Reading Diary 2012, June-December.

January 22, 2013 at 10:17 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

People keep posting their reading lists, and since I’m always curious what other people are up to reading-wise, I figured I’d do the same.

Last year, I tracked my novel/story collection reading along with a bunch of ephemera, including: 1) the online magazines and blogs I check/read regularly, 2) all the review copies I picked up at AWP (which I read over about a month), 3) department-related readings (papers by colleagues, job candidates and guest speakers), 4) books I skimmed when I rebuilt my SF-themed composition course over the summer, and 5) crits for friends (I’m reading several novel-length works for friends at the moment, and I have a shortlist of people whom I’ll happily read short-stories for anytime).  I scrubbed all that out of the list below, for brevity’s sake.  Also, from Jan.-April I was reading for doctoral exams, and in May I hadn’t yet started logging my reads.  So this list is Dec.-June only.  I should have read more, but is there ever enough time?  Was shooting for 30 books a month/a book a day, since that was basically the reading load of exams and (like a crazy person) I thought I could and should retain that quantity; even counting all the extraneous reading, I ultimately didn’t even come close.  I’m reconciling myself to reading slower (and hopefully better) now, though, which is an odd take-away from the exam binge, but oh well.  Better luck in 2013, I suppose.

December

Something Happened, Joseph Heller

Bizarro story collection

Haunted Houses, Lynn Tillman

Through the Drowsy Dark, Rachel Swirsky

Honored Guest, Joy Williams

Tongue Party, Sarah Rose Etter

The Pornographers, Christopher Grimes

White Cat, Holly Black

Companion to an Untold Story, Marcia Aldritch

Art of Fiction, David Lodge

Hologram for the King, David Eggers

November

Martin Dressler, Steven Millhauser

Book of Horrors (anthology)

Jaggonath, Karin Tidbeck

Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, Catherynne Valente (reread)

Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland, Catherynne Valente

Nova, Samuel Delany

Shape of the Signifier, Walter Benn Michaels (reread)

Postmodernist Fiction, Brian McHale (reread)

October

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang

Book of Ghosts, Baring-Gould

Loteria, Pelayo

Clockwork Phoenix 1 (anthology)

Pale King, DFW

Anna Akhmatova complete works

Tony Hoagland essays

Cloud Atlas

Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich

Foundation, Asimov

Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams

September

Not Dead Yet, short story collection

NW, Zadie Smith

Kij Johnson, At the Mouth of the River of Bees

Ann Radcliffe, On the Supernatural in Poetry

HP Lovecraft, On the Supernatural

Amber Sparks, May We Shed These Human Bodies

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tanglewood Tales

August

Barthelme, Snow Queen

Valente, Labyrinth

Mercier and Camier, Beckett

In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, William Gass

The Man in the High Castle, PKD

Among Others, Jo Walton

Caitlin Kiernan, Two Worlds In Between

Above, Leah Bobet

Brave New World

July

Colson Whitehead, Zone One

Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

Millhauser, Enchanted Night

Charles Baxter, Burning Down the House

Mrs. Bridge

Writers of the Future 2011 anthology

Men, Women, and Chainsaws

We

The Thorn and the Blossom, Goss

Chandler, The Long Goodbye

So You Know It’s Me, Oliu

Map of the System of Human Knowledge, Tadd Adcox

June

Damon Knight’s craft book

Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

2666

Deerskin

Twice 22 Bradbury collection

Wave in the Mind, LeGuin

Air, Geoff Ryman

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Best Of anthology

Elif Batuman, The Possessed

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism

Mechanique: Tales of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine

Cambridge Companions to Allegory, Fantasy, and SF

Theory of Prose, Viktor Shklovsky