Book List Archiving, Cont.

Elese raised an interesting question to the last post--what's the male/female breakdown? I had no idea what to expect. I'm almost exactly even: 46% women, 54% men.

I also should have included a top 10 for the year. Here are the most highly rated titles:
1. My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki, Rating: 4.9
2. Y The Last Man (Series), Rating: 4.8
3. The Stand, Stephen King, Rating: 4.8
4. The Chosen, Chaim Potok, Rating: 4.8
5. American Gods, Neil Gaiman, Rating: 4.7
6. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute, Rating: 4.7
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling, Rating: 4.7
8. The Promise, Chaim Potok, Rating: 4.6
9. The Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox, Rating: 4.6
10. Nowhere in Africa, Stephanie Zweig, Rating: 4.5

Book Journal

I keep track of the books I've read in a cute little journal from Chronicle Books. It's really satisfying to flip through, but isn't particularly useful when I'm trying to figure when (or if) I read a particular book. I've been thinking about digitizing the records for the past few weeks.

I initially planned on just making an excel spreadsheet, and then decided to do a quick google search to make sure there wasn't already something out there for book tracking. I found a great free program called books for Macs (download it here). It's not totally perfect (it autofills with information from amazon, generally with the most recent edition. I'd rather have the original publication date), but it's simple and fast and highly searchable.

So, I now have book stats! Here's an overview of 2005.
Total books read: 102
Pre-1900: 3 (The Innocents Abroad, Around the World in 80 Days, Anna Karenina)
1940s: 1 (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter)
1950s: 4 (Town Like Alice, Around the Bend, On the Beach, East of Eden)
1960s: 3 (The Chosen, The Promise, Travels with Charley)
1970s: 1 (Lucifer's Hammer)
1980s: 2 (The Amateurs, Clan of the Cave Bear)
1990-present: obviously, a ton of books
Non-fiction: 16
Memoir: 11
Authors appearing more than once on list: 7 (Bill Bryson, Chaim Potok, John Steinbeck, Nevil Shute, Nicholas Evans, Sandra Gulland, Tom Clancy)

Best American Fiction, Last 25 Years

There's a great piece on contemporary American fiction in next week's NY Times (that's right, they've posted it online a full week early). A large, very impressive list of authors was polled to determine the single best American work published in the last 25 years. The winner? Beloved. I'm pleased to see Blood Meridian on the runner's up section--I finished McCarthy's Suttree yesterday, and it just reminded me how much more I liked the other book. Also interesting to note the number of Don DeLillo books nominated. Here's the list (titles I've read in bold):

THE WINNER:
Beloved
Toni Morrison
(1987)

THE RUNNERS-UP:
Underworld
Don DeLillo
(1997)

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy
(1985)

Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels
John Updike
(1995)

American Pastoral
Philip Roth
(1997)

THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ALSO RECEIVED MULTIPLE VOTES:
A Confederacy of Dunces
John Kennedy Toole
(1980)

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
(1980)

Winter's Tale
Mark Helprin
(1983)

White Noise
Don DeLillo
(1985)

The Counterlife
Philip Roth
(1986)

Libra
Don DeLillo
(1988)

Where I'm Calling From
Raymond Carver
(1988)

The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien
(1990)

Mating
Norman Rush
(1991)

Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson
(1992)

Operation Shylock
Philip Roth
(1993)

Independence Day
Richard Ford
(1995)

Sabbath's Theater
Philip Roth
(1995)

Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy
(1999)

The Human Stain
Philip Roth
(2000)

The Known World
Edward P. Jones
(2003)

The Plot Against America
Philip Roth
(2004)

Penguin Deluxe Classics

I find it extremely odd that none of the book blogs I'm reading have commented on Penguin's new covers for their Deluxe Classics line. Four have been released thus far. They're having famous (or at least well-respected) illustrators and comic book artists design the covers. Really interesting way to get a younger audience to check out these titles.

I'm really impressed with the range of people they're hiring--Roz Chast and Seth, for example. I suppose they're just casting a wide net? Good for Penguin.