Another Year of Books

I guess this book-listing is going to be an annual thing. I haven't written a book review in a long time.

Anyway, here are the books I read in 2009. A plus sign means I liked it. Multiple plus signs mean I really, really liked it. The lack of a plus sign isn't necessarily a negative review; it just didn't stick with me.

I don't know if you do, but I count graphic novels as books. There are several listed here. Meanwhile, I hope none of my professors see this and find out how many graphic novels I read instead of the books they assigned....

The Painted Veil +
by W. Somerset Maugham

The Almost Moon +
by Alice Sebold

Restless
by William Boyd

Morgan's Passing ++
by Anne Tyler

The Fifth Child
by Doris LEssing

Sula
by Toni Morrison

French Milk +
by Lucy Knisley

The Golden Gate
by Vikram Seth

The Adrian Mole Diaries +
by Sue Townsend

Q and A
by Vikas Swarup

The Jungle Book +
by Rudyard Kipling

The Godmother
by Carrie Adams

The Blithedale Romance
by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Beastly +
by Alex Flinn

Schuyler's Monster ++
by Robert Rummel-Hudson

Neverwhere ++
by Neil Gaiman

The King in the Window
by Adam Gopnik

The House of Many Ways +
by Diana Wynne Jones

The Mysterious Benedict Society
by Trenton Lee Stewart

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister ++
by Gregory Maguire

The Sirens of Titan ++
by Kurt Vonnegut

Mister Pip +
by Lloyd Jones

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life ++
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World +
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness +
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together +
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Castle Waiting ++
by Linda Medley

Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe +
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

The Book Thief +++!!
by Markus Zusak

Lucky +
by Alice Sebold

Our Lady of the Artichokes
by Katherine Vaz

Juliet, Naked +
by Nick Hornby

Elements +
by Stephen Gutierrez

A Year of Books

Alas, another year of unreviewed reading has passed, but this time I kept a list of books as I read them. This is that list. Each book is rated out of four. Originally, it was out of five, but when none of them scored that high, I decided to grade on a curve. (*specifies a re-read)


New Moon
by Stephenie Meyer

13 Little Blue Envelopes
by Maureen Johnson

21 Proms
edited by David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft

The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
by Michael Scott

The Princess Diaries
by Meg Cabot

The Penelopiad
by Margaret Atwood

About a Boy
by Nick Hornby

The Jane Austen Book Club
by Karen Joy Fowler

This Book Will Save Your Life
by A. M. Homes

The Martian Child
by David Gerrold

Suite Scarlett
by Maureen Johnson

High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby

The Last Sin Eater
by Francine Rivers

Anansi Boys
by Neil Gaiman

The Time Traveler's Wife*
by Audrey Niffenegger

American Gods
by Neil Gaiman

The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger

Austenland
by Shannon Hale

Twice Upon a Marigold
by Jean Ferris

Ella Enchanted*
by Gail Carson Levine

The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold

On Writing
by Stephen King

The Emperor's Children
by Claire Messud

Bag of Bones
by Stephen King

Whirlwind
by Cathy Marie Hake

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
by Stephen King

Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure
by Dorothy Allison

Let It Snow
by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle

Fup
by Jim Dodge

On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan

Paper Towns
by John Green

Fragile Things
by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman

The Giver
adapted for the stage by Eric Coble from the book by Lois Lowry

Slaughterhouse Five
by Kurt Vonnegut

Just Ella
by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Nature of Jade
by Deb Caletti

Hit the Road
by Caroline B. Cooney

P.S. I don't know why the stars image has a white border, and I don't know how to make it go away. Go away! Go away! It doesn't work.

My To-Read List

I hit the year mark more than a month ago. I feel bad. I've read so many books this year, and now, I can't remember them well enough to write about them.

Anyway, here's something different. Here is the content of my "Books to Read" journal, ordered as it is in the journal itself and excluding the books I have read since writing them down. (I'll put an asterisk next to the ones I don't own, just in case you view this as a Wish List.)

• Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife by Linda Berdoll*
• The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford
• Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen*
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by W.S. Merwin
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason
• Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak*
• Prague by Arthur Phillips*
• A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain
• The Divided Crown by Isabelle Glass*
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain
• The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
• Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
• The Divine Symphony by Calvin Miller
• About Grace by Anthony Doerr*
• Labyrinth by Kate Mosse*
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert*
• Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza with Steve Erwin*
• Red Herrings and White Elephants by Albert Jack*
• The Fugitive Wife by Peter C. Brown*
• The House of Scortia by Laurent Gaude*
• Carrie's War by Nina Bawden*
• The Cider House Rules by John Irving
• Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
• The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville
• Emma by Jane Austin
• Silas Marner by George Eliot
• The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
• The Agony and the Ecstacy by Irving Stone
• South by Ernest Shackleton
• Endurance by Alfred Lansing
• Postmarked Heaven by Jack Cavanaugh
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
• Maggie-Now by Betty Smith
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Forest Gump by Winston Groom
• Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix*
• Me, Myself, and Bob by Phil Vischer*
• His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman*
• Wise Blood by Flannery O'Conner*
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger*
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer*
• River Secrets by Shannon Hale*
• Austenland by Shannon Hale*
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides*
• Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller*
• The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne*
• The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis*
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell*
• Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan*
• Animal's People by Indra Sinhan*
• My House in Umbria by William Trevor*
• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
• Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut*
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut*
• Peeps by Scott Westerfield*
• Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer*
• Everyman by Philip Roth*
• Nim's Island by Wendy Orr*
• The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov*
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak*
• The Adventures of Telemachus by Louis Aragon*
• The Frog King by Adam Davies*
• I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted by Jennifer Finney Boylan*
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold*
• The Last Sin Eater by Francine Rivers
• The Long Day Wanes by Anthony Burgess
• The Alchemyst: the Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott
• Inkheart by Cornelia Funke*
• 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson*
• The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson*
• 21 Proms edited by David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft*
• Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Artwork illustrated by Scott Hunt*
• The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly*
• A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas*
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick*

