This post has been long in coming. I started a list last April of the books (including poetry and plays) I read. I decided to post the list in year-long increments, this being the first:

1) Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
2) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
3) The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh
4) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
5) To Lie With Lions by Dorothy Dunnett
6) The Flâneur by Edmund White
7) Prague by Arthur Philips
8) Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
9) Democracy by Michael Frayn
10) Nightspawn by John Banville
11) Birchwood by John Banville
12) Perfume by Patrick Süskind
13) Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
14) The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
15) Paddy Clarke HaHaHa by Roddy Doyle
16) The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt
17) Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
18) Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
19) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
20) Metroland by Julian Barnes
21) Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein
22) Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
23) The Unfinished Novel and Other Stories by Valerie Martin
24) The Line of Beauty by Allan Hollinghurst
25) Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
26) Howard's End by E.M. Forster
27) Eclipse by John Banville
28) Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
29) Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane
30) Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
31) The White by Deborah Larsen
32) Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
33) Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard
34) Hotel de Dream by Edmund White
35) Red Azalea by Anchee Min
36) The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
37) The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
38) Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
39) So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
40) Paradise by Toni Morrison
41) The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett
42) Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee
43) The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski
44) The Singing by C.K. Williams
45) Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
46) Le Chanson de Roland
47) Essais by Montaigne (X2, once in French and once in English)
48) Le Malade Imaginaire by Molière
49) Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon
50) In the Cut by Susanna Moore
51) The 5-Minute Illiad by Greg Nagon
52) Candide by Voltaire
53) Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
54) Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
55) Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
56) The Hours by Michael Cunningham
57) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
58) Master Pip by Lloyd Jones
59) The Gathering by Anne Enright
60) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
61) The Seafarer by Conor McPherson
62) March by Geraldine Brooks
63) Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon
64) Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
65) Tintin and the Alph-Art by Hergé
66) Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
67) Phaedrus by Plato
68) The Aeneid by Virgil
69) Confessions by St. Augustine
70) Pseudolus by Plautus
71) The Secret by Francesco Petrarch
72) Vita Nuova by Dante
73) The Early History of Rome by Livy
74) The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
75) The Prelude by William Wordsworth

SEVENTY-FIVE!!!! Such a perfect number.
Might quantify this later. Or not. Now my roommates want to go eat.


LATER:
Well, I'm quite proud of myself. In a year there were TWO instances of truly guilty pleasure reading, THREE that I would never read again, ONE re-read, ONE Harry Potter, and FIVE that I can name as my top five of the year. They are:
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Line of Beauty
Howard's End
The Book of Salt
The Gathering

I also recommend reading Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, and Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood in exactly that order. It gives you World War Two in reverse, from three VERY different perspectives, in three very different regions, almost at first hand, and is absolutely fascinating.


EVEN LATER
Recurring authors included TWO Edmund Whites, TWO E.M. Forsters, THREE Julian Barneses, THREE John Banvilles, and ONE A-John-Banville-By-Any-Other-Name-Would-Smell-As-Sweet (except it didn't).