Links go to my reviews. * indicates books read as e-books, ** were audiobooks
2013
Mogador, Alberto Ruy Sanchez
A Rosario Castellanos Reader, Maureen Ahern and others, translators
Bolero, Angeles Mastretta
First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century, David Lida
The Orange Tree, Carlos Fuentes
The Traveler's Companion to Mexican Literature, C.M.Mayo, ed.
The Life of Pi, Yann Martel **
The Beloved Returns, Thomas Mann
Mission to Paris, Alan Furst
The Sea, John Banville
Himalaya Poems, Ko Un
White Egrets, Derek Walcott
Word into Silence, John Main, OSB
Istanbul Passage, Joseph Kanon **
2012
Descriptive blog post about my 2012 reading.
Gilead, Marilynne RobinsonBleak House, Charles Dickens*
Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen**
Richard II, William Shakespeare (reread)
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens*The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, Bernie Krause
Chorister at the Abbey, Lis Howell**
Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools through Fearless Leadership, Yvette Jackson and Veronica McDermott
Van Gogh Up Close, Cornelia Homburg, editor
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce*
History of Butoh, Khadija Anderson (full-length poetry collection)
Worlds Apart, Dorothee Lang and Smith Murthy
I Stand Here Shredding Documents, Kristin Berkey Abbott (poetry chapbook)
Balance, Robbi Nestor (poetry chapbook)
Saga of the People of Laxardal (from Sagas of Icelanders)
What the Twilight Says (essays), Derek Walcott
A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Marly Youmans *
Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Naht Hahn
Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti *
Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental journey Through Quebec, Taras Grescoe
Roads to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom
The Common Reader, First Series, Virginia Woolf *
The Most Beautiful Thing, Fiona Robyn *
The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obreht *
Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal, Rob Rieman
That Woman, Tom Montag (poetry chapbook)
Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, Tamim Ansary
2011 (Links go to my reviews) (* indicates books read as e-books)
Descriptive blog post about my 2011 reading.
Letters from Iceland, W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice
Fight the Wild Island, Ted Edwards
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes (audio book read by Richard Morant)
The Wide, Wide World, Susan Bogert Warner
Vatnsdœla saga, from The Sagas of Icelanders
Egil's Saga, from The Sagas of Icelanders
Opening the World, Dale Favier (poetry chapbook)
The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (audio book)
Open City, Teju Cole (rereading)
Ice and Gaywings, Ken Pobo (poetry chapbook)
The Book of Ystwyth, six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
Triplicity, Kristin McHenry (poetry chapbook)
Paper Covers Rock, Chella Courington (poetry chapbook)
Phaedrus, Plato
The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde*
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf*
I Stand Here Shredding Documents, Kristin Berkey Abbott (poetry chapbook)
Possession, A.S. Byatt
The Years, Virginia Woolf*
The Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett*
The Throne of Psyche, Marly Youmans
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy. Adaptation for the stage by Mark Healy.
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (reread on its centennial)*
The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt
Errata, George Steiner
Dark and Like a Web, Nic Sebastian* (poetry chapbook)
De Niro's Game, Rawi Hage
How I Became a Nun, César Aira
The Death of Tragedy, George Steiner
Phédre, Jean Baptiste Racine
Broken, Karin Fossum
The Redbreast, Jo Nesbo
The Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton (rereading)
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Lydia Davis
To the Wedding, John Berger
The Jewel Box Garden, Thomas Hobb
Under the Glacier, Halldor Laxness
The Stone Raft, José Saramago
Home is Where We Meet, John Berger (rereading)
Human Chain, Seamus Heaney
Val/Orson, Marly Youmans
Independent People, Halldor Laxness
Open City, Teju Cole
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Hakiro Murakami
Lords of the Sea: Athenian Naval Power in the 5th century, John Hales
2010
Descriptive blog post about my 2010 reading
Helen, Euripides
"You have your sorrows, I know it well. But it were best
to bear your life's constraints as lightly as you may."
