The books are listed in the order I read them, oldest first, except for the 5 fiction books which I listed separately at the bottom. My favorite books were #’s 1, 6, 9, 16, 19, 22, and 25.

Nonfiction:

1. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Mary Roach

2. Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude, Neal Pollack

3. unSweetined: A Memoir, Jodie Sweetin

4. Hoda: How I Survived War Zones, Bad Hair, Cancer, and Kathie Lee, Hoda Kotb

5. Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language, Deborah Fallows

6. Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy, Lindsay Moran

7. Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds, Sylvia Browne

8. How Did You Get This Number, Sloane Crosley

9. The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love, Kristin Kimball

10. Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn’t Go Away, Jennette Fulda

11. I Love You and I’m Leaving You Anyway, Tracy McMillan

12. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, Peggy Orenstein

13. Grindhopping: Building a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, Laura Vanderkam

14. Committed: A Love Story, Elizabeth Gilbert

15. The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie, Wendy McClure

16. Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Gabrielle Hamilton

17. SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, Howard E. Wasdin

18. My Year with Eleanor, Noelle Hancock

19. Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India, Miranda Kennedy

20. Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West, Dorothy Wickenden

21. Across Many Mountains: A Tibetan Family’s Epic Journey from Oppression to Freedom, Yangzom Brauen

22. An Unquenchable Thirst: Following Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Service, and an Authentic Life, Mary Johnson

Fiction

23. Dancing for Degas, Kathryn Wagner

24. I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith

25. Alice I Have Been, Melanie Benjamin

26. Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel, Jeannette Walls

27. The Help, Kathryn Stockett

The books are listed in the order I read them, oldest first, except for the 3 fiction books which I listed separately at the bottom. My favorite books were #’s 13, 18, 23, 34, 43, and 44.

Nonfiction:

1. The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution, David Kamp

2. Making the Corps, Thomas E. Ricks

3. Faith Under Fire: An Army Chaplain’s Memoir, Roger Benimoff

4. The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment, A.J. Jacobs

5. Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, Julie Powell

6. Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House, Stacy Parker Aab

7. Tide, Feather, Snow: A Life in Alaska, Miranda Weiss

8. Love My Rifle More than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, Kayla Williams

9. Prairie Tale, Melissa Gilbert

10. The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, Gretchen Rubin

11. Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, Anthony Swofford

12. Babylon by Bus: Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq, Ray LeMoine and Jeff Neumann

13. Catch Me If You Can, Frank Abagnale

14. Paper Daughter: A Memoir, M. Elaine Mar

15. Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI, Candice DeLong

16. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated, Alison Arngrim

17. The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy, Mark Sisson

18. Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, Piper Kerman

19. My Life from Scratch: A Sweet Journey of Starting Over, One Cake at a Time, Gesine Bullock-Prado

20. Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China, Jen Lin-Liu

21. Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, Fuchsia Dunlop

22. Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, Anthony Bourdain

23. The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese, Margaret Hathaway

24. Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves, Crystal Renn

25. The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, A.J. Jacobs

26. Someone Will Be with You Shortly: Notes from a Perfectly Imperfect Life, Lisa Kogan

27. No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process, Colin Beavan

28. Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology, Eric Brende

29. Bound Feet and Western Dress: A Memoir, Pang-Mei Chang

30. At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery, Rebecca Otowa

31. Petite Anglaise: In Paris. In Love. In Trouble, Catherine Sanderson

32. I Am Hutterite: The Fascinating True Story of a Young Woman’s Journey to Reclaim Her Heritage, Mary-Ann Kirkby

33. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Timothy Ferriss

34. The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: An American Journalist in Yemen, Jennifer Steil

35. The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, Cathy Erway

36. Devotion: A Memoir, Dani Shapiro

37. Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas & Found Happiness, Dominique Browning

38. Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America, Linda Furiya

39. Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, Bich Minh Nguyen

40. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, Jennifer 8. Lee

41. Alternadad: The True Story of One Family’s Struggle to Raise a Cool Kid in America, Neal Pollack

42. Lost on Planet China: One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation, J. Maarten Troost

43. Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, Portia de Rossi

44. Whip Smart: A Memoir, Melissa Febos

Fiction:

45. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins

46. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

47. Little Bee, Chris Cleave

(Previous lists can be found here: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.)

