The Year in Books

Every year I keep a list of all the books (and short stories) I read. I started this in 1995 and it creates a type of lively journal of my years, as in “Oh yeah, I read The Portable Faulkner on the plane to San Diego, didn’t I?” or “I bought that book in Philadelphia” or “Why did I read Hunchback of Notre Dame in Rome? Shouldn’t I have read Dante or something Italian?”

Anyway, it’s fun to log them in and count them up at year’s end. (I’m going to end up in the mid-20s this year, while in 2006—thanks to the miracle of audio books—I actually finished 56 titles,.)

2008 was Different
This year, I decided to focus on literature written by Christians and the arts, specifically the craft of writing. I did this because I usually read wherever my moods take me, and I wanted to build a certain mental framework that specifically fed my experience within Christian literature, offered me with insights into the creation process, and provided general context (in this case the ripe Rembrandt’s Eyes that is promising me about 500 more pages of pleasure in 2009 and perhaps 2010).

So while I occasionally strayed into other areas, especially dipping into a hand full of Young Adult titles shoved onto Caleb at school—how did Island of the Blue Dolphins win any award except for tediousness?—I basically stuck to my commitment. (Though I was especially amazed that such an astounding fiction talent as Micahel Chabon could write so many essays with so few rewards as Maps and Legends demonstrates.)

My year in books looked like this:

Christian Literature

• Contemporary Titles—Marilynne Robinson’s Home, Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi, Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young & Handsome, and Uvem Akpan’s harrowing short stories of Africa in Say You’re One of Them.
  
• Classic Titles—Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illyich, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited

Writing / Arts Titles

• How Fiction Works by James Wood. Insightful & pentetrating. He uses writing from the canon to prove his every point.
  
• Art and the Bible by Francis A. Schaeffer. Interesting, but not amazing.


• Literary Genius edited by Joseph Epstein. Literary biographies of 25 Americans & Brits with spectacular wood prints by Barry Moser.


• Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter. Energetic screeds against lazy thinking about writing. He even defends melodrama successfully.


• Conversations with Flannery O’Conner edited by Rosemary M. Magee, which may be good enough to teach a fiction writing course from.

But Wait! There's More!

I also tackled a number of Christian books (two by Kathleen Norris, A Tale of Three Kings by Gene Edwards, among others), but I’m glad I (largely) kept to my commitment. Of course, I won’t be able to evaluate their value for another couple years, but I didn’t feel cheated as I made my choices throughout the year.

Do you keep a reading list? What did your Year in Reading consist of? (Extra points for the person who can identify the picture of an author on my reading list.

Merry Christmas!