2009 Books Read and Rating

Here's my list from my GoodReads profile (anyone else use Goodreads? I love it). I didn't start using it until halfway through the year, so this list accounts for about half of the books I read.

Drown
Junot Díaz
5

Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (Theory and Interpretation of Narrative)
Lisa Zunshine
3

Lisa's Flying Electric Piano
Kevin Rabas
5

City of Thieves
David Benioff
5

Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk
2

Last Days
Brian Evenson
5

Stories
scott mcclanahan
3

The Elephant Vanishes: Stories
Haruki Murakami
3

Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
5

The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder
Stephen Elliott
4

Collected Stories
Gabriel García Márquez
3

In the Midst Of
C.M. Barons
5

How America Died: A Letter to the Future
Tim Hall
5

EVER
Blake Butler
4

Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell
5

Antisocial
David Blaine
5

The Leap and Other Mistakes
David Barringer
4

Major Inversions
Gordon Highland
5

Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners
Alan Emmins
3

A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
5

Scorch Atlas
Blake Butler
5

Geek Love: A Novel
Katherine Dunn
4

A Prayer for the Dying
Stewart O'Nan
5

The Book of Lazarus
Richard Grossman
2

The Death of Bunny Munro
Nick Cave
4

Prose. Poems. a Novel.
Jamie Iredell
5

All the Names
José Saramago
4

Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell
3

When the Cats Razzed the Chickens and Other Stories
Mel Bosworth
5

Nobody Trusts a Black Magician
xTx
4

Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate
Pablo D'Stair
4

Baby Leg
Brian Evenson
4

Bad Behavior
Mary Gaitskill
3

The Double
José Saramago
5

Just the books I bought off Amazon. i read quite a few others but didn't keep track so I wont try to remember. And these are the ratings I gave them on Amazon right after finishing them. Some of them I think are better or worse now looking back but immediate feelings below. And .5s but there would have been if I could.

Glamorama
by Easton Bret Ellis
4

Hell's Half Acre
by Will Christopher Baer
4

Filth
by Irvine Welsh
5

No Dominion
by Charlie Huston
3

Dermaphoria
by Craig Clevenger
5

Forever Odd
by Dean Koontz
2

Cosmopolis
by Don Delillo
4

Slaughterhouse-Five
by Kurt Vonnegut
3

Invisible Monsters
by Chuck Palahniuk
5

The Coma
by Alex Garland
2

American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
5

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs
by Irvine Welsh
4

The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong
by Stephen Graham Jones
3

Half the Blood of Brooklyn
by Charlie Huston
3

Company
by Max Barry
4

The Raw Shark Texts
by Steven Hall
4

Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk
4

The 25th Hour
by David Benioff
3

The Contortionist's Handbook
by Craig Clevenger
4

House of Leaves
by Mark Z. Danielewski
3

Existentialism is a Humanism
Juan-Paul Sartre, 3.5

Fear and Trembling
Mr. Kierkegaard, 3.5

The Game
Neil Strauss, 4.5

Watchmen
Alan Moore, 4.5

Education: Free and Compulsory
Murray Rothbard, 3.5

The Essential Second Amendment Guide
Wayne Lapierre, 3

The Sublime Object of Ideology
Slavoj Žižek, 4

Self Reliance and Other Essés
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2.5

The Dice Man
Luke Rhinehart, 4.5

Civil Dis and Other Essés
Henry David Thoreau, 4

The End of Faith
Sam Harris, 2.5

Our Enemy, The State
Albert Jay Nock, 3

Anthem
Ayn Rand, 4.5

The Machinery of Freedom
David Friedman, 4

On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion
Stefan Molyneux, 3.5

Lord of the Flies
William Golding, 3

A Modest Proposal
Jonathan Swift, 2

God and the State
Mikhail Bakunin, 3

No Exit
Juan-Paul Sartre, 4

An Appeal to the Young
Peter Kropotkin, 2.5

Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris, 2.5

My Disillusionment In Russia
Emma Goldman, 3.5

Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche, 3

Fugitives and Refugees
The Palahniuk, 3.5

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
Ludwig von Mises, 3.5

The Road
Cormac McCarthy, 3.5

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S., 3.5

The Deist’s Immortality
Lysander Spooner, 3.5

The Catcher in the Rye
JD Salinger, 1.5

The Law
Frederic Bastiat, 4

The Virtue of Selfishness
Ayn Rand, 4.5

The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka, 3

Universally Preferable Behavior
Stefan Molyneux, 5

Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell, 4

For A New Liberty
Murray Rothbard, 4.5

Alongside Night
J. Neil Schulman, 4.5

The Art of War
Sun Tzu, 3.5

On Liberty
John Stuart Mill, 3

Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression
Mary Ruwart, 5

Pygmy
The Palahniuk, 2.5

None Dare Call It Conspiracy
Gary Allen, 3.5

An Agorist Primer
Sam Konkin, 4.5

50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Should Know
Ben Dupre, 3.5

Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom
F.W.J. von Schelling, 3.5

End The Fed
Ron Paul, 4

In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson
Noble Cunningham, 4

Nausea
Juan-Paul Sartre, 3.5

The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins, 4

Juiced
Jose Canseco, 3.5

Pink Floyd: Through the Eyes of…
Bruno Macdonald, 3

Currently reading:

The Ethics of Liberty by The Rothbard and Fahrenheit 451 by The Bradbury.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: 10(I know the scale is to 5, but it's that good)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DFW: 5

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel: 5

Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine: 4

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware: 4

Pygmy: 3

Cosmopolis by Don Deillo: 3

V. by Pynchon: 4.5

Billy Budd By Herman Melville: 4

Beckett's Trilogy: 4

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July: 4

Carpenter's Gothic by William Gaddis: 3

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon: 3

Maps and Legends by Chabon: 4

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster: 1

The Professor's House by Willa Cather: 2

If the Sky Falls by Nicholas Montemarano: 4

Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut: 4

Pastoralia by George Saunders: 5

The Universal baseball Association by Robert Coover: 4

Mao II by Don Delillo: 4

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan: 2

Our Gang by Philip Roth: 4

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami: 3

Pnin by Nabokov: 4

Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem: 4

Short Stories of Donald Barthelme: 5

There's a lot more that I'm forgetting but I don't really keep track. Currently Reading Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon. It's very good

I completely agree. Probably my favorite book by Chuck, that or Rant.

dermaphoria
craig clevenger - 5

average american male
chad kultgen - 3.5

mastering your hidden self
serge king - 5

story of my life
casanova - 3

battle royale
koushan takami - 3

blood's a rover
james ellroy - 5

bone volumes 1-4
jeff smith - 5

preacher volumes 1-5
garth ennis - 5

chobits volumes 1-8
clamp - 4

FLCL volumes 1-4
hajime ueda - 5

wasteland
francesca lia block - 5

i was a teenage fairy
francesca lia block - 4

emergency
neil strauss - 3.5

invisibles volume 1
grant morrison - 2

legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA
tim wiener - 3

the road
cormac mccarthy - 5

Lullaby by Palahniuk - 3.5

Invisible Monsters by Palahniuk - 3

Choke by Palahniuk - 4

Black Rain by Ibuse - 4

Pride and Prejudice by Austen - 3.5

Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck - 5

King Lear by Shakespeare - 3.5

Mayor of Casterbridge by Hardy - 3

Anthem by Rand - 1.5

Slapstick by Vonnegut - 3

Armageddon in Retrospect by Vonnegut - 5

The Gunslinger by King - 3.5

The Drawing of the Three by King - 2.5

1984 by Orwell (reread) - 3.5

Stranger in a Strange Land by Heinlein (reread) - 3.5

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Adams - 3.5

Frankenstein by Shelly (reread) - 4.5

Death of a Salesman by Miller (reread) - 4

The Stranger by Camus - 4

Steppenwolf by Hesse - 4.5

Farewell to Arms by Hemingway - 3.5

Spook Country by William Gibson - 2.5

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone by Rowling - 2.5

The Pearl by Steinbeck - 4

I think that's all. Short stories and nonfiction aren't listed.