These books are listed in the order I read them, oldest first, except for the three fiction books which I listed separately at the bottom. My favorite books were #’s 8, 13, 15, 18, 21, and 23.

Nonfiction:

1. Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over, Cathy Alter

2. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School, Kathleen Flinn

3. Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Susan Shapiro

4. Thin is the New Happy, Valerie Frankel

5. Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher (Warning: this was my least-favorite of everything I read last year. I only finished it because it was a quick read.)

6. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris

7. Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, Jennifer O’Connell (editor)

8. Lying Together: My Russian Affair, Jennifer Beth Cohen

9. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea, Chelsea Handler

10. Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories, Katha Pollitt

11. Washington Schlepped Here: Walking in the Nation’s Capital, Christopher Buckley

12. Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, David Oliver Relin

13. Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, William Queen

14. No Limits: The Will to Succeed, Michael Phelps

15. The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them, Amy Dickinson

16. I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, Giulia Melucci

17. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Susan Jane Gilman

18. Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story, Lang Lang

19. Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain, Martha Sherrill

20. It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita, Heather Armstrong

21. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, Kevin Roose

22. Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids, Lynne Van Luven

Fiction

23. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

24. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, Tiffany Baker

25. Last of the Breed, Louis L’Amour

(Previous lists can be found here: 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003.)

They’re listed in the order I read them, except for the two fiction books which I listed separately at the bottom. My favorite nonfiction books were #’s 4, 16, 20, 25, and 32. The two fiction books by Khaled Hosseini were both excellent as well.

Nonfiction:

1. Every Second Counts, by Lance Armstrong

2. Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back…And
How You Can Too, by Shauna James Ahern

3. Service Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter, by Phoebe Damrosch

4. See You in a Hundred Years: Four Seasons in Forgotten America, by Logan Ward

5. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, by Michael Pollan

6. The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria, by Marlena de Blasi

7. Not That You Asked: Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, by Steve Almond

8. Living in a Foreign Language: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Love in Italy, by Michael Tucker

9. Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders, by Aimee Liu

10. Cheer!: Three Teams on a Quest for College Cheerleading’s Ultimate Prize, by Kate Torgovnick

11. Bitter is the New Black, by Jen Lancaster

12. The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, by Chandler Burr

13. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World, by Eric Weiner

14. Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir, by Jennette Fulda

15. Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny, by Jessica Queller

16. Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams, by Jennifer Sey

17. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach

18. Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After, by Bella DePaulo

19. C’est La Vie: An American Woman Begins a New Life in Paris and–Voila!–Becomes Almost French, by Suzy Gershman

20. Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir, by Franz Wisner

21. Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism, by Thomas Kohnstamm

22. I Was Told There’d Be Cake, by Sloane Crosley

23. Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me, by Ben Karlin

24. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest To Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, Or Why Pie is Not The Answer, by Jen Lancaster

25. The Kabul Beauty School: The Art of Friendship and Freedom, by Deborah Rodriguez

26. Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress, by Debra Ginsberg

27. Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, by Stephanie Klein

28. Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited, by Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein

29. Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, by Beth Lisick

30. Don’t Let The Lipstick Fool You: The Making of a Champion, by Lisa Leslie

31. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science, by Jill Price

32. Madness: A Bipolar Life, by Marya Hornbacher

Fiction:

33. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

34. A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

The books that I liked best have a double-asterisk after the author’s name (**).

