Ladies and Gentlemen! It’s my triumphant return to Literary Lollapalooza. WTF? Where have I been? What have I been reading?
Since it’s been over a year since I last posted one of these, I guess I should just start with a list of everything I’ve read over that point. Maybe I’ll say a little something about it, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just tell you if it was good. Maybe I won’t.
As a quick reminder, I have a rule that I try to stick to, and it’s that one out of every four books I read needs to be a Pulitzer Prize Winner. Outside of that, I read whatever I want to.
I’m not feeling the need for a long introduction, so I’m just going to jump right in on it:
BOOKS READ OVER THE LAST 12 MONTHS
(** denotes Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Geraldine Brooks, “March”** - Don’t waste your time. One of the most dreadfully boring books I’ve ever read. As bad as Willa Cather.
Christopher Moore, “Fool”
Truman Capote, “Other Voices, Other Rooms”
Ken Grimwood, “Replay”
Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”
Bryan Burrough, “Public Enemies”
Chuck Klosterman, “
Dan Brown, “The Lost Symbol”
A.J. Jacobs, “The Know-It-All”
Marilyn Robinson, “
Edward P. Jones, “The Known World”** - The first Pulitzer Winner I’ve read since starting my rule that I liked.
Richard Russo, “
Nick Hornby, “Shakespeare Wrote for Money”
Joe Meno, “The Great Perhaps” – See Chuck’s write-up for this one.
Nick Hornby, “Juliet, Naked” – See Chuck’s write-up for this, as well.
Chuck Klosterman, “Eating the Dinosaur”
Michael Chabon, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”** - Absolutely loved this one.
Seth Godin, “All Marketers Are Liars”
David Cordingly, “Under the Black Flag”
It was a light year for me, as I was working on several other things and didn’t devote as much time to reading as I usually do. I’m working on fixing that. Stay tuned, in the next couple days, my Literary Lollapalooza from July will be making it’s way onto the Intertubes!
I agree Ryan about Cavalier and Klay: Great! I am sad to hear the bad news about Gilead. It's on my bookshelf and I'll eventually get to it, but now I'm not excited at all. I haven't read the Known World yet, but I hear great things. So glad to have you back!
ReplyDeleteGilead bored me. It took me a month to read it, because I couldn't get excited about it. At all. I do have to say, the last 60 pages of March were very good. I flew through those. Getting to them was like pulling teeth, though.
ReplyDelete