Robin Camille Davis
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Books I read in 2011

January 15, 2012

I read 18 books in 2011. It was a pretty good reading year, although I read fewer books than in 2010 (21) and 2009 (59!), which is worrisome. None of these are for class, and I will point out that I've been slogging through Infinite Jest since like May, so that is a factor. (Infinite summer, my foot.) Bold titles indicate books I read for the first time that I highly recommend.

  • Regarding The Pain Of Others, by Susan Sontag
  • Illness As Metaphor, by Susan Sontag
  • Chronic City, by Jonathan Lethem
  • All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy
  • Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
  • The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony
  • The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel (reread)
  • Atlas Of Remote Islands: Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot On And Never Will, by Judith Schalansky
  • Cosmicomics, by Italo Calvino
  • Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
  • Great House, by Nicole Krauss
  • The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
  • The Englishman Who Posted Himself And Other Curious Objects, by John Tingey
  • A Short History Of Women, by Kate Walbert
  • Hons And Rebels, by Jessica Mitford
  • Love In A Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford (reread)
  • Pyongyang, by Guy Delisle (reread)

Biggest literary disappointment? The Marriage Plot. It was like reading literary Twilight, and so obviously scraped from his college-age years, but without any semblance of the patina of wisdom that comes with time. I will freely admit that my main motivation for picking it up was to read about 1980s Brown. Anyway, if you want to read Eugenides, read Middlesex.