Books

I've been reading a ton since I started staying home with Evie after grad school. Mostly fiction. That winter I set a (minor) life goal for myself. I figured that if I was reading a couple novels every month, I might as well make sure I mix some real good ones in there too. So I decided that I'd work my way through the winners of four big US awards each year: the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Book Critic's Circle Award. So far so good, I've made it through nearly 18 in the just-over two years since I started working on it. I've gone through some truly wonderful books from these lists: To Kill A Mockingbird, Lonesome Dove (never thought I'd dig a western, but this has been the top book so far), Empire Falls (I've read all the rest of the Russo books since this one). There's some brutally boring reads on the list too, but I guess that's part of it ("A Thousand Acres" ...King Lear adaptation via Iowa, ugh).

Anyway, I occupy enough of my time with reading these days that I thought I keep a list of books on here as I finish them. I'm always looking for good new material, I thought maybe other people were too. I'm not much into literary analysis; I just read them for the stories. I gave a grade to all the books, but it's basically just how much I enjoyed it. These here are all books I've read since the beginning of 2006. Some of them probably aren't for everybody. They span a big range, from fantasy baseball to epic fantasy to a Fish & Game detective novel. I overloaded myself on the "prize-winning" books last year, so I'm only now reading my first award winner of this year. I've only popped out seven so far this year, but the average length of the first 5 was about 1000 pages, so I'm cutting myself some slack.

I'd also love you to post me a comment here if you've read something worth picking up. It'd be really appreciated.