That is way more than I thought was in there... I'm slightly embarrassed.

The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

The Kitchen Boy, for the most part, is a (fictional) first-person account of the captivity of the Romanov family in the weeks preceding and including their murder in July of 1918. Robert Alexander pieces together details from Romanov diaries and letters as well as witness accounts to create a realistic portrait of the last Russian Imperial family.

Why do I read books like this?

While reading this book, I came to a point at which I had to wonder. Did I really want to become emotionally attached to these people and then continue on to read through their demise which, from history and pop-culture, I knew was coming? But, as many have found in the past 90 years, the mystery surrounding the denouement of the Romanovs is too enticing to resist.

This book left me both satisfied and not. I was satisfied with the portrayal of the family neither as martyrs or as enemies of the Russian people but as a simple, loving family that had the misfortune of being monarchs in a world quickly leaving autocracy behind. Alexander mournfully paints a picture of a man and woman passionately in love, four daughters with beauty, charm, and individual dreams, and a sickly, young son who treasures bits of wire and flattened coins.

What left me dissatisfied was that, even though I enjoyed trying to work out the mystery to the very end, when Alexander finally unveiled the truth, there was no time left to soak it in and to rearrange the facts I had misplaced.

I felt a bit cheated because the opportunity for me to figure out the truth myself was never made available. In whole, I think that was the point: that even when everything is laid out for you, it is never what it seems.

Nevertheless, the story is satisfying in that it answers (fictitiously, of course) the most famous questions that remain even now. Was there really a secret plan to rescue the Romanovs? What happened to the missing Romanov jewels? And most importantly, where are the two bodies that were absent from the grave that was unearthed in 1991?

Even apart from all the mystery, this book is a colorful picture of the broader Russian spirit and the tragedy that characterized Russian history in the past century. The images conjured are vivid and heart-breaking.

If you are one of the thousands intrigued by the Romanov mystery or if you are captivated by historical mystery in general, I recommend this book to you.

Many of the events described in this book are disturbing and graphic, and in general, this book is not intended for children. Were this book a film rated in America, it would probably receive an R rating. Please take this into consideration.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

I did not read this book instead of doing homework as I have read so many others. This book was homework, and as required reading, I put it off for as long as possible.

I very deeply regret this.

The Kite Runner is the heart-wrenching story of Amir, an intelligent boy who grows up in Afghanistan before and during the Russian invasion. This era of political conflict serves as a backdrop for Amir's story of love, confliction, loyalty, and betrayal. Amir is the son of one of Kabul's most respected and successful men. His family has consorted with the king, but Amir's best friend is his servant Hassan.

The two boys share the bond that comes from being nursed at the same breast. Their relationship is that of brothers, but because of their class, ethnic, and religious differences, Amir has trouble seeing Hassan as his best friend. While Hassan is unwaveringly loyal to Amir, Amir excludes Hassan when other children are present and ridicules Hassan's illiteracy. Nevertheless, Hassan again and again proves his loyalty, but when Amir's worth and loyalty is tested, to his own repulsion, he fails. Amir says himself that this single event makes him who he is. He spends the rest of his life trying to redeem himself for his act of betrayal and the events that follow.

The result is a novel that is both unpleasant and engaging. At moments the story is so painful to read that I nearly put it down, but I had to discover how Amir would redeem himself. If I left it there, unresolved, I myself would feel unreconciled.

While discussing the book in class, one of my classmates, who boasted at already having finished the book, stated as fact that “Amir is an asshole.” I winced. The statement is not entirely untrue, but I wondered how she could say that so decidedly after spending 371 pages inside his head, sharing his anguish. This is one of those books that forces you to look in the mirror and really wonder if you wouldn't have done the same as Amir, even knowing what a wicked thing it was to do.

This book is definitely not a light read and should not be entered upon lightly. If you do take up this book (and I recommend you do), be sure to prepare yourself for an emotional journey. Allow yourself to grow through Amir's experiences. Even as different as it may be from your own, I am sure you will find at least one point at which you can relate to this story.

This book depicts some extreme violence and subject matter that may not be appropriate for some readers. Were this book a film rated in America, it would probably receive an R rating. Please take this into consideration.