This Year's Book List or You Can't Talk You Don't Have A Larynx

I’m at home, sick again. I end up missing a few days of school at the start- or near the start- of every school year. My problem is I don’t know how to do things half-way. I develop bad habits during the summer, like going to bed at 4:00 a.m. and waking up at noon. Then once school starts I expect my body to bounce right back into my school routine of waking up at six in the morning; when I’m still going to bed at roughly 4:00 a.m.; walking to and from school, homework, friends and volunteering. Going full force into school mode without preparing myself beforehand has put me in bed with a scratchy sore throat, fever and runny nose. I never learn. Anyways, after reading the title of this journal entry you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with my booklist- I’m getting to that.

Since I’m home I have some extra time on my hands, which I spent browsing Amazon creating a list of books I want to read during the rest of the school year. I read a lot, so this list probably won’t sustain me for the whole school year. I’m looking to you Mibbians for more book suggestions for my list, which I’m posting. You can click on the name of the book if you want to read a description of it. This is to give you an idea of the type of books I’m into. Please don’t recommend classics because I’ve read most of them. Also don’t give me the name of any best sellers because I’ve already been through most of those too.

(The titles with the stars in front of them are books that sound the most interesting to me. The ones without the stars I’m not too enthusiastic about and I probably won’t read them until I’ve gotten through all the titles with the stars.)

*Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
*The Burning Plain: and Other Stories by Juan Rulfo
**Marginal Voices: Selected Stories by Julio Ramon Ribeyro
*The Elephant Vanishes: Stories by Haruki Murakami
*Finbar’s Hotel: A Novel by Dermot Bolger
*Pastoralia by George Saunders
*The Knife Thrower: and Other Short Stories by Steven Millhauser
*The Losers Club: Complete Restored Edition! by Richard Perez
*Late Nights on Air: A Novel by Elizabeth Hay
*What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
*October by Richard B. Wright
*The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
*Beautiful Lies: A Novel by Lisa Unger
*The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber
*Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt
*The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer
*Man Walks Into a Room by Nicole Krauss
*Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer
*The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss
*Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
*The Sea by John Banville
*Theft by Peter Carey
*The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
*Plainsong by Kent Haruf
**The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
*The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
*On Chesil Beach by Ian Mcewan
*The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
*Villette by Charlotte Bronte
*The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
*The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
*Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
Complicity by Iain Banks
Geek Love: A Novel by Katherine Dunn
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Dreams from Bunker Hill: Novel by John Fante
The Gathering by Anne Enright
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
The Third Angel: A Novel by Alice Hoffman
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
The Professor by Charlotte Bronte
Emma by Jane Austen
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Essence of Camphor collection of short stories by Naiyer Masud
The Beach House by Jane Green
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The Madonnas of Leningrad: A Novel (P.S.) by Debra Dean
The Space Between Us: A Novel (P.S.) by Thrity N. Umrigar
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
North of Boston by Robert Frost
Housekeeping: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes