Sunday, January 4

2008 book list

The first time I came across Lake Loop and In Blue Ink, they had posted a list of the books they had read that year (like they did this year, here and here). I've always been the type of person to visit someone's house for the first time and immediately check out their bookshelves. Since I found their books to often be my books, I started "following" their blogs and I figured this year, I should return the bookshelf voyeurism. The following list is based on memory and hence very partial--it also doesn't include any of the pregnancy and parenting books I read.

Courage for the Earth/various
The Best American Short Stories 2005
The 100-Mile Diet (aka Plenty)/Alisa Smith and I can't remember her partner's name
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America/Barbara Ehrenreich
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle/Barbara Kingsolver
Rant/Chuck Palahniuk
Building Suburbia/Dolores Hayden
The Namesake/Jhumpa Lahiri
Affluenza/John de Graaf
In Defense of Food/Michael Pollan
The Botany of Desire/Michael Pollan
The Omnivore's Dilemma/Michael Pollan
Last Child in the Woods/Richard Louv
Freakonomics/Steven Levitt
Depletion and Abundance/Sharon Astyk (a Blogging Bookworm giveaway--thank you!)
Unaccustomed Earth/Jhumpa Lahiri
The Hour I First Believed/Wally Lamb (just started reading)

8 comments:

BerryBird said...

Oh, you got it right: your books are definitely my books... and I do the same thing when I go to someone's house for the first time. I already added Unaccustomed Earth to my wish list based on your tip, but I think I should look into some of these others, too. This is a great list, thanks so much for playing along!

Anonymous said...

If I did a book list it would be nearly empty - I was so focused on the work of remodeling my house. But I decided that I would take time this winter and started reading again on my vacation. This post made me decide to keep a list to keep track.

a/k/a Nadine said...

Neat list! Glad you've joined in the fun. :-)

Green Bean said...

Ohhh, some good ones there! Some I've read and think you'll like and some I'd like to read and look forward to reading what you think of them. Thanks for the book peep show.

Green Bean said...

Doh! Realizing now that these are books that you read - not that you mean to read. What did you think of Nickel and Dimed and also Building Suburbia?

Electronic Goose said...

GB--Building Suburbia was wonderful, and I highly recommend reading it. Not only does Hayden provide a historic and social background to how we got in this mess, but she also throws in feminist perspective on a subject that I wouldn't normally consider from that angle. The book covers all of the many, many factors that converged into creating suburbia, and she concludes with some suggestions on how to rebuild that are different from standards like Paul Lukez's.

Nickel and Dimed, not so much. I think it's a great book to open the eyes of upper middle class folk to the struggles of the working poor, but Ehrenreich's position within the upper class negates some of her experiences. It's worth reading, and it's a quick read, but it's not great.

Anonymous said...

Interesting blog, thank you for sharing this

a/k/a Nadine said...

I picked up The Namesake at a used bookstore this afternoon. I immediately started reading it and can't put it down. I'm glad the author's name caught my eye, as it wasn't anyone I was familiar with before seeing this list. Thanks!