2012
Gravity’s Rainbow; Pynchon
For Whom the Bell Tolls; Hemingway
Ease of Eden; Steinbeck
The Western Canon; Bloom
2011
Post Office; Bukowski
Crabwalk; Grass
Absalom, Absalom!; Faulkner
Exit Ghost; Roth
The Human Stain; Roth
Austerlitz; Sebald
I Married a Communist; Roth
Leaving a Doll’s House; Bloom
American Pastoral; Roth
The Counterlife; Roth
The Prague Orgy; Roth
The Anatomy Lesson; Roth
Zuckerman Unbound; Roth
The Ghost Writer; Roth
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter; McCullers
The Orchard Keeper; McCarthy
Child of God; McCarthy
Wise Blood; O’Connor
Blood Meridian; McCarthy
Moby-Dick; Melville
The Good Soldier; Ford
Dress Your Family…; Sedaris
Grounds for Murder; Balzo
Blindness; Saramago
White Noise; DeLillo

2010 Ok. Blew my personal challenge from last year. This time around, I’m focusing on novels I’ve been putting off due to length, density, etc. If I end up reading a whopping 12 of such books this year, I’ll be happy. So far (with some misc. pleasure mixed in):

Hard-Boiled Wonderland…; Murakami
As I Lay Dying; Faulkner
More Die of Heartbreak; Bellow
Everyman; Roth
Blood Meridian; McCarthy
Cities of the Plain; McCarthy
The Crossing; McCarthy
All the Pretty Horses; McCarthy
Never Let Me Go; Ishiguro
The Dying Animal; Roth
Benito Cereno; Melville
The Turn of the Screw; James
The Metamorphosis; Kafka
A Trial By Jury; Burnett
The Sun Also Rises; Hemingway
Alice in Wonderland; Carroll
Tropic of Cancer; Miller
Moby-Dick; Melville
Haunted; Palahniuk
Lolita; Nabakov

2009 I’m taking Rove’s little WSJ propaganda piece as a personal challenge. If Bush can read 95 books in 2005, then I can certainly match that figure this year. Here’s a list of my progress so far.

Captain…Burton; Rice
Power, Faith, and Fantasy; Oren
The Killer Angels; Shaara
Bluebeard; Vonnegut
The Road; McCarthy
A Crack in the Edge…; Winchester
The Corrections; Franzen
In Cold Blood; Capote
Hell and Back; Miller
Love in the Time…; Garcia Marquez
The General in His…; Garcia Marquez
H.M.S. Suprise; O’Brian
Post Captain; O’Brian
Master and Commander; O’Brian
The Fountainhead; Rand
Nelson: 1758-1797; Sudgen
Cat’s Cradle; Vonnegut
Booze, Broads, & Bullets; Miller
Family Values; Miller

Song of Solomon; Morrison

Brave New World; Huxley

That Yellow Bastard; Miller
The Big Fat Kill; Miller
A Dame to Kill For; Miller
The Things They Carried; O’Brien
Prince Caspian; Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Lewis
The Hard Goodbye; Miller
The Catcher in the Rye; Salinger
Into the Wild; Krakauer
Watchmen; Moore, Gibbons
Lincoln and Whitman; Epstein
Running With Scissors; Burroughs
Irregulars; Conant