44 and counting . . .

For my inagural blog post I've decided to start us off with a public service announcement (and something I've been meaning to do for myself for ages). Here is a complete list of all of the books we have read thus far since our first actual book discussion on Monday, January 31, 2005 (wow. that was a long time ago). For those of you who have joined since then . . . now you know what you missed! I did not include books we chose and then rejected (Amelia...the Stephenson sci-fi book...)

2005:
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

2006:
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
An Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Beast by Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia by George Saunders
A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester

2007:
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
1776 by David McCullough
Summer of '49 by David Halberstam
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors by Roddy Doyle
I Love You More Than You Know by Jonathan Ames
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

2008:
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
The Commitment by Dan Savage
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2009:
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin
Dancing to Almendra by Mayra Montero


Turns out we usually can pull off 10 books a year, with the exception of 2007 where we read 11. We've definitely had some high points (Steinbeck) and some low points (the beginning of 2006...) but all in all I think we've done a great job of reading across genres.

Hope you all enjoy the list!