Rosio Pavoris a blog

It’s probably unlikely that I’m going to finish another book in the five and a half hours left in 2009, so I’m going to post this while we’re waiting for snacks.

I don’t have any bad habits, so my only New Year’s resolution tends to be to read fifty books in a year. Last year I didn’t quite make it, but apparently I more than made up for it this year. I finished eighty-eight:

The Ancestor’s Tale Richard Dawkins
Snow Crash Neal Stephenson
An Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe Leon Trotsky
The Origin of Species Charles Darwin
The Fabric of the Cosmos Brian Greene
Anansi Boys Neil Gaiman
I Am a Strange Loop Douglas Hofstadter
Why I Am Not a Christian Bertrand Russell
Gödel, Escher, Bach Douglas Hofstadter
JPod Douglas Coupland
Your Inner Fish Neil Shubin
Deep Simplicity John Gribbin
On Natural Selection Charles Darwin
Mathematics for the Imagination Peter M. Higgins
The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume 1 Karl Popper
Atheist Manifesto Michel Onfray
The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
Yiddish Policemen’s Union Michael Chabon
The Extended Phenotype Richard Dawkins
The Chronicles of Narnia Clive “Staples” Lewis
Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
How to Solve It George Pólya
Failed States Noam Chomsky
Hegemony or Survival Noam Chomsky
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft H. P. Lovecraft
What We Say Goes Noam Chomsky
Wealth of Nations Adam Smith
Consciousness Explained Daniel Dennett
Life’s Grandeur Stephen Jay Gould
A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper John Allen Paulos
The Myths We Live By Mary Midgley
The Tiger That Isn’t Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot
The Essential Turing B. Jack Copeland
The Mismeasure of Man Stephen Jay Gould
Faust (Frühe Fassung) Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Paradise Lost, and Other Poems John Milton
Physics of the Impossible Michio Kaku
Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond
The Trouble With Physics Lee Smolin
The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
De la Terre à la Lune Jules Verne
The Drunkard’s Walk Leonard Mlodinow
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
Stephen Fry in America Stephen Fry
The Road Cormac McCarthy
Voyage au Centre de la Terre Jules Verne
De Weduwe Becker Maurice Roelants
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell Susanna Clarke
You Shall Know Our Velocity Dave Eggers
Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Computer Networks Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
The Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins
Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
Dubliners James Joyce
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson
Het Achterhuis Anne Frank
God Created the Integers Stephen Hawking
Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie
Nation Terry Pratchett
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close Jonathan Safran Foer
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Seth Grahame-Smith, Jane Austen
A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
The Penelopiad Margaret Atwood
Dracula: the Un-dead Dacre Stoker, Ian Holt
House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski
The Universe John Gribbin
The Zombie Survival Guide Max Brooks
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Mark Haddon
Curious Pursuits Margaret Atwood
Speak, Memory Vladimir Nabokov
We Have Always Lived in the Castle Shirley Jackson
Winnie-the-Pooh A. A. Milne
The Night Watch Sergei Lukyanenko
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing Richard Dawkins
Unknown Quantity John Derbyshire
A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
The Yellow Wallpaper, and Selected Writings Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Day Watch Sergei Lukyanenko
The Twilight Watch Sergei Lukyanenko
The Last Watch Sergei Lukyanenko
Lord of the Flies William Golding

So I guess I only need 46 next year to maintain my average.
Reviews for a significant number of those can be found on the Facebook (or here, which is the same place). I’d use LibraryThing, but you need a paid account to have more than two hundred books on it, and I don’t trust them enough to give them credit card information.
If someone wants to send me money for it, though, you know my Paypal address.

Highlights:
Best fiction: probably Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, though Margaret Atwood is a good writer.
Worst fiction: Rand, obviously. CS Lewis is a close second. Even Neal Stephenson isn’t that shit.
Best non-fiction: Nothing earth-shattering this year. I guess John Allen Paulos’s A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper was pretty good.
Worst non-fiction: Mary Midgley’s Myths We Live By. I’m not sure it even deserves to be called non-fiction. Runner-up goes to Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man.