My Reading Year, 2013

My wife reminded me that we got married and pregnant this year, and we both worked a ton, plus we we took a few small summer trips, but still, I'm a little discouraged that I didn't meet my reading goal, which was 52 books. I've been buying books at library sales and off remainder shelves at bookstores for years, and now I have a nice collection of books I've never read. One of the purposes of setting my reading goal was to read a lot of those books that have been gathering dust for years. I established a few small rules for myself and I mostly followed them, with one or two deviations that were totally worth breaking the rules for. These were my rules: I had to read books from my shelves that I had never read before. I couldn't borrow books from the library. At least half the books had to be from the Modern Library's Top 100 Novels. As a side goal, I wanted to read as many of my wife's favorite books as I could, especially the ones she read as a young person. I liked a few of them a lot, and in fact one of my favorite books of the year was a young adult novel she loved called The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by Avi.

So, here's my 2013 Reading List:

1. Animal Farm, George Orwell
2. Best Erotic Poems, David Lehman, Editor
3. O Pioneers, Willa Cather
4. The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker
5. The Captain's Verses, Pablo Neruda
6. The Sea of Grass, Conrad Richter
7. Habibi, Craig Thompson
8. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Sparks
9. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
10. My Life as a Weapon, Hawkeye Vol.1, Matt Fraction and David Aja
11. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
12. The Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West
13. Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington
14. The Yellow Lighted Bookstore, Lewis Buzbee
15. The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
16. Daily Rituals, Mason Currey
17. Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
18. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates
19. Disquiet, Julia Leigh
20. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr
21. Call of the Wild, Jack London
22. Strong is Your Hold, Galway Kinnell
23. Stag's Leap, Sharon Olds
24. Scapled, Vol. 9, Jason Aaron
25. Scalped, Vol. 10, Jason Aaron
26. The House Made of Dawn, N. Scott Momaday
27. Sailor Twain, Mark Seigel
28. The Nao of Brown, Glynn Dillon
29. The Celts of Myth and Legend, Tim Roberts
30. The Wasp Eater, William Lychack
31. Flex Mentallo, Grant Morrison, Frank Quietly
32. Late for Work, David Tucker
33. Hating Alison Ashley, Robin Klein
34. Star Girl, Jerry Spinelli
35. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
36. The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi

I have bookmarks in two books I didn't finish before the new year, they are The Devil's Arithmetic, by Jane Yolen, and Whirligig, by Paul Fleischman.