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I tend to be a voracious reader, and I read widely. This list has its origins in an old signature file which I would update periodically with the current book that I was reading. That gradually transmogrified itself into the current massive archive with brief reviews.
| What I've been reading lately |
| Number of books read and reviewed each year | |
|---|---|
| 1995* |  (28) |
| 1996 | (47) |
| 1997 | (74) |
| 1998 | (61) |
| 1999 | (62) |
| 2000 | (27) |
| 2001 | (51) |
| 2002 | (60) |
| 2003 | (37) |
| 2004 | (36) |
| 2005 | (32) |
| 2006 | (46) |
| 2007 | (109) |
| 2008 | (78) |
| 2009 | (65) |
| 2010 | (68) |
| 2011 | (98) |
| 2012 | (129) |
| 2013 | (114) |
| 2014 | (101) |
| 2015 | (88) |
| 2016 | (82) |
| 2017 | (76) |
| 2018 | (67) |
| 2019 | (95) |
| 2020 | (90) |
| 2021 | (85) |
| 2022 | (101) |
| 2023 | (124) |
| 2024 | (154) |
| 2025 |  (1) |
| * Partial year | |
[Finished 1 January 2025] The conceit here is a risky one. The protagonist’s mother leaves a fax machine in her daughter’s bedroom and the daughter ends up communicating with the aliens who sent her to earth by way of it, all while we learn the story of the girl’s coming of age from childhood into adulthood. The question of whether the aliens are real or not is left delightfully unresolved but
Eleanor Roosevelt
by Russell Freedman
[Finished 28 December 2024] Back in 2001 I read No Ordinary Time and was so impressed with Eleanor Roosevelt I wanted to know more so I went to the big river site (they weren’t so ostentatiously evil at that point) and I ordered the highest rated book I could find. I was a bit embarrassed to discover I’d purchased a book for young readers and put it on the shelf and didn’t read it until just recently at which point I discovered that the book was, despite its ostensible audience, a rather good account of Roosevelt’s life, not pulling any punches with the more challenging aspects of her biography. It never felt patronizing. Worth reading not only for the younger set but for the adults as well.
Great Expectations
by Vinson Cunningham
[Finished 26 December 2024] A sort of fictionalized account of Cunningham’s involvement with the 2008 Obama campaign and I have to say that ultimately, I found this kind of, well, boring. It seemed a lot of stuff happening, but not much to connect them into a narrative I could care about.
The Best American Essays 2021
edited by Kathryn Schulz
[Finished 23 December 2024] Another time capsule through essays. 2020 was a hell of a year and this collection did a good job of encapsulating a lot of it.
Someone Like Us
by Dinaw Mengestu
[Finished 22 December 2024] As much as I tried, I didn’t connect with this book. I think the choice to eschew chronology didn’t help, especially with the choice to have some events happen in the main character’s imagination,
El esquinista
by Laia Jufresa
[Finished 19 December 2024] Absolutely delightful short stories, I’m looking forward to reading her novel.
Rejection
by Tony Tulathimutte
[Finished 17 December 2024] The first stories are outstanding, but the collection loses steam towards the end (and even acknowledges this in a metatextual final section), which makes it a bit less than optimal.
Margo's Got Money Troubles
by Rufi Thorpe
[Finished 13 December 2024] A decent enough book, but Thorpe decided to switch between first and third-person narration in the book in a way that I found so grating that I went into the novel I’ve started and tore out everything that I did which was vaguely similar (in my case, I had the third person narrator periodically directly address the reader).
How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry
by Edward Hirsch
[Finished 12 December 2024] A recommendation from one of the poetry faculty at my MFA. Not quite what I had expected or hoped for in that it’s ultimately a collection of essays by Hirsch, although there’s still a lot of great stuff here.
The Book Censor's Library
by Bothayna Al-Essa
[Finished 10 December 2024] Part of my Tournament of Books reading. A mix of surrealism and dystopianism that I’m not sure really worked for me. It felt especially weird reading something that was in translation but that almost exclusively referenced work from the Anglo-American literary tradition. There were moments here, but it didn’t really land with me.