2014 Reading List

This was a good year for reading on a personal level. The three successive years, I've only been able to read 50 books (half of my intended goal). This year, however, I moved to a place on the far outskirts of the city, so my transit time into the office and back home doubled, giving me plenty of time to do more reading. 

I tried to reread as few books as possible this time around, but sometimes you just have to settle into something fun and mindless or dig into the books you just really love even if you already know how things are going to end for the characters. I picked up some new (to me) authors this year: George Saunders, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami, Stieg Larsson, and finally dug deeper into the Roberto Bolano oeuvre that's been sitting on my shelf for ages. I was pleasantly surprised by all of them, though I found Saunders to be the least interesting of the bunch. Larsson was the standout surprise as I don't normally do crime/popular fiction, but I ended up reading the entirety of his Millenium trilogy within a week or two.

66 books. 21,036 pages. On top of getting thirteen stories written (three of which have been picked up for publication as of last night). 2014 was a pretty good year for all things literary in my world. How was it in yours?

2014 Reading:

January

01.) (reread) Salvador Plascencia  - "The People of Paper" (256pgs)
02.) Shaun Tan - "Lost and Found: Three Stories" (128pgs)
03.) Shaun Tan - "Tales from Outer Suburbia" (98pgs)
04.) Shaun Tan - "The Arrival" (128pgs)
05.) Luis Negron - "Mundo Cruel" (91pgs)
06.) E.B. Hudspeth - "The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black" (208pgs)
07.) Jean Telue - "The Suicide Shop" (169pgs)
08.) Ben Marcus - "Leaving the Sea" (271pgs)
09.) Max Ernst - "Une Semaine de Bonte (208pgs)
10.) Kobo Abe - "The Box Man" (178pgs)
11.) Madeline L'Engle - "A Wind in the Door" (245pgs)
 
(1,980pgs total)
 


February

12.) Margaret Atwood - "Oryx and Crake" (374pgs)
13.) Ann & Jeff Vandermeer - "The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities" (305pgs)
14.) Margaret Atwood - "The Year of the Flood" (431pgs)
15.) James Smythe - "The Machine" (320pgs)

(1,430pgs total)
 


March

16.) Robert Coover - "A Night at the Movies or, You Must Remember This" (187pgs)
17.) George Saunders - "Civilwarland in Bad Decline" (179pgs)
18.) Margaret Atwood - "MaddAddam" (390pgs)
19.) Laura van den Berg - "What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us" (205pgs)
20.) Amelia Gray - "Museum of the Weird" (171pgs)

(1,132pgs total)

 
April

21.) Seth Fried - "The Great Frustration" (192pgs)
22.) Jose Donoso - "The Obscene Bird of Night" (438pgs)
23.) Ray Bradbury - "The Martian Chronicles" (181pgs)
24.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (309pgs)
25.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" (341pgs)
26.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (435pgs)
27.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (734pgs)
28.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (870pgs)

(3,500pgs total)

 
May

29.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" (652pgs)
30.) Anthony Bourdain - "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" (312pgs)
31.) (reread) JK Rowling - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows" (759pgs)
32.) Steven Millhauser - "The King in the Tree" (242pgs)
33.) Mikhail Bulgakov - "The Master and Margarita" (396pgs)
34.) Cameron Pierce - "In Heaven, Everything is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch" (345pgs)

(2,706pgs total)


 

June

35.) Brian Evenson - "The Open Curtain" (223pgs)

(223pgs total)

 

July

36.) Norman Lock - "A History of the Imagination" (223pgs)
37.) (reread) Dexter Palmer - "The Dream of Perpetual Motion" (353pgs)
38.) Roald Dahl - "The Witches" (201pgs)
39.) Tom Robbins - "Jitterbug Perfume" (388pgs)

(1,165pgs total)

 

August

40.) Roald Dahl - "The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me" (73pgs)
41.) Roald Dahl - "Matilda" (232pgs)
42.) Franz Kafka - "The Penal Colony" (317pgs)
43.) Roald Dahl - "Danny, the Champion of the World" (214pgs)
44.) Haruki Murakami - "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" (400pgs)
45.) Roald Dahl - "The BFG" (199pgs)
46.) Roald Dahl - "Boy: Tales of Childhood" (176pgs)
47.) Roald Dahl - "Going Solo" (210pgs)
48.) Fox Spirit Anthology - "The Girl at the End of the World: Book 1" (360pgs)
49.) Roald Dahl - "George's Marvellous Medicine" (104pgs)
50.) Roberto Bolano - "Distant Star" (149pgs)
51.) Stieg Larsson - "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (590pgs)
52.) Roberto Bolano - "Antwerp" (78pgs)

(3,102pgs total)

 

September

53.) Roberto Bolano - "The Skating Rink" (182pgs)
54.) Roald Dahl - "Fantatic Mr. Fox" (82pgs)
55.) Lois Lowry - "The Giver" (179pgs)
56.) Stieg Larsson - "The Girl Who Played with Fire" (724pgs)
57.) Stieg Larsson - "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" (743pgs)
58.) Roberto Bolano - "Monsieur Pain" (134pgs)
59.) Jeff Vandermeer - "City of Saints and Madmen" (704pgs)
60.) Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - "Dragonlance Legends: Time/War/Test of the Twins" (909pgs)
61.) Roberto Bolano - "Last Evenings on Earth" (219pgs)
62.) Madeline Roux - "Asylum" (310pgs)
63.) Courtney Moreno - "In Case of Energency" (274pgs)

(4,460pgs total)

 

October

64.) Don DeLillo - "White Noise" (310pgs)

(310pgs total)


 

November

65.) Philip K. Dick - "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (214pgs)
66.) Carlos Ruiz Zafon - "Marina" (238pgs)
67.) Blake Butler - "300,000,000" (576pgs)

(1,028pgs total) 


21,036 pages for the year 

(49,589)