January 24, 2006
Books read in 2005
Thinking about Hilary Spurling's Matisse biography (and all the other books released last year that I haven't yet read) led me to try and reconstruct—from memory—a list of all the books I did read last year. Here is what I came up with:
Diana Athill, Stet
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty
Michael Kimmelman, The Accidental Masterpiece (review here)
Carl Andre, Cuts: Selected Writings 1959-2004 (review here)
Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!
Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
John Haskell, I Am Not Jackson Pollock
Peter Schjeldahl, The Hydrogen Jukebox (quote here)
Aleksander Hemon, Nowhere Man
Paul Berman, Power and the Idealists (comments here)
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
At barely more than a book a month, it's not the most impressive list. Already twenty-four days have passed in 2006 and I've yet to finish anything I've picked up, putting aside three or four selections after no more than a few chapters.