Nonfiction:

1) Lucky Man (AUDIOBOOK), by Michael J. Fox **

2) One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School (AUDIOBOOK), by Scott Turow **

3) Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student, by Martha Kimes

4) Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, by Adeline Yen Mah

5) Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir, by Janice Erlbaum

6) Let Me Go (AUDIOBOOK), by Helga Schneider

7) The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (AUDIOBOOK), by Bill Bryson **

8 ) My Invented Country (AUDIOBOOK), by Isabel Allende

9) The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones, by Anthony Bourdain **

10) The Reach of a Chef: Beyond the Kitchen, by Michael Ruhlman

11) Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival (AUDIOBOOK), by Anderson Cooper (I also wrote a book review here)

12) Outside the Box, by Lynn Sherr

13) Fleeing Fundamentalism: A Minister’s Wife Examines Faith, by Carlene Cross

14) The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them (AUDIOBOOK), by Erin Gruwell and students

15) Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide (AUDIOBOOK), by Maureen Dowd

16) Choosing Simplicity: Real People Finding Peace and Fulfillment in a Complex World, by Linda Breen Pierce

17) Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (AUDIOBOOK), by Various Authors

18 ) Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, by Stefan Fatsis

19) Ultimate Fitness: The Quest for Truth about Health and Exercise, by Gina Kolata

20) Jackpot Nation: Rambling and Gambling Across Our Landscape of Luck, by Richard Hoffer

21) Hate Mail from Cheerleaders, by Rick Reilly

22) The Big Turnoff: Confessions of a TV-Addicted Mom Trying to Raise a TV-Free Kid, by Ellen Currey-Wilson

23) Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave, by Ellen Sussman **

Fiction:

24) Digging to America (AUDIOBOOK), by Anne Tyler

25) The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (AUDIOBOOK), by Kim Edwards

26) The Thirteenth Tale (AUDIOBOOK), by Diane Setterfield

27) Bee Season, by Myla Goldberg

Travel:

28 ) A Thousand Days in Venice, by Marlena De Blasi

29) A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure, by Marlena De Blasi

30) France: A Love Story, by Camille Cusumano (Editor)

31) French By Heart: An American Family’s Adventures in La Belle France, by Rebecca Ramsey

This is an extensive list: I read 110 books, which is more than double what I read in 2005. Even though I knew there were a lot, I didn’t know exactly how many I’d read until yesterday because I don’t count the total until the end of the year.

There were several factors this year that enabled me to finish so many books. The biggest one was the long commute I had for the first six months of 2006, when I was living in California and taking a commuter bus to work. I had 2-3 hours a day of uninterrupted reading time. Then, beginning this summer when I drove back to Virginia, I started listening to audiobooks. Now I always keep one in my car and I listen to it almost every time I drive somewhere, as long as I’m in the car by myself (which is most of the time). My drive to work takes 25-35 minutes each way, so I finish a new audiobook roughly once a week.

A few additional notes:

• I end up organizing these lists a little bit differently every year. This year I tried to group similar books together within the categories I assigned, and whenever I read multiple books by the same author I kept those together as well. The audiobooks are also clearly denoted.
• If anyone ends up reading something because of a recommendation found here, or if you’ve read something on this list already, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment on this post or use the email address on my About page.
• Most of my favorite books from the Travel Memoir category were previously mentioned in this post.
• The books that I liked best, and highly recommend, have a double-asterisk after the authors name (**).

INVESTIGATIVE

1) The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan **

2) The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, by John Robbins **

3) Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World’s Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers, by Amy Sutherland **

4) Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America, by Amy Sutherland **

5) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach **

6) Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, by Mary Roach

7) Color Stories: Behind the Scenes of America’s Billion-Dollar Beauty Industry, by Mary Lisa Gavenas **

8 ) Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, by Judith Levine **

9) Whoredom In Kimmage: The Private Lives of Irish Women, by Rosemary Mahoney

10) Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany, by Bill Buford

11) Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (AUDIOBOOK), by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

12) Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, by Elizabeth Royte

13) My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, by Rebekah Nathan

MEMOIR

14) Naked, by David Sedaris **

15) Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris **

16) First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, by Loung Ung **
I wrote about reading this book at the bottom of this post.

