The all-true, all-dressed, technicolor reading list of 2004

Here she is, in all her glory. It’s as complete as I can make it, yet I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff. I take so many books home from the library that I basically just use as decoration, or to feed wishful thinking. Somehow this list doesn’t make me out to be as brainy as I’d like it to—there’ll be more theology next year, Aquinas and Soul of Politics, here I come. The list would also be longer if I hadn’t taken six weeks to plough through Anna Karenina this summer... it was worth it, though, and there are more fat Russian novels in my near future.

The starred titles are, well, starred—the best of the bunch. The ones marked ‘R’ were re-reads—I dream of a year made up entirely of re-reads, and next year I hope to revisit the delights of Life of Pi and of Zadie Smith’s genius work White Teeth. The ones marked ‘%’ I only read bits of, either because I got distracted, because they are still in the ‘in progress pile,’ or have because they have beentried and found wanting.

Next up are the new book of short stories by Annie Proulx, Bad Dirt; Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour; a book of Chesterton essays titled On Lying in Bed; and Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

FICTION

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
*A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
R The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
R Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
Unless, Carol Shields
*R Close Range, Annie Proulx
R Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
*The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Kilter, John Gould
*A Complicated Kindness, Myriam Toews
A Death in the Family, James Agee
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall-Smith
Tears of the Giraffe, Alexander McCall-Smith
*Swallows of Kabul, Yasmina Khadra
The Cave, José Saramago
*Runaway, Alice Munro
Ghost Writer, Philip Roth
%Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
...and, the mysterious fabulous novel that breaks my heart and makes me snort with laughter and weep with gratitude everytime I open it, but that I’m still keeping a secret.

NON-FICTION

*Cash, Johnny Cash
Virgin of Bennington, Kathleen Norris
*Long Life, Mary Oliver
Ressuciter, Christian Bobin
*Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Lynn Truss
Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
%Geometry of Love, Margaret Visser
Autoportrait au Radiateur, Christian Bobin
A Time to Keep Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor
%Memoirs, Pablo Neruda
*Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
%Quarrel & Quandary, Cynthia Ozick
%One Man’s Meat, EB White
%War of Art, Steven Pressfield


SHPIRITUAL SCHTUFF

Centering Prayer, M. Basil Pennington
%Genesis Trilogy, Madeleine L’Engle
Walking on Water, Madeleine L’Engle
Walking a Literary Labyrinth: A Spirituality of Reading, Nancy, M Malone
%A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle
*R Way of a Pilgrim, Anonymous
Girl Meets God, Lauren F. Winner
%Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
R Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen
*Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton
Genesee Diary, Henri Nouwen
*R Living with Contradiction, Esther de Waal
as well as countless re-readings of Merton and Kathleen Norris, of de Waal’s Seeking God, of Dillard; daily readings on The Rule of St Benedict, with commentary by Joan Chittister; and, of course, the Bible by the Lord, ed.

POETRY

The usual suspects: Mary Oliver (esp. her latest, Why I Wake Early,) Jane Kenyon, Pablo Neruda, Adam Zagajewski, Czeslaw Milosz, Wendell Berry, Wallace Stevens, Roo Borson, Jan Zwicky, Don McKay, Emily Dickinson, Denise Levertov, Robert Frost, ee cummings; and the latest additions, Robert Bly, Andrew Hudgins and Hannah Main-van der Kamp.