Books

The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus

I am an unrepentant bookworm. I love reading books, buying books, smelling books, admiring books. I love the crackling of the spine as it is first opened, and the aroma emitted by flipping through the pages. I have a strong distate for dog-ears, spine creases, and writing in the margins (I use Bookdarts and Moleskine instead).

The Great Books Project stems from a desire to read great books throughout my life, inspired years ago by The New Lifetime Reading Plan. My interest began (and remains) primarily in fiction, but the project has grown in many wonderful directions and is now roughly organized by genre.

Book Gallery

It is the words on the page that matter most, but I do value the aesthetic attractiveness of books, and their history too. I love cracking open an old Modern Library hardcover and seeing the $2.95 price on the dust jacket. But there are plenty of modern editions to appreciate as well, such as the current Everyman's Library and the Library of America. The point is to have the books I enjoy, in volumes that I can both read and admire.

I have slowly begun scanning the dust jackets of each book in my collection, and you can click here for a gallery of my books.

The Year in Books

The books I have read thus far in 2008:

1. Eventide - Kent Haruf
2. Passionate Sage - Joseph Ellis
3. The Assassins' Gate - George Packer
4. Benjamin Franklin - Edmund Morgan
5. The Survivor - John Harris
6. Atonement - Ian McEwan
7. The Tie That Binds - Kent Haruf
8. The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan
9. The Immortal Bartfuss - Aharon Appelfeld
10. Cobra II - Michael Gordon
11. Fiasco - Thomas Ricks
12. In the Company of Soldiers - Rick Atkinson
13. State of Denial - Bob Woodward
14. Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse
15. The Sweet Hereafter - Russell Banks
16. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
17. His Illegal Self - Peter Carey
18. Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
19. Ray in Reverse - Daniel Wallace
20. Badenheim 1939 - Aharon Appelfeld
21. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
22. The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
23. In the Wake - Per Petterson
24. Lincoln - Richard Carwardine
25. Supreme Conflict - Jan Crawford Greenburg
26. The Lake - Yasunari Kawabata
27. Nickel and Dimed - Barbara Ehrenreich
28. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
29. Isaac Newton - James Gleick
30. The Assault on Reason - Al Gore
31. The Nine - Jeffrey Toobin
32. House of the Sleeping Beauties - Yasunari Kawabata
33. The Ice Storm - Rick Moody
34. Harry, Revised - Mark Sarvas
35. Justice For All - Jim Newton
36. Becoming Justice Blackmun - Linda Greenhouse
37. Drown - Junot Diaz
38. The Child in Time - Ian McEwan
39. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
40. The New Face of War - Bruce Berkowitz
41. Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
42. Ancient Greece - Thomas Martin
43. Obsessive Genius - Barbara Goldsmith
44. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
45. A Separate Peace - John Knowles
46. The Bill of Rights - Akhil Amar
47. Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin
48. Polio - David Oshinsky
49. March - Geraldine Brooks
50. The Chosen - Chaim Potok
51. Billy Budd - Herman Melville
52. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
53. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
54. Dracula - Bram Stoker
55. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
56. Tartuffe and Other Plays - Moliere
57. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
58. The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin - Gordon Wood
59. Companero - Jorge Castaneda
60. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
61. Girls of Riyadh - Rajaa Alsanea

Past Years in Books

The books I read in 2007:

