Read 50 books in 2007

I’m really not into chicklit, but most all of these stories were centered around women traveling the world alone, which was cool.

It was also a welcome break from the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, which I’m working on finishing. It’s amazing, but a little heavy for summer.

Clearly I really need to get to the library and stop raiding my parents’ bookshelves.

This made a nice follow-up to Operating Instructions. It’s cute. I never laughed out loud, but I smiled.

A journal of a recovering alcoholic’s first year as a single mother. Funny and poignant at the same time.

Also a bit horrifying if you don’t have intimate knowledge about motherly things like recovering from childbirth and all the interesting things that come out of a baby.

Bullfights in Spain and war wounds and tortured love affairs that can never be. The gin-soaked pages of this book are full of beauty and longing and dangerous passion.

The more of Hem I read, the less I hate him.

This book reads like a conversation you’d have with an economist at a bar after he’d had a couple of shots of tequila. In a good way!

People have sacrificed happiness for instant gratification, which they get through drugs and promiscuous sex. The government knows lots of things that it isn’t telling. Babies are being manufactured in tubes and everyone is being driven to consume, consume, consume.

Total science fiction, obviously.

Written conversationally, full of great anecdotes about old Hollywood, and further proof that no one makes it alone. Miss Kate had lots and lots of help from some pretty amazing people.

A series of five lectures Borges gave at Harvard, with footnotes galore. He gives great advice on reading poetry as well as advice for writing poetry.

I must say of all the books in my library, this is the most visually pleasing. Slim, a bit shorter than your average book, small margins, and a nice font. Well done, Harvard Press.

The second volume of my school’s fabulous literary magazine, published in the spring of 2006.

I like it, but it has two poems of mine as well as things my friends published, so I’m probably biased.

Oh, those crazy Greeks.

I really liked this translation. As the foreword explains, the text is translated by both a poet and a scholar. The end result is a perfect balance between readability and accuracy.