While I can’t say they were all marvelous works of fiction, I did have an interesting run of it. The beginning of the year saw me reading emotional fiction, then it turned silly and I became with a certain really amusing author closer to the summer, and the end was mostly a confused mess of all sorts of voices. My favorite over the whole year was definitely Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley.
Key:
+ = Amazing
++ = Good
+ = Okay
- = Never again (aka thrown in the trash)
1. The Nurses, Richard Frede +
2. Tales of Burning Love, Louise Erdrich +
3. Animal Dreams, Barbara Kingsolver +
4. Big If, Mark Costello -
5. Like a Hole in the Head, Jen Banbury -
6. Last Refuge of Scoundrels, Paul Lussier -
7. Some People, Places, and Things that will not appear in my next novel, John Cheever ++
8. The Giant's House, Elizabeth McCracken +
9. The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst +
10. Confessions of a Medical Heretic, Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. ++
11. Vinegar Hill, A. Manette Ansay ++
12. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon ++
13. Falling Leaves, Adeline Yen Mah ++
14. A World of Difference, Leona Blair ++
15. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd +
16. Descent from Xanadu, Richard Hobbins +
17. 101 Poems that could save your life, edited by Daisy Goodwin -
18. The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, Edward Lear +
19. Vincalis the Agitator, Holly Lisle +
20. Living with Grief, edited by Kenneth J. Doka +
21. Peel my Love like an Onion, Ana Castillo ++
22. "I hope your penis shrivels up" and other helpful advice on life and sex, from Vernon Coleman ++
23. Hospital: The Hidden Lives of a Medical Center Staff :: Michael Medved +
24. The Dark Mirror, Juliet Mariller +
25. Moist, Mark Haskell Smith +
26. Girl Walks in to a Bar, Strawberry Saroyan -
27. Well Bred and Dead, Catherine O'Connell +
28. White as Snow, Tanith Lee ++
29. Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs -
30. The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show, Ariel Gore +
31. Dzur, Steven Brust +
32. Pen Pals, Olivia Goldsmith +
33. Young Wives, Olivia Goldsmith -
34. Switcheroo, Olivia Goldsmith +
35. Blood Run: A Medical Suspense Novel, Leah Ruth Robinson -
36. Marrying Mom, Olivia Goldsmith -
37. Bad Boy, Olivia Goldsmith -
38. Dumping Billy, Olivia Goldsmith -
39. The Postman, David Brin +
40. Wickett's Remedy, Myla Goldberg ++
41. The Antelope Wife, Louise Erdrich ++
42. The Medical Racket: How Doctors, HMOs, and Hospitals are Failing the American Patient, Martin L. Gross ++
43. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Walter Mosley +
44. Perfect Husbands (& Other Fairy Tales), Regina Barreca +
45. The Blue Jay's Dance, Louise Erdrich +
46. The Death Committee, Noah Gordon -
47. 21 Dog Years, Mike Daisey +
48. We were the Mulvaneys, Joyce Carol Oates -
49. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden ++
50. The Shadow King, Jane Stevenson -
