Progress on my Book List for the 9/9/9 Project

Here's an update on my 9/9/9 project. That's 9 books in 9 categories in 2009 (plus an extra few to make it up to 100 this year). Books in bold I have read. You would think I would have been caught up by now, but so far I believe the count is at 39 for the year. I should be at 50 or so by now if I am going to make 100. Hm.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

1. Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. I, Robot by Issac Asimov
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
8. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
   

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

1. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
4. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
5. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
6. Post Office by Charles Bukowski
7. UBIK by Philip K Dick
8. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
9. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
   

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

1. QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
2. The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
3. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
4. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
5. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
   
6. Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
7. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
8. Just After Sunset by Stephen King
9. Transformations by Anne Sexton
   

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

1. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
   
2. Art & Fear by David Bayles
3. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
   
4. Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
   
5. A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
6. Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
7. The Journalist and The Murder by Janet Malcom
8. The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
9. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach
   

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

1. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
2. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
3. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
4. Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
5. Love by Toni Morrison
6. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
7. White Teeth by Zadie Smith
8. Where or When by Anita Shreve
9. Atonement by Ian McEwan
   

Books Turned into Movies

1. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
   
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
   
3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
4. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist
5. The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis
6. The Stand by Stephen King
7. The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry
8. Zodiac by Robert Graysmith
9. Blindness by Jose Saramago
   

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

1. The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
2. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
6. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
7. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
8. Peter Pan by J.M Barrie
9. The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
   

Books translated into English

1. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
2. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
   
3. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
4. Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
   
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
   
6. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
8. Seeing by Jose Saramago
9. Never Let Me Go by Nazuo Ishigino
   

Classic Mysteries

1. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
2. Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
3. Inspector Morse: The Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
   
4. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
5. Dashiell Hammett novel collection
6. The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
7. Brown's Requiem by James Ellroy
8. The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly
9. Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin
   

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. Ghost: A Novel by Alan Lightman
2. The Lighthouse by P. D. James
3. The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll
4. Dead & Gone by Charlaine Harris
   
5. Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski
   
6. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
   
7. Real World by Natsuo Kirino
   
8. Picture Me Dead by Heather Graham
   
9. ?
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?

Just After Sunset by Stephen King

To be honest, I didn't think Just After Sunset was nearly as good as Everything's Eventual, Stephen King's previous short story collection, but I do love how King writes those short stories. 

I think my favorite might be The Gingerbread Girl. The main character here takes up running after a tragedy strikes her family. When I say takes up running, I mean seriously running. Like all the time until she feels like dropping dead (which I have totally felt before but that's because running is like Heaven and dying to me. It's a weird combo, I know.). Of course, this obsessive/compulsive running comes into play later in the story when she has to run with purpose. 

Otherwise, the stories all kind of ran together for me. I'm not saying they weren't good, but none of them really stood out to me like The Gingerbread Girl, except for maybe N., which channels Lovecraft (even if King says it doesn't). I love the play on obsessive/compulsive behavior in that story. 

Overall, I will always love Stephen King's ability to write short stories. It seems like a lost art form these days.  But despite that, I can't wax poetic about this collection.

Rating: 4 Purrs for The Gingerbread Girl, 3 1/2 for everything else

Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski

I never would have picked up Charles Bukowski on my own if it weren't for 3 different people waxing poetic about him, so I threw in the towel and tried him out. Wow. I wasn't sure about him because although I understood the significance of On the Road, I just didn't fall in love with it, so more Beats, well, I wasn't interested. But damn if Mr. Bukowski didn't blow me away. Technically, he's not a Beat, but he has a similar style. So far I have read Post Office and Ham on Rye this year, and I have several more queued up in the library to read. I am parsing them out so I don't run through everything too quickly; that's how much I like Bukowski. He is reaching Vonnegut proportions for me.

Ham on Rye is set in Bukowski's younger years and man if the guy can't create a vibrant visual image using like, 3 words. 

If you are interested in an author who can write using concise, simple language to create images that stick with you, beauty out of the ugly. gilding out of the sow's ear so to speak, then check him out. He runs up there with my e.e. cummings, Kurt Vonnegut, and (new) Philip K. Dick obsession. 

Rating: 5 Purrs so far...there's still so much to read!

Ubik by Philip K. Dick

I had a friend recommend Ubik to me, saying it's one of those books that leaves you saying, "what the hell just happened?" Well, he was right, because that's the exact reaction I had when I read the last paragraph. I can't get this book out of my head. 

