Year in Review: Brent

Making this list was really difficult. On another day, Huck Finn, Vernon God Little, Of Human Bondage, or Lolita might have made it, but I guess it really just means that this was a great year for reading. Here's hoping 2008 is as good.

Best of the Year
1. War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy

2. Don Quixote
Miguel Cervantes

3. East of Eden
John Steinbeck

4. Underworld
Don DeLillo

5. The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis

6. Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton

7. The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

8. As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner

9. Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides

10. Watership Down
Richard Adams


Books I Hated:

Invisible Monsters
Chuck Palaniuk

Song of Susannah
Stephen King


Books I just didn't care for:

]Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
J. K. Rowling

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen


Books that were bad but still a lot better than Invisible Monsters:

Scavenger Hunt
Christopher Pike

Carlton's Year in Review

I have a problem of overthinking things in general. Lists pose a particular problem. Here goes...

Top ten books I read this year:
10. The Chamber
by John Grisham
9. All Aunt Hagar's Children
by Edward P. Jones
8. Colors of the Mountain
by Da Chen
7. Tuesdays with Morrie
by Mitch Albom
6. Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
5. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
4. Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
3. A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
2. To a God Unknown
by John Steinbeck
1. The Man Who Was Thursday
by G.K. Chesterton

Less than stellar:
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
by J.K. Rowling
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
by Lewis Carroll
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings
by Charles Dickens

Books that made me laugh:
Naked
by David Sedaris
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
The Wednesday Wars
by Gary D. Schmidt
I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This!
by Bob Newhart

Sexiest 50 Booker:
Christopher Chilton

2007 Post-Mortem

Well, it's been a wonderful year. Those of us remaining have read, between us, 222 books. That only comes to less than 40 books a person, but, hey, that's why there's 2008.

Here is the top ten books I have read in 2007, in descending order of awesomeness, not including re-reads like Huck Finn:

10. The Man Who Was Thursday
by GK Chesterton
9. Vernon God Little
by DBC Pierre
8. The Power and the Glory
by Graham Greene
7. The Road
by Cormac McCarthy
6. A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick
5. Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov
4. Money
by Martin Amis
3. Watership Down
by Richard Adams
2. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey
1. Catcher in the Rye
by JD Salinger

And the bottom of the list...

60. The Children of Men
by PD James
61. Those Who Blink
by William Mills
62. Sexing the Cherry
by Jeanette Winterson

Post your own and tag them "top ten 2007"