What to Read in 2012

Memoir from Antproof Case - Mark Helprin
Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Crossing to Safety - Wallace Stegner
Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
Ficciones - Jorge Luis Borges
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood
Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder - Lawrence Weschler
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Long Loneliness - Dorothy Day
Dick Davis Dividend - Dick Davis
Confessions - St. Augustine
Story of Philosophy - Will Durant
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami

It is embarrassing that I have not read these. At my age.

Another book list: Black fiction for White people

I read on a local periodical's blog a post by its Books Editor noting the segregation of African-American fiction in bookstores and audiences. Most of my friends have read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and we have a Chester Himes book at home, but now's as good a time as any to cross segregational lines. As one panelist put it at a Book Expo: "Books are the freest media we have—it's the only media where we're not advertising drivel."

Chester Himes
Edward P. Jones
Donald Goines
Nathan C. Heard
James Baldwin
Walter Mosley
Richard Wright
Colson Whitehead

Alice Walker
Zadie Smith
Zora Neale Hurston
Octavia Butler

What I'm reading now: September 2008 edition

Lifehacker -- there's an actual softcover book I have on loan from the library. Blindingly obvious tips I never thought of before.

The Learners -- the second novel from Chip Kidd. Astonishingly good writing. Appeals to the Communications major within me. Check out the promo video. Safe for work, but use headphones.