It’s already 2012 in my current time zone and, so far, nothing seems so different about 2012. Just like on birthdays, the actual movement of the clock from 11:59PM to 00:01AM wasn’t a noteworthy experience full of internal fireworks going BANG and making everything in my head rearrange itself somehow. Thank goodness – can you imagine how unpleasant that would have been?

I’ve never made New Year’s resolutions. I judge myself too harshly and obsess over things too easily – if I made resolutions, I’d feel horribly guilty if I broke them, and keeping them would turn into an unpleasant and burdensome chore that I’d learn to despise. So I make small resolutions, daily goals that I can write down in my planner and joyfully tick off at the end of the day.

I also don’t seem to go for introspection. I’ve realized lately that I have a lot of trouble with sitting and thinking. I know some people who consciously take time to think over their issues, to reach decisions, to make sense of what they’re doing. I don’t do this. It seems to happen on its own, in between reading and showering and going about my daily life. I often wonder what I’m missing and whether my insights are somehow less worthy because I didn’t put in the deliberate time to reach them. I think that’s why I don’t manage to write long pieces about my life very often. I get bored with only being able to experience what I experience and think what I think; I suppose that’s part of why I read so much.

My only real resolution for 2012 is to manage to read one hundred books or more. And now I present the list of books I read during 2011:

Reading List, 2011

 

 

January

1. A Room With a View by E. M. Forster
2. To the Lighthouse by Virgina Woolf
3. The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
4. How the Elephant Got Its Trunk by Rudyard Kipling
5. Mai: The Psychic Girl Perfect Collection (Volume 1) story by Kazuya Kudo, art by Ryoichi Ikegami [graphic novel]
6. Mai: The Psychic Girl Perfect Collection (Volume 2) story by Kazuya Kudo, art by Ryoichi Ikegami [graphic novel]
7. The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
8. The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis
9. Mai: The Psychic Girl Perfect Collection (Volume 3) story by Kazuya Kudo, art by Ryoichi Ikegami [graphic novel]
10. The Loneliness of the Mind Reader by Dalit Orbach
11. Henry IV Part I by William Shakespeare

 

February

12. Maurice by E. M. Forster
13. The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré
14. A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
15. The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
16. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré

 

March

17. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss [reread]
18. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
19. The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker
20. The Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint
21. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
22. The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker by Leslie Frewin

 

April

23. The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth
24. The Quest for le Carre ed. By Alan Bold
25. The Faerie Queene, book VI by Edmund Spenser
26. IT by Stephen King
27. Utopia by Thomas More
28. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
29. The Tempest by William Shakespeare
30. Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint
31. Overqualified by Joey Comeau

 

May

32. Bad Love by Jonathan Kellerman
33. Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales by Tamora Pierce
34. Twisted by Jonathan Kellerman
35. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
36. Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card

 

June

37. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
38. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
39. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
40. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
41. Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams
42. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
43. Young Zaphod Plays it Safe by Douglas Adams
44. The Hug by David Grossman
45. Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams
46. Neuland by Eshkol Nevo
47. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

 

July

48. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
49. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling [Reread]
50. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
51. The Locusts Have No King by Dawn Powel
52. Pipelines by Etgar Keret
53. Naamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

 

August

54. Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton
55. Watchmen by Alan Moore
56. Embassytown by Charles Mieville
57. The Conspiracy Club by Jonathan Kellerman
58. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
59. Breakable You by Brian Morton

 

September

60. Missing Kissinger by Etgar Keret
61. Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life by Bryan Lee O’Malley
62. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain [Reread]
63. Scott Pilgrim v. the World by Bryan Lee O’Malley
64. Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness by Bryan Lee O’Malley
65. Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together by Bryan Lee O’Malley
66. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen [Reread]

 

October

67. Masfield Park by Jane Austen [Reread]
68. Spuds by Karen Hesse

69. Galilee by Clive Barker
70. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
71. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens [Reread]
72. The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard by A. E. Coppard
73. Wolf Moon by Charles de Lint

 

November

74. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
75. God’s Eyes a-Twinkle: An Anthology by T.F. Powys
76. Middlemarch by George Eliot

 

 

December

77. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
78. Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley
79. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
80. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine
81. The Dylanist by Brian Morton
82. Conrad’s Fate by Diana Wynne Jones
83. The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones