1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austin
2. Getting in Touch with your Inner Bitch by Elizabeth Hilts
3. Dear Jane Letters by Amanda Hamm
4. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
5. Death Note, vol. 2 by Tsugumi Ohba
6. Stories by O. Henry
7. Death Note, vol. 3 by Tsugumi Ohba
8. A Calculated Risk by Katherine Neville
9. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10. Death Note, vol. 4 by Tsugumi Ohba
11. Dracula by Bram Stoker
12. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult
13. The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
14. Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody by Michael Gerber
15. Dragons by Catherine M. Petrini
16. Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
17. Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
18. Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-bye! by Cynthia Heimel
19. The Invisible Heart by Russell Roberts
20. She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
21. The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions by Kenji Kawakami
22. The Great Fetish by L. Sprague de Camp
23. Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
24. The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
25. Best-Loved Short Stories by various
26. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
27. What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Richard P. Feynman
28. James Herriot’s Cat Stories by James Herriot
29. Broca’s Brain by Carl Sagan
30. Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist
31. This Book Will Change Your Life by Benrik
32. The Martian Way by Isaac Asimov
33. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
34. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
35. Sudden Fiction edited by Robert Shapard
36. Waiting for Gertrude by Bill Richardson
37. George W. Bushisms edited by Jacob Weisberg
38. What Goes Around Comes Around by Con Lehane
39. Nation by Terry Pratchett
40. Kingmaker by Alexey Braguine
41. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart
42. Stiff by Mary Roach
43. Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin
44. The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov
45. Scum Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
46. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
47. Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto
48. We Thought You Would Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro
49. The Myth of You and Me by Leah Stewart
50. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
51. Kiss Me Like a Stranger by Gene Wilder
52. Brush Up Your Mythology! by Michael Macrone
53. If Chins Could Kill by Bruce Campbell
54. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
55. Why Don’t Your Eyelashes Grow? by Beth Ann Ditkoff
56. The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham
57. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Books listened to in 2008
1. The Client by John Grisham
2. Velocity by Dean Koontz
3. The Firm by John Grisham
4. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
5. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
6. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
8. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
9. Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
11. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
12. From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz
13. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
14. Freakonomics by by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
15. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
16. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
19. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
20. Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler (abridged)
21. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
22. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
23. Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
24. Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
25. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde
26. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
27. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
28. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
29. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
30. Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig
31. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
32. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
33. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Books started but not finished
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (skipping audiobook)
* The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (uncle!)
* Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King (horrible audiobook narrator)
* Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner (boring)
* The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (horrible audiobook narrator)
* Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much by Anne Wilson Schaef (too busy)
* Cleopatra VII by Kristiana Gregory (boring)
* Jack the Bodiless by Julian May (boring)
* A Writer’s Time by Kenneth Atchity (not what I was looking for)
* The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (no sympathy for the main characters)
* Fiction Writer’s Workshop by Josip Novakovich (not what I was looking for)
by Bernhard Schlink: Though it purports to be about a teenaged boy and his romance with a complicated older woman, this book is more about how the succeeding generations of Germans deal with the horrors of their Third Reich parents and grandparents. Michael Berg is a thoroughly introspective narrator, creating the feel of a memoir more than a novel. I found myself thinking about the characters and their choices long after finishing the last page. Recommended for those looking for a thought-provoking read.
by Mary Shelley: Forget all the Frankenstein stereotypes you know. Forget Igor, grave robbing, neck bolts, electricity, and mobs of angry villagers carrying torches. Victor Frankenstein is a student of natural philosophy (what science was evidently called back then) who plays with chemicals in order to create life from dead tissue. The monster, which remains nameless throughout the story, so frightens Victor that he runs away and tries to forget about it. The monster, initially gentle but driven to cruelty by the repeated condemnation by mankind, vows to ruin Victor’s life in return for creating his misery. It’s an interesting story, one that touches less obviously on the ethics of scientific experimentation, but says quite a lot about the unfortunate importance of beauty in society. Victor is more naive and pitiful than evil or mad. Definitely one worth reading, but don’t go in expecting anything like those famous old movies.
by Lawrence Lessig: Copyright law! That’s right, folks, I read a book about copyright law. And a fascinating book, at that. Lessig takes us through the ins and outs of these ever-changing rules, sprinkled liberally with relevant examples. Should students be sued for their life savings for sharing music files? Should copyright automatically be renewed, even if the original holder is disinterested or even dead? Are fanart and fanfic actually a threat to creators of the content on which they are based? How does the internet change the way content is shared, and how should copyright law to reflect this? Lessig goes through this all in great detail. It’s an important book for most netizens, particularly those members of fandom.
