I have about half of book #38 to go, but since tomorrow is New Year's Eve (and I feel pretty confident that I'm going to achieve my 38 books goal in the next 24 hours or so), I think it's time to reflect on what I read in 2008.
Here's the full list, with a little breakdown at the end:
1. Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
2. Skinny Bitch by Rory Freedman
3. Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
4. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
5. Speaking with the Angel by Nick Hornby
6. Night Train by Martin Amis
7. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
8. The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman
9. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
10. Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
11. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
12. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
13. Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
14. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
15. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
16. The Preservationist by David Maine
17. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
18. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
19. Marley & Me by John Grogan
20. Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
21. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
22. How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
23. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
24. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
25. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
26. King Dork by Frank Portman
27. Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
28. The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
29. The Further Adventures of a London Call Girl by Belle de Jour
30. A Wolf at the Table by Augusten Burroughs
31. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt
32. Songbook by Nick Hornby
33. The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
34. An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
35. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
36. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
37. I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
38. The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten (almost finished with it)
Three of these books were re-reads (Fight Club, The Catcher in the Rye, High Fidelity), two of them were terrible (Skinny Bitch, The Diagnosis), fourteen were non-fiction or memoirs or at least non-fictionesque, nineteen were by authors I had never read before and six were published before I was born.
As for my favorites, they were:
Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Songbook by Nick Hornby
Along with my two previously-read favorites:
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
Extremely honorable mentions, and highly recommended to most of you include:
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
King Dork by Frank Portman
Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
I'll have reviews of the final three books soon, but first I have to finish #38!