meme from The Usual Suspects - Favorite Books Read in 2003

[maribou]

Best Novels:
AS Byatt - Possession
Haruki Murakami - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Frederik Pohl - Narabedla Ltd
Robert Hough - The Final Confession of Mabel Stark
Matt Ruff - Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife
Kim Stanley Robinson - The Memory of Whiteness

Best Non-Fiction:
Marc Reisner - Cadillac Desert
Suzy McKee Charnas - My Father's Ghost: The Return of My Old Man and Other Second Chances
Eric Myers - Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis
Azir Nafisi - Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books

Best YA/Kid's Chapter Books:
Garret Freyman-Weyr - My Heartbeat
Catherine Storr - Marianne Dreams

Best Play:
Michael Frayn - Copenhagen

Best Guilty Pleasure Fluff:
Jan Karon - At Home in Mitford

Best Graphic Novel:
Lynda Barry - One Hundred Demons

Best Audio:
Harlan Ellison - I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream: The Voice from the Edge, vol. 1

(I read a lot of other really really really good books this year, but these are my favorites today.)

Comments

[xiadyn.livejournal.com]

I haven't read most of the things on your list, but the two I have--The Memory of Whiteness and Set This House In Order--I agree completely. Maybe I'll hunt up some of the others..

[xiadyn.livejournal.com]

and how do you manage to remember what you read in the last year? I have no idea, aside from a few specifics..

[maribou]

I've actually been writing them all down since 1999, for two reasons. 1) I was forever starting to read something and then realizing I'd already read it; 2) I could remember lots of things about books, but not title and author, when people were trying to get me to help them at the bookstore ("Oh, YES, I love that book ... uh, sorry, can't find it for you, no bloody idea what it's called.") - in both cases, it's not that I actually refer back to the list, but the act of writing it down helps me associate author/title with the specific experience of reading the book.

And now it's kind of a habit. And I am attached to my habits.

[maribou]

I should say, I've been writing most of them down. I still go on flurries of reading half a dozen books in 2 days and then don't remember that I meant to record them.