1. Cobb - Al Stump
2. Saturday - Ian McEwan
3. Where Angels Fear to Tread - E.M. Forster
4. Cataclysm - David Stevenson
5. Gilgamesh - Unknown
6. Organic, Inc. - Samuel Fromartz
7. 84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
8. American Colonies - Alan Taylor
9. Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
10. A Land As God Made It - James Horn
11. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
12. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
13. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
14. Mayflower - Nathaniel Philbrick
15. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
16. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
17. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
18. Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver
19. Beloved - Toni Morrison
20. Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
21. Silas Marner - George Eliot
22. Many Thousands Gone - Ira Berlin
23. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
24. The French and Indian War - Walter Borneman
25. Empires at War - William Fowler
26. Blindness - Jose Saramago
27. Field Notes From a Catastrophe - Elizabeth Kolbert
28. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
29. Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
30. Johnny Cash - Michael Streissguth
31. A Long Way Gone - Ishmael Beah
32. Othello - William Shakespeare
33. A History of the Middle East - Peter Mansfield
34. The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
35. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
36. Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
37. Friday Night Lights - H.G. Bissinger
38. The Yiddish Policemen's Union - Michael Chabon
39. Winesburg, Ohio - Sherwood Anderson
40. America's Splendid Little Wars - Peter Huchthausen
41. The Battle of Salamis - Barry Straus
42. The Generals' War - Michael Gordon
43. Crusade - Rick Atkinson
44. The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright
45. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
46. Not a Good Day to Die - Sean Naylor
47. The Princess Bride - William Goldman
48. Middle Passage - Charles Johnson
49. A Woman in Jerusalem - A.B. Yehoshua
50. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
51. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
52. The Iliad - Homer
53. Atticus - Ron Hansen
54. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
55. Sounder - William Armstrong
56. Midnight Magic - Avi
57. Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt
58. Caesar - Adrian Goldsworthy
59. Cicero - Anthony Everitt
60. Caddie Woodlawn - Carol Ryrie Brink
61. We Wish to Inform You... - Philip Gourevitch
62. Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
63. The Distance Between Us - Masha Hamilton
64. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
65. Augustus - Anthony Everitt
66. Ancient Rome - Christopher Mackay
67. The Wheel on the School - Meindert DeJong
68. The Chinese - Jasper Becker
69. Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh
70. The Whipping Boy - Sid Fleischman
71. The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
72. Summer for the Gods - Edward Larson
73. Genome - Matt Ridley
74. The Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam
75. American Creation - Joseph Ellis
76. The Year of Living Biblically - A.J. Jacobs
77. Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
78. Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot
79. Julie of the Wolves - Jean George
80. Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
81. Plainsong - Kent Haruf

The books I read in 2006:

1. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
2. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
3. Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
4. Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively
5. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
6. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth
7. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan
8. Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
9. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
10. The Well-Educated Mind - Susan Wise Bauer
11. Mythology - Edith Hamilton
12. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
13. The Forever War - Joe Haldeman
14. Six Days of War - Michael Oren
15. The Yom Kippur War - Abraham Rabinovich
16. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle
17. Anthills of the Savannah - Chinua Achebe
18. Brick Lane - Monica Ali
19. Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
20. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster
21. The Book of Evidence - John Banville
22. Theft - Peter Carey
23. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
24. Moth Smoke - Mohsin Hamid
25. The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens
26. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters / Seymour - J.D. Salinger
27. Life & Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee
28. Black Dogs - Ian McEwan
29. The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories - Yasunari Kawabata
30. The Fatal Shore - Robert Hughes
31. No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
32. His Excellency - Joseph Ellis
33. The First World War - Hew Strachan
34. Child of God - Cormac McCarthy
35. Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih
36. The Judas Field - Howard Bahr
37. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
38. Undaunted Courage - Stephen Ambrose
39. The Innocent - Ian McEwan
40. The Stars My Destination - Alfred Bester
41. The Man in the High Castle - Philip Dick
42. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
43. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams
44. The First World War - John Keegan
45. 1776 - David McCullough
46. Regeneration - Pat Barker
47. The Eye in the Door - Pat Barker
48. The Ghost Road - Pat Barker
49. Rocket Boys - Homer Hickam
50. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
51. Enduring Love - Ian McEwan
52. When Pride Still Mattered - David Maraniss

The books I read in 2005:

