Books read, 2014

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To accompany Wednesday’s column on my reading for the year, I’ve compiled all 68 books I finished last year into the list below.

Numerically speaking, I’ve done better, I’ve done worse. Since I began reading intensively again, I read 75 in 2013, 80 in 2012, 60 in 2011, 52 in 2010 and 58 in 2009. That was five years and 325 books, which now that I see it makes me wish I’d hit 75 last year just to even it out at 400. Well, 393 in six years isn’t shabby.

The photo doesn’t have every book from last year: a few were borrowed and a couple are already in my “sell” pile and weren’t worth the bother of finding. But it’s got most of them.

Below you’ll see some authors represented two or three times, even four in one case. Looking back, I’m satisfied, although I didn’t get to everything I wanted to read. Early in the year, I set three goals: one Shakespeare play, the “Dangerous Visions” SF anthology and “The Three Musketeers.” I accomplished the middle one. Also, in my post last year, I wrote of Twain: “Definitely I’ll read ‘A Tramp Abroad’ this year.” You, er, won’t find that one listed. Well, I’ll definitely TRY to read it this year.

Here’s the list, from January through December.

1. “Alone Against Tomorrow,” Harlan Ellison

2. “Deathbird Stories,” Harlan Ellison

3. “Shatterday,” Harlan Ellison

4. “18 Best Stories,” Edgar Allan Poe

5. “The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales,” Edgar Allan Poe

6. “Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By,” Anna Jane Grossman

7. “Betsy-Tacy,” Maud Hart Lovelace

8. “Betsy In Spite of Herself,” Maud Hart Lovelace

9. “Orange Blossoms Everywhere,” Mary Thiessen

10. “Ubik,” Philip K. Dick

11. “Ubik: The Screenplay,” Philip K. Dick

12. “Waging Heavy Peace,” Neil Young

13. “The Swerve,” Stephen Greenblatt

14. “Stranger Passing,” Joel Sternfeld

15. “Silverlock,” John Myers Myers

16. “Tales From the ‘White Hart,’” Arthur C. Clarke

17. “The Woman in Black,” Susan Hill

18. “The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop,” Lewis Buzbee

19. “The Red Pony,” John Steinbeck

20. “Darker Than Amber,” John D. MacDonald

21. “The Green Hills of Africa,” Ernest Hemingway

22. “The Green Hills of Earth,” Robert A. Heinlein

23. “Outlaw Blues,” Paul Williams

24. “Gently Down the Stream,” Bill McClellan

25. “The Farther Shore,” Robert M. Coates

26. “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” Jules Verne

27. “Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: How Deep is the Ocean?” Paul Williams

28. “Coming Up for Air,” George Orwell

29. “All the President’s Men,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

30. “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

31. “President Fu Manchu,” Sax Rohmer

32. “Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time,” Jeff Speck

33. “The Portable Poe,” Philip Van Doren Stern, ed.

34. “What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East,” Bernard Lewis

35. “The Gateway Arch: A Biography,” Tracy Campbell

36. “The Leisure Architecture of Wayne McAllister,” Chris Nichols

37. “L.A. in the ’30s,” David Gebhard and Harriette von Breton

38. “On Reading,” Andre Kertesz

39. “The Bronze Rule,” Mary Sisney

40. “Shakespeare Wrote for Money,” Nick Hornby

41. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Lewis Carroll

42. “Through the Looking-Glass,” Lewis Carroll

43. “Gullible’s Travels, Etc.,” Ring Lardner

44. “The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories,” Ernest Hemingway

45. “The Chandler Apartments,” Owen Hill

46. “Urban Tumbleweed,” Harryette Mullen

47. “Dangerous Visions,” Harlan Ellison, ed.

48. “Mind Fields,” Harlan Ellison and Jack Yerka

49. “Eye in the Sky,” Philip K. Dick

50. “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Zora Neale Hurston

51. “One Fearful Yellow Eye,” John D. MacDonald

52. “The Machineries of Joy,” Ray Bradbury

53. “Chips Off the Old Benchley,” Robert Benchley

54. “No Poems, Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways,” Robert Benchley

55. “The Tomb and Other Tales,” H.P. Lovecraft

56. “God and Mr. Gomez,” Jack Smith

57. “Weird Heroes 2,” Byron Preiss, ed.

58. “The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes,” Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr

59. “Jungle Tales of Tarzan,” Edgar Rice Burroughs

60. “The Drums of Fu Manchu,” Sax Rohmer

61. “Mockingjay,” Suzanne Collins

62. “The Prisoner of Zenda,” Anthony Hope

63. “The Crack in Space,” Philip K. Dick

64. “Tales of Mystery and Imagination,” Edgar Allan Poe

65. “Great Tales and Poems,” Edgar Allan Poe

66. “The Essential Ellison,” Harlan Ellison

67. “Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far),” Dave Barry

68. “The Martian Chronicles,” Ray Bradbury

 

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