An exception to every rule

Because the year in books is a way to mark the passage of time. This year's literature round-up is frankly embarassing. First, because I didn't read very much. Second, because a lot of the books I did read were crappy and for work. And finally, because it has been a year of easy distraction and false ambitions. Certain of said ambitions (the LSAT, for example) took up a great deal of time that would have been better spent on literature.

As in 2006, the new year will not have the ambitious (for me) literary quota of 2005. Now is a time for writing. And changing place of employment. You know what? I think I will also start doing this for movies.

Key:
R=reading it again
W=read for work
*=really fucking good

1. The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean
2. The March, by E.L. Doctorow
3. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace (R,*)
4. Consider the Lobster, Ibid.
5. Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
6. Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding*
7. The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford
8. Inside the Wire, by Erik Saar and Viveka Novak (W)
9. Camille's Children, by Camille Geraldi (W)
10. Guantanamo: The war on human rights, by David Rose (W)
11. For God and Country, by James Yee (W)
12. The Information, by Martin Amis
13. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro*
14. The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene*
15. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov*
16. Faceless Killers, by Henning Mankell
17. Strange Affair, by Peter Robinson
18. Table of Contents, by John McPhee
19. The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
20. The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
21. The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion*
22. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman (R,*)
23. Elizabeth: the biography of Elizabeth Taylor, by J. Randy Taraborelli (W, don't ask)
24. Spy: the Funny Years, Various Authors*

One thing that I enjoyed immensely, though not technically a book:
n+1, Issue Four

Works in Progress, likely to be included in 2007 list:
Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
[Both get * so far]

Last year's list can be read here.

Oh, blog! How I miss thee. Thy audience hath departed for greener pastures at thine own bidding.
If a tree falls in the woods...