2008 Books
January
Alma by Junot Diaz — Guys who do stupid things part one million: a short story.
Looking for Hemingway by Gay Talese — Talese’s 1960 Esquire article about George Plimpton and The Paris Review.
*Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott — Just refreshing myself.
Roman Fever by Edith Wharton.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien — I just read the title story.
Happy Endings by Margaret Atwood — Part B just kills me, reminds me a lot of “Shopgirl.”
February
The Diamond As Big As The Ritz by F. Scott Fitzgerald — Strange and dreamy, very different for Fitzgerald and yet so much like him.
*A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor.
Skinny Bitch by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman — Two former models write a poorly-informed book on how being vegans made them skinny. Of course they’re skinny; they’re former models!
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.
Displacement by Randi Faust — Iowa Review fiction winner for 2007 written by the instructor of my Inprint Workshop.
March
*Journey Into Night by David Sedaris.
Promise Breaker by Chris Adrian — Strange and too wordy and predictable.
The Worst Addiction of Them All by Kurt Vonnegut — Wonderful, prescient essay from 1983 but what’s with all the typos, Nation?
Black Ice by Cate Kennedy — Best short story I’ve read all month.
April
Voice Lesson by Kate Christensen — Cheesy story but the blog is an excellent concept.
The Man Who Loved Old Ladies by Theodora Keogh — Strange little story by an author with an interesting life. Her novel “The Double Door” is on my reading list.
May
How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead by Ariel Gore — Less about writing and more about selling yourself as an independent writer. The best book about writing I have ever read.
June
Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford — True or not, a very engaging, very guilty pleasure.
July
The Itch by Atul Gawande — An essay in the New Yorker about phantom limbs, the mysteries of the brain, a woman with an itch so strong she scratches through her skull. It’s gross and fascinating.
The Jewish-American Saga of Gitty Grunwald and Her Daughter by Mark Jacobson — A NYMag piece about a woman who left the fold of Hasidism and lost her daughter in the process.
August
Hell’s Angels by Hunter Thompson — Not the best of Hunter’s (his writing here is extremely repetitive) and I’m not sure I like non-fiction all that much). But it was good, for what it was.
September
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach — This book is kind of old but I’ve always wanted to read it, and it is an excellent, engaging read. The perfect blend of humor, humanity and salacious science.
November
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote — The character of Holly Golightly is so much more interesting than Audrey Hepburn made her.
Unfinished
*Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh.
*Items marks with asterisks have been previously read. Some titles are links to short stories, not books.