procrastinating on the book

[decemberthirty]

I often refer to my to-read list as if it were an actual, coherent thing that exists in some form other than titles scribbled on the backs of envelopes and author's names dashed off on bookstore receipts, but doing so presents an inaccurate picture of the situation. I have a notebook where I list all the books I read, and the front of that notebook is stuffed with all the scraps of paper on which I've jotted down various book recommendations over the years. I also have a list on my office computer for book ideas that come to me at work. And a separate list in the notebook where I keep notes for my novel. My system is a little bit complicated, and isn't actually much of a system at all. So I thought I'd consolidate things here.


Please note that all of this is in no particular order and includes a wide mix of recommedations from friends, things I feel I should read to fill holes in my education, books of which I've read good reviews, and things that just looked interesting on bookstore or library shelves.

Books to read that are currently in my possession:
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain - Cormac McCarthy
Yo! - Julia Alavarez
You Remind Me of Me - Dan Chaon
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey

Nonfiction not in my possession:
The Working Poor - David Shipler
How I Learned to Cook - Margo Perin, ed.
Elegy for Iris - John Bayley
Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood - Julie Gregory
Tender at the Bone Ruth Reichl
Land's End: A Walk in Provincetown - Michael Cunningham

Fiction not in my possession:
Brick Lane - Monica Ali
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass
The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst
The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst
The Woman Who Walked Into Doors - Roddy Doyle
Oh, Play That Thing - Roddy Doyle
Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra
Giants In the Earth - O.E. Rolvaag
In the Skin of a Lion - Michael Ondaatje
Too Loud a Solitude - Bohumil Hrabal
Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
The Mistress of Spices - Chitra Divakaruni
Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
Maurice - E.M. Forster
If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino
Wonder Boys - Michael Chabon
Empire Falls - Richard Russo
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
Crooked Hearts – Robert Boswell
Laughable Loves – Milan Kundera
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company – Brian Hall
Waxwings – Jonathan Raban
Ways of Dying - Zakes Mda
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin (owned)
Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
Funeral Rites - Jean Genet
Our Lady of the Flowers - Jean Genet
Death in Venice - Thomas Mann
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov
Ada, or Ardor - Vladimir Nabokov
The Electrid Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
The Quiet American - Graham Greene
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce (owned)
The Stone Virgin - Barry Unsworth
Red Ant House - Ann Cummins
Little Black Book of Stories - A.S. Byatt
The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salman Rushdie
Staircase of a Thousand Steps - Masha Hamilton
Snow - Orhan Pamuk
Learning to Swim - Graham Swift
Favorite of the Gods - Sybille Bedford
 

And now I'm off to do some writing.