Mary's Wedding, Stephen Massicotte (play)
The Shadow of the Sun, Rysard Kapuscinski
The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk
All Souls', Javier Marias
The Blind Contessa's New Machine, Carey Wallace
Ivon Hitchens (his art and life), Peter Khoroche
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
Light in August, William Faulkner
A Writer's Diary, Virginia Woolf
The year of the death of Ricardo Reis, José Saramago
Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner
The bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak
South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami
The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
Champlain's Dream (a biography of Samuel de Champlain) David Hackett Fischer
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
A Mind at Peace, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Birds Without Wings, Louis de Bernieres
Non-Adhesive Binding, Books Without Paste or Glue, Volume I, Keith A. Smith
English, August: An Indian Story, Upamanyu Chatterjee
Brücke: The Birth of Expressionism in Dresden and Berlin, 1905-1913
The Thing Around Your Neck, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe
Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Henry V, William Shakespeare
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
The Gargoyle, Andrew Davidson
Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh
Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, Jonathan Gould
2009
Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad
Grandfather Stories, Stephen Hopkins Adams
A Mixture of Frailties, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, III)
Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, II)
Tempest Tossed, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, I)
The Pragmatist and his Free Spirit, Susan Chan Egan and Chih-p'ing Chou
World of Wonders, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, III)
The Manticore, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, II)
An Outcast of the Islands, Joseph Conrad
Thirty-Two films About Glenn Gould (screenplay), Francois Girard and Don McKellar
Fifth Business, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, I)
The Ni---- of the 'Narcissus', Joseph Conrad
Almayer's Folly, Joseph Conrad
The Arrow of Gold, Joseph Conrad
Une Vie, Guy de Maupassant
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Fresco, Luljeta Lleshanaku
Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare
Complete Poems, C.P. Cavafy (Daniel Mendelsohn, translator)
Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
Other Colors, Orhan Pamuk
The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas
Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje
Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier
The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone, Sophocles
The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton
Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 1, Werner Jaeger
The Demons, Heimito von Doderer
Philoctetes, Sophocles
Elektra, Sophocles
Iphegenia in Taurus, Elektra, Hippolytus, Euripides
En Relisant les Evangiles, Arnaud Desjardins
Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, John Ellis
2008
Division of the Spoils, Paul Scott (Raj Quartet #4)
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa
Dragon Thunder: My Life With Chogyam Trungpa, Diana Mukpo
Poems of Paul Celan
Les Aurores Montreales, Monique Proulx
The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald
Essays on The Iliad, Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff
War Music, Christopher Logue
Every Day is for the Thief, Teju Cole
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
The Aesthetics of Resistance, Peter Weiss
Un Grain de Sagesse, Arnaud Desjardins
The Places that Scare You, Pema Chodron
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
Daughter of Persia, Sattareh Farman Farmaian
The Great Enigma, New Collected Poems, Tomas Transtromer
Pour une mort sans peur, Arnaud Desjardins
The Republic, Plato
Maria Chapdelaine, Louis Hemon
Myth and Metamorphosis: A Study of Picasso's Classical Prints of the 1930s, Lisa Florman
The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
Metamorphoses, Ovid
The Age of Reason, Jean-Paul Sartre
Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy, Michael Baxandall
View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska (re-reading)
Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories, Italo Calvino
The Silent Cry, Dorothee Soelle
The Oresteia, Aeschylus
The Gift, Lewis Hyde
I don't seem to have notes for 2005-2007. Here are the years before that.
2004:
THE NEW LIFE
Orhan Pamuk
BEYOND BELIEF
Elaine Pagels
THE WINTER QUEEN
Boris Akunin
THE CAVE
Jose Saramago
SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION
Gustave Flaubert
GATHERING THE NEXT GENERATION
Essays on the Formation and Ministry of GenX Priests
Nathan Humphrey, Ed.
