With a personal best of having read fifty-four books (!) this year, my favorites were:

The Last Girls - Lee Smith

The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris

Grace (Eventually) - Anne Lamott

Skylight Confessions - Alice Hoffman

Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller

Now and Forever - Ray Bradbury

The Ivory and the Horn - Charles de Lint

How about you?

These are all the books I've read this year (I think), favorite to least favorite in each category:

Non-fiction:

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer
Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man - Dale Peterson
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright
Einstein - Walter Isaacson
Finding Darwin's God - Kenneth R. Miller
Jesus Land: A Memoir - Julia Scheeres
Confederates in the Attic - Tony Horwitz
Galileo's Daughter - Dava Sobel
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God - Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan
This Is Your Brain on Music - Daniel J. Levitin
Introducing Kafka - David Zaine Mairowitz and Robert Crumb
Everyday Miracles - Ardath Rodale

Fiction:

The Wars - Timothy Findley
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
The Rising Tide: A Novel of World War II - Jeff Shaara
Book of the Dead - Patricia Cornwell
Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

I'm pretty happy with all my reading choices for 2007, but the real standouts were:

Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
On Beauty - Zadie Smith
The Children of Men - P. D. James
Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy

And I have to give a nod to Harry Potter 7, because as much as it disappointed me, I probably logged a minimum of 40 hours discussing it with one of my friends!

even with those of us who haven't read it!

I read Middlesex about 4 years ago. Picked it up in an airport bookstore b/c I had no reading material for the flight. By the time I got home I was literally calling people from the airport to tell them to go out and buy this book. I can't wait for Eugenides to do something else.

In no particular order, my favorites from '07:

-- The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
-- God is not Great, Christopher Hitchens
-- The End of Faith, Sam Harris
-- His Dark Materials Trilogy, Phillip Pullman
--The Glass Bead Game, Herman Hesse


And there were lots of re-reads as well. That's pretty common for me, as I struggle mightily to find contemporary fiction that I find to be worth a damn. Eugenides was like finding a needle in a haystack. What will the kids 50 years from now read in school?

Most of this was summer reading…

Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close: Foer
On Beauty: Zadie Smith (much preferred White Teeth but I looks like I will be able to borrow The Autograph Man…yay)
Balzac and the Chinese Seamstress:
The Trial: Kafka
The Meaning of Jesus: Borg and Wright
The History of Doubt: Hecht (which I was sooo looking forward to and was hugely disappointed by it’s simplistic approach)
The White Castle and My Name is Red: Pamuk
Grace Eventually: Lamott
Plan B: Lamott
Interpreter of Maladies: Lahiri
Chronicles Vol 1: Dylan

i know there are others i really liked but my brain is dead...

so far short into this year, I have enjoyed The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs. Reread Marley and Me and finished the 101st Airborne trilogy by George E Koskimaki. Nappy time now.

i remember when i discovered Tom Robbins. I read everything i could find. I think my fave was Another Roadside Attraction.

What is Tom Robbins like?

his stuff is funny, irreverent, and highly creative in regard to the ordinary.

I got to hear him lecture at VU last spring. What a treat!

And thanks for the nod to "Cowgirls." I read that years ago and think the paperback is still on the shelf in my old bedroom at dad's house. I'm going to check Monday when I go over for a visit. Hopefully it's not in too bad of shape to reread once again.

Cher

Glad to see that I'm not the only one who was disappointed by it. However, it does have one of my most favorite lines:

"Not MY daughter you bitch!" I hope they leave that one in the movie!

Cher

keith, can you tell me more about this book?