), the Killer Inside Me (Thompson)
Favorite Nonfiction: Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag; Women, Race, and Class - Angela Davis
Total Books read in 2008: 70; approx. 216,000 pages

Art Garfunkel Memorial Reading List (January - June 2008)

So to be clear, Garfunkel isn't dead...but the list that I put out every six months of the books that I have read is somewhat of a tribute to him. Art's been keeping track of every book that he's read since the late 1960s. I started at the beginning of 2007...

1. Confusions of Young Torless - Robert Musil (Jan 12)
2. Desire and Delusion - Arthur Schnitzler (Jan 15)
3. Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon (Jan 20)
4. No Man is an Island - Thomas Merton (Jan 20)
5. Gang Leader for a Day - Sudhir Venkatesh (Feb 3)
6. Obscene Bird of Night - Jose Donoso (Feb 8)
7. Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron (Feb 19)
8. Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer (Mar 22)
9. Death of Artemio Cruz - Carlos Fuentes (Mar 23)
10. The Fierce and Beautiful World - Andrei Platonov (Apr 2)
11. Lady With the Dog and Other Stories - Anton Chekhov (Apr 4)
12. the Giver - Lois Lowry (Apr 7)
13. Atonement - Ian McEwan (Apr 8)
14. If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino (Apr 16)
15. Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment - Jeffrey Goldstein (Apr 17)
16. Dream Life of Sukhanov - Olga Grushin (Apr 26)
17. Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? - Michael Eric Dyson (Apr 28)
18. Reeling - Pauline Kael (May 2)
19. the Dutchman and the Slave - Leroi Jones (May 5)
20. Oil! - Upton Sinclair (May 11)
21. Against Interpretation - Susan Sontag (May 12)
22. Coldest Winter Ever - Sister Souljah (May 16)
23. Heartsnatcher - Boris Vian (May 16)
24. Death of Adam - Marilynne Robinson (May 24)
25. Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles (May 25)
26. Women, Race, and Class - Angela Davis (June 3)
27. Aura - Carlos Fuentes (June 4)
28. Journey to the End of Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine (June 5)
29. the Disappointment Artist - Jonathan Lethem (June 7)
30. Play It as It Lays - Joan Didion (June 7)
31. Box Man - Kobo Abe (June 11)
32. Blood and Grits - Harry Crews (June 15)
33. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston (June 20)
34. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (June 22)
35. Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (June 28)

July to December: books

Welcome to the sequel to a post back in June regarding the books I had read up to the halfway point in the year. Back in June I had cited a statistic from the National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" (2002) that said 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school. The Guardian actually reported on an Associated Press poll back in August of this year that showed that one in four Americans read no books in the past year and most people typically said that they read four books. http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2153877,00.html


So once again, here is my somewhat self-indulgent compilation of the books I have read in the past six months...doing my part to up our national average...


1. The Trial - Franz Kafka
2. Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
3. Hunger - Knut Hamsun
4. the Gospel Singer - Harry Crews
5. the Clown - Heinrich Boll
6. Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
7. Know What I Mean? - Michael Eric Dyson
8. No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
9. Gargoyles - Thomas Bernhard
10. Victoria - Knut Hamsun
11. Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
12. Three Novels by Beckett: Molloy, Malone Dies, and the Unnnamable - Samuel Beckett
13. A Hundred Little Hitlers - Elinor Langer
14. Selected Stories - Robert Walser
15. Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement
16. Ferdydurke - Witold Gombrowicz
17. Killing the Black Body - Dorothy Roberts
18. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
19. Zeno's Conscience - Italo Svevo
20. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
21. Sundown Towns - James Loewen
22. Slowness - Milan Kundera
23. Crystal Frontier - Carlos Fuentes
24. Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors - Susan Sontag
25. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
26. Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz*
27. Rereading America*


*= still in process, expected to complete by the end of the month


highlights: Selected Stories (Walser). the Clown. Gargoyles. Molloy. Hunger. Crystal Frontier. Pale Fire.
favorite nonfiction: Killing the Black Body
estimated number of pages read in the past 6 months: 8500
total number of books for the year: 43

January to June: books

I tried to find a statistics regarding the number of books the average American reads per year, and instead found out that 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school...
Here's the books I've completed so far (in chronological order by date of completion)

1. The Glass Bead Game - Hermann Hesse (Jan 25)
2. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie (Feb 3)
3. Cities on a Hill - Frances Fitzgerald (Feb 20)
4. The Plague - Albert Camus (Mar 3)
5. Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin (Mar 7)
6. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers (Mar 10)
7. And Still We Rise - Miles Corwin (Mar 15)
8. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (Mar 16)
9. Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce (Apr 6)
10. How to Read and Why - Harold Bloom (Apr 18)
11. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop - Bakari Kitwana (Apr 24)
12. And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave (May 10)
13. Miss Lonelyhearts/Day of the Locust - Nathanael West (May 19)
14. Saint Francis - Nikos Kazantzakis (June 12)
15. Wandering - Hermann Hesse (June 17)
16. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf (June 29)