17) Lucky Child: A Daughter of Cambodia Reunites with the Sister She Left Behind, by Loung Ung **

18) Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan, by Elizabeth Kim **

19) When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, by Chanrithy Him

20) Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power, by Elisabeth Eaves **

21) Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi

22) The Liars’ Club, by Mary Karr **

23) Cherry: A Memoir, by Mary Karr **

24) A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana, by Haven Kimmel

25) Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, by Elizabeth Wurtzel **

26) More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction, by Elizabeth Wurtzel **

27) Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy, by Dorothy Allred Solomon **

28) Crossing Over: One Woman’s Escape from Amish Life, by Ruth Irene Garrett

29) Night (AUDIOBOOK), by Elie Wiesel **

30) Lucky, by Alice Sebold **

31) Mostly True: A Memoir of Family, Food, and Baseball, by Molly O’Neill

32) Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker **

33) Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex (AUDIOBOOK), by Marita Golden

34) Finding Fish (AUDIOBOOK), by Antwone Fisher **
The movie Antwone Fisher came out first, and then he wrote this book.

35) The Broke Diaries: The Completely True and Hilarious Misadventures of a Good Girl Gone Broke, by Angela Nissel

36) Possible Side Effects, by Augusten Burroughs

37) But Enough About Me: A Jersey Girl’s Unlikely Adventures Among the Absurdly Famous, by Jancee Dunn **

38) Free Gift with Purchase: My Improbable Career in Magazines and Makeup, by Jean Godfrey-June **

39) Tabloid Love: Looking for Mr. Right in All the Wrong Places, by Bridget Harrison **

40) Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown: Notes from a Single Girl’s Closet, by Adena Halpern

41) Alligators, Old Mink and New Money: One Woman’s Adventures in Vintage Clothing, by Alison and Melissa Houtte

42) My Life in France (AUDIOBOOK), by Julia Child, Alex Prud’Homme

43) White House Nannies: True Tales from the Other Department of Homeland Security, by Barbara Kline

44) Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

45) Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love, by Anne Thomas Soffee

46) Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back, by Norah Vincent

47) You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny, by Suzanne Hansen

48) Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life, by Erica Jong

49) My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru, by Tim Guest

50) On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King

51) On Becoming Fearless…. in Love, Work, and Life, by Arianna Huffington

52) Open House: Of Family, Friends, Food, Piano Lessons, and the Search for a Room of My Own (AUDIOBOOK), by Patricia Williams

53) Join Me, by Danny Wallace

54) Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, by Geoff Dyer

55) Are You Really Going to Eat That?: Reflections of a Culinary Thrill Seeker, by Robb Walsh

TRAVEL MEMOIR

56) The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, by J. Maarten Troost **

57) Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, by J. Maarten Troost **

58) My ‘Dam Life: Three Years in Holland, by Sean Condon **

59) Along the Inca Road: A Woman’s Journey into an Ancient Empire, by Karin Muller **

60) River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler **

61) The Early Arrival of Dreams: A Year in China, by Rosemary Mahoney **

62) Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert **

63) The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca, by Tahir Shah **

64) Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman, by Alice Steinbach **

65) Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman, by Alice Steinbach **

66) Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World, by Rita Golden Gelman **

67) Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, by Stephanie Elizondo Griest **

68) Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure, by Sarah Macdonald **

69) Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei, by David Mura **

70) Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto, by Victoria Abbott Riccardi **

71) Too Late for the Festival: An American Salary-Woman in Japan, by Rhiannon Paine **

72) Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havana, by Isadora Tattlin **

73) Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman’s Travel Odyssey, by Laurie Gough **

74) The Devil’s Picnic: Around the World in Pursuit of Forbidden Fruit, by Taras Grescoe **

75) A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines, by Anthony Bourdain **

76) Paris to the Moon, by Adam Gopnik **

77) Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris, by Sarah Turnbull **

78) On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town, by Susan Herrmann Loomis **

79) French Fried: The Culinary Capers of an American in Paris, by Harriet Welty Rochefort

80) Expat: Women’s True Tales of Life Abroad, by Christina Henry De Tessan (Eds.) **

81) An Inn Near Kyoto: Writing by American Women Abroad, by Kathleen Coskran & C. W. Truesdale (Eds.) **
I read about 95% of the stories in this anthology. It was a huge book—over 500 pages.

82) A House Somewhere: Tales of Life Abroad, by Don George and Anthony Sattin (Eds.)

