What I Have Read Since Last April, pathetic addition. It was a slow year for reading, but a great one for academic writing. I turned my thesis in two days ago. More on that later.

1) The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer
2) Inda by Sherwood Smith
3) Brooklyn by Colm Toíbín
4) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson
5) Tinkers by Paul Harding
6) A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
7) The Fox by Sherwood Smith
8) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
9) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
10) Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
11) The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by John Joseph Adams
12) Breakfast on Pluto by Patrick McCabe
13) Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
14) Farthing by Jo Walton
15) Ha'penny by Jo Walton
16) Nineteen Seventy Seven by David Peace
17) Nineteen Eighty by David Peace
18) Half a Crown by Jo Walton
19) Call for the Dead by John Le Carré
20) The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
21) The Legend of the King by Gerald Morris
22) Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller
23) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, An American Slave, Written by Himself
24) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré
25) Beloved by Toni Morisson
26) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
27) Nineteen Eighty Three by David Peace
28) Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
29) The Honorable Schoolboy by John Le Carré
30) Moby Dick by Herman Melville
31) A Murder of Quality by John Le Carré
32) Smiley's People by John Le Carré
33) A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury
34) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
35) Race Matters by Cornel West
36) Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War
37) All is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
38) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
39) Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
40) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
41) The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
42) The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
43) The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis
44) The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis
45) The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
46) The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett
47) Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite
48) The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
49) The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
50) In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
51) Happy Pills in America by David Herzberg
52) Smack: Heroin and the American City by Eric Schneider


This, my dears, was clearly the year of the re-read, with a grand total of twelve. It was also the year of series (but then again, with me, what year isn't?), as I devoured two and wrapped up two more.

And then, of the newly read...
Top Five of the Year, in descending order:
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Of the fifty-two, one I would never, ever read again and two were extremely overrated. One was underrated. One mentioned a Snuggie. Five really grossed me out. Four were dead boring. One hit a little too close to home. Two of the re-reads became two of my favorite books.