Barbara's Random Thoughts

Here's the annual reading list, a little late this year due to recent travels. I actually thought I might finish a couple more to add to this list while I was gone--but no. So here's this year's somewhat meagre total, broken down by category, with brief notes to follow. The titles with stars were ones I read for NCSA.

Fiction: (9)
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Perelandra, C.S. Lewis
Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
The Magician's Assistant, Ann Patchett
The Feast of Love, Charles Baxter
The Club Dumas, Arturo Perez-Reverte
Wieland: or, The Transformation, Charles Brockden Brown
Dance, Dance, Dance, Haruki Murakami
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Suskind

Children's: (7)
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
Chasing Vermeer, Blue Balliett
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
Forever in Blue, Ann Brashares
A City in Winter, Mark Helprin
The Wind Singer, William Nicholson
The Enchanted Castle, E. Nesbit

Nonfiction: (11)
*Spiritual Direction, Henri Nouwen
*Sub-Merge, John Hayes
*Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Traveling Mercies, Ann Lamott
*The Master Plan of Evangelism, Robert Coleman
*Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster
*The Shaping of Things to Come, Alan Hirsch & Michael Frost
*The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard
Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
The Allure of Hope, Jan Meyers
The Irresistible Revolution, Shane Claiborne

Poetry:
Wild Iris, Louise Gluck (yeah, I listed this last year, but I actually read through the whole collection this year)

Re-read:
*Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver

Read chunks of:
*Knocking Over the Leadership Ladder, Paul R. Ford
*Theology for the Community of God, Stanley J. Grenz

Grand total (including re-reads so I reach a nice round number but not including poetry or books I only read bits of): 30

Small thoughts:
I had a grand run of great fiction at the beginning of the year, with Atonement, Perelandra, and re-reading Cry, the Beloved Country and The Sparrow. The rest of my fiction reading for the year (with the exception of kids books, that is--HP7 was great fun) was more patchy and kind of "eh" overall. Then there was that disturbing run of novels having to do with murder and/or the occult. (Thanks, Anne, for that care package!) I'm proud of the increase in my nonfiction reading, due largely to NCSA required reading. Not that I'm complaining. Highlights of the year in that category (all NCSA stuff): Nouwen, Willard, and Hirsch/Frost. I feel like I've become a broken record when it comes to recommending and referencing Divine Conspiracy. But it's just so good. Read it.

On the off chance that you're interested, here are my lists from 2006 and 2005. I read fewer books this year all around, but I am proud to report that I also bought far fewer books. I made a nice dent in the category of books I've purchased and always meant to read. (That sentence just reminded me of a passage from Calvino and it's driving me crazy that it would require me sifting through 5 or 6 boxes in order to find the book to read and quote the passage. Argh.)

Labels: reading