End of the year book round-up

Every year, about mid-December, I get really excited about writing about the books I read in the past year. Since 2005 I've kept a list of everything I read; since 2007 it's been primarily online. In 2009 I might go back to the word document/excel file method, because one thing I miss about using goodreads is that I no longer have a tally of page numbers. I read fewer books this year than last year, but a lot of the books I read were fairly long. And I've been reading an epic biography of Mao Zedong for the last month (it's over 900 pages, but if you skip the interviews, index, and footnotes it's a mere 770!)

Overall trends of the year: short stories and nonfiction. Short story collections are good for the busy reader, and I'm happy to start reading more nonfiction because I used to be a straight-up novel girl.
Web reading trend of the year: lots of Google reader, especially science articles, and cutting celebrity snark blogs out of my life. (I've still got things like Gawker, Defamer, GFY, and the IMDB news feed, but I think I'm a much happier person for not reading I Don't Like You In That Way or Tyler Durden to find out who looks fat in their bikini.)
Recent bandwagon trend: the New Yorker fiction podcast. I can't really read on noisy crowded buses here, but with this podcast, it's just like I can.
Life change/awesome website of the year: Bookmooch! I had to get rid of a lot of my library when moving across the world, so I sold some books online, gave more to the library, conveniently forgot a few at friends' houses, and shared a lot through Bookmooch. I highly recommend it, especially for those of you still in the U.S. with its awesome cheap media mail. Giving a book to someone who you know wants it is a great feeling.

1. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
2. Straight Man by Richard Russo
3. Tomcat in Love by Tim O'Brien
I started off the year with a mini-trend of college satirical novels. Lucky Jim is the best and one of the very first. I read Francine Prose's Blue Angel towards the end of 2007, which kick-started the college novel trend and led me to Lucky Jim, which I'd never heard of before. If you like this type of novel, you need to check out the original.
4. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcom X
5. Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
6. My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
I read a lot of books about birds this year.. but surprisingly, not these two.
7. Beautiful Children by Charles Bock
8. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
9. At Home in the World: A Memoir by Joyce Maynard
Felt sorry for her when I finished reading it, but still wanted to go read Salinger instead.
10. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
11. Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
12. Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
13. Red-Tails in Love: A Wildlife Drama in Central Park by Marie Winn
I didn't think this book was written particularly well, but hey, hawks! In the city!
14. Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays by David Sedaris
15. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
Loved Raise High the Roof Beam, couldn't make it through Seymour.
16. The Life of the Skies by Jonathan Rosen
Great book about what it means to be a birdwatcher/observe the natural world, and why it's so important, but I'm afraid that if I try to describe it it will sound really cheesy.
17. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
18. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
I am so glad I came back to this book and actually read it!
19. Things I Learned About My Dad: Humorous and Heartfelt Essays, edited by Heather Armstrong
A really uneven book of essays. I'm sorry to end the year with this one. Maybe I can read five hundred pages about Mao before tomorrow night.

This year I got away from my goal of reading National Book Award winners, Pulitzers, and the Modern Library's 100 best 20th century novels - the only one I picked up was Kavalier and Clay.

I can't really pick a favorite book of the year - as I look at this list, my choices seem to be all over the place. Best novel? Best nonfiction? Best essay or short story? Most important? Most thought-provoking? "Kavalier and Clay" is great, but you know that. Everyone should read Malcolm X's Autobiography. The collection of love stories edited by Jeffrey Eugenides has an awesome title referencing Catullus, a lot of excellent stories, and a human heart on the cover, so that's worth your time. "Beautiful Children" got a ton of hype and subsequent backlash, but in my opinion it's a very good novel about a child's disappearance that follows multiple characters through Las Vegas and manages to keep them all from becoming caricatures (usually).

All that said, I keep coming back to "Life of the Skies." Part history of birdwatchers and birdwatching, part quest for the ivory-billed woodpecker, part memoir; full of literary references and early Audubon illustrations; this book explores what it means to be a birdwatcher in the early 21st century - and I mean birdwatcher as in "hey, look, there's a robin in my yard" not snobby analyses of breeding plumage of tiny birds in treetops that all look the same from the ground. It's a big read, but a good one. Enjoy it while reading something else - may I suggest a collection of short stories or humorous essays?

Read between the lines

The scene: my apartment
The time: last night, 1:30 am.
The quote: "Okay guys, as I see it we have two choices. We go on a beer run, or we go out for barbeque."

Let's parse all the ways that sentence is awesome.
1. You can buy beer at 1:30 in the morning! In fact, half a block from my house is a 24-hour convenience store, and as far as I can tell, there is not a single liquor control law in China.
2. You can get barbeque at 1:30 in the morning! Delicious, life-giving barbeque.
3. Nobody works on weekday mornings! It is totally kosher to stay up late drinking after class and then wake up late the next day. In fact, as soon as Dan gets out of the shower, we're headed down to Macao for the day.
4. Advanced analysis: drinking in my apartment is way cheaper (and sometimes more fun) than hitting a smoke-filled western bar where you end up desperately trying to figure out what Australians are saying.

We ended up with barbeque, because it's hard to resist the lure of hot dogs, tofu strips, beef, and chicken. We also got my favorite thing - I only know the name in Chinese (jiu cai) but it's sorta like chives or green onions, lightly spiced and shoved on a skewer - as well as mushrooms and cauliflower (literally "flower vegetable" in Chinese). All things considered, this is a pretty great country.