January 2010

Here’s the stuff I’ve been reading this month.

1. Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks (nonfiction)
2. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (from Chera)
3. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton (Christmas book)
4. Favorite Father Brown Stories by G. K. Chesterton (more Chesterton)
5. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (Christmas book)
6. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (Holmes)
7. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (more Holmes)
8. That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis (third in the Space Trilogy)
9. A Universal History of Iniquity by Jorge Luis Borges (from Collected Fictions)
10. Morality Play by Barry Unsworth (from Chera)
11. Sabriel by Garth Nix (a reread)
12. The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley (Christmas book)
13. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (this month’s funniest read)
14. The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa (for fun)
15. This Is Not the Way We Came In by Daryl Scroggins (by a professor I know)
16. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (for Modern British Fiction)
17. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose (for Form and Theory)

Good heavens, what a month of books!  I read almost a book a day during the first week of the year, but this past week I’ve only been able to finish two, so that will be a measure of how many books I should expect to read in February.  Probably all of them will say “for class” in parentheses after the author.

My favorite book was The Book of Chameleons, followed closely by a tie with A Study in Scarlet and Juliet, Naked, and my least favortites were The Little Disturbances of Man and Lord Jim, the former because for the first half of each story it was unclear who was talking to whom and why, and the latter because of the long sentences which required mental diagramming for comprehension.

As usual, I will write reviews upon request.