With my underemployment, I’ve had a bit more time than usual to read, so combine that with being cursed with a very rapid read/comprehension rate and you have 50 books (and counting) read in 26 days. Of these, 40 were in English, 9 in Spanish, 1 in Serbian. 30 of the books were read for the first time, 20 had been read sometime in the past.
1. Nick Mamatas, Under My Roof
2. Michael Cisco, The San Veneficio Canon
3. Sylvia Kelso, Amberlight
4. Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, The Shadow Speaker
5. Ekaterina Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow
6. Christopher Barzak, One for Sorrow
7. José Saramago, Las intermitencias de la muerte (re-read from 2006, 2007)
8. Shaun Tan, The Arrival (re-read from 2007)
9. José Saramago, La balsa de piedra
10. Roberto Arlt, Trescientos Millones (re-read from 2007)
11. Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull (re-read from 2007)
12. Richard Bach, Galeb Džonatan Livingston (Serbian; re-read from 2007)
13. Antonio Machado, Antologia poética (re-read from 2007)
14. George R.R. Martin (ed.), Wild Cards: Inside Straight
15. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (re-read from 1996)
16. Harvey Pekar, Gary Dumm, and Paul Buhle (eds.), Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
17. Elizabeth Bear, Blood and Iron
18. Elizabeth Bear, Whiskey and Water
19. Paul Kearney, The Mark of Ran
20. Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself
21. Daniel Abraham, A Shadow in Summer
22. Ursula Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion
23. Jeffrey Ford, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
24. Edward Carey, Observatory Mansions
25. Richard Morgan, Market Forces
26. Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony
27. China Miéville, The Tain (re-read from 2003, 2004, 2005)
28. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
29. Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero
30. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Stories (re-read from 2001)
31. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (re-read from 1997)
32. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (eds.), Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy
33. David Keck, In the Eye of Heaven (re-read from 2007)
34. David Keck, In a Time of Treason (ARC)
35. Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
36. John Crowley, Little, Big (re-read from 2004)
37. J.G. Ballard, The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard (re-read from 2004)
38. Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys
39. Eliseo Alberto, Caracol Beach (re-read from 2006)
40. Sergio Ramírez, Margarita, está linda la mar (re-read from 2006)
41. Manuel Vicent, La novia de Matisse
42. Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing
43. Jorge Luis Borges, La memoria de Shakespeare (re-read from 2007)
44. Laura Esquivel, Como agua para chocolate
45. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (re-read many times since my childhood)
46. Geoff Ryman, Air
47. Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (re-read from 2007)
48. Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (re-read from 2006)
49. Rhys Hughes, A New Universal History of Infamy (re-read from 2004)
50. Martin Millar, The Good Fairies of New York
Before any gawk or anything, I remember a summer or two during my college days, when all of my good friends were off, hundreds of miles away and I had no car to go hang out with them. Wasn’t working the summer of 1995, outside of doing rehab on my broken right radial head (elbow region), so I had the choice of network TV (no cable back then) or reading for my evening hours’ entertainment. I chose reading and I believe I finished somewhere in the neighborhood of 180 books in 3 months that summer. So yeah, I’m a fast reader, deal with it.
1 Comment
January 28, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] http://juandahlmann.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/50-book-challenge-met-january-1-january-26-2008/ This is not so much an interesting ‘article’ , as well just an impressive feat. I mean, c’mon the guy has read more in a single month than I have read in a whole year. Larry’s got that rare talent all reviewers would like to have. Apart from being a feat, it’s also a neat little ‘index’ for some of the more thoughtful reviews the guy has thrown out there. [...]