2011 Reading List...

I'm about to finish my final year of an MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. During the Christmas and Summer breaks between classes, I would always try to get as much writing done as possible, forgetting that books already written and worth reading were still out there. So, this past December, I made it a point to start reading more. Most of the list includes a lot of surreal or magical realism type books. There's also a ton of what can be called "experimental" writing as that's primarily what I believe I do.


You'll notice that there are children's books as well (Roald Dahl, Lemony Snicket), but oftentimes kid's books have a special way of defying logic that adult books can't achieve. There is certainly some more traditional/realist stuff on this list, but I tend to shy away from most realism as a good chunk of it doesn't keep my interest. I like to be challenged when I read - give me a novel as puzzle to solve and I'm happy.






December

01.) Italo Calvino - "Under the Jaguar Sun" (86pgs)
02.) Italo Calvino - "Mr. Palomar" (126pgs)
03.) Italo Calvino - "Marcovaldo (or The Seasons in the City)" (121pgs)
04.) Michel Foucault - "This Is Not A Pipe" (58pgs)

January

05.) Italo Calvino - "The Baron in the Trees" (217pgs)
06.) Jedediah Berry - "The Manual of Detection (278pgs)
07.) Gabriel Garcia Marquez - "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (143pgs)
08.) Paul Harding - "Tinkers" (191pgs)
09.) Jorge Luis Borges - "The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory" (131pgs)
10.) Joshua Mohr - "Termite Parade" (180pgs)
11.) Mark Haddon - "The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time" (226pgs)
12.) Juan Rulfo - "Pedro Paramo" (124pgs)
13.) Pablo Neruda - "World's End" (301pgs)
14.) Don DeLillo - "Point Omega" (117pgs)

February

15.) Joshua Mohr - "Some Things That Meant the World to Me" (205pgs)
16.) Charles Yu - "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe" (234pgs)
17.) Carlo Collodi - "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (170pgs)
18.) Italo Calvino - "The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount" (246pgs)
19.) Suzanne Collins - "The Hunger Games" (374pgs)
20.) Suzanne Collins - "Catching Fire" (391pgs) *this is genuinely one of the best trilogies i've ever read. i've never read this much in one day before and it's classified as young adult fiction. started this one at midnight, finished it at 3:30am. couldn't put it down.*
21.) Suzanne Collins - "Mockingjay" (390pgs)

March

22.) Alex Garland - "The Coma" (196pgs)
23.) Roald Dahl - "The Magic Finger" (56pgs)
24.) Roald Dahl - "Esio Trot" (55pgs)
25.) Roald Dahl - "Boy: Tales of Childhood" (176pgs)
26.) Douglas Coupland - "Player One: A Novel in Five Hours" (214pgs)

April

27.) Grace Krilanovich - "The Orange Eats Creeps" (172pgs)
28.) Blake Butler - "Ever" (100pgs)
29.) Paul Auster - "Leviathan" (275pgs)
30.) Roald Dahl - "The Twits" (84pgs)
31.) Roald Dahl - "Danny, the Champion of the World" (214pgs)
32.) Blake Butler - "Scorch Atlas" (152pgs) - this book is fucking brilliant with prose so good, i hate that i didn't come up with it myself.
33.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning" (Book 1 of 13, 162pgs)
34.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room" (Book 2 of 13, 190pgs)
35.) Garrett Cook - "Murderland Pt. I - H8" (145pgs)
36.) Mark Gluth - "The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis" (102pgs)

May

37.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window" (Book 3 of 13, 214pgs)
38.) Kevin Brockmeier - "The Brief History of the Dead" (252pgs)
39.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill" (Book 4 of 13, 194pgs)
40.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy" (Book 5 of 13, 221pgs)
41.) David Benioff - "City of Thieves" (258pgs)

June

42.) Bogdan Suceava - "Coming From an Off-Key Time" (200pgs)
43.) Belen Gopegui - "The Scale of Maps" (223pgs)
44.) Blake Butler - "There Is No Year" (401pgs)
45.) Agota Kristoff - "The Notebook, The Proof, The Third Lie" (478pgs)
46.) Lemony Snicket - "A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator" (Book 6 of 13, 259pgs)

July

thesis work has kept this month pretty quiet on the free reading tip, unfortunately.

47.) Antoine De Saint-Exupery - "The Little Prince" (83pgs)