read 100 books in 2006

89. Brave New World by Alduous Huxley.

I can’t believe I didn’t reach the goal! I thought it would be super easy, actually, and I’d reach it by July or something. In my defense, I was travelling a lot this year, and I moved to a place with not that many books in languages I can read… akh, who am I kidding? Too much internet! Not enough books! Urgh! Oh well, I’ve already finished 3 books this year, anyhow. I’m ahead of the goal so far! Maybe I should increase it to 150 books in 2007?? Just kidding!

84. & 85. Brev från utlandet and Brev från samhället by Eric Ericsson. This guy wrote a bunch of letters, and people answered him. Pretty funny.
86. Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
87. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami.
88. MASH by Richard Hooker.

81. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller. I thought this book was fairly riveting, which is a rare time when I agree with a comment that’s printed on the front of the book. It’s about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her marriage and a tradgedy that happened when she was younger. I though it dealt pretty well with older women’s sexuality (okay, she was only like 50 or something, she wasn’t elderly, but still!), something that doesn’t get talked about very much. & with fidelity in marriage.
82. The Outsider by Albert Camus. I didn’t think it “marked my life indelibly” which the front cover claimed it would do. It was pretty … eh. It’s about a guy who kills somebody, and then is sentenced to death, basically because he doesn’t go along with society’s ideas about how a person should be- sad when their mother dies, regretful when they kill somebody, and having faith in God. I think the idea is interesting, but… I just never really identified with the character, so I couldn’t care what happened to him.
83. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. This was kinda funny… I don’t know. I don’t think I got the deeper meaning, so I didn’t really get the point.
17 to go, and 20 days to do it in…

78. The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster.
79. Philosophy Made Simple by Robert Hellenga
80. Flying Solo by Roald Dahl

I liked all 3. I still have to read 1 book a day until New Year’s to reach my goal!!!

74. I remembered! Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I liked Dry a lot better.
75. Hypocrite In A White Dress by Susan Gilman. I liked it a lot. I was expecting just funny, lighthearted stories, but I liked that she talked about racial and feminist issues, among others. She’s funny gal, that Susy.
76. Animal Farm by George Orwell. I’m glad I finally read this. Evil pigs!!! I need to read 1984 now, too.
77. Thai Lite by S. Tsow. Completely lame. It was like bad, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny-like-Dave-Berry essays. But it was slightly fun that I knew some of the stuff he mentioned in Thailand. He was still lame, though. & I don’t think Tsow was his real last name. It’s just a feeling I get.
Uh, again, I feel like there’s a book I’m forgetting…

74. I remembered! Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs. I liked Dry a lot better.
75. Hypocrite In A White Dress by Susan Gilman. I liked it a lot. I was expecting just funny, lighthearted stories, but I liked that she talked about racial and feminist issues, among others. She’s funny gal, that Susy.
76. Animal Farm by George Orwell. I’m glad I finally read this. Evil pigs!!! I need to read 1984 now, too.
77. Thai Lite by S. Tsow. Completely lame. It was like bad, trying-too-hard-to-be-funny-like-Dave-Berry essays. But it was slightly fun that I knew some of the stuff he mentioned in Thailand. He was still lame, though. & I don’t think Tsow was his real last name. It’s just a feeling I get.
Uh, again, I feel like there’s a book I’m forgetting…

One more condensed book:
65. Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne.
I went on vacation for 12 days, and I read 9 books! Not too shabby!
First were 4 cheesy romance novels, just because they’re short. I did read them in Swedish, though, so that makes them slightly more educational. I didn’t write down the names, though, but that brings me to 69.
70. The Tesseract by Alex Garland. I’m not really into this type of book. It was okay, though.
71. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. It was alright. There was a lot of Spanish I didn’t understand (& a bit of Spanish I did), so that made it worse than it would have been otherwise. It’s about a Mexican American girl’s childhood and family history.
72. Sandor /slash/ Ida by Sara Kadefors. This is for young adults, but I thought it was pretty good anyhow. It’s about two teenagers who meet on the internet & help each other grow as people. I’m glad I’m not a teenager anymore, though, although I never felt as much angst as they did.
73. Wanderlust edited by salon.com. A collection of travel essays from the website. Pretty good. One of the most interesting was about travel books written about Africa, how they always start out the same way, with the author arriving on a plane or boat, looking at the vista, feeling anxious about scary Africa. Anyhow, it was a good book to read while travelling!
74. One more that I can’t remember right now…
I promise I didn’t spend all my time reading, either! I need more vacation if I’m going to finish in time!

60. Shopaholic & Sister by Sophia Kinsella. Ahhh… chick lit. I started saying “fab!” a lot more since I read this.
61. Hello Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland. This book was pretty different than the other stuff I’ve read- a bit similar to Girlfriend in a Coma but less pop cultury than that one. It was good.
62. Underground by Haruki Murakami. All about the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway in 1995. they were committed by the Aum cult. It was interesting reading the survivors accounts, but I thought the interviews with Aum members & former members were even better. It kinda made me want to become a Buddhist and join a cult (not neccessarily a Buddhist cult, though).
& two more condensed books (bwahahhaa!):
63. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. Because the author of The Russian Debutant’s Handbook that I read recently was compared to Evelyn, so I wanted to see if it was true. But I haven’t drawn any conclusions.
64. The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

57. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Super good, depressing book about Afghanistan and betrayal. My two favorite things!
58. The Preservationist by David Maine. About the Noah’s ark, except he’s named Noe in the book. Pretty good. I wonder if the author is religious. I think he definitely is. But he has long hair, which I’m pretty sure the Bible is against, so I don’t know.
59. The Russian Debutante’s Handbook by Gary Shteyngart. About this Russian guy who joins the mob. I didn’t really find the character that engaging. There were tons of praising remarks on the back cover & first page, which makes me wonder if that really sells books. I don’t like it, personally. One or two remarks, okay, more and it’s just silly. Some parts were funny, but I didn’t think it was “the real thing,” “terrifically charming,” or “blisteringly funny.” MAYBE “breezily hilarious,” but even that is stretching it.

51. Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta. A collection of fantastic (like from the word “fantasy,” althought they were quite good) stories. I liked it.
52. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This book seemed to take a loooooong time to read. It was okay… I would’ve liked more cholera, less love.

In contrast, the next 3 books took no time at all to read. Because they were condensed books!! Such a great invention!! I was debating about whether to include them or not, but they’re books, and I read them, so why the heck not?! I’ll never reach the goal otherwise!
53. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore.
54. The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.
55. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Okay, back to normal, uncondensed books.
56. The Secret House: The Extraordinary Science of an Ordinary Day by David Bodanis. This sucked. It’s a really interesting idea, to write about microscopic and scientific things in the house, but I didn’t like the way he wrote at all.