read at least 4 books a month in 2009

September:
1) Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
2) Up the Organization by Warren G. Townsend
3) Confessions of an Organized Homemaker
4) Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
5) The Power of Style by Annette Tapert

Wow, am I behind. I mean, in tracking months. My average BPM (books per month) is 4.5.

June:
1) The Secret Lives of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
2) Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.

July:
1) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
2) Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
3) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

August:
1) The One Thing You Need To Know by Marcus Buckingham
2) What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith
3) The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten

A little late on May…

1) Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels
2) Life of Pi by Yann Martel (ick)
3) Judgment in Death by JD Robb
4) The Left Hand Of Darkness by Ursula L. Le Guin
5) The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
6) The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan

April.

1) Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen (didn’t like it)
2) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (meh)
3) Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman (I read most of it, but I didn’t like it and it was due before I finished)

Under my goal, whoops. It was a bad month for books, I didn’t like anything that I got. I also picked up Zorba the Greek but read a few pages and didn’t want to deal with it.

Oh! March.

I gave up on Love in the Time of Cholera (ughhh), but did finish:
1) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
2) Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life : How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness by Karen Rauch Carter
3) White Oleander by Janet Fitch
4) The Shining by Stephen King (the last FEW pages were today, but I’ll count it as March for this purpose.)

Love in the Time of Cholera is what really screwed me – awful book.

I’ve got Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen on the hold shelf at the library for me and I’m working on figuring out how to do Audiobooks, especially for non-fiction which I have a hard time reading.

Okay, I’m calling February.

February:
1) The Elements of Style, Third Edition by William Strunk Jr.
2) Eat That Frog! : 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
3) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
4) Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
5) Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Working on:
1) Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (less than 20% through)
2) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (JUST started)
3) Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life : How to Use Feng Shui to Get Love, Money, Respect and Happiness by Karen Rauch Carter (really reading this pretty passively… I guess I should get on it.)

To my surprise, I actually did finish An American Childhood last night (what an unpleasant book). I currently don’t have anything on-hand from my queue but maybe I’ll be able to make it down to the library today. I’m kind of skimming The Elements of Style but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I would sit down and read cover-to-cover.

January, re-revised:
1) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
2) Candide by Voltaire
3) Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
4) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
5) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
6) 1984 by George Orwell
7) Brave New World by Adolus Huxley
8) Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe
9) Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood
10) An American Childhood by Annie Dillard

Apparently, I thought I would finish the wrong book. So far I’m at over double my goal for January, but we’ll see if I can keep this up. I do not intend for it to be a goal of averages (i.e. 8 in January, 0 in February = average of 4/month).

January, revised:
1) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
2) Candide by Voltaire
3) Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
4) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
5) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
6) 1984 by George Orwell
7) Brave New World by Adolus Huxley
8) Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe
9) Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood

Working on:
1) An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (I still might finish by February, but I kind of doubt it)

January:
1) The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
2) Candide by Voltaire
3) Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
4) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
5) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
6) 1984 by George Orwell
7) Brave New World by Adolus Huxley
8) Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe

Working on:
1) An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (I might finish by February)
2) Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood

And I’ve got 32 more on my current queue.