What I'm Up To

Okay, so Jesse Thorn over at The Sound of Young America was making fun of me the other day because I never update this blog.

What's worse, I include the url in the signature for most of my outgoing emails. I'm just inviting people to come over here and see how unproductive I am.

So to counteract that suspicion in people, and to enact, or re-enact, in a non-Civil War costume wearing kind of way, the original purpose of this blog, namely to talk about the books, art, and other things I encounter and respond to (see, it's a collection of stuff, but it's empty, too, since these works occupy primarily mental space, not physical space), I thought I'd put together of all the books I've read since the beginning of the year. Maybe one or two of these I read between X-mas '05 and New Year's '06, but let's count them in this year's endeavors. In roughly chronological order:

1. Off Center : The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson


2. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders


3. Double Trouble, Greil Marcus


4. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion


5. Palestine, Joe Sacco


6. Rembrant's Eyes, Simon Schama


7. Unlikley, Jeffrey Brown


8. Cute Manifesto, James Kochalka


9. Shutterbug Follies, Jason Little


10. The Thirty Years War, C.V. Wedgwood


11. Notes from a Defeatist, Joe Sacco


12. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion


13. Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Gabriel Garcia Marquez


14. Naruto (Volume 1), Masashi Kishimoto


15. Crooked Rain, Meghann Rosales


16. V for Vendetta, Alan Moore


17. From Hell, Alan Moore

Hey, not bad. I'm on pace to read a book a week this year, even though a lot of these books are on the short side. However, the Schama and the Wedgwod ought to count more, so it all evens out.

Currently reading, but not yet finished:

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman