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