by Marisha Pessl: Blue van Meer and her somewhat eccentric dad live a nomadic life as he jumps between visiting professorships all over the country. Our story takes place during Blue’s senior year of high school in North Carolina, when the two actually stay in one place for an entire year. She meets a collection of unusual characters, most notably Hannah Schneider, a film studies teacher at the high school with a somewhat mysterious past. The most memorable and enchanting part of this book is the writing style. Blue’s lively narration is rife with intellectual asides, all backed up with MLA-style citations. I kept wondering how many of the references were real. So convinced was I of the legitimacy of the sources that I was rather surprised to discover that the Night Watchmen don’t actually exist. I found the plot and the unique storytelling methods delightful. And for the record, I think Blue is 100% correct. (Those who have read the book will know what I mean.)
by Beth Ann Ditkoff: This is a collection of questions and answers geared towards parents answering their children’s queries about their bodies. No, it’s not about puberty. It’s about all the other little stuff: why do we have boogers, what are moles, etc. I knew most of the answers already, though I recognized several misconceptions I held as a child. I can see this being a useful book to have in the house. Unfortunately, I am a touch leery about the credibility of the information. Yes, the author is a doctor, but there is no bibliography or even recommended further reading. That always puts up a red flag for me when reading nonfiction.
by Jodi Picoult: Not one of her better books. There are a few things you can count on in your average Picoult novel: a family or two with teenage children, police and/or lawyers, at least one romance, and a heaping helping of dysfunction. I get the impression that Picoult reads a headline and decides to write a story about it. Which is fine, but this book’s Weighty Topic is school shootings, which reads a lot like a cross between 
and a Law & Order episode, with a generous sprinkling of high school stereotypes. The main characters were the shooter and his mother, the shooter’s crush and her mother (a judge) and boyfriend (a bully/jock), and the detective. The whole story was just so tragic that I stopped caring how things turned out. It didn’t help that I called the twist ending around halfway through the book. I’ve read some excellent books by Picoult; this just didn’t happen to be one of them.
by Bruce Campbell: This is an autobiography unlike most others. Campbell, star of the Evil Dead films, starts from his surprisingly industrious childhood, through the physical tortures of his friendship with Sam Raimi (who would go on to direct the Spiderman films, among others), and into his career as a full-time actor. Not only is it a fascinating look into the making of Evil Dead and Hercules, it’s downright hilarious. Campbell writes the way he speaks, a sort of campy monologue full of entertaining anecdotes. My favorite part was the photo captions. Definitely recommended, not only to Bruce Campbell fans, but also to aspiring filmmakers. It’s amazing what Raimi and co. were able to accomplish on a meager budget, using homemade special effects. I look forward to Campbell’s other books.
by Zadie Smith: Whenever I review a book, I feel a need to at least briefly sum up the plot. It’s hard to decide if one might want to read something without even knowing vaguely what it’s about. Unfortunately, I’m having a bit of a tough time with this one. See, this book is about family and infidelity and race relations and Haiti and Britain and New England and intellectualism and hip hop and poetry and more. The main characters are the Belseys: white British art history professor Howard, his black American wife Kiki, and his three very different children. Jerome is experimenting with Christianity and conservatism, Zora is an insatiable intellectual, and Levi is struggling to discover what it means to be black. My favorite character by far was Kiki. She was warm and friendly without being a doormat for her idiot husband. (Yeah, I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy for Howard.) The story itself was interesting, more or less covering one turbulent year in the lives of the Belseys. Unfortunately, once it reached the (rather predictable) climax, there was a big time skip, followed by a sort of lackluster coda, like the author ran out of steam. I don’t need tidy endings with everything all neatly tied up, but I would have liked a little more detail on what happened between the Big Drama and the fizzle of a conclusion. If you’re the sort of person who likes reading page by page, enjoying the sensation of being in someone else’s life, you’ll probably enjoy this one. The characters are realistic and recognizable. Personally, I like books that go somewhere, where at the end I can tell why the author felt a desire to tell that particular story. This one left me a little disappointed.
by Michael Macrone: Oddly enough, this book appears to have been originally titled “By Jove!”, which would have been far more fitting. Though you will learn (or relearn) a number of famous tales, the purpose of this book is not to function as a primer, but rather to describe the Greek/Roman mythological roots of common English words and phrases. And in that capacity it does an excellent job, covering terms from the obvious (dionysian) to the obscure (syringe), with a healthy peppering of amusing commentary interspersed. If you’re a fan of language or mythology, this is a fun read.