Tuesday, July 03, 2007

No Frigate Like One

Like Katya, I keep a booklist. She's posted before about her list, and really, I have nothing more to add about the theory of such a list: it's fun to see the reading phases I've gone through, and useful when trying to recommend, or even remember, books I've read.

It's also useful, of course, when trying to prove how desperately underemployed I was this past year in Indonesia. Days are long when you work fifteen hours a week--even with countless hours devoted to language study, practice, and research, pirated DVDs, travelling, and texting the SLO, I had time to read. A lot.

See for yourself:

A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
Lord of the Barnyard, Tristan Egolf
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Mighty and the Almighty, Madeleine Albright
Culture Shock Indonesia, Cathie Draine and Barbara Hall
Semester Pertama di Malory Towers (First Term at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Kelas Dua di Malory Towers (Second Form at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
The Girl Who Invented Romance, Caroline B. Cooney
The Witches, Roald Dahl
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Oscar Hijuelos
Gilead, Marilyn Robinson
Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas H. Naylor
Kelas Tiga di Malory Towers (Third Year at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Best American Essays of the Century, ed. Joyce Carol Oates
Deep River, Shusako Endo
The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
Mulai Malapekata (The Bad Beginning), Lemony Snicket
Kelas Empat di Malory Towers (Upper Fourth at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Kelas Lima di Malory Towers (In the Fifth at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
The Collected Short Stories, Nikolai Gogol
Arab and Jew, David K. Shipler
Shopaholic Ties the Knot, Sophie Kinsella
The Woman In the Dunes, Kobo Abe
Kokoro, Soseki Natsume
Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
Akhir Satu Cinta (The End of the Affair), Graham Greene
Gio, Jangan Cari Pacar Berjilbab!, Chris Oetoyo
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
Semester Terakhir di Malory Towers (Last Term at Malory Towers), Enid Blyton
Wonderful Fool, Shusako Endo
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
America: The Book, John Stewart
Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl
Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett
Out, Natsuo Kirino
Spring Snow, Yukio MIshima
Made in America, Bill Bryson
A Severed Head, Iris Murdoch
The End, Lemony Snicket
A Million Little Pieces, James Frey
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal
The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby
Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton
Lies my Teacher Told Me, James Loewen
A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Ludmilla's Broken English, DBC Pierre
Manhattan Monologues, Louis Auchincloss
Clear Light of Day, Anita Desai
The Know-It-All, A.J. Jacobs
The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek
The Accidental, Ali Smith
Confessions of Love, Uno Chiyo
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Ruth, Elizabeth Gaskell
The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl
Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry
The Master Butchers Singing Club, Louise Erdrich
The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom
Culture Shock: Indonesia, Cathie Draine and Barbara Hall
We'll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light John Baxter
The Final Martyrs, Shusako Endo
Appointment in Samarra, John O'Hara
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
Some Prefer Nettles, Junichiro Tanizaki
The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh
Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima
Monumen, Nh. Dini
Three Men on the Bummell, Jerome K. Jerome
The Europeans, Henry James
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson
After the Banquet, Yukio Mishima
What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis
Six Easy Pieces, Richard Feynmann
Perempuan di Titik Nol, Nawal Al-Sadawi, trans. Mochtar Lubis
Mereka Bilang, Saya Monyet, Djenar Maesa Ayu
Saman, Ayu Utami
Raumanen, Marianne Katoppo
Sepuluh Anak Negro (Ten Little Indians), Agatha Christie
Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman
He's Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo
Aib (Disgrace), J.M. Coetzee
Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia, Benedict Anderson
Bali, Putu Wijaya
Dua Dunia, Nh Dini
The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz
Cerita Pendek Tentang Cerita Cinta Pendek (Short Stories about Short Love Stories), Djenar Maesa Ayu
Write Away, Elizabeth George
No Touch Monkey, and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late, Ayun Halliday
The Sociopath Next Door, Martha Stout
Full House, Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes
The Rocky Road to Romance, Janet Evanovich
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima
Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Booty Nomad, Scott Mebus
Vampires of Venice Beach, Jennifer Colt
Snow, Orhan Pamuk
Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, Anne Lamott
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
The Riddle of the Sands, Erskine Childers
Home, Manju Kapur
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Steven Sherrill
The Bell, Iris Murdoch
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
What Came Before He Shot Her, Elizabeth George
The Good Good Pig, Sy Montgomery
Fermat's Last Theorem, Simon Singh
And Then, Nastume Soseki
Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Runaway Horses, Yukio Mishima
Sacred Games, Vikram Chandra
The Famished Road, Ben Okri
The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
The Suffrage of Elvira, V.S. Naipaul
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion, V.S. Naipaul
A Flag on the Island, V.S. Naipaul
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, Umberto Eco
Villette, Charlotte Bronte

So if you ever need a book recommendation, you know who to ask.

9 comments:

Melyngoch said...

OK. What should I read after The Last Samurai and Gilead?

SkyBluePink said...

Speaking of recommendations, I still have that one book you lent to me last summer. I should really find a time to give that back to you now that you're back.

BJ Homer said...

Did you read all of those this summer? Because if so, that's absolutely incredible.

Katya said...

You may have a booklist, but have you cataloged your books on LibrarThing? Hmm?

Caitlin said...

booty nomad? what EXACTLY was that one about? and you may have read a shopaholic book, but i can one up you--i read the entire series, purchased for $12/book at gramedia--now that's dedication to the luminous works of sophie kinsella.

Petra said...

Mel: As a future missionary, do you want "books that made me feel more Christian," or just "books that I think you would like"? For the former, I'd read some Shusaku Endo (start with Silence), but for the latter, I'd read The Know-It-All or Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life.

SBP: I forget what you borrowed from me, but I'll be around for another two weeks or so. Anytime you can find to return it would be great.

Yellow: No, those are the books I read during my ten months in Indonesia.

Katya: Not yet, because all my books are still in boxes in my grandma's basement. You can trust I'll get to it as soon as I move in someplace, though.

Caitlin: Booty Nomad was a mildly amusing novel about singles in New York City. And I have no dedication to the luminous works of Sophie Kinsella, simply a dedication to prose; the Shopaholic books, or, for that matter, any throwaway romances, are a good sign that Amelia was visiting me at the time.

Zillah said...

i am...jealous. damn.

eleka nahmen said...

I admit to raising my eyebrow at seeing the Janet Evanovitch.

Katie said...

I'm actually vastly reassured that someone else besides me has electic reading habits. (I read the whole Shopaholic series, but not out of any sort of duty or dedication--more because I found the first mildly amusing and hoped Kinsella could sustain it)