What Have You Read 2010? What Do You Hope To Read 2011?

We did this at the end of the year last year, and so I suppose it shall become the very first regular feature of my very irregular blog.

The Challenge: What have you read this past year? What was your favorite? What was your least favorite? What book would you most recommend to others to read? Also list one or two reading goals for next year. What do you hope to read? Do you hope to read more? Do you hope to read more of a particular type of material?

Even if you haven't read any books- what blogs, news sources, message boards, or magazines have you read?


Either leave your list in the comments or on your own blog with a link in the comments!!

What I Have Read 2010

My Detachment Tracy Kidder
Dog Soldiers Robert Stone
A Soldier's Heart Elizabet Samet
Generation Kill Evan Wright
Lolita Nabokov
The Quiet American Graham Greene
Girl With The ( fucking) Dragon Tattoo Steig Larson
Count Of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
Mountains Beyond Mountains Tracy Kidder
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Dias
Gifts Of Imperfection Brene Brown
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey
Paco's Story Larry Heinemann

Favorite: Read some very life changing and really great books this year it's hard to narrow it down. Least Favorite: Duh...Girl With The Dragon Tattoo . What Everyone Should Read: Cuckoo's Nest, Gifts of Imperfection, Generation Kill.


I did complete the War Through the Generations Challenge! Woot! (But only since they counted movies ...lol!) Next year is the American Civil War, and there is not much from there which calls to me to read right now, so I might skip it.

Goals for 2011
Really to just try to read steadily. I got waaay bogged down in several books this year, and that always spells disaster. I even quit in the middle of a couple books, and that is very unlike me. I'd like to read some Dicken's this year--it's been a couple years since I've read him and I miss him. Would like to read Henry Miller, too--I feel like he is a big gap in my American reading.

What Have You Read-2009? What Do You Hope To Read- 2010?

We did this at the end of the year last year, and so I suppose it shall become the very first regular feature of my very irregular blog.

The Challenge: What have you read this past year? What was your favorite? What was your least favorite? What book would you most recommend to others to read? Also list one or two reading goals for next year. What do you hope to read? Do you hope to read more? Do you hope to read more of a particular type of material?

Even if you haven't read any books- what blogs, news sources, message boards, or magazines have you read?


Either leave your list in the comments or on your own blog with a link in the comments!!

What I've Read 2009:
One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Mr. Ives' Christmas- Oscar Hijuelos
Bridge of San Luis Rey- Thorton Wilder
Things They Carried- Tim O'Brien
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace-
Mister Pip-Lloyd Jones
Bachelor Brother's Bed and Breakfast-Bill Richardson
Robber Bridegroom-Eudora Welty
Between, Georgia- Joshilyn Jackson
Going After Cacciato- Tim O'Brien
Roxanna Slade- Reynolds Price
Steve and Me- Terri Irwin
Fathers and Sons- Ivan Turgenev
The Good Earth- Pearl S Buck
My Mortal Enemy- Willa Cather
The Open Boat and Other Stories- Stephen Crane
Camino Real- Tennessee Williams
The Autobiography of Santa Claus- Jeff Guinn


Favorite: Roxanna Slade Least Favorite: Going After Cacciato. What Everyone Should Read: Mr Ives' Christmas.

Goals For 2010
Mostly I just want to complete the War Through The Generations reading challenge. I want to be realistic in what I am able to do while not sleeping and having a wee baby in the house. Though I think in the next few weeks here, the time has absolutely come for me to read Nabakov. It astounds me often, the big gaps in my reading! Time to ammend at least this one.

The Last 5 Books

What are your last five books to show up in your house, from the library, from a friend, from the store, or wherever? How did they get to you and why?

1. The Original Scroll of On The Road...which my husband gave me for Valentine's Day prefacing it with "Just to remind you that I really like being married to a crazy person."

2. Norman Mailer's The Naked and The Dead- for the War Through the Generations Challenge (which is killing me, I've been so, so bogged down in From Here To Eternity--I need to seriously head down, power through it and move on with my reading life)

3. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos- from my husband, because it was on the bargain table and I had just finished and loved, loved Mr. Ives' Christmas.

4. The Duty of Delight, The Diaries of Dorothy Day...from my husband, who somehow knew I really wanted to read through this despite me never having told him.

5. Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones..which I bought after reading a synopsis on a site where you can get free books to review on you blog. This book sounded so fun, but was only available for free to Canadian reviewers...so I bought it.

Reading Plans

I have been searching and perusing lists looking for WWII novels. In the process, I have found other books about other wars I really want to read. I thought I'd just put them here so I could keep track of them; paper lists inevitably immaterializing in our little house. Please feel free to add suggestions!!!

WORLD WAR I
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
Parade's End- Ford Maddox Ford
Soldier's Pay- William Faulkner
Kangaroo- DH Lawrence
All Quiet on The Western Front- Erich Maria Remarque
A Farewell to Arms- Ernest Hemingway

VIETNAM
The Short Timers-Gustav Hasford
We Were Soldiers Once and Young- Moore and Halloway
The Quiet American-Graham Greene
The Sorrow of War- Bao Nihn
Going After Cacciato- Tim O'Brien