Big List of Shame 2008

[amari_z]

Perhaps a real updatey type post later, but now I’m waiting for something at work, and so have decided this is a lull and I will update my Big List of Shame. It’s a little sad to delete all the books I've read, since they show progress amidst the madness (I had reached equilibrium between the read and unread tally at the end of the year). But a new year seems like a good time to clean it up, and I've gone on a mini buying spree recently--and I'm eyeing more. (Stop that!) I don’t think I’ve even added everything I purchased. ^^; Perhaps the sheer numbers here will have some impact on me, considering I have a few more books on this list than the total number of books I remember reading last year.


Fiction
1. Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah 6/4
2. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun* 7/18
3. Peter Ackroyd, The Plato Papers* 7/27
4. Peter Ackroyd, The Lambs of London* 8/7
5. Saher Alam, The Groom to Have Been* 12/12
6. Tahmima Anam, A Golden Age* 3/6
7. Pat Barker, Life Class * 2/2
8. Honore de Balzac, Eugenie Grandet*2/25
9. Honore de Balzac, Old Goriot* 9/7
10. Samuel Beckett, Molly*
11. Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies*
12. Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable*
13. Carol Berg, Breath and Bone*
14. Jermey Blachman, @nonymous Lawyer 8/18
15. Peter Carey, My Life as a Fake* 8/30
16. Vikram Chandra, Sacred Games*
17. Susanna Clark, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
18. J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello* 5/2
19. Sioned Davies (trans), The Mabinogion
20. Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter * 8/31
21. George Eliot, Middlemarch
22. Nuruddin Farah: Links 1/23
23. Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End* 6/19
24. Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore 1/24
25. Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices 5/7
26. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring 5/12
27. Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's 7/3*
28. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Means of Escape* 11/6
29. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Golden Child* 6/22
30. Jasper Fforde, Thursday Next: First Among Sequels* 8/17
31. Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide 1/14
32. Amitav Ghosh, The Circle of Reason* 3/19
33. Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes * 7/25
34. Edward P. Jones: The Known World 10/3
35. Franz Kafka, Collected Stories
36. Sayed Kashua, Let it be Morning* 9/17
37. Elias Khoury, Gate of the Sun 4/26
38. Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth* 5/14
39. Lancelot of the Lake
40. Chang-Rae Lee: Aloft
41. Christopher Logue, All Day Permanent Red 3/5
42. Christopher Logue, War Music*
43. Colum McCann, Zoli* 6/14
44. Colum McCann, Dancer* 7/29
45. Colum McCann, This Side of Brightness* 8/12
46. Colum McCann, Songdogs* 9/19
47. Ian McEwan, Enduring Love* 2/10
48. Dinaw Mengestu The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears* 6/23
49. David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas 8/15
50. Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion 8/4
51. Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, A Companion to Wolves* 9/16
52. Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun* 1/8/08
53. Haruki Murakami, After Dark* 7/9
54. V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas* 7/16
55. V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River* 9/24
56. R.K. Narayan, Mr. Sampath--The Printer of Malgudi 1/11/08
57. R.K. Narayan, The Financial Expert 8/8
58. R.K. Narayan, Waiting for the Mahatma 9/30
59. R.K. Narayan, Swami and Friends 4/30
60. R.K. Narayan, The Bachelor of Arts 6/7
61. R.K. Narayan, The Dark Room 6/8
62. R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher 7/3
63. Ono, Fuyumi Sea of Wind* 4/08
64. Helen Oyeyemi, The Opposite House* 7/22
65. Orhan Pamuk, Snow* 8/1
66. Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses* 6/10
67. Philip Pullman, Once Upon a Time in the North * 7/26
68. Siegfried Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
69. Kamila Shamsie, Broken Verses* 2/12
70. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* 9/9
71. Elizabeth Speller, Following Hadrian
72. Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma
73. Tatyana Tolstaya, White Walls
74. M. G. Vassanji, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall* 8/11
75. Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall 2/20/08
76. Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen 1/30/08
77. Evelyn Waugh, Unconditional Surrender 2/1/08
78. Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust3/28/08
79. Evelyn Waugh, Put Out More Flags* 6/20/08
80. Evelyn Waugh, Scoop* 10/8
81. Evelyn Waugh, Black Mischief* 9/10
82. Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One* 10/8
83. Evelyn Waugh, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold*10/8
84. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 1/7/08


