2010
9. A Beautiful blue death / Charles Finch
8. Music and silence / Rose Tremain
7. All aboard for Arrarat / H.G. Wells
6. Moominland midwinter / Tove Jansson
5. Moominsummer madness / Tove Jansson
4. The Phantom tollbooth / Norton Juster
3. The Divine mentor / Wayne Cordeiro
2. 100 years of solitude / Gabrielle Garcia Marquez
1. The Archivist : a novel / Martha Cooley
2009
2. Twilight / Stephanie Meyer (434 p.)
1. Wanting / by Richard Flanagan (256 p.)
** I did read other books in 2008 and 2009, except that this page somehow deleted its entire contents so the listing disappeared. I managed to salvage what is here from the Internet Wayback Machine. When I find time, I’ll fill in the blanks. **
2008
5. Postcards from Surfers / by Helen Garner (106 p.) [short-stories]
4. The Spare room / by Helen Garner (195 p.) [fiction]
3. Learning to float / by Lili Wright (362 p.)
2. Run / by Ann Patchett (294 p.) [fiction]
1. Confessions of an amateur believer / by Patty Kirk (271 p.)
2007
19. Dirt music / by Tim Winton (465 p.) [fiction]
18. Year of wonders / by Geraldine Brooks (321 p.) [fiction]
17. The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency / by Alexander McCall Smith (250 p.) [fiction]
16. Camille’s bread / by Amanda Lohrey (277 p.) [fiction]
15. Freakonomics / by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (320 p.)
14. A Short history of tractors in Ukrainian / by Marina Lewycka (324 p.)
13. Gittinomics : living the good life without money stress, overwork and joyless consumption / by Ross Gittins (254 p.)
12. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows / by J. K. Rowling (607 p.)
11. In the company of others : making community in the modern world / edited by Claude Whitmyer (275 p.)
10. Save Karyn : one shopaholic’s journey to debt and back / by Karyn Bosnak (447 p.)
9. Women of spirit : stories of courage from the women who lived them / by Katherine Martin (381 p.)
8. God’s smuggler : one man’s mission to change the world / by Brother Andrew (292 p.)
7. Eat, pray, love : one woman’s search for everything / by Elizabeth Gilbert (348 p.)
6. Editing fact and fiction : a concise guide to book editing / by Leslie T. Sharpe and Irene Gunther (uni textbook) (227 p.)
5. Quirky qwerty : the story of the keyboard at your fingertips / by Torbjorn Lundmark (172 p.)
4. Eats, shoots & leaves : the zero tolerance approach to punctuation / by Lynne Truss (209 p.)
3. Apple of my eye / by Helene Hanff (121 p.)
2. How to be good / by Nick Hornby (245 p.)
1. Books, baguettes and bedbugs : the Left Bank world of Shakespeare & Co. / by Jeremy Mercer (260 p.)
book bites (the ones that didn’t make it)
1. Grass sister / by Gillian Mears
2. The myth of the paperless office / by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper
want to read
1. The Secret of lost things / by Sheridan Hay (A search for a valuable manuscript; set in a bookstore in NY.)
2. The book Searching for Bobby Fischer was based upon / by Frank Waitzkin
philosophy
I’m attempting to read 52 books this year. Largely because Tom, David, Howie, et al attempt to watch 52 movies each year, and I figured why not books instead. There are no book rules regarding genre or minimum number of pages as such; however, I will loosely follow the Nancy Pearl 50 Page Rule. If, having read 50 pages (or 10% if the book has less than 50 pages), the book is just not resonating with me, it can be put aside. Those “book bites” will be listed too. And it really doesn’t matter if the target isn’t reached. The point is just to read more.