{"id":1221,"date":"2010-01-05T12:29:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T12:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2025-04-24T17:42:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T17:42:03","slug":"2009-book-log-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/?p=1221","title":{"rendered":"2009 Book Log In Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books read in 2004: 21<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2005: 28<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2006: 40<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2007: 30<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2008: 41<\/a>
\nBooks read in 2009: 22<\/p>\n

That can’t be right… can it? That’s back to 2004 levels, when I had a needy one year old around the house. 2009 is a year where the kids would entertain themselves, and I could even sit on the couch and read while they were awake<\/i>.<\/p>\n

What happened this year? I think I’m going to blame it on the Spanish classes. I’ve been taking them for just over a year, and my lunch hours are pretty much dedicated to either taking the classes, or doing homework for them. There’s a lot of reading that I’ve done that doesn’t show up on this list because I haven’t finished. I’m almost through reading a Spanish translation of the Ghost World graphic novel (the slang makes it especially hard to translate), and there are three plays and a book of short stories that I’m working my way through.<\/p>\n

In truth, I could also add most of The Magic Tree House<\/i> books 1 through 36 to this list. But I’m not going to, out of pride.<\/p>\n

At any rate, here’s the list…<\/p>\n

1. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1<\/i> by Alan Moore & Kevin O\u2019Neill
\n2. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2<\/i> by Alan Moore & Kevin O\u2019Neill
\nGraphic novels of an extensively researched imagined universe where the fictional characters of the Victorian era of our universe are real, e.g. Dr. Jekyl, The Invisible Man, Alice In Wonderland. Great graphic novels.<\/p>\n

3. David Copperfield<\/i> by Charles Dickens
\nFantastic novel. I\u2019m sad it took me this long to read it, but I was turned off by Great Expectations<\/i> in high school.<\/p>\n

4. Cringe<\/i> edited by Sarah Brown
\nThe Cringe Festival is like a poetry reading, except instead of poetry, you read excerpts of your teenage or younger diary, and cringe at who you used to be in front of other people. This book is a compilation of the most cringe-worthy stuff of past readings. Entertaining.<\/p>\n

5. The Best American Essays 2005<\/i> edited by Susan Orlean.
\nAs usual, a hit and miss collection of essays. I like essays, but not all essays. There were some good ones, usually from comedic type folks like Jonathan Franzen or David Sedaris.<\/p>\n

6. How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World<\/i> by Francis Wheen
\nAn okay overview of some modern Popular Delusions. I enjoyed the much older 1841 work Extraordinary Popular Delusions<\/i> as less stream of consciousness, and more scholarly. This has a bit more partisan than I\u2019m comfortable with.<\/p>\n

7. The Magicians and Mrs. Quent<\/i> by Galen Beckett (pseudonym of Mark Anthony)
\nIf Pride and Prejudice<\/i> and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell<\/i> had a baby, it might be this book. But people would cluck their tongues and say \u201cThe talent gene skipped this generation.\u201d <\/p>\n

8. Sloppy Firsts<\/i> by Megan McCafferty
\nI had no business reading this, as its target audience is probably teenage girls. Or New Jerseyians. Anyway, not me.<\/p>\n

9. Winter\u2019s Tale<\/i> by Mark Helprin
\nSeveral people I know have gushed about this book, citing it as a book they re-read annually. It\u2019s a well-written fantasy\/alternate history novel that I was glad I read (some of the sections are outstanding), but probably won\u2019t re-read at any point soon.<\/p>\n

10. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About<\/i> by Mil Millington
\nA novel based on a website that probably should have stayed a website, not unlike The Flying Spaghetti Monster<\/i> book.<\/p>\n

11. Special Topics in Calamity Physics<\/i> by Marisha Pessl
\nThis is the third book about teenage angst I read this year (see #4 and #8), but it is a very good one. Relentlessly annotated with real and made-up references (by relentlessly, I mean every 2-3 sentences have a footnote), it is a very richly detailed story that turns from run-of-the-mill outcast story to something darker.<\/p>\n

12. Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life<\/i> by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans\/Marian Evans)
\nRecommended by Nick Hornby, sort of, this is my first George Eliot novel, and it wasn\u2019t my last, as this list will attest. Very witty, and well written.<\/p>\n

13. Silas Marner<\/i> by George Eliot
\nA short, simple work, but well-wrtten and enjoyable. Middlemarch was upper classes, Marner is lower.<\/p>\n

14. Shakespeare Wrote for Money<\/i> by Nick Hornby
\nDo you like reading books? Have you read Nick Hornby\u2019s books compiling his articles about reading books? If you answered No to either of those questions, you are dead to me. Resurrect yourself and get one of these from McSweeneys.com. If you answered Yes to both questions, aren\u2019t these books awesome? I thought so. I mean, the man got me reading George Eliot and Charles Dickens for goodness sakes.<\/p>\n

15. Adam Bede<\/i> by George Eliot
\nAnother well-written tale of the lower classes and the upper classes in contrast. The plot is not the point, the way it is told is.<\/p>\n

16. Arkansas<\/i> by John Brandon
\nA first novel, published by McSweeney\u2019s. I\u2019m not ordinarily a fan of back country drug dealer stories, but I enjoyed this one. A portion of this novel was in the second person, and I thought it worked well.<\/p>\n

17. Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America<\/i> by David Hadju
\nA very interesting tale of government and community attempts to censor an art form. It\u2019s a good thing this doesn\u2019t happen any more.<\/p>\n

18. The Zero<\/i> by Jess Walter
\nA really interesting story told through the eyes of a 9\/11 worker who experiences long periods of blackouts. We only catches glimpses of his life, but know as much as he does about what he\u2019s doing. Darkly comic in much the same way that Memento<\/u> is. <\/p>\n

19. Daniel Deronda<\/i> by George Eliot
\nSo, this is more or less Adam Bede. The two of them are like Some Kind of Wonderful<\/u> and Pretty in Pink<\/u>. Only no gender switching, and the hero always ends up with Mary Stuart Masterson.<\/p>\n

20. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Etc. Who Was Born In Newgate, and During a Life of Continu’d Variety For Threescore Years, Besides Her Childhood, Was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife [Whereof Once To Her Own Brother], Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon In Virginia, At Last Grew Rich, Liv’d Honest, and Died a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums.<\/i> by Daniel Defoe
\nI love super-long titles for books. I liked this book, but it has a feel of a Bunch Of Stuff That Happened instead of a story.<\/p>\n

21. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe<\/i> by Daniel Defoe
\nThe story is intriguing (though, again, a Bunch of Stuff That Happened), even if the protagonist is flawed by modern measures.<\/p>\n

22. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes<\/i> by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
\nMy first Holmes read since The Hound of the Baskervilles in school. I didn\u2019t like Hound (at least at the time), but I enjoyed these short stories. I\u2019m also seeing reflections of Holmes in many modern characters I\u2019ve loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books read in 2004: 21 Books read in 2005: 28 Books read in 2006: 40 Books read in 2007: 30 Books read in 2008: 41 Books read in 2009: 22 That can’t be right… can it? That’s back to 2004 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[481,513],"tags":[494,432,81],"class_list":["post-1221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-log","category-books","tag-book-log-2","tag-book-log-2009","tag-book-log-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3358,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions\/3358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journal.electric-rocket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}