2005 Book List of D00m!!!!!

[quidditchgrrl]

I joined 50bookchallenge in 2003, but found it strangely stressful. It was like my reading was being watched and critiqued - I spent the last week of 2003 frantically reading the last of my pile in an effort to hit 50.

2004 was not such a good year for reading. It was more a year of reading magazines and blankly staring at MTV Hits, hoping calculating the odds that a rogue missile would fly into the living room and annihilate me.

2005, however, I made a great effort to get back into the groove.

1. Superstud: Or, How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin by Paul Feig, creator of the TV show Freaks and Geeks
2. The Big Ka-Boom, Part 1 by Jello Biafra. Love this guy.
3. Killing Yourself To Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman
4. Fargo Rock City, also by Chuck Klosterman
5. Doing It by Melvin Burgess. You only wish your high school sex life was like this.
6. Lock 'n' Load, Denis Leary. Not on Amazon, must be out of print.
7. Machine Gun In The Clown's Hand by Jello Biafra
8. Remains Silent by Michael Baden and Linda Kenney. Popular, predictable, but likeable characters throughout.
9. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling
10. Imperial Ambitions : Conversations on the Post-9/11 World by Noam Chomsky. Wanna be scared? Give this a go - Noam at his most coherent.
11. I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight by Margaret Cho. Angry feminists and fag hags, unite!
12. An Ex to Grind by Jane Heller. I like her stuff - strong women making mistakes and *gasp* learning from them rather than having another dirty martini.
13. The Tender Bar: A Memoir by JR Moehringer
14. New Rules: Timid Observations From a Polite Observer by Bill Maher. Fucking funny.
15. Hide and Seek by Clare Hambrook
16. Hot Ice by Cherry Adair
17. Amaryllis by Craig Crist-Evans. Amazing story about Vietnam told through letters an older brother writes to his younger brother, as the elder descends into drug-addled madness.
18. Gone With The Nerd by Vicki Lewis Thompson. So I like the Nerd Series, so what?! :D
19. Looking For Peyton Place by Barbara Delinsky. The quality of her writing has really improved over her last several books.
20. The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness by Stephen R. Covey
21. Name All The Animals: A Memoir by Alison Smith. This was the year of missing/dead sibling books.
22. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
23. Two Seconds Under the World: Terror Comes to America - The Conspiracy Behind the World Trade Center Bombing by Jim Dwyer et al. This is well out of date, but a very good look at the 1993 WTC bombing.
24. 102 Minutes : The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer. You'd think this would be pretty dry reading, but it's well-written and factual. Heroes, everyday people, all.
25. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale by Jenna Jameson. Interesting reading. I'd probably have been a porn star in another body life.
26. Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg. Why is this book so boring? Not recommended.
27. Fat Girl: A True Story by Judith Moore. It's a must-read.
28. The Fat Girl's Guide to Life by Wendy Shanker. Another must-read for the big-girl lifestyle. Bracing and honest, she cuts the bullshit.
29. Charlie All Night by Jennifer Crusie. For whatever reason, her female leads remind me of nmalfoy - they're spunky, bottle-blonde, and like their drinks vodka.
30. Table For Five by Susan Wiggs. Schmoopy but nicely readable.
31. Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America by Morgan Spurlock. Good times, bad food.
32. Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Perfect pop-econ book.
33. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Yeah, I read a couple of "Oprah"-recommended books, so what? At least it's not Stones From The River...
34. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I loved The Member of the Wedding; I'm sorry it took me so long to pick up something else of McCullers'.
35. Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About by Kevin Trudeau. Scientology at it's sneakiest, but confirms my belief that if I were to join a hive mind religion, I'd have to choose Scientology. At least the smoothies would be tasty!
36. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. Rather intellectual, but if you want to truly understand how Wal-Mart keeps those prices so low (and why it's not the worst thing to ever happen in the history of the world), I recommend getting this on CD/Tape from your local lie-berry.
37. Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. I liked it, though it was roundly panned. I've had "Blink moments".
38. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. Along with Freakonomics, these are probably the two best pop-econ/pop-reference books I can recommend.
39. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. Recommended for those who have ever considered dropping a friend because of his or her atrocious grammar/spelling.
40. Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss. Not quite done with this one, but I think it's better than Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Effing rude people, piss off!
41. The Bright Forever by Lee Martin. Creepy.
42. The Tricky Part : One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace by Martin Moran. Amazing story; there were a couple of scenes that left me gasping for air. Not for the faint of heart or for anyone who hasn't dealt with their past.
43. Sex Smart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What to Do About It by Aline Zoldbrod. Interesting, though I wasn't reading it for myself. No, really.
44. Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser. Wanna go fucking crazy thinking about the misappropriation of your tax money? Read this book.
45. Suspect by Michael Robotham. Slippery little thriller, nothing too hard on the brain, but filled with anxiety that comes with being between a rock and a hard place.
46. Nothing's Sacred by Lewis Black. Decent memoir, I love Lewis.
47. For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn. Men want sex and are excited by visual stimulation. *yawn*



Well, that only took forever. I only get exhausted and want to sleep when I don't have to be up early for work; this is the way of the world. Night all.

Comments

[roguebitch.livejournal.com]

I recognize a lot of those titles from my previous life as a bookseller! Many were on the front tables. That last one looks intriguing, I may have to check it out.

In my 20s, I used to keep a list of the books I'd read, I should take it up again. It's a good way to track my interests in a given year.

[quidditchgrrl.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was pretty interesting, although it didn't really address sexual abuse as much as physical and emotional abuse.

[snarkypants.livejournal.com]

Love your book list! I thought Wendy Shanker's book was fabulous.

Have you read "Kiss My Tiara: How to Rule the World as a SmartMouth Goddess" by Susan Jane Gilman? Chapter titles: "If you can't order dessert, you can't ask for a raise," "We don't shape history by shaping our thighs," "Never mind a Penis, We'll take a bigger paycheck," and "Give us that ol'-time religion--so we can clobber sanctimonious morons with it."

My all-time favorite quote in this book (hard to choose, as there are so many): "Feminists have condemned capitalism as patriarchal and exploitative. They obviously never tried to buy tampons in Communist China in 1986." It's great, funny, pro-woman, anti-stupidity, size- and sexuality-friendly. And damned good fun.

Feeling the Vicki Lewis Thompson love. And I'm so going to have to get the Lynne Truss books.

Recommended for those who have ever considered dropping a friend because of his or her atrocious grammar/spelling. Wordy McWord. I mean, is the [shift] key so very difficult to master? Spell checker? I have one on my flist who pecks at the keys with all the sentience of a mechanical chicken, and it annoys me so much I just ignore her totally. Nice person otherwise, but...yeah.

[quidditchgrrl.livejournal.com]

I have Kiss My Tiara waiting at work for me. :)

[kaputla.livejournal.com]

I've paged through a bunch of those at work. Unfortunantly I have only read 19 actual books this year. Two were technically comics...the Persepolis ones. I think I might join and try to get in 50 though. I hate not reading as much as I used to.

[queenkatieett.livejournal.com]

One of my old, hated roommates reserved #43 from my branch once. And I laughed and laughed, because she's the biggest prude. And I was so glad that I always looked at what people reserved, even though I knew I wasn't supposed to.

[quidditchgrrl.livejournal.com]

I look at everyone's reserves! All of the staff here check each other's cards to find new and interesting things to put on reserve.

There was a couple at the other library I worked at who were in the middle of a divorce. The male half constantly checked out books about "divorce recovery" and the woman kept a list of "how to recover from a terrible lover" on her card. It was hard not to smirk at the guy (because we knew exactly how big his penis was not).

Most people are really boring, though, and reserve Mitch Albom and John Grisham.