83) By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel And Misadventure, by Don George (Ed.)

84) Not So Funny When It Happened: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure, by Tim Cahill (Ed.)

85) I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, by Bill Bryson **

86) A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, by Bill Bryson **

87) In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson

88) Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson

89) The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, by Bill Bryson

90) A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle **

91) Toujours Provence, by Peter Mayle **

92) Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France, by Peter Mayle **

93) Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy, by Frances Mayes

94) Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes

95) The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France, by Carol Drinkwater

96) Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain, by Chris Stewart

97) La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, by Beppe Severgnini

98) Mango Elephants in the Sun: How Life in an African Village Let Me Be in My Skin, by Susana Herrera

BODY IMAGE

99) Appetites: Why Women Want, by Caroline Knapp **

100) The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addict, by William Leith **

101) Tales From The Scale: Women Weigh in on Thunder Thighs, Cheese Fries, and Feeling Good…at Any Size, by Erin J. Shea (Editor) **

102) I’m Not the New Me, by Wendy McClure

103) Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self, by Frances Kuffel

FICTION

104) Water for Elephants (AUDIOBOOK), by Sara Gruen **

105) Never Let Me Go (AUDIOBOOK), by Kazuo Ishiguro **

106) A Long Way Down (AUDIOBOOK), by Nick Hornby **

107) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (AUDIOBOOK), by Lisa See **

108) A Million Little Pieces (AUDIOBOOK), by James Frey

109) A Year in the Merde (AUDIOBOOK), by Stephen Clarke

110) A Woman’s Worth (AUDIOBOOK), by Tracy Price-Thompson

I could easily have read double that number if it weren’t for other factors: a busy semester at college, moving, and then job-searching for the past four months (I would feel like a slacker if I read during the day when there were more important things to tend to). To tell the truth, I wouldn’t have reached my reading goal if it weren’t for all the books I read in December, which had the largest total all year—10! (Thanks to the fact that the job-hunt is done for now, and I subsequently spend less time online. Reading for at least an hour every morning and evening during the commute to/from work is also playing a big part.)

The number is also deceptive because I read newspapers, magazines, and tons of online articles—not to mention portions of multiple books and journals while doing research this past spring semester. Whenever I come across an interesting book (on TV, in a magazine, on the internet, or through another person’s recommendation), I always make a note of it right away because I know I’m likely to forget about it otherwise. Since I like reading nonfiction, most of the time it’s easy for me to tell that I’ll like something just by reading the title.

I worked hard on the following list—like last year, I decided to arrange the books by category rather than the order in which they were read. The ones that I liked best either have a short description, or I starred (**) them. This means that they come highly recommended; please feel free to follow the book’s link for more information.

FICTION

1) My Year of Meats, by Ruth Ozeki
With the distinction of being the only fiction book I read this year, this one was great. An Asian-American filmmaker is hired by a U.S. meat conglomerate to make a series of TV shows that will air on Japanese television; the company’s goal is to show how people in the U.S. eat and cook their favorite meat dishes, in order to increase meat consumption among the Japanese people. The story gets even better when the filmmaker begins to have second thoughts about the safety of the meat that she has a hand in promoting.

NONFICTION: PERSONAL NARRATIVES

2) Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China, by Rachel DeWoskin
Fresh out of college, the author gets a job with an ad agency in Beijing and ends up co-starring in a Chinese soap opera. Very entertaining.

3) Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, by Julie Powell
I finished this book in just a few days; it was written by a woman who cooked every recipe in Julia Child’s How to Master the Art of French Cooking, in a single year. She wrote about the trials and tribulations, as well as all the changes that came about—including her outlook on life. She originally documented everything on a blog, and then she got a book deal—I thoroughly enjoyed it.

4) The Weight-Loss Diaries, by Courtney Rubin
Thought-provoking: I loved this book; I finished it in just a few days. This author wrote a monthly column for Shape magazine over the space of a few years; this is her extremely honest and real personal story about her struggle with being overweight.

5) The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs
This was the first book I read in 2005. The author decided to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (he admits that this feat was accomplished by a lot of skimming and speed-reading); he intersperses personal anecdotes along with interesting passages and facts that he came across while reading.

