- Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jaques Bonnet
- One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
- Singing School: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters by Robert Pinsky
- Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
- The Circle by Dave Eggers
- How to Read a Novelist by John Freeman DNF
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- The Wildlife-Friendly Vegetable Gardener by Tammi Hartung
- Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
- Trojan Women by Euripides
- Slow Reading in a Hurried Age by David Mikics
- Andromache by Euripides
- Memories of the Unknown by Rutger Kopland
- David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
- Vital Signs: Psychological Responses to Ecological Crisis by Mary-Jayne Rust and Nick Totton, eds.
- Why I Read by Wendy Lesser
- The Critic in the Modern World: Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood by James Ley (Library Journal Review)
- Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden
- A Highly Unlikely Scenario, Or, A Neetsa Pizza Employee’s Guide to Saving the World by Rachel Cantor
- Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine
- A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
- Landscape with Rowers edited by J.M. Coetzee
- Saving Vegetable Seeds by Fern Marshall Bradley (Library Journal Review)
- A Farm Dies Once a Year by Arlo Crawford
- Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling
- The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
- The Search for Anne Perry by Joanne Drayton (Library Journal Review)
- Old Goriot by Honore Balzac
- The Word Exchange by Alena Graedon
- King Lear by William Shakespeare
- Teaming with Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
- The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
- The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight with illustrations by Terrence Tasker
- Letters to Anyone and Everyone by Toon Tellegen
- The Weekend Homesteader: A Twelve-Month Guide to Self-Sufficiency by Anna Hess
- Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
- The Gardener of Versailles by Alain Baraton
- The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
- In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen
- Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill
- My Struggle: Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard – DNF
- Founding Gardeners:How the Revolutionary Generation Created and American Eden by Andrea Wulf
- Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
- A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
- 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri
- The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert
- Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist by Michael Judd
- The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
- The Troll Garden by Willa Cather
- How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
- But What by Judith Herzberg
- Icon edited by Amy Scholder (reviewed for Library Journal)
- Mind Change by Susan Greenfield (reviewed for Shiny New Books)
- She by H. Rider Haggard
- Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall
- The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel
- Seconds by Brian O’Malley
- What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton
- Famous Modern Ghost Stories edited by Dorothy Scarborough
- Medea by Euripides
- Teach Us to Sit Still by Tim Parks
- House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski
- Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Brian O’Malley
- The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired Our Best-Loved Authors by Jackie Bennett
- Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin or Error by Kathryn Schulz
- Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
- Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution by Laurie Penny
- The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
- Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
- Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
- A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
- F: A Novel by Daniel Kehlmann
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Scott Pilgrim vs. The World by Bryan O’Malley
- How to Be Both by Ali Smith
- Dirty Chick by Antonia Murphy
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I cant believe its possible to read this much when you have a full time job. Awesome!
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Impressive. The structure of non-fiction (I’m a history buff) allows for some speedreading so i’m in the #60s, but the amount of leisurely tasted fiction in there makes for an impressive 36.
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Why didn’t you finish Knausgaard?
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Jeff, there were a couple of reasons. I had borrowed it from the library and didn’t finish it before it was due back. I re-requested it and had a copy again three weeks later but after the break it just could’t get back into it. But before I had to return it I was already starting to feel unmotivated to read it. I didn’t find the writing all that great and while the books starts off well, I just had a hard time caring about the character and since there is no real story things just fell apart. Have you read it?
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I’ve nearly finished it. I also had trouble with motivation. In between some of the mundane scenes that are written functionally are some passages that take the mundanity into abstractions that work really well. This, it seems to me, is how thinking often works. The trouble for me was twofold. Firstly, they seemed to be scant reward for ploughing through so much mundanity. Secondly, why care about observations that quickly fizzle out instead of connecting with each other into something greater? The book left me almost wondering about what happens next.
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Oh yes! Especially your second point. I found it hard to really care. Do you think you will read the next one?
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Probably not. There’s stronger competition for my reading time. I’ll write a piece on it though. It’s a polarising book that I find myself in-between on. Although I appreciate its use of that ‘Eastern’ / self-helpy concept supposedly called ‘the moment’, I wanted sustained insight over and above mere description, otherwise why read this account of the everyday rather than experience your own?
I like your list here very much btw. There’s a lot of quirky stuff that I’ll browse now and again for ideas. Working in a secondhand shop, I tend to get curious when anything difficult comes along, but they tend to be the better known figures. Sebald’s Vertigo came in recently, which I’ve never seen secondhand. It’s nice to see things like this, but I do worry that they overshadow lesser known authors. You’re doing a great service for these authors and your readers.
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He’s been compared to Proust so I was expecting something more Proust-like with better writing and more thoughtful insight. Now I wonder if he is just somehow the flavor of the moment. Glad you like my reading list. I enjoy lots of variety!
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Pingback: Memoirrheoa? My Struggle, Part 1 by Karl Ove Knausgaard | Recent Items
Really astonishing record here. This year I read about 50 books for a high school book reading site, so this is truly amazing. I read about a book a day and then wrote 30 questions with the correct answer and three distractors. One of the things I found that really helped was to vary the type and style of book. Oscar Wilde, then River of Doubt, the Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. You should get a big prize for this!
People always ask me what was my favorite book. Stock answer is that is like asking me which of my children I like best: I like them for different reasons, so it is impossible to answer.
I have to ask: What was your favorite book here? (apologize if you have already said here somewhere; I didn’t see it.)
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Matt, Thanks! This is the most I have ever read in a year. Usually I read somewhere around 52-60 so I have quite surprised myself. My favorite book this year? I will be putting together a year-end summary in the next few days and can never name just one favorite, I generally give myself five fiction and five nonfiction. But, if you really press me on the fiction, I will say A Girl is a Half-formed Thing was pretty darn amazing. 🙂
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