Books I Read in 2004

At the beginning of last year, Top Management suggested we keep lists of every book we read. I was diligent for a while but got lazy about halfway through the year. Still, I don’t think I missed many, and there were none that I regretted, which is more than I can say about the movies we watched.

Hmm…maybe that’s an idea for next year…

JANUARY
Winter Fire by William Trotter
A neat bit o’ historical fiction, it takes place during World War II in (mainly) Finland. The protagonist is an up-and-coming German conductor who gets drafted and finds himself acquainted with Jean Sibelius.

Carl Nielsen by Jack Lawson
A bio of the greatest Danish composer; one of Phaidon’s 20th Century Composers series.

Jean Sibelius by Guy Rickards
A bio of the greatest Finnish composer; one of Phaidon’s 20th Century Composers series.

The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman
A horrifying look at where we may be heading.

FEBRUARY
Ender’s War by Orson Scott Card
An absolutely fantastic sci-fi novel. There were four sequels. The first was nearly as great, the next was really, really good, the third was good and the fourth made me wish I’d only read the first in the series. Let that be a lesson to you.

Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
Self-explanatory.

Maurice Ravel by Gerald Larner
A bio of the second-greatest French composer; one of Phaidon’s 20th Century Composers series.

MARCH
Indivisible by Four by Arnold Steinhardt
A look at the inner-workings of a string quarter by the first violinist of the longest-running string quartet.

Midnight Hour Encores by Bruce Brooks
A magnificent young adult novel about a brilliant and headstrong teenage cellist and how stupid even the smartest of kids are.

Sergei Prokofiev by Daniel Jaffe
A bio of about the fifth-best Russian composer; one of Phaidon’s 20th Century Composers series.

APRIL
Possession by A.S. Byatt
A gorgeous novel, part love story, part mystery, part set in the past, part set now. Most audaciously, Byatt has the nerve to create poems for a fictitious poet who’s supposed to be one of the greatest of the Victorian era. Them’s some cojones there.

MAY
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
Never read it before. I suspect I will again.

Robota by Doug Chiang and Orson Scott Card
Beautiful sci-fi paintings which were later given a story by Card. Stunning art, decent ideas, not a waste of time but not something I’ll return to, I reckon.

Newjack—Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover
Non-fiction. The author, a leftwing journalist, wants to do a piece on New York’s penal system but isn’t allowed inside any prisons—no one but workers and the incarcerated is. So he becomes a guard at the notorious Sing Sing and finds himself, within weeks, become someone else entirely.

Against All Enemies by Richard A. Clarke
About what you’d expect only several times more terrifying.

JUNE
But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer
A collection of short stories/vignettes of jazz greats. Mainly fiction with enough history to lend it weight, and convincingly weaving in bits of jazz critics. Great stuff.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hadn’t read it since college. Better than I remembered…and I remembered it being great.

The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor
A novel where the protagonist is a talking bear who’s also one of the great sax players in the world. Bizarre, captivating, shockingly believable.

Downsize This by Michael Moore
Self-explanatory.

Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore
Written by Gary Gilmore’s younger brother, one of the great rock critics and a former editor at Rolling Stone, it’s a history of their entire troubled family and his relationship with Gary, the man executed by firing squad in Utah, as well as a brief history of Utah itself. Powerful and disturbing, I don’t know if I’ll ever read it again, but I will absolutely never forget it.

JULY-OCTOBER
Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Very frightening but, unfortunately, sabotaged by its own last chapter.

Where the Right Went Wrong by Pat Buchanan
Self-explanatory. (Top Management’s in love with Pat Buchanan.)

Bruckner by Derek Watson
A bio of the really good Austrian composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

Tchaikovsky by Edward Garden
A bio of the great Russian composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

Mahler by Michael Kennedy
A bio of the great Austrian composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson
Saw it at the library and picked it up on a whim. Odd. Had the potential to be really, really good but threw it away on too many melodramatic subplots. A waste of potential, but not a waste of my time.

What’s the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank
An exploration of why so many people vote against their own interests.

Reason by Robert Reich
The former secretary of labor explains why liberalism isn’t [quite] dead and what they should do to revive their noble cause.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Tried to read this several times growing up but it never worked for me. It worked for me this time. In a big way.

NOVEMBER
In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman
A sort of very short graphic novel, the book is the artist’s attempts to come to grips with pulling his daughter out of school at the base of the towers just moments before the first one fell, and watching them come down, sure it was the end of the world. Nowhere near as successful as Maus but then how many things have been?

Vaughan Williams by James Day
A bio of the greatest English composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
One of King’s more accessible books for those not into horror, a young girl wanders off the path while hiking and ends up completely lost in the woods, and the only thing that keeps her going is listening to her favorite Red Sox pitcher on her little transistor radio.

Rachmaninov by Geoffrey Norris
A bio of the great Russian composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

DECEMBER
Brahms by Malcolm MacDonald
A bio of the great German composer; one of Oxford University Press’s Master Musicians series.

Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
A young adult novel about a young English orphan sent to stay with her third-cousins who live deep in the Amazon. Recommend by marvelous librarian Wendy, it's one of the better young adult novels I’ve read and a pretty fine way to finish up the year.

Comments

[Susan]

Are you interested in what I have read? My list does not span as many genres as you. (And, I didn't mind that you have been delinquent in posting because I've been delinquent in reading.)

[Scott]

Sure, the more the merrier. Bring 'em on.

As for you being a delinquent, that's your problem. You see, you were the only victim of your own foolish and negligent actions there. My not blogging, though, hurts the entire world, billions of innocent victims. And that's just not right. Then again, neither is ordering and paying for a medium and only getting a small. It's a hard-knock life, baby.