DISGRACE
J. M. Coetzee
THE ROAD TO SAN GIOVANNI
Italo Calvino (re-reading)
THE DA VINCI CODE
Dan Brown
GOD'S BANQUET: Food in Classical Arabic Literature
Geert Jan Van Gelder
BRANCHING STREAMS FLOW IN THE DARKNESS
Shunryu Suzuki
LIVING BUDDHA, LIVING CHRIST
Thich Naht Hanh
THE COURAGE TO BE
Paul Tillich
PICASSO AND MATISSE
Francoise Gilot
MATISSE AND PICASSO
Yves-Alain Bois
PICASSO: LITHOGRAPHS
Felix Reuse, Henri Duchamps, Erich Franz, Ulrike Gauss
THE NEW CHINESE PAINTING
Joan Lebold Cohen
ANIL'S GHOST
Michael Ondaatje
50 POEMS
Boris Pasternak
Polish Poetry:
ELEGY FOR THE DEPARTURE and other poems
REPORT FROM THE BESIEGED CITY
SELECTED POEMS
THE BARBARIAN IN THE GARDEN
Zbigniew Herbert
THEY CAME TO SEE A POET
Tadeusz Rozewicz
VIEW WITH A GRAIN OF SAND, Selected Poems
Wislawa Szymborska
NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS 1931-2001
THE CAPTIVE MIND (essays)
Czeslaw Milosz
TWO CITIES
MYSTICISM FOR BEGINNERS
Adam Zagajewski
TALKING TO MY BODY
Anna Swir (Swirszcynska)
THE MATURE LAUREL: Essays on Modern Polish Poetry
Adam Czerniawski, editor
MAGNETIC POLES: Essays on Modern polish and Comparative Literature
George Gomori
POLISH POETRY OF THE LAST TWO DECADES OF COMMUNIST RULE
An anthology edited by Stanislaw Baranczek and Clare Cavanaugh
2003
MORAL GRANDEUR AND SPIRITUAL AUDACITY
Abraham Joshua Heschel
FLOWER HERDING ON MOUNT MONADNOCK
Galway Kinnell
RECITATIVE
James Merrill
BEGIN AGAIN, New and Collected Poems
Grace Paley
CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER
Thomas Merton
CRESCENT
Diana Abu-Jaber
PORTS OF CALL
BALTHAZAR'S ODYSSEY
THE ROCK OF TANIOS
Amin Maalouf
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY: Comparative Perspectives
Winston Davis, ed.
An academic but enlightening series of essays by different authors that look at the origins of the concept of responsibility (response � ability) in Western democracy, and how responsibility is interpreted, or not, in non-Western societies.
PORTRAIT IN SEPIA
Isabel Allende
I keep waiting for her to write a book that is up to the stature of House of the Spirits; this one doesn�t make it � Allende is so deft it feels like she�s just tossing off page after page -- but it�s entertaining and has an occasional beautiful descriptive passage.
WHAT DO WE KNOW: Poems and Prose Poems
Mary Oliver
I generally admire Oliver very much, and if that�s like admitting you like a modern-day Frost, well, OK. There are some gems here; I like the prose poems less than the others.
SILK DRAGON (Chinese poetry)
Arthur Sze (trans.)
Wonderful poems, an overview of the tradition.
Drinking Wine (II)
T�ao Ch�ien
I built my house near where others live
but without noise of horse or carriage.
You ask, how can this be?
A distant mind leaves the earth around it.
I pick chrysanthemums below the eastern fence,
then gaze at mountains to the south.
The mountain air is fine at sunset,
flying birds go back in flocks.
In this there is a truth;
I wish to tell you, but lose the words.
BAROMETER RISING
Hugh MacLennan
A romance set against WWI and the Halifax explosion of December 6, 1917. I�m trying to read more Canadian fiction� was more fascinated by the history in the book than by the novel�s storyline, which was a little too pat; MacLennan�s style, though, is impressive for a first novel.
RAY OF DARKNESS
Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Dense essays that reveal Willams� complicated thinking and theology; often very moving and profound. I�m banking on him to help rescue the Anglican church and mainline Christianity from the conservatives and from a long period of attrition due to the failure to speak to modernity, and was happy with what I found here.
THE MANTLE OF THE PROPHET: RELIGION AND POLITICS IN IRAN
Roy Mottahedeh
Amazing book that weaves together an inside look at the rigorous education of Shiite clerics and the history of Iran. One of my top choices for this year.
