- Pohl, Frederik — Gateway (278 pages)
- Clement, Hal — Mission of Gravity (193 pages)
- Benford, Gregory — Timescape (499 pages)
- O'Hare, Mick (editor) — Why Don't Penguins Feet Freeze? and 114 Other Questions (232 pages)
- Dos Passos, John — Number One (218 pages)
- Heller, Joseph — Catch-22 (457 pages)
- St. John of the Cross — Dark Night of the Soul (119 pages)
- Day, Dorothy — The Long Loneliness (286 pages)
- Allen, Ted, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley, and Jai Rodriguez — Queer Eye for the Straight Guy: The Fab 5's Guide to Looking Better, Cooking Better, Dressing Better, Behaving Better, and Living Better (250 pages)
- Whittemore, Carroll E., ed. (William Duncan, illus.) — Symbols of the Church (59 pages)
- Hardy, Thomas — Jude the Obscure (507 pages)
- Lee, Harper — To Kill a Mockingbird (278 pages)
- Mann, Thomas (Helen T. Lowe-Porter, transl.) — Death in Venice (73 pages)
- Kempis, Thomas à — The Imitation of Christ (165 pages)
- West, Canon Edward N. — Outward Signs: The Language of Christian Symbolism (232 pages)
- Alexander, Lloyd — The High King (253 pages)
- Bellairs, John — St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies (84 pages)
- Endo, Shusaku — Silence (300 pages)
- Moorcock, Michael — Behold the Man (137 pages)
- Pouncey, Peter — Rules for Old Men Waiting (208 pages)
- Davies, Robertson — Tempest-Tost (The Salterton Trilogy) (235 pages)
- Davies, Robertson — Leaven of Malice (The Salterton Trilogy) (218 pages)
- Davies, Robertson — A Mixture of Frailties (The Salterton Trilogy) (311 pages)
- Austen, Jane — Pride and Prejudice (274 pages)
- Murakami, Haruki — Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (400 pages)
- Burrows, Ruth, O.C.D. — Essence of Prayer (210 pages)
- McCarthy, Cormac — The Road (239 pages)
- Dahl, Roald — The BFG (184 pages)
- Eugenides, Jeffrey — The Virgin Suicides (247 pages)
- Geoffrey of Monmouth — The History of the Kings of Britain (280 pages)
- Figgess, Sandra — Christian Initiation of Older Children (87 pages)
- Clarke, Susanna — Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (1006 pages)
Page count: 8,519 of targeted 12,500.
What a book! Wow! I'm not going to say too much about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, because I need to go to bed and I know I won't have much time to write about it anytime soon.
I'm not sure what to say about it anyway. The first two-thirds of the book, I remember thinking to myself, "When I write up my little book review, I must mention something about how Clarke's writing evokes the good Dickens (the magical Dickens, not the dreary Dickens)," but I must point out that the only Dickens I've read is The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol. But enough comparisons: this is a highly original story inventively told. (At least, I don't think I've read anything quite like it.) I highly recommend it to all, especially anyone who enjoys fantasy-realism and historical fiction. Don't be daunted by the length, as it reads far more quickly than many a shorter book.
Meanwhile, I've just about given up on my reading goal for the year. I would have to bump my reading up from the 40+ pages a day from a couple of months ago to 50+ pages a day, and I just don't see that happening. I have mostly myself to blame, as I spent a 2-month or so stretch watching movies more than reading, and now my Russian, Italian, and singing classes are taking up my time. The biggest time drain, though, is a particularly obnoxious website for a client that has proven to be far more complicated than I expected and has taken two months longer to complete than it should have. The only time, thanks to all these things, that I have to read is on commutes and for a half hour or so before I sleep. Oh well, it really wasn't all that important a goal, I suppose.
