The Books I Read This Year
These are the books I read this year. I think I got all of them. A couple of them were started and put down. Some were read in Swedish, but listed here as they are available in English.
- Joseph Williams, Style: Towards Clarity and Grace
- Peter Bøgh Andersen, A Theory of Computer Semiotics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
- Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated
- Karl Popper, All Life is Problem Solving (1, 2, 3)
- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
- Rem Koolhaas, Content
- Italo Calvino, The Invisible Cities
- Bruce Chatwin, Songlines (1, 2, 3, 4)
- Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie’s Report (notes)
- Andrés Duany, et al, The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning
- Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning (1, 2, 3)
- Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (notes)
- Warren F. Motte, Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature
- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
- Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy
- Italo Calvino, Time and the Hunter (out of print; notes: 1, 2, 3, 4)
- Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions
- Jeanette Winterson, The PowerBook
- Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
- Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
- Paul Shepheard, What Is Architecture? (1, 2)
- Leonard Koren, Wabi Sabi (notes)
- Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn (1, 2)
Of these, the following books made the greatest impression and are those I would most warmly recommend: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, Kevin Lynch’s The Image of the City, Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and a couple of the short stories in Time and the Hunter; Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines, several of the short stories in Borges’s Collected Fictions, and Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn (which I’m currently reading).
My intention was to read 12 novels this year. Did I succeed? No, I read eleven Yes, I read twelve ‘ if