I have always been a sucker for year-end countdowns and best-of lists of any sort. If you find my junior high diaries you will come across (undoubtedtly irreverent) monthly lists of "Favorite tv shows and songs". Don't remember all the songs, but Moonlighting, The Cosby Show, Designing Women (and for a brief stretch that seems out of character, Rosanne) were repeat winners in the former category.
I still love lists, and still manage to keep a journal full of them. It's fairly embarassing stuff (although you already know that The Best Show on Television is The People's Court), so I'll just end the year with this one (you'll have to page through the moleskine yourself to find the fluffier stuff):
Books and Stories I read in 2005
It wasn't all High Literature (thank goodness!), but many of the these books and stories kept me entertained this year. I loved many of them, was truly moved and changed by some, and quite honestly deplored a few on the list. Also, I stopped updating the list regularly in early fall, so there are probably quite a few I've forgotten. (Which is, perhaps, just as well. If I've dropped them from memory already, surely they didn't make much of an impression.) I have four books in front of me which are begging to be next on the list (or, I should say, 1st on the "Read in 2006" list), and a couple others I never quite finished this year but haven't given up on.
It will be interesting to see how the Reading Habit holds up when Baby Bumble arrives...
Books and Stories I read in 2005
1. "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
2. "Reading Lessons" by Edwidge Danticat [short story]
3. "Cards on the Table" by Agatha Christie
4. "The Juniper Tree" by Lorrie Moore [short story]
5. "Old School" by Tobias Wolff
6. "Tooth and Claw" by T. Coraghessan Boyle [short story]
7. "Written in Stone" by Catherine Brady [short story]
8. "Ice" by Thomas McGuane [short story]
9. "Screenwriter" by Charles D'Ambrosio
10. "The Walk with Elizanne" by John Updike [short story]
11. "Bull" by Aimee Bender [short story]
12. "Fixer Chao" by Han Ong
13. "Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
14. "Spilling Open" by Sabrina Ward Harrison
15. "The Roads of Home" by John Updike [short story]
16. "Five Little Pigs" by Agatha Christie
17. "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
18. "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway [short story]
19. "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
20. "Up North" by Charles D'Ambrosio [short story]
21. "The Four Agreements" by don Miguel Ruiz
22. "The Autograph Man" by Zadie Smith
23. "Curtain" by Agatha Christie
24. "Delta" by Anne Enright [short story]
25. "The Opposite of Fate" by Amy Tan
26. "To a Young Jazz Musician" by Wynton Marsalis (w/Selwyn Seyfu Hinds)
27. "Men of Ireland" by William Trevor [short story]
28. "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov
29. "Comfort me With Apples" by Ruth Reichl
30. "Solace" by Donald Antrim [short story]
31. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafizi
32. "Kiss the Girls" by James Patterson
33. "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Buroughs
34. "Where I'm Likely to Find It" by Haruki Murakami [short story]
35. "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood
36. "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" by Peter Hedges
37. "Where I Work" by Ann Cummins [short story]
38. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
39. "Along Came a Spider" by James Patterson
40. "Monday Mourning" by Kathy Reichs
41. "Word Freak" by Stefan Fatsis
42. "Appointment with Death" by Agatha Christie
43. "The Blind Assasin" by Margaret Atwood
44. "Four Blind Mice" by James Patterson
45. "The Big Bad Wolf" by James Patterson
46. "Trace" by Patricia Cornwell
47. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling
48. "Awaiting Orders" by Tobias Wolff [short story]
49. "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl
50. "Still Life with Woodpecker" by Tom Robbins
51. "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer
52. "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner
53. "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenedis
54. "Diane Arbus: A Biography" by Patricia Bosworth
55. "Slapstick" by Kurt Vonnegut
56. "On Writing" by Steven King
57. "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving
58. "Cross Bones" by Kathy Reichs
59. "Shopgirl" by Steve Martin
60. "The Best Year of My Life" by Paul Theroux [short story]
61. "The Year of Spaghetti" by Haruki Murakami [short story]
62. "It's Not Easy Being Green and Other Things to Consider" by Jim Henson et al.
63. "The Smile on Happy Chang's Face" by Tom Perrotta [short story]
64. "Until Gwen" by Dennis Lehane [short story]
65. "A Taste of Dust" by Lynn Sharon Schwartz [short story]
66. "Old Friends" by Thomas McGuane [short story]
67. "Eight Pieces for the Left Hand" by J. Robert Lennon [short story]
68. "Stone Animals" by Kelly Link [short story]
69. "First Four Measures" by Nathaniel Bellows [short story]
70. "The Scheme of Things" by Charles D'Ambrosio [short story]
71. "Silence" by Alice Munro [short story]
72. "The Girls" by Joy Williams [short story]
73. "Simple Exercises for the Beginning Student" by Alix Ohlin [short story]
74. "Old Boys, Old Girls" by Edward P. Jones [short story]
75. "What to Expect When You're Expecting" by Heidi Murkoff
76. "Loud and Clear" by Anna Quindlen