I read a collection of Philip K. Dick short stories awhile back, and I really wasn't sure I would like another go around. His short stories just felt like too much of a "ta-da" ending, a la Twilight Zone, but I think that's because it was a whole lot of them all at once. Ubik was almost a whole other animal. Glen Runciter runs a business full of anti-telepaths that people hire to protect their secrets. On a trip to the moon, a bomb goes off and the real adventure begins. Who lived and who died? Reality starts to change, shifting backwards in time and soon you don't know what is going on or what is real and neither do the characters.

I want to say more about the plot, but I am afraid that giving too much away would spoil the greatness that is Ubik. I'll never doubt Philip K. Dick again, and dang it, now I have to accept that every time that friend recommends a book I should pay attention. I can't get this damn book out of my head, and I keep twisting and turning it about like maybe then I could figure it out. 

Rating:  5 Purrs for totally blowing me away

9/9/9 Comics January - March Progress

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan

1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
2. Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
3. The Blot by Tom Neeley
4. The Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade
5. The Aviary by Jamie Tanner
6. Glister Volume 1
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by Steve

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by others

1. The Complete Persepolis
2. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth
3. Burnout by Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda
4. Local, Issues 1-3 by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Independent graphic novels

1. Re-Gifters by Mike Carey
2. The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
3. Dead at 17: the 13th Brother by Josh Howard
4. Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh
5. Lava Punch by Ben Seto
6. Last Exit Before Toll by Neal Schaffer
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)

1. Walking Dead Volume 6
2. Walking Dead Volume 7
3. Walking Dead Volume 8
4. Hell and Back: Sin City
5. Fables Volume 11: War & Pieces
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias

1. DMZ Volume 1
2. DMZ Volume 2
3. DMZ Volume 3
4. DMZ Volume 4
5. Channel Zero
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural

1. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Vol. 1: Guilty Pleasures
2. Buffy Season 8 single issues, catch up
3. Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust 
   
4. Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond
   
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes

1. Superman Red Sun
2. Bulletproof Monk
3. Fallen Angel Volume 1
4. Elektra Lives Again
5. Wonder Woman: Love and Murder
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Adaptations of Books

1. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier
2. Horror Classics: Graphic Classics
3. Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson
4. Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
5. Richard Mathesons' Hell House
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. Fell Volume 1: Feral City
2. Flight, Volume 1
3. The Killer, Volume 1
4. Ex Machina Volume 1
5. Ex Machina Volume 2
6. Ex Machina Volume 3
7. Ex Machina Volume 4
8. Ex Machina Volume 5
9. Ex Machina Valume 6
10. Jack of Fables Volume 1
11. We3 by Grant Morrison
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?

9/9/9 Books January-March Progress

Here's an update. Books in bold I have read. Yeah, I am a little behind...I'm at 15, working on 16.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

1. Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. I, Robot by Issac Asimov
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
8. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
   

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

1. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
4. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
5. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
6. Post Office by Charles Bukowski
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

1. QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
2. The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
3. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
4. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
5. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
   
6. Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
7. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
8. e e cumming collection
   
9. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Rainer Maria Rilke

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

1. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soulby Karen Abbott
   
2. Art & Fear by David Bayles
3. What If? Writing Exercises for Authors by Anne Bernays
4. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
   
5. Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
   
6. A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
7. Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
8. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
9. ?

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

1. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
   
2. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
3. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
4. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
5. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
6. Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
7. Love by Toni Morrison
8. ?
9. ?

Books Turned into Movies

1. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
   
2. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
   
3. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
4. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

1. The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
2. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
6. Dianna Wynne Jones - something of hers?
7. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
8. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
9. ?
   

Books translated into English

1. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
2. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
   
3. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
4. Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
   
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
   
6. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
7. Something by Arturo Perez-Reverte
8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
9. ?

Classic Mysteries

1. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
2. Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
3. Inspector Morse novel
4. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
5. Dashiell Hammett novel collection
6. The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. Ghost: A Novel by Alan Lightman
2. The Lighthouse by P. D. James
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

I picked up Lonesome Dove because a friend told me that it was his favorite book. I don't meet many people who love to read, so when someone tells me that a book is his favorite, and he is able to defend it when I respond, "Seriously? A Cowboy book?", I figure I really should give it a shot. I stand corrected. Lonesome Dove is much more than just a cowboy book.

Lonesome Dove is about a cattle drive and the people who participate in it or are affected in some way by it. You have my favorite character, Augustus McCrae, former Texas Ranger and current easy-going drunkard, who follows Woodrow Call, his former Captian and best friend, on the drive up to Montana. Jake Spoon shows up in Lonesome Dove, TX one day and tells his former Texas Ranger pals that the real paradise is Montana. The undiscovered, ungrazed country, so to speak. Call decides it's an opportunity not to be missed, and hires a bunch of local boys to drive a huge herd of cattle up to Montana to start one of the first cattle ranches before the wilderness is lost. He misses the urgency, the spectacle, the danger of his former days in the Texas Rangers. (Many times Gus & Call discuss the comfort of the area they have helped civilize, with Gus wondering why anyone would need to leave it.) Jake, however, has his own problems, and never really intends on joining the boys on the drive. Jake is a man of appetities, of luxuries, gambling, and using up women. When he meets Lorena, he thinks he's got it made, until she holds him to his promise to get her out of Lonesome Dove. (Lorena is another one of my favorite characters. I didn't like her much at first, but her character really grew on me. You start off thinking she will just be the hooker with the heart of gold type character, but instead she ends up being so much more complex.) Lorena joins them on the drive, along with lovesick Dish, the top hand, Newt, the youngest of the crew, and others. They face the difficult, long drive to Montana, driving the cattle across rivers, on the look out for Indians, protecting their horses and their own skin, and battling the weather.

What I liked most about this book was from the moment I started reading, I knew I was in Texas. You could almost feel the swagger, the hitching of belt buckles, the chewing of tobacco. Gus is a wonderful character, on the one hand so easy-going, and on the other, so cruel and exacting when rescuing Lorena. Lorena's whole storyline tore me up. Her grief was almost too close to home. I could see it in my head so vividly. But what I loved the most was despite the epic scale of the cattle drive, the growth of the characters, even the interplay of all of the characters, McMurtry never says this is epic. This is historic. This is significant. In fact, he leads you to question whether the whole thing is simply folly, an old man catering to his needs of danger, heroism, and valor, and whether the cost of it is too great. It's mythic and tragic all in one. You are left to question whether any of it really made any difference, even at the cost of so many and so much.

When you think of Lonesome Dove, don't think cowboy book. Yes, it is a Western. You can't deny that. But it can be so much more if you look beyond the cover.

Rating: 4 1/2 Purrs

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights is one of those books that has sat on my shelf for years. It's not that didn't want to read it; I always wanted to but just never seemed to get around to it. After reading it, I'm not sure what all of the fuss is about. Maybe I do, but overall, the book just left me kind of angry.

Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together and of course fall in love. But since Cathy has no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and neither does Heathcliff really, of course they don't end up happily ever after. Cathy marries rich, and since Heathcliff overhears her say it's because she can't marry him because it would be beneath her, he decides to seek revenge on Cathy and those who have slighted him. This revenge drive the rest of the book, and he seeks it even unto his and Cathy's own children.

I don't know why anyone would ever read about Cathy And Heathcliff and think man, those two are some of the most romantic characters in literature. Frankly, they are nightmares and deserve each other, if only they could not destroy everyone else in their path. They may talk how one completes the other, that Cathy *is* Heathcliff or whatever, but really, neither character understands one little whit about love. I can kind of see why Stephenie Meyer says Wuthering Heights influenced the Twilight series, because I see a whole lot of Heathcliff and Cathy in Edward and Bella. That's not really a good thing.

I do, however, find it very interesting that Emily Bronte would put two unlikable characters as main characters in her story, considering Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre has such an agreeable main character in Jane. It sort of makes Emily a bit balls-y in my thoughts. You know, like I *dare* you to like my story.

Rating: 3 1/2 Purrs for a couple of characters that pissed me the hell off, but yet also Go Emily!

Graphic Novels Assigned to the 9/9/9 Categories

Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan

1. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
2. Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe
3. The Blot by Tom Neeley
4. The Travels of Thelonious by Susan Schade
5. The Aviary by Jamie Tanner
6. Glister Volume 1
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by Steve

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Graphic Novels recommended by others

1. The Complete Persepolis
2. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Independent graphic novels

1. Re-Gifters by Mike Carey
2. The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci
3. Dead at 17: the 13th Brother by Josh Howard
4. Polly and the Pirates by Ted Naifeh
5. Lava Punch by Ben Seto
6. Last Exit Before Toll by Neal Schaffer
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)

1. Walking Dead Volume 6
2. Walking Dead Volume 7
3. Walking Dead Volume 8
4. Hell and Back: Sin City
5. Fables Volume 11: War & Pieces
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias

1. DMZ Volume 1
2. DMZ Volume 2
3. DMZ Volume 3
4. DMZ Volume 4
5. Channel Zero
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural

1. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Vol. 1: Guilty Pleasures
2. Buffy Season 8 single issues, catch up
3. Zebediah the Hillbilly Zombie Redneck Bites the Dust 
   
4. Pablo's Inferno: An innocent child's descent into the Underworld and Beyond
   
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes

1. Superman Red Sun
2. Bulletproof Monk
3. Fallen Angel Volume 1
4. Elektra Lives Again
5. Wonder Woman: Love and Murder
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Adaptations of Books

1. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Black Dossier
2. Horror Classics: Graphic Classics
3. Graphic Classics: Robert Louis Stevenson
4. Graphic Classics: Mark Twain
5. Richard Mathesons' Hell House
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. Fell Volume 1: Feral City
2. Flight, Volume 1
3. The Killer, Volume 1
4. Ex Machina Volume 1
5. Ex Machina Volume 2
6. Ex Machina Volume 3
7. Ex Machina Volume 4
8. Ex Machina Volume 5
9. Ex Machina Valume 6
10. Jack of Fables Volume 1
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?

Books assigned to the 9 categories for 9/9/in 2009

These might change as the year progresses, but this is the plan.

Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)

1. Sanditon and Other Stories by Jane Austen
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
3. I, Robot by Issac Asimov
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
6. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
7. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
8. The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner
9. Middlemarch by George Eliot
   

Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)

1. Steve's pick
2. Steve's pick
3. Steve's pick
4. Steve's pick
5. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
6. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
8. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
9. ?
   

Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)

1. QPB Anthology of Women's Writing edited by Susan Cahill
2. The Disobedience of Water: Stories and Novellas by Sena Jeter Naslund
3. Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut
4. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
5. The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
   
6. Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
7. The Waste Land and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
8. e e cumming collection
   
9. Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, or Rainer Maria Rilke

True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction

1. Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
   
2. Art & Fear by David Bayles
3. What If? Writing Exercises for Authors by Anne Bernays
4. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson
   
5. Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights by Robert Schnakenberg
   
6. A Biography of Zelda by Nancy Milford
7. Desperate Passage: The Donner Party's Perilous Journey West by Ethan Rarick
8. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
9. ?

Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
3. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
4. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo
5. Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides
6. Snobs by Julian Fellowes
7. Fragile Things Neil Gaiman
8. Love by Toni Morrison
9. ?

Books Turned into Movies

1. L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
   
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)

1. The Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Lyr, Taran Wander, The High King)
2. The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin (The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
4. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory & The Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl
6. Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers
7. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
8. Dianna Wynne Jones - something of hers?
9. ?

Books translated into English

1. After Dark by Haruki Murakami
2. The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur by Victor Pelevin
   
3. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
4. Have Mercy on Us All: A Novel (Chief Inspector Adamsberg Mysteries) by Fred Vargas
   
5. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
   
6. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
7. Something by Arturo Perez-Reverte
8. ?
9. ?

Classic Mysteries

1. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
2. Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
3. Inspector Morse novel
4. Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
5. Dashiell Hammett novel collection
6. The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?

Whatever, Whatever, I'll read what I want...

1. ?
2. ?
3. ?
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?
11. ?
12. ?
13. ?
14. ?
15. ?
16. ?
17. ?
18. ?
19. ?

9/9 in 2009: Books I am going to read this year

For the past several years, I stopped setting reading goals for the upcoming year. This year I became intrigued by the 9/9/9 concept that's floating around LibraryThing, so I'm doing one myself. (That would be 9 categories, 9 books in each, in 2009). That makes it 81 books in 2009. Which is okay, but I really want to read 100 books this upcoming year. So I guess I will have 9/9/in 2009, plus 19 freebies to be whatever I want. That might work. Eventually I will fill in the books I am assigning to each category, or at least assign them a topic of sorts.

And of course I have a separate category list for graphic novels, cause those always get left behind.

BOOKS, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

1. Books I should have read but haven't (The Classics)
2. Books picked by Steve (and recommended by others)
3. Collections and Anthologies (short stories and poetry)
4. True Stories, Writing, Biographies, History...in Other Words Non-Fiction
5. Good Intentions: Books I Own but Keep Avoiding
6. Books Turned into Movies
7. Books from Childhood (or that I wish had been there for me to read)
8. Books translated into English
9. Classic Mysteries

• Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)
  

Graphic Novels, Meet your 9/9/9 Categories:

1. Graphic Novels recommended by Jeremy and his cohorts at Titan
2. Graphic Novels recommended by Steve
3. Graphic Novels recommended by others
4. Independent graphic novels
5. Next in the Series (because I have a lot of series that I read and a lot of backlog here)
6. It's the end of the world as I know it: Dystopias
7. Zombies, Vampires, Vampire Slayers, and other stuff of the supernatural
   
8. Men (and women) in Tights: Superheroes
9. Adaptations of Books

• Whatever, whatever, I'll read what I want (random picks, 19 of them)