V+V Remembers 2010: Books we only liked enough to get from the library (and sometimes never finished)

Poplicola:

Game Change. The first 20 pages I read were way too terrible to continue reading. To compensate, for the rest of the year I only read American novels and novellas from 1920s through the 1960s. In other words, yes, Mark Halperin drives me to read books by drunks.

Jack Burden:

Small Business Financial Management Kit For Dummies, by Tage C. Tracy and John A. Tracy: Yes, the yellow one, how else to know the difference between a S corp and C corp?

Didn’t finish: Henry Clay by David Heidler and Jeanne Heidler – but seriously, all the dueling was spot on.

Lady Blaga:

Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

(I’m a little ashamed that my book category has almost nothing in it, but I don’t tend to read books the year they come out, apparently.)

The Ghost of Hemingway’s Gun:

1. Paul Auster – Sunset Park
2. Philip Roth – Nemesis
3. Michael Lewis – The Big Short

Didn’t Finish:

1. Hitch-22
2. John Hick – Between Faith and Doubt: Dialogues on Religion and Reason
3. Time Parks – Teach Us to Sit Still
4. Yann Martel – Beatrice and Virgil (And I will never finish that garbage)

But, some that were totally worth buying:

1. Tony Judt – Ill Fares the Land
2. Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
3. Jorge Luis Borges – The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise
4. Colm Toibin - The Empty Family
5. Judith Schalansky – The Atlas of Remote Islands

Nemo:

Well, here’s the deal.  I don’t read new books. Unlike music, movies, or video games, reading books requires a massive investment in time and intellectual and/or emotional energy. And there are a lot of them! So, my usual M.O is to let myself fall behind the literary zeitgeist and read the books that still seem worthwhile 5-10 years after publication. Right now I’m reading The Enchantress of Florence, which is the newest book I’ve read, and that’s a major exception made for one of my favorite authors.

Related posts:

1. V+V Remembers 2010: Best things we watched thanks to Netflix
2. V+V Remembers 2010: Movies we weren’t pissed off after spending $10 to see
3. V+V Remembers 2010: Albums that were worth buying