1. Brilliance of the Moon - Liam Hearn
2. Death Comes For the Archbishop - Willa Cather
3. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
4. The Sound of Waves - Yukio Mishima
5. True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
6. Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
7. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
8. The Trial - Franz Kafka
9. Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
10. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
11. Battle Creek - Scott Lasser
12. A Problem From Hell - Samantha Power
13. Lincoln - David Herbert Donald
14. First in His Class - David Maraniss
15. Cancer Ward - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
16. The Fall - Albert Camus
17. Intruder in the Dust - William Faulkner
18. A Lost Lady - Willa Cather
19. The Acharnians - Aristophanes
20. The Clouds - Aristophanes
21. Lysistrata - Aristophanes
22. Lucy Gayheart - Willa Cather
23. Exile and the Kingdom - Albert Camus
24. Alcestis - Euripides
25. Medea - Euripides
26. The Children of Heracles - Euripides
27. Hippolytus - Euripides
28. Andromache - Euripides
29. Electra - Euripides
30. Hecabe - Euripides
31. Suppliant Women - Euripides
32. Trojan Women - Euripides
33. An Enemy of the People - Henrik Ibsen
34. The Wild Duck - Henrik Ibsen
35. Romsersholm - Henrik Ibsen
36. Peer Gynt - Henrik Ibsen
37. A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
38. Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
39. The Pianist - Wladyslaw Szpilman
40. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time - Mark Haddon
41. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
42. The Coffeehouse Investor - Bill Schultheis
43. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
44. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
45. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
46. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - J.K. Rowling
47. I Married a Communist - Philip Roth
48. The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata
49. Caesar and Cleopatra - George Bernard Shaw
50. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
51. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
52. The Music Room - Dennis McFarland
53. Lindbergh - A. Scott Berg
54. The Alchemist - Paolo Coehlo
55. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
56. The Lance and the Shield - Robert Utley
57. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
58. The Shadow of the Sun - Ryszard Kapuscinski
59. Motherless Brooklyn - Jonathan Lethem
60. An Empire of Wealth - John Steele Gordon
61. Androcles and the Lion - George Bernard Shaw
62. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
63. Heartbreak House - George Bernard Shaw
64. The Year of Jubilo - Howard Bahr
65. My American Journey - Colin Powell
66. Measuring America - Andro Linklater
67. A Reporter's Life - Walter Cronkite
68. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
69. Straight Man - Richard Russo

The books I read in 2004:

1. Failure is Not an Option - Gene Kranz
2. Last Picture Show - Larry McMurtry
3. Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
4. Death of Sweet Mister - Daniel Woodrell
5. Plays - Anton Chekhov
6. Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - Kenzobauro Oe
7. Shipping News - Annie Proulx
8. Vendor of Sweets - RK Narayan
9. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
10. Summer of '49 - David Halberstam
11. Arms and the Man - George Bernard Shaw
12. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
13. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
14. How to Be Good - Nick Hornby
15. Neuromancer - William Gibson
16. Big Fish - Daniel Wallace
17. Staircase of a Thousand Steps - Masha Hamilton
18. Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain
19. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
20. Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon
21. A Model World - Michael Chabon
22. Werewolves in Their Youth - Michael Chabon
23. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
24. A Good Life - Ben Bradlee
25. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
26. Emma - Jane Austen
27. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
28. The Theban Plays - Sophocles
29. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
30. Beauty & Sadness - Yasunari Kawabata
31. Dreamtigers - Jorge Luis Borges
32. The Iceman Cometh - Eugene O'Neill
33. Krapp's Last Tape - Samuel Beckett
34. Endgame - Samuel Beckett
35. Vietnam - Stanley Karnow
36. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
37. Candide - Voltaire
38. Founding Brothers - Joseph Ellis
39. The Plague - Albert Camus
40. Herzog - Saul Bellow
41. Confessions of a Mask - Yukio Mishima
42. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
43. The English Teacher - R.K. Narayan
44. Candida - George Bernard Shaw
45. American Sphinx - Joseph Ellis
46. What Kind of Nation - James Simon
47. Pere Goriot - Honore Balzac
48. Patriots - A.J. Langguth
49. Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
50. Barabbas - Par Lagerkvist
51. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
52. Robert Kennedy - Evan Thomas
53. A Death in the Family - James Agee
54. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
55. Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
56. The Sound of the Mountain - Yasunari Kawabata
57. If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino
58. Bearing the Cross - David Garrow
59. The Subjection of Women - John Stuart Mill
60. The Green Mile - Stephen King
61. Benjamin Franklin - Walter Isaacson
62. The Two Gentlemen of Verona - William Shakespeare
63. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
64. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
65. The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare
66. The City and the Stars - Arthur Clarke
67. A Fine and Private Place - Peter Beagle
68. The Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare
69. The Last Unicorn - Peter Beagle
70. D-Day - Stephen Ambrose
71. Crime & Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
72. Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
73. The Pastures of Heaven - John Steinbeck
74. The Moon is Down - John Steinbeck
75. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
76. Too Late the Phalarope - Alan Paton
77. Citizen Soldiers - Stephen Ambrose
78. Voyage in the Dark - Jean Rhys
79. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
80. A Bend in the River - V.S. Naipaul
81. All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
82. Hard Times - Charles Dickens
83. Agamemnon - Aeschylus
84. The Libation Bearers - Aeschylus
85. The Euminides - Aeschylus
86. The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes
87. A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
88. Across the Nightingale Floor - Liam Hearn
89. Grass For His Pillow - Liam Hearn