Good to see more than a few books listed that I actually recognize. I was starting to think people in the writer's workshop and I were coming from two completely different literary universes.
It seems I spent 2009, as well as most of 2008, reading only books that directly related to research I was doing for my own book, Voodoo Inferno. Below is a list of those books and how they relate to my own. Since they all contributed a little or a lot, but all were crucial helping me develop my own voice, I can't really grade them in any sort of balanced fashion.
The infamous prologue of Voodoo Inferno was a hodgepodge of different historical sources. Black Opium by Claude Farrère and Opium, a Portrait of the Heavenly Dreams by Barbara Hodgson helped with Jan Van Faust’s back story chasing the dragon in Thailand. Mannahatta by Eric Sanderson and Low Life by Luc Sante provided the background to his time in New Amsterdam and the early years of New York.
The bit about the slave who taught himself how to read in Chapter One was taken part and parcel from The Big Boxcar by Alfred Maund. Much of the cultural information on the Big Easy, as well as its place names, that I couldn’t dig up directly from memory came from a handy referencing of New Orleans, DK Eyewitness Travel Guide, Mardi Gras Indians by Michael P. Smith, and Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans by Katila Katherina Smith. “Arthur Hardy’s Mardi Gras Guide”, 29th Annual Edition, 2005 rounded out Virgil Cane’s first Mardi Gras parade.
Help with the ecology of the Barataria Preserve came from The Bayous by Peter S. Fiebleman. Cane’s Landing was based on Nonce by Michael Brandon. Rampart Street by Everett and Olga Webber and Louisiana Cavalier by Everett Webber gave me much of the detailing that went into historical New Orleans and the Behemoth Steel Works was lifted directly from The Money Changers by Upton Sinclair.
Voodoo Inferno obviously borrows its structure from Divine Comedy: Hell by Dante Alighieri, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, my social commentary owes a tip of the hat to Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain, the main character is patterned after Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlow and the climatic court case after Devil and Daniel Webster by Stephen Vincent Benet. My Satan shares much in common with John Milton’s rebel in Paradise Lost and parts of his soliloquy on religion come from Gnosticism and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake. Dante’s Inferno by Sandow Birk and Marcus Sanders turned up midway into the second draft of the book and gave me my first indication that I wasn’t venturing into virgin territory (The trailer to “The Princess and the Frog” revealed itself to me about the same time and gave me the impetus to finish the book and copyright it before the movie’s release date).
The religious and cultural aspects of New Orleans Voodoo as well as the chants, rites, and mythology found in Inferno were borrowed with heartfelt thanks from Voodoo in New Orleans by Robert Talent, Voodoo, Search for the Spirit by Laënnec Hurbon, Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, Donald J. Cosantino editor, Vodou: Visions and Voices of Haiti by Phyllis Galembo, Divine Horsemen by Maya Deren, Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston and The Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis. Much of this research kept leading me back to Haiti and its history, which after having developed a much larger picture of the situation there, only magnified for me the tragedy of the earthquake.
What started as a way to keep myself out of the bars, save money, and stay basically sober, turned into damn near a 150,000 word treatise on just about everything from religion, human nature, politics and injustice to the very nature of right and wrong, Katrina, environmental degradation and the planet’s way of responding to it. Inferno also became an ode to one of my all-time favorite cities and cultures, as well as a paean for its rebirth. Now, with the disaster, both natural and unnatural, that is Haiti, this treatise has, unfortunately, taken on an even larger, ominous, and more timely scope.
Of course, I know we were talking about books, but in the sense of completeness, it would be unfair not to give a grateful shout out to Wikipedia (and a potpourri of different websites too numerous to name or remember), as well as three movies that also served as both inspiration and source material: “Black Orpheus” directed by Marcel Camus, “Angel Heart” directed by Alan Parker, and “Louisiana Story” directed by Robert J. Flaherty. The musical quotes come from some of my favorite New Orleans musicians and I recommend playing the real thing in between reads to give it a real Crescent City feel.
Good stuff, all, and all of it much better than my own (circumvent me and go straight to the source!).
Of course, I did manage to read a couple of books just for fun last year (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy), and these were: Snuff and Rant by our illustrious host (good, but a little light, compared to some of his older offerings), The Last Cop Out by Mickey Spillane and The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammet (neither were their best), It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (oh yes, it can, it almost did, who says it didn’t, and it still might), as well as Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (whose Ignatius J. Reilly helped shape my author’s introductions that went over so well), not to mention my own book, which it seems I read about a thousand times.

Hmm...Umm...

Underworld USA Trilogy by James Ellroy(5, 5 & 5...but I'm shamelessly Ellroy bias)
Mao II by Don DeLillo (4)
The Names by Don DeLillo(2)
Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo(3.5)
I Heard You Paint House by Charles Brandt(2)
Crime and Punishment by Who doesn't know who?(5)
The Dying Animal by Phillip Roth(5)
Glamorama by Duuuuuuuuhhh(4)
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vogeneneghtu(3)
Filth by Irvine Fucker(1)

I don't remember else.