Nonfiction
1. Alcock et al., Pausanias
2. Lindsay Allen, The Persian Empire
3. Thomas Asbridge: The First Crusade 5/25
4. Babur, The Baburnama
5. Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone 8/5
6. Jeannie Boyer, Daily Life in Ancient India
7. Edmund Blunden, The Undertones of War
8. T. Bryce, Trojans and their Neighbors*
9. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians
10. Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World *
11. Tim Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome*
12. Ragiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City
13. Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng, Benjamin Ajak, They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky* 6/25
14. Malcom Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle* 2/29/08
15. Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi 5/29
16. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities* 12/30
17. Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Scriptures*
18. Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich*
19. Christopher Fee, Gods, Heroes & Kings 9/28
20. Guglielmo Ferrero, Characters and Events of Roman History: From Caesar to Nero 3/29
21. M.I. Finey, World of Odysseus* 9/21
22. Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain*
23. Lawrence M. Friedman: Law in America
24. Francessco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades
25. Amitav Ghosh, Incendiary Circumstances*
26. Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun* 6/27
27. Peter Godwin, Mukiwa* 7/2
28. Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus *
29. Andrew Gordon, Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present
30. Al Gore, The Assault on Reason
31. Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare *
32. Linda Greenhouse, Becoming Justice Blackmun
33. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society *7/6
34. Chris Hedges, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning * 8/28
35. Peter Hessler, Oracle Bones*
36. Paul Johnson: The Renaissance
37. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
38. Stuart Kelly, The Book of Lost Books
39. Rashid Khalidi The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood * 9/16
40. Ross King, Machiavelli 2/19/08
41. Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence
42. Edward Larson: Evolution
43. Livy, Books I-V (Luce Translation)
44. Mary Lefkowitz: Greek Gods, Human Lives
45. Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East 9/11
46. Edward Luce, In Spite of the Gods
47. Martin Marty, The Christian World* 7/11
48. Heather McKillop, The Ancient Maya: New Perspectives
49. Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
50. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge: The Company 12/22
51. Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps*
52. Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea
53. Azar Nafisi: Reading Lolita in Tehran 11/19
54. Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making*
55. Stephen O'Shea Sea of Faith*
56. Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City* 5/22
57. Jonathan Philips, The Fourth Crusade 12/8
58. Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology
59. P. J. Rhodes, Athenian Democracy*
60. H.H. Scullard, History of the Roman World: 753 to 146 BC 2/9/08
61. H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 BC to AD 68 3/4/08
62. Tahir Shah, The Caliph's House 7/8
63. Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character* 2/13
64. Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks* 10/24
65. Seth L. Shein, The Mortal Hero 2/15/08
66. Daniel C. Snell, Life in the Ancient Near East
67. Dava Sobel: The Planets 9/26
68. Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History *
69. Kevin Starr: California
70. Barry Strauss, The Battle of Salamis 10/26
71. Barry Strauss, The Trojan War* 2/27
72. Romila Thapar, Early India
73. Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs*
74. John V. Tolan, Saracens* 11/4
75. Milton Viorst, Storm from the East 11/29
76. Alexander Waugh, Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family* 10/15
77. Frances Wood, The Silk Road
78. Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor
79. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World *


* Purchased in 2008

Comments

[darklyscarlett.livejournal.com]

OMG -- there's an application on Facebook that allows you to add a Visual Bookshelf to your wall (the message space on your profile page is actually called a wall). There are a few categories you can add, including books bought, read, and want to read. You type in the title, and it auto-generates a thumbnail of the cover. It's pretty cool. I am so tempted, but I think the limit for each section is about 100.

I'm also not sure how I feel about having an actual visual representation of my addiction.

[amari-z.livejournal.com]

That would even tempt me to join facebook, but not for only 100 books. Phth. Amateurs. My list is at that (I just remembered a few more), and that's not even including all the older stuff that I've never bothered to list.

[darklyscarlett.livejournal.com]

Oh god, apparently there is no limit. I started it tonight -- it's connected to Amazon -- and it just goes on. Apparently, you can solicit recommendations and stuff from all your friends who are willing to let you access their lists. Here's a shot of my bookshelf after only a few entries:

[amari-z.livejournal.com]

Pretty cool.

I've been using delicious library to try to keep track of my books. It also looks up the info on Amazon, so you can see all your covers. I don't think it has any networking aspects, but I think they're adding them in with the new version. I can't say I really care about the sharing thing, since I certainly don't need people's help in buying more books ;)

[cat-o-wen.livejournal.com]

My list of shame is probably as long as yours....or somewhere close. I'm not brave enough to count them. *laughs*

Cheers to another great year of book collecting!

[amari-z.livejournal.com]

I make myself count them so that I can feel some guilt at least when I next hit that buy button on amazon. ;) It doesn't seem much to stop me from actually clicking though . . . .

[cat-o-wen.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would deter me either. *laughs*


Oh look! Amazon just delivered two more books! Wheeeee! *gg* Well, one was required for a class at school...so surely that one doesn't count in the list of shame. *smirks* But the other....well....*tosses it on the pile*

[amari-z.livejournal.com]

And I'm sure you needed to order the second one in order to get free shipping on the school book, so that probably shouldn't count either.

[cat-o-wen.livejournal.com]

How did you know? *smiles and attempts a look of innocence*

[shelley-stone.livejournal.com]

I don't think you should call it a list of shame. Buying good books is always a joy and a treat. Reading them is enlightening and fun. Learning should be an ongoing life long event. So, long live buying, reading and enjoying books.

Look on the bright side...... when you retire think of the fun you can have reading for the 1st time all those books you didn't have time for because of RL, and, re-reading those books you did :)) because time is no longer an issue.

Shelley

[amari-z.livejournal.com]

Buying books is an excellent thing, I agree, but between the space issues and the huge number of unread books, I really should be holding off on yet buying more right now. Should being the important word there. ;)