I ended up reading 52 books in 2009, though The Original of Laura should hardly count as a book, even when Dmitri Nabokov's introduction is included. You can see my list in my profile if you're curious. I resolved that in 2010 I am not going to even try to read 50 books. My goal will only be 20 as I expect the year will be very busy for work and I'm mulling over the idea of mastering another language (and I really mean "mastering", not just studying), which would take away from reading time significantly. I'm thinking Tibetan, or Akkadian, or maybe just an easy language from the Romance family that I already know (like Portuguese or French), though "mastering" the latter requires a lot of work on slang and stylistics. Any thoughts on which to pick?


I counted that book last year. I think it's about as valid to list as The Original of Laura - I had finished it in under an hour. Still, I loved the way it looked (I got the fun version with the skull on the cover in the big book-shaped bo.


I think Lolita is one of the best books I have ever read, and certainly one of the best I've read in English. It's just wonderful prose writing.


I couldn't get into Zelazny. I have the whole Amber series but just couldn't bring myself to go back to it after having read about 50 pages.


It's the best of the series. I'm 2/3 of the way through the next book (Day Watch) and just can't bring myself to finish it for 2 years now.


I loved the Illuminatus trilogy. Damn fnords are everywhere, though. Apply these comments to the later books in the series listed.


A short, fun but dated book.


Of all the Eco books I've read this is the one I liked the least. It started out well and then just made a turn to the absurd. I liked the whole idea of a lying main character but at the point where it stopped being a stretching of history and started parroting the more bizarre stories of Marco Polo et al., I just lost interest. I think Eco has some fascination with the grotesque. I certainly don't.


No, seriously, you aren't counting a book on contract law, are you? If so, why???


Of all the Eco books I've read this is the one I liked the most. It was wonderful, it was well-researched and I found myself wondering whether Eco hadn't really stumbled upon something and was signalling to the reader that there was a big conspiracy, but doing it through fiction.