Year in Review

I only keep a journal when I’m traveling, living outside of Texas, or chronicling my kids. But a few years ago on a dismal New Year's Eve, I decided to write my own year-in-review entry covering books, movies, music, and notable events of the year in one fell swoop. The next year I dispensed with everything but the books. After that, I started maintaining my book list throughout the year rather than try to remember author names and titles after 12 months of reading. Although I don’t write down every book I read, as some are best forgotten (see Cheer!: Three Teams on a Quest for College Cheerleading's Ultimate Prize), I do note my favorites.

Here's my list of fiction and nonfiction notables (in the order read) for 2008. Click on the title to read a summary.

Fiction
The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
Zoo Station by David Downing
The Guy Not Taken: Stories by Jennifer Weiner
A Peculiar Grace and Lost Nation by Jeffrey Lent
Consequences by Penelope Lively
What is the What by Dave Eggers
Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Belong to Me: A Novel by Marisa De Los Santos
The Commoner: A Novel by John Burnham Schwartz
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
I'll Never Be Long Gone by Thomas Greene
The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker
The Condition by Jennifer Haigh
The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu
The Deportees: and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
The Sound of Language by Amulya Malladi
The Brambles and The Tiny One by Eliza Minot
This Book Will Save Your Life by A. M. Homes
Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi
Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx

Nonfiction
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
Paris to the Moon and Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York by Adam Gopnik
Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
Sheetrock & Shellac by David Owen
Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson
I Was Told There'd Be Cake - Essays by Sloane Crosley