#36 - Read 35 Books

Last year, I read 30 books, but when I put them in a list and then took a photo, I was disappointed with the content.  It was mostly school-related reading and shallow books.  Apparently the depth I was thinking for class made me crave no depth in my free time.  However, I decided that wasn't acceptable to my inner literary snob, so I vowed to read at least 3 books from the Modern Library top 100 for the 20th century list, and to beef up my reading list in general.  I am pretty pleased with my choices this year.  Below are the books I finished and a favorite quote, or, when lacking reading notes, the first line of the book.

1 - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
1/17/15 (for the third time)
"That's when I make a list in my head of very act of goodness I've seen someone do."  (p. 390)

*2 - When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
1/18/15
"Not 'my nephew Keith' or 'Keith, who works at the filling station and is wanted in five states,' but 'just Keith,' as if we had read a book about her life and were expected to remember all the characters."  (p. 23)

3 - A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
1/18/15, loaned to me by Kevin Robitaille
"'Dragons,' said Mollander." (p. 1)

*4 - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
3/9/15
"But I was not reassured.  I remembered the fox.  One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed." (Chapter 25)

5 - The North Pole Penguin by Christopher Payne
3/20/15, borrowed from and written by Chris Zann

6 - The Petting Zoo by Jim Carroll
4/5/15
"All the trouble, of course, began with Velazquez,"  (p. 3)

*7 - The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
4/5/15 (for the second time), gifted to me by Kevin Robitaille
"'...And that's where the power of love comes in.  Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.'"  (p. 178)

8 - A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
4/11/15, loaned to me by Kevin Robitaille
"The night was rank with the smell of man."  (p. 3)

*9 - A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
5/16/15
"A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head."  (p. 1)

*10 - The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak
5/27/15
"Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring the out like the rain." (p. 80)

*11 - The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
6/23/15 (for the umpteenth time)
"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.  That doesn't happen much, though." (p. 18)

*12 - The Satanic Verses  by Salman Rushdie
7/1/15 (for the 2nd time), "borrowed" from Jerry & Kathy Krone
"He saw the tree explode into a thousand fragments, and the trunk crack, like a heart..." (p. 506)

13 - The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas J. Sugrue
7/8/15, gifted to me by Jerry Krone
"The story I tell is one of a city transformed." (p, 3)

*14 - The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
7/18/15, loaned to me by Casey (Jordan) Krone
"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." (p. 39)

15 - Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell
7/23/15, gifted to me by Kathy Krone
"Why is there a glop of macaroni salad next to the Japanese chicken in my plate lunch?" (p, 1)

16 - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
8/11/15
"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" (p.1)

*17 - The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
8/15/15
"How long could we remain true to the girls?  How long could we keep their memory pure?" (p. 182)

*18 - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
8/31/15
"But then finally we had to go inside and almost the instant we did the spell was broken, and in the brightness of the hallway we were embarrassed and stiff with each other, almost as if the house lights had been turned up at the end of a play, and all our closeness exposed for what it was: make-believe." (p, 619)

*19 - You Are Here by Thich Nhat Hanh
9/1/15
"Breathing in, I know I am breathing in." (p. vii)

20 - Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework by Kim S. Cameron & Robert E. Quinn
9/14/15, recommended by Dr. George Reed
"The implication in education is that we are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, to use technologies that have not been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet." (p. 9)

21 - Snuff by Chuck Palaniuk
9/24/15
"One dude stood all afternoon at the buffet just his boxers, licking the orange dust off barbecued potato chips." (p. 1)

22 - My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
9/4/15, book chosen by the book club that Sarah Arn invited me to
"I don't want to be a tree, I want to be its meaning." (p. 51)

*23 - Yes Please by Amy Poehler
10/19/15
"She has lived a life of struggle and decided not to pick up the armor.  She teaches me about compassion.  She makes her journey about open hearts.  She is not ashamed. / Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou." (p. 79)

*24 - Euphoria by Lily King
11/6/15, book chosen by the book club that Sarah Arn invited me to
"'...The truth you find will always be replaced by someone else's.  Someday even Darwin will look like a quaint Ptolemy who saw what he could see but no more.'" (p. 51)

25 - Hawaii The Big Island Revealed: The Ultimate Guidebook
11/29/15, book sent to me by Jerry & Kathy Krone for our trip
"The Big Island has it all." (p. 9)

*26 - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
12/14/15
"He felt the weights of things, of his body, his emotions, his hopes."  (p. 159)

27 - The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep by Carl Johan Forssen Ehrlin
12/21/15, borrowed from Evelyn Sommariva

28 - All By Myself by Mercer Mayer
12/21/15 (for the second time), read to me and her son by Evelyn Sommariva
"I can get out of bed all by myself."

29 - Excuse Me by Karen Katz
12/21/15 (for the second time), read to me and her son by Evelyn Sommariva
"Mommy says, 'Do you want peas for breakfast?'"

30 - Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
12/26/15
"'...Within him there is a secret something that is striving to grow.  It is the thing I let be killed in myself.'" (p. 30)

31 - Bad Feminist by Roxanne Gay
12/27/15
"When you can't find someone to follow, you have to find a way to lead by example."

32 - Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
12/27/15
"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." (p. 1)

*33 - Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
12/28/15
"When I reached C Company lines, which were at the top of the hill, I paused and looked back at the camp, just coming into full view below me through the grey mist of early morning." (p. 3)

34 - Blink by Malcom Gladwell
12/29/15, loaned to my by Jerry Krone
"But it had one overwhelming advantage: allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition." (p. 119)

*35 - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
12/31/15 (for the second time), gifted to me by Jerry & Kathy Krone
"I relay it through printed words on crumpled newspring, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will. / When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it?" (p. 369)

*Some favorites.  Of the books I read for the first time, The Goldfinch was my favorite with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days being a close second.  A Catcher in the Rye and The Night Circus are already on my all-time favorite list, which is why I chose to read them again.