THE NOISE OF TIME
Osip Mandelstam
Mandelstam was one of the greatest Russian poets of the early 20th centuty; he died in one of Stalin�s death camps. This is a book of his luminous and sometimes difficult prose, of which the best are the title essay, a memoir of childhood in St. Petersburg; and Journey to Armenia.
THE RAFT IS NOT THE SHORE
Conversations with Thich Naht Hahn and Daniel Berrigan
ONE, NO ONE & ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND
Luigi Pirandello
The Italian existentialist proves he is everyone in the title�
HAMLET
William Shakespeare
Well, it�s something to read this again. A different book now -- and it has to be the source of more quotations in the English language than anything escept the Bible. About one per page. I was dumbfounded.
MALLOY, MALONE DIES (parts 1&2 of Beckett�s Trilogy)
Samuel Beckett
Strangely comforting. Yikes, what does that say about me? Beckett rises to the top of my esteem.
HENRY IV PART 1
RICHARD I
RICHARD II
William Shakespeare
I haven�t read all the histories and after re-reading Richard II thought I�d start back at the beginning. Immediately bailed on King John, loved Richard I and Bolingbroke�s ascent to the throne, then got bogged down � bored? -- in Henry IV Part II. But the above are compelling and fresh: how little has changed in the lives of kings.
ISRAEL/PALESTINE: HOW TO END THE WAR OF 1948
Tanya Reinhart
Reinhart is right. Is anybody listening?
ULYSSES
James Joyce
No, I didn�t finish but I want to list it so I can whine. Bailed out for the second time in my life, this time on page 247, and on the recommendation of a friend picked up Beckett�s Trilogy and the Pirandello instead. A good move, in my estimation, but you can argue of course�
COOKBOOKS!
A friend asked, "What do you read for fun?" Well, actually, I read all of the above for pleasure, if not exactly "fun". But to relax, I read (and use)... cookbooks. The best new acquisitions of 2003:
A TASTE OF PERSIA: An Introduction to Persian Cooking
Najmieh K. Batmanglij
Everything I've made out of this book so far has been delicious, and has even met with the approval of my Iranian friend who is the best cook on the planet. Especially good are the many recipes for khoresh, or various Persian stews with vegetables and meat.
THE MOROCCAN COLLECTION
Hilaire Walden
Beautiful pictures and easy-to-follow recipes for tagines, couscous, chermoula...
AUTHENTIC VIETNAMESE COOKING
Corinne Trang
Authentic means not only terrific recipes for lemongrass chicken and summer rolls, but also for frogs legs, snails, and a treatise on dogs...
THE BOOK OF JEWISH FOOD: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York
Claudia Roden
An astounding book, divided into Ashkenazi and Sephardic sections, that not only gives family recipes with many variations, but tells the story of the people and their migrations. Winner of the James Beard cookbook of the year award, deservedly so. This is really a history of the Jewish people told through food.
FLATBREADS AND FLAVORS
Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid
Wonderful book with recipes for breads and stews and other foods to go with them, as well as stories of the couple's world travels. The recipe for Afghani bread is worth the price of the whole book.
A NEW BOOK OF MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD
Claudia Roden
An update of Claudia Roden's previous Penguin classic; the indispensible "Joy of Cooking" for Middle Eastern food.
2002 (notes to come)
THE CAIRO TRILOGY
Naguib Mahfouz
RELIGION AND COMMUNITY
Keith Ward
SEASON OF MIGRATION TO THE NORTH
Tayib Saleh
THE NAUTICAL CHART
THE FENCING MASTER
Arturo Perez-Reverte
ZEN AND THE ART OF KNITTING
Bernadette Murphy
NINE PARTS OF DESIRE: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Geraldine Brooks
MY NAME IS RED
Orhan Pamuk
ARABY
Eric Ormsby
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES
Jhumpa Lahiri
WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE
John Shelby Spong
THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
WE BELONG TO THE LAND
Elias Chacour
GRANTA 77 / SPRING 2002
What We Think of America
A CONFESSION AND OTHER RELIGIOUS WRITINGS
Leo Tolstoy
WAITING
Ha Jin
