Unlike the year before, I compiled the 2009 list less from hope of starting conversation than for reasons of internal housekeeping. Last year’s list is really pretty thin, less than a book a week on average and many of them short; I’ve already read half as many books in the first two months of this year. I can’t account for this meagreness, except to hope I read a lot of short stories I didn’t keep track of, and to cite six summer weeks where I read only the work of Clarion contemporaries. Yet again, I’ve been less than scrupulous about listing graphic novel reads, though a few are grouped at the bottom.
Again, the rules: this doesn’t count books I re-read, books I read ¾ of and abandoned, or essay and story collections I dipped into once, twice, or repeatedly, but failed to finish cover to cover. Nothing’s here unless I read, for better or for worse, every word. That means excluding many fine books I wanted to pore over more closely, and at greater length, prolonging the pleasure so to speak, and collections where, for one reason or another, I left a few stories unread. Similarly, however, if I began reading a story collection the previous year, but didn’t finish it until this year, it appears here. » Read the rest of this entry «