Saturday, December 30, 2006

Books I Read in 2006

The Claw recently posted a list of the best books he read in 2006. He and I started keeping (only semi-competitive) lists of the books we were reading back in 2003.

Now, this may seem excessive, but I'm going to post all of the books I read in 2006.

Erm, their titles, I mean.

But I'll post them at the bottom so as not to mess up this post. And at the top I'll post the Best, the Worst, and the Honorable Mentions. Oh, and not all of the books are actually books - some were just really long articles. All in all, I read approximately 53 (not counting each article as a book).

Which means that if I started reading 'hardcore' at age 8 in grade 3 (which I did) and read the same number of books each year and live to be 88, I'll only have read 4,240 books by the time I die which is no where near good enough!!!

*sigh*


The Best Read of 2006
Howard's End by E.M. Forster
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
To Sail beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

Honorable Mentions
The Knight (The Wizard Knight, Book 1) by Gene Wolfe
Colour Blind by Catherine Cookson
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling
POSSESSION: A Romance by A.S. Byatt

The Worst Read of 2006
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown*
Awakening the Virgin by Nicole Foster*
Seventh Son (Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card


The Books of 2006

The Knight (The Wizard Knight, Book 1) by Gene Wolfe
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester
Howard's End by E.M. Forster
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters
Eloise: The Ultimate Edition by Kay Thompson, Hilary Knight
The Borrowers Afloat by Mary Norton
The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton
The Borrowers Aloft by Mary Norton
The Juniper Game by Sherryl Jordan
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
Colour Blind by Catherine Cookson
A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Elsewhere by Will Shetterly
Crisis Volunteer Training Manual by Klinic
Nevernever by Will Shetterly
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
To Sail beyond the Sunset by Robert A. Heinlein
Seventh Son (Tales of Alvin Maker, Book 1) by Orson Scott Card
The Lions of al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay
Darfur – Assault on Survival: A Call for Security, Justice, and Restitution by Physicians for Human Rights
When Neutrality is a Sin: The Darfur Crisis and the Crisis of Humanitarian Intervention in Sudan by Nsongurua J. Udombana, from Human Rights Quarterly
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J.K. Rowling
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation in Africa: Issues and Cases by Lyn Graybill
Healing Genocide by Timothy Morgan
After Arusha: Gacaca Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda by Alana Tiemessen
The Introduction of a Modernized Gacaca for Judging Suspects of Participation in the Genocide and the Massacres of 1994 in Rwanda: A Discussion Paper by Peter Uvin
Consolidating Democracy Through Transitional Justice: Rwanda’s gacaca courts by Aneta Wierzynska
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Understanding Contemporary Africa by April A. Gordon and Donald L. Gordon
Silent No More: African fights HIV/AIDS by United Nations Department of Public Information
Why Are There So Many Civil Wars in Africa? Understanding and Preventing Violent Conflict by Ibrahim Elbadawi and Nicholas Sambanis
Native Son by Richard A. Wright
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Stolen Life : Journey Of A Cree Woman by Rudy Wiebe, Yvonne Johnson
POSSESSION: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
The Adventures of Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey by Tony Millionaire
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
Peril at End House by Agatha Christie
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Awakening the Virgin by Nicole Foster

______________________________
* Unspeakably terrible. I stopped reading it part way through.
* This must be the worst book of lesbian erotica ever! Why oh why didn't I notice that the description said
"amateur writing" and "true tales" before I ordered it on Amazon!

6 comments:

Elliot said...

ROFL!

I love your footnotes.

Anonymous said...

I love seeing lists of books! It took me a while, but I just finished putting together a list of all the books I read in 2006: all 110 of them! This is more than double what I read in 2005, due to various factors (explained in more detail in the post). They're broken down into categories, and I denoted the ones that I liked the best. :)

http://www.zandria.us/archives/000925.html

Anactoria said...

Wow! You read a lot of nonfiction!

In the realm I come from, its almost shocking to see so few fiction books on a reading list!

I suppose that's why I'm so full of nonsense...

*sigh*

I love how you linked each book. I nearly set myself to that arduous task - it certainly would have been more reader-friendly, but alas - I was lazy. :P

Anactoria said...

P.S. Zandria - I've been exploring your blog and your photos - its such an odd thing to go through someone else's childhood 'memory pictures' - so personal. The Web is a funny thing in the way it give us little peeks into so many corners we'd never have seen otherwise... Anyhow, enough rambling and off to bed...

Greg said...

I must disagree about Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, which I feel is an amazingly raw and intense work from a very important playwright.

I will agree about On the Road, though. I didn't read it all, just produced part of it at the CNIB and that was more than enough.

Anactoria said...

You're not allowed to disagree with me! :P

No, jk.

I guess I could see how it could be powerful when acted out.

But... no, that still doesn't soften my attitude towards it. I don't deny that it might have some passion to it - it certainly would feel incredibly awkward and uncomfortable to watch.

But do I think it has merit over all? No, I don't. I think its resting on its provocative nature instead of a solid plot and an insightful story.