2008 Year in Review: Favorite Books

Here’s my annual list of my ten favorite books read in the year.  As always, this is merely the best books I read this year not books published in 2008.  For previous years see 2007 and 2006, and of course Every Book I’ve Ever Read are cataloged in Library Thing.

1. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
2. The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
3. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1 and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol II by M.T. Anderson
4. The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle
5. The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox by Steven Budiansky
6. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
7. This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust
8. Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa
9. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester
10. The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet by Neil Degrasse Tyson

Below is the list of all the books I’ve read in the past year.  Books actually published in 2008 are in bold.

Books Read in 2008

• The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke (completed reading on 1/4/08)
• Slam by Nick Hornby (completed reading on 1/6/08)
• Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick (completed reading on 1/9/08)
• Pride of Baghdad by Brian K Vaughan (completed reading on 1/12/08)
• The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (completed reading on 1/20/08)
• Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat (completed reading as of 1/25/08)
• American Pastoral by Phillip Roth (completed reading on 2/6/08)
• Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To by Anthony DeStefano (completed reading on 2/9/08)
• The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (completed reading 2/13/08)
• God’s Library by Joe Paprocki (completed reading 2/12/08)
• The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes (completed reading on 2/18/08)
• The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs (completed reading on 2/23/08)
• How Big is Your God? by Paul Cutinho (currently reading as of 2/23/08)
• Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (completed reading 3/3/08)
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (completed reading as of 3/9/08)
• Hell’s Abyss, Heaven’s Grace: War and Christian Spirituality by Lawrence D. Hart (completed reading as of 3/12/08)
• Saints Behaving Badly by Thomas J. Craughwell (completed reading 3/16/08)
• Jesus Before Christianity by Albert Nolan (completed reading 3/18/08)
• The Rapture Exposed by Barbara R. Rossing (completed reading 3/20/08)
• The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine (completed 3/22/08)
• Googling God by Mike Hayes (completed reading 3/25/08)
• Beer: Tap Into the Art and Science of Brewing by Charles Bamforth (completed reading 3/30/08)
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies (completed reading 4/2/08)
• Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brook(completed reading 4/18/08)
• Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury (completed reading 4/15/08)
• Mets by the Numbers by Jon Springer and Matthew Silverman (completed reading 4/29/08)
• Billiards at Half-Past Nine by Heinrich Boll (completed reading 4/30/08)
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1 by M.T. Anderson (completed 5/2/08)
• The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle (completed reading 5/6/08)
• A Game of Brawl by Bill Felber (completed reading 5/12/08)
• The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox by Steven Budiansky (completed reading 5/14/08)
• All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Tod Wodicka (completed reading 5/19/08)
• Lee Miller’s War by Anthony Penrose (completed 5/28/08)
• Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar (completed 5/31/08)
• The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki (completed 6/6/08)
• Woman of the Inner Sea by Thomas Keneally (completed 6/11/08)
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (completed 6/19/08)
• In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (completed 6/28/08)
• The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe (completed 7/6/08)
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens (completed 7/9/08)
• The Declaration of Independence: A Global History by David Armitage (completed 7/11/08)
• This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust (reading as of 7/15/08)
• Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa (completed 7/24/08)
• Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple) by Jeffrey Kluger (completed 7/28/2008)
• Groundswell by Charlen Li and Josh Bernoff (completed 7/30/2008)
• Crosstown by Helen Levitt (completed 8/1/2008)
• The Confusion (Baroque Cycle Book 4: “Bonanza”) by Neal Stephenson (completed 8/5/08)
• The Joke by Milan Kundera (completed 8/13/08)
• New York Calling edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger (completed 8/14/2008)
• A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America–One State Quarter at a Time by Jim Noles (completed 8/15/2008)
• The Fabric of America by Andro Linklater (completed 8/19/2008)
• The Confusion (Baroque Cycle Book 5: “The Juncto”) by Neal Stephenson (completed 8/27/2008)
• Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica by Sara Wheeler (completed 9/3/08)
• The Driftless Area by Tom Drury (completed 9/3/08)
• The black swan : the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (completed 9/13/2008)
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky (completed 9/14/2008)
• How the States Got their Shapes by Mark Stein (completed 9/18/2008)
• Maps by Nuruddin Farrah (completed 9/26/08)
• Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (completed 10/1/08)
• A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester (completed 10/8/08)
• Manhattan ‘45 by Jan Morris (completed 10/9/08)
• Paula Spencer by Roddy Doyle (completed 10/11/08)
• Solomon’s Gold by Neal Stephenson (completed 10/16/08)
• The Blind Side by Michael Lewis (completed 10/23/08)
• The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (completed 10/29/08
• Empire Rising by Thomas Kelly (completed 10/30/08)
• The Devil We Know by Robert Baer (completed 11/5/08)
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol II (completed 11/13/2008)
• Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived by Daniel Wilson (completed 11/14/08)
• Middlesex by Jefferey Eugenides (completed 11/17/2008)
• Trawler by Redmond O’Hanlon (completed 11/20/08)
• Freeman Walker by David Allan Cates (completed 11/23/08)
• Brisingr by Christopher Paolini (completed 11/30/08)
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (conpleted 12/1/08)
• Respect by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (completed 12/8/2008)
• Snakepit by Moses Isegawa (completed 12/16/08)
• Rough Crossing by Simon Schama (completed 12/17/2008)
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (read online via DailyLit from 1/1/08 – 12/17/08)
• Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga (completed 12/19/08)
• The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet by Neil Degrasse Tyson (completed 12/20/2008)
• Dishwasher : one man’s quest to wash dishes in all fifty states by Pete Jordan (reading as of 12/21/2008)
• Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center by Daniel Okrent (completed 12/30/08)