David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller & Dave Ramsey
Chip Kidd (Monographics) by Veronique Vienne
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Emma by Jane Austen
Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa by Nicholas Shrady
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
Historic Costume: From Ancient Times to the Renaissance by Tom Terney
Lady Susan* by Jane Austen
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Jane Austen (Biography)* by Margaret Kennedy
The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Life, The Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
Northanger Abbey* by Jane Austen
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Spook Country by William Gibson
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken
The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell
I believe that David Copperfield is the first time I’d attempted to read Charles Dickens after having suffered through being made to read Great Expectation in high school. I remember not liking Great Expectations at the time, but I do recall liking David Copperfield. As it turns out, I quite like Dickens. But I don’t like being made to read him, if that makes sense.
Reading 48 Days to the Work You Love is symptomatic of my chronic underemployment. I was part of that class of Millennials that had a decade of lost wages and despair in the 2000s.
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You was a collection of short stories by Amy Bloom that I picked up. It was inconsistent. A few of the stories were quite good. The rest were forgettable. I recently culled this book from my collection to make room on my shelves for better works.
I picked up this book on a whim because I needed a new collection of short stories for bedtime reading. It surprised me and continues to do so. The stories have stayed with me for nearly two years now.
-From my Goodreads review
This was the year that I began reading through the catalog of Jane Austen novels. I frequently re-read them now, but this was my first exposure to her work. I can say that Persuasion is my favorite with Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park battling for second place. I never finished reading Northanger Abbey for some reason. I suppose I didn’t like the more gothic tone. And I also never finished Lady Susan but I never could read epistolary novels and like them.
I picked up Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa on the strength of its unorthodox book design. It’s cropped at the same angle as the tilt of the tower itself, so it sits on the shelf with the spine cocked in. It’s a very good non-fiction work about the architectural marvel. I find architecture isn’t a subject that attracts much good reading for laypeople, but this is a notable exception.
I was still trying to write my first novel during this time, so it makes sense that I would turn to one of my favorite authors for advice on how to accomplish this feat, thus Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card makes its way onto this list. He’s still cancelled. And I no longer read “how to write” advice. I actually actively avoid it.
It’s actually a pity that I read The Awakening by Kate Chopin and A Room with a View by E.M. Forster back-to-back because I conflate the two works in my head now and mix up the plots. I adored them both. I remember liking Forster’s writing better, but enjoying the story in The Awakening more than A Room with a View.
Is it fitting that I read the entire catalog of Jane Austen and Douglas Adams in the same year? Yes, I think it really is. Writing humor is a skill I do not possess and I greatly admire anyone who is able to pull it off with as much skill as Douglas Adams.
This was the year that the Harry Potter fandom got to read the conclusion of the Second Wizarding War. I re-read some the Harry Potter books beginning with Half-Blood Prince in preparation for the finale being released. I went to the midnight release party and felt a bit out of place for being older than most of the people there, but it was totally worth it. The odd thing is that I had never read Sorcerer’s Stone before, and I went back and read it for the first time directly after reading Deathly Hallows and the plot points set up so innocuously right at the outset of the saga were so masterfully incorporated into the later works. J.K. Rowling deserves all her fame and riches. She’s truly a modern master.
I picked up some new works by some of my favorite authors, Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier and Spook Country by William Gibson. Vastly different works. Burning Bright isn’t one of Chevalier’s best and I believe I stopped reading her new output after this, though I keep meaning to pick up her more recent works. I remember thinking Spook Country was better than Pattern Recognition. I felt like the plot was tighter and it had more focus.
I don’t remember who recommended The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova to me, but a lot of people were talking about how good it was. The talk about how it took her 10 years to research it intrigued me. In the end, I don’t think it was as good as it could have been. I think it was over-rated and bloated. It got lost in itself a bit, but it did have some very strong imagery. I don’t think the first person perspective served it well.
During this time, I was beginning to pay more attention to politics. I went to a rally that featured speaker Barack Obama before he was running for president, and I was reading quite a few blogs and news articles about what was happening in the world. I went to a few rallies that were against the Iraq War, and reading Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken was definitely part of this political awakening.
My friend tasked me with reading The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmell because she wanted my perspective on it as a virgin. It was the first time I’d read anything sexually explicit, but I think I lacked the framework to really appreciate the character’s arc. It was a well written, thought-provoking exploration of a woman’s sexuality, which my little feminist heart definitely appreciated, but I didn’t identify with the character at all and couldn’t connect with the book as much as I might if I were to go back and read it now.