6) Leg the Spread: A Woman’s Adventures Inside the Trillion-Dollar Boys Club of Commodities Trading, by Cari Lynn **

7) Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris **

8. Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, by Koren Zailckas **

9) The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls **

10) Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, by Martha Beck **

11) Fat Girl: A True Story, by Judith Moore **

12) Ciao, America!: An Italian Discovers the U.S., by Beppe Severgnini **

13) Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer, by Lynne Cox

14) Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner, by Dean Karnazes

15) Don’t Kiss Them Good-bye, by Allison DuBois

NONFICTION: INVESTIGATIVE

16) Fashion Victim: Our Love-Hate Relationship with Dressing, Shopping, and the Cost of Style, by Michelle Lee
Written by a former fashion magazine editor, Lee scrutinizes multiple aspects of the fashion and clothing industry. Among other things: we pay less now for clothes than people did in the past (as well as having more of them), but this has resulted in a rapidly-changing industry that must come up with “trends” in order to convince us to buy more and more; although the clothes are cheap, people consider them to be more disposable and don’t feel bad about throwing/giving them away to make room for more.

17) Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, by Alexandra Robbins
As Janet noted, this book wouldn’t be considered shocking for people who have gone to college and/or known sorority girls (or, in my case, read about it elsewhere), but it’s still very good. What I found most interesting was Robbins’ discussion of the differences between predominantly white and predominantly black sororities.

18) Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs In on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help, by Abby Ellin
Interestingly, last year I read a book with a slightly different spelling—called Teenage Wasteland—which was completely different. Here, Ellin investigates various methods that are used to help kids lose weight—both good and bad—and her personal experience.

19) Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer: A Journey into the Heart of Fan Mania, by Warren St. John
I wouldn’t think I’d enjoy a book about fanatic people who love their favorite football teams so much that they camp outside the stadium in RV’s, going to multiple games every year; however, this is an interesting glimpse into a group of people that I don’t understand.

20) Ms. Moffett’s First Year, by Abby Goodnough
The author followed a woman in NYC who gave up her long-term job as a secretary to take up the challenge of teaching in NYC’s first Teaching Fellows program—where career professionals were challenged to take the place of much-needed teachers in low-income and minority schools that didn’t have enough teachers.

21) Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, by Ben Mezrich **

22) Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, by David Lipsky **

23) Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, by Steve Almond **

24) Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters, by Joan Ryan **

NONFICTION: WOMEN, GIRLS, EMPOWERMENT

25) The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the 21st Century, by Anne Kingston **

26) Raising Our Athletic Daughters: How Sports Can Build Self-Esteem and Save Girls’ Lives, by Jean Zimmerman **

27) Strong, Smart, and Bold: Empowering Girls for Life, by Carla Fine

28) Whatever It Takes: Women on Women’s Sport, edited by Joli Sandoz and Joby Winans

29) Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, by Gloria Steinem

30) The Good Body, by Eve Ensler

31) Beauty Fades, Dumb Is Forever: The Making of a Happy Woman, by Judy Sheindlin

NONFICTION: FOOD/TRAVEL

32) Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, by Ruth Reichl
All of Ruth Reichl’s books are good (this one, as well as the next two listed). She was a restaurant critic for the L.A. Times and then the New York Times for many years, and is now the Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet magazine. A very detailed and entertaining writer who has led an interesting life.

33) Comfort Me With Apples, by Ruth Reichl **

34) Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise, by Ruth Reichl **

35) The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute, by Michael Ruhlman
Ruhlman enrolled at the well-renowned Culinary Institute of America; this is investigative as well as being a personal narrative, showing us what life is like in an elite cooking school.

36) The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection, by Michael Ruhlman **

37) Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater, by Alan Richman

38) Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table, by Linda Ellerbee

NONFICTION: HEALTH

39) Don’t Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America, by Morgan Spurlock **

40) French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure, by Mireille Guiliano

41) Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business–and Bad Medicine, by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

NONFICTION: OTHER

42) Queen of the Turtle Derby (and Other Southern Phenomena), by Julia Reed **

43) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell

44) Area Code 212: New York Days, New York Nights, by Tama Janowitz

45) Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss

Since I haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions so far this year, my resolution will be to read more books in 2005 than I read in 2004. “The Books I Read in 2004″ are in the extended entry. Click the name of the book to read to the description.

FICTION:

1) The Book of Illusions, by Paul Auster

2) The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room, by Paul Auster

3) If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, by Jon McGregor

4) Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown

5) The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand

6) The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe

7) Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell

8) The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, by Maxine Hong Kingston

9) The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

10) Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, by Hilary Mantel

11) Play It As It Lays, by Joan Didion

FICTION: SHORT STORIES

12) How To Be Alone: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen

13) I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere, by Anna Gavalda

14) Open Secrets, by Alice Munro

15) After the Quake, by Haruki Murakami

NONFICTION: SOCIOLOGY

16) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America, by Barbara Ehrenreich

17) Random Family, by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

18) Laughter Out Of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown, by Donna M. Goldstein

19) Teenage Wasteland : Suburbia’s Dead End Kids, by Donna Gaines

20) The McDonaldization of Society, by George Ritzer

21) The Globalization of Nothing, by George Rizer

22) Home Town, by Tracy Kidder

NONFICTION: CONSUMERISM & ADVERTISING

23) No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, by Naomi Klein

24) Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, by John De Graaf

25) Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers, by Alissa Quart

26) The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, by Juliet Schor

27) Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism, by Daniel Harris

NONFICTION: MISC.

28) We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, by Philip Gourevitch

29) Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser

30) Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness to the Women of America, by Myrna Blyth

31) Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, by Jane Holtz Kay

32) The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings, by Amy Tan

33) The Undutchables, by Colin White & Laurie Boucke

34) Midlife Crisis at 30: How The Stakes Have Changed For a New Generation – And What To Do About It, by Lia Macko and Kerry Rubin

35) Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food, by Michelle Stacey

36) Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, by Joan Didion

37) The Art of Travel, by Alain de Botton

38) * Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, by Susan Bordo

39) * Collected Prose: Autobiographical Writings, True Stories, Critical Essays, Prefaces, and Collaborations with Artists, by Paul Auster

TEXTBOOKS, READ FOR SCHOOL

40) The American Class Structure (In An Age of Growing Inequality), Sixth Ed., by Dennis Gilbert

41) Poverty and Development Into the 21st Century, by Tim Allen and Alan Thomas

42) * Capitalist Development & Democracy, by Dietrich Rueschemeyer

Total: 42
(The textbooks total doesn’t include all of the ones read during the spring, summer, and fall university semesters of 2004.)

1) Caramelo, by Sandra Cisneros

2) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain

3) Getting Over It, by Anna Maxted

4) Sula, by Toni Morrison

5) I’ll Take You There, by Joyce Carol Oates

6) Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison

7) The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

8) Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron

9) The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair

10) Empire Falls, by Richard Russo

11) The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

12) The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

13) The Master Butchers Singing Club, by Louise Erdrich

14) The Assistant, by Bernard Malamud

15) The Covenant, by Beverly Lewis

16) Resistance, by Anita Shreve

17) The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan

18) The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison

19) The Black Rose, by Tananarive Due

20) The Hungry Gene, by Ellen Ruppel Shell

21) Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain

22) The Making of June, by Annie Ward

23) My Antonia, by Willa Cather

24) Like Water For Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel

25) The Whole Woman, by Germaine Greer

26) Fat Land, by Greg Critser

27) Fire With Fire, by Naomi Wolf

28) The King of Torts, by John Grisham

29) Quentins, by Maeve Binchy

30) What Women Want, by Patricia Ireland

31) Wasted, by Marya Hornbacher

32) Shutterbabe, by Deborah Copaken Kogan

33) Tara Road, by Maeve Binchy

34) Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin

35) The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan

36) The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding

37) The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould

38) Sidewalk, by Mitchell Duneier

39) Blood in the Face, by James Ridgeway

40) Strip City, by Lily Burana

41) The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown