Bethany’s 2009-10 Book List

My reading challenge began at the end of May in 2009. Since I am a teacher, the beginning of summer vacation always seems like the best time to begin new projects, so each year’s challenge runs from Graduation of one year to Graduation of the next. The rules evolved over time and are as follows:

1. I read whatever I feel like reading. There are no restrictions based on “quality.” However, because my thought processes are so different when I read poetry, individual volumes of poetry don’t count. However, epic poems, book-length narrative poems, and collections of essays and short stories are fine as long as I read them in order from start to finish.

2. Re-reads are fine – again, as long as I truly read them from start to finish without skimming. However, once a title is on the list, it can not be added to the list again, for that year or for any future year. Since I’m an English teacher, I re-read a lot of books for school, but they can only make the list once.

The 2009-10 List

1. Curtis Sittenfeld, Man of My Dreams
2. Geraldine Brooks, March
3. John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
4. Meg Wolitzer, The Ten-Year Nap
5. David Ebersoff, The 19^th Wife
6. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
7. Kate Atkinson, Case Histories
8. Bill McKibben, Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously
9. Jason Brown, Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work
10. Kate Jacobs, The Friday Night Knitting Club
11. Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear it Away
12. Marjane Satrapi, The Complete Persepolis
13. Julie Powell, Julie and Julia
14. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
15. Lalita Tademy, Cane River
16. Aravind Adiga, White Tiger
17. Alice Hoffman, Here on Earth
18. Alice Munro, The Beggar Maid
19. Carson McCullers, Clock Without Hands
20. Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
21. Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House
22. Alice Munro, Runaway
23. T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain
24. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
25. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
26. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
27. J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
28. David Leavitt, Arkansas
29. Pat Conroy, South of Broad (my early thoughts) (my final thoughts)
30. Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades (my thoughts on “The Office”)
31. Don DeLillo, Falling Man
32. Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
33. Jane Smiley, Ten Days in the Hills
34. Andre Dubus, In the Bedroom
35. Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
36. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
37. Albert Camus, The Stranger
38. Bill Bryson: Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way
39. Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food
40. Nevil Shute: On the Beach
41. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
42. Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge
43. Lorrie Moore, The Gate at the Stairs
44. Michael Gates Gill, How Starbucks Saved My Life
45. Susan Cheever, American Bloomsbury
46. Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
47. Frederick Douglass, Narrative
48. Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Jill’s final thoughts)
49. Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
50. Kate Chopin, The Awakening
51. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (my thoughts on Act I)
52. Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
53. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
54. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
55. Dante, The Inferno
56. Kathryn Stockett, The Help
57. Joseph O’Neill Netherland
58. John Irving, Last Night at Twisted River
59. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley (Jill’s review)
60. J.M. Coetzee, Age of Iron
61. Joanne Harris, Gentlemen and Players
62. Ha Jin, Waiting
63. Bharati Mukherjee, The Holder of the World
64. Joanne Harris, Chocolat
65. John Steinbeck, The Pastures of Heaven
66. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
67. Julie Powell, Cleaving
68. Toni Morrison, Beloved
69. Michael Downs, The House of Good Hope
70. William Styron, Darkness Visible
71. Joanne Harris, The Girl With No Shadow
72. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (my essay “The Parallel Lives of Jay and Grey”) (My essay “The Great Gatsby as Complicated Comedy”)
73. Jerzy Kosinski, Being There
74. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I
75. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
76. Gloria Goldreich, Dinner with Anna Karenina
77. Sherman Alexie, Flight
78. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
79. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
80. Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
81. Dan Chaon, Await Your Reply
82. Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
83. Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety
84. Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
85. John Cheever, The Wapshot Chronicle
86. Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano
87. Wallace Stegner, Recapitulation
88. John Steinbeck, To a God Unknown
89. Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Jill’s review)
90. William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
91. Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
92. James Dickey, Deliverance
93. Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories (my thoughts on “Good Country People”)
94. Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
95. J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
96. Don DeLillo, Point Omega
97. David Treuer, The Translation of Dr. Apelles
98. J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
99. Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
100. Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
101. George Orwell, 1984
102. Abraham Verghese, Cutting For Stone
103. Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees
104. Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire
105. John Williams, Stoner (Jill’s review)
106. Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
107. Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
108. Thomas Cahill, The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels
109. Paul Harding, Tinkers
110. Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin