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.