Readings, 2007

In 2007 I read the following books:

Code:

italics = reread
asterisk = new (to me) author (*)
bold = my favorites this year
exclamation mark = !unfinished
strikethrough = never finished, never will

  1. Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang (*)
  2. The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War by George Hicks (*)
  3. Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson
  4. Accelerando Charles Stross (*)
  5. Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, by Wendy Kaminer (*)
  6. Tatja Grimm’s World by Vernor Vinge
  7. The Koreans by Michael Breen (*)
  8. Stone by Adam Roberts
  9. Sin City Book 6: Booze, Broads, and Bullets by Frank Miller (*)
  10. Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto (*)
  11. Seven Touches of Music by Zoran Zivkovic (*)
  12. Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich (*) (Thank, Tina!)
  13. Korea Bug: The Best of the Zine that Infected a Nation, by J. Scott Burgeson (*)
  14. Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling
  15. Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, translated by Yair Reiner (*)
  16. Inventory by Dionne Brand
  17. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture by John Strausbaugh. (*)
  18. The Weight of Oranges/Miner’s Pond by Anne Michaels
  19. The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (*)
  20. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass (*)
  21. Deconstruction and Criticism (Continuum Impacts) by by Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey H. Hartman, J. Hillis Miller , Harold Bloom, and Paul De Man
  22. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd
  23. Titus Crow, Volume 1: The Burrowers Beneath & The Transition of Titus Crow by Brian Lumley
  24. Angry Young Spaceman by Jim Munroe (*)
  25. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels (*)
  26. Space War Blues by Richard Lupoff (*)
  27. The Canterville Ghost and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde
  28. Magnificent Corpses by Anneli Rufus (*)
  29. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
  30. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (*)
  31. What Mad Universe? by Frederic Brown (*)
  32. A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare Operation by Daniel Barenblatt (*)
  33. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
  34. The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
  35. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
  36. The Ma Rok Biographies by Seo Giwon (*), translated by Kevin O’Rourke
  37. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin (*)
  38. She Dreams in Red by Alexis Kienlen
  39. Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow (*)
  40. Three Poets of Modern Korea: Yi Sang, Hahm Dong-seon (*) and Choi Young-mi (*), translated by Yu Jung-yul(*) and James Kimbrell (*)
  41. After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
  42. Superman — Sunday Classics: 1939-1943 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
  43. It’s Superman!, by Tom De Haven (*)
  44. Toast by Charles Stross
  45. Ghost Country by Steve Noyes (*)
  46. The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker
  47. Kappa by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (*), translated by Geoffrey Bownas (*)
  48. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (*)
  49. Love as a Foreign Language (Vol 1 & 2) by J. Torres (*) and Eric Kim (*)
  50. Journey of Joenes by Robert Sheckley (*)
  51. The Divine Invasion by Philip K. Dick
  52. Parecon: Life After Capitalism by Michael Albert (*)
  53. The Coming Anarchy by Robert Kaplan (*)
  54. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
  55. !The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea, translated by Jahyun Kim Haboush
  56. The Hye Ch’O Diary: Memoir of the Pilgrimage to the Five Regions of India (*)
  57. Haunted: A Novel of Stories, by Chuck Palahniuk
  58. Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks (*)

Magazines:

  1. F&SF, October/November 2007
  2. F&SF December 2006
  3. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, #11 (*) (Thanks, Tina!)
  4. F&SF January 2007
  5. F&SF February 2007
  6. F&SF March 2007
  7. Drive-By English by J. Scott Burgeson
  8. Interzone 208
  9. Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007
  10. Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2007
  11. Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2007
  12. Interzone 209
  13. Fantasy Magazine, #5 (December 2006)
  14. Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2007
  15. Asimov’s SF October/November 2007
  16. Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 2007
  17. Asimov’s SF, June 2007
  18. Interzone 210
  19. Fantasy Magazine Spring 2007

That’s a lot more books than I thought I’d read — more than one a week is pretty stunning, given the amount of travel I did, and given how slow I am at reading. (And some of those books, like Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, are massive tomes.)

I’m pleased and impressed. At the moment, though, I have a surprisingly big list of books on the go:

  • several issues of magazines to which I’m subscribed but have fallen behind on (Asimov’s, Interzone, and F&SF are the most prominent, though there are issues of LCRW, Sibyl’s Garage, Subterranean, and the Kyoto Journal awaiting my attentions too)
  • Getting Things Done by David Allen (because being more organized sounds great to me)
  • Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge (on my ebook reader, though I have a copy)
  • The Octopus by Frank Norris (on my ebook reader, though I have a copy)
  • The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (though it’s a slog for me, because of how I feel about some of his ideas)
  • Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  • The Snow by Adam Roberts
  • Blindsight by Peter Watts (on my ebook reader, though I have a copy)
  • Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas (on my ebook reader, though I have a copy)
  • Overclocked by Cory Doctorow (on my ebook reader, though I have a copy, and though I’ve read everything but The Seige online as well as heard it all in podcast form… but I read “When Sysadmins Rule the Earth” recently, and I do want to read “The Seige” as well)

One note: while I do try to keep up with the online zines, like Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld, I don’t list them here. I’m only counting printed books, because otherwise I’ll be listing short stories endlessly, and who needs that?

Even so, I’m impressed: almost 60 books this year, on top of a good stack of magazines. And I’m still behind on the subscriptions! (Though I’ve decided to let one lapse.)

8 thoughts on “Readings, 2007

  1. I left a comment with linky goodness on LJ, reply to that if you want me to repeat the info here for the edification of anyone who might be following comments here, but not looking at LJ. :)

  2. The David Allen book is good, and it made a big difference re: how I organized stuff, but if you are completely disorganized and set in your ways (I passed it on to someone like that) you’ll probably go, “Huh”, and never believe it’s possible to use his advice.

  3. Julia,

    Yeah, I think I’ll be using more electronic records and less on the filing and paper… though paper will be important for a while, still. Hacking the methods is the only way I could use ’em.

    Mark,

    Yeah, I’m not so disorganized I can’t use this book — though his exact methods seem a little arxhaic for me… actual files and paper? That’s probably cool for people with an office, but for me, I’m not sure. Though who knows, maybe if I try it I’ll prefer it. But I do know I need to get organized!

    Trevor,

    Yes.

    I mean, a combination of Bandi & Luni (at Jonggak station), Whatthebook.com, and, for used things, mostly Abebooks, but also occasionally Amazon.com. However, I also have brought lots of books home after trips, either when I’m in a place with English books I can’t find cheaply in Korea, or else when I visit my mother and can bring back an extra boxful on the plane.

  4. Actually, two things that really made a big difference were the two minute rule (anything that can be done in two minutes or less should be done immediately) and just dumping everything into centralized places – an inbox, a dayplanner (or a PDA). I got interested in David Allen when I read an article about him by James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly, someone who is no dummy and quite tech savvy – I believe it’s one of the reasons why Fallows was drawn to Allen.

    I can tell from your blog that you do have organizational skills – all the posts about grading and marking indicate a healthy interest in having a consistent yardstick for getting work done.

  5. Mark,

    I’d swear Cory Doctorow said that Allen just de-religionized level one of that religion Tom Cruise is part of (Sc**nt*l*gy) — the bit where they get you to organize your life, and suddenly you feel like this religion is making a difference, and feel willing to invest more time (and money, and belief) into it.

    I am somewhat organized when it comes to writing and my courses, but it’s the rest of my life I’m rather more disorganized with. Hoping that some of Allen’s tricks will help with that.

  6. Well, I don’t know if Allen is trying to start a cult, but I have found his methods quite effective. As he points out in his book, he can’t find the direction you (or your organization) are going in, but he can help you start moving.

  7. Heh, no, I think he isn’t trying to start a cult — he just retooled the methods used by one to help no-cultists get organized and feel more in control of their own lives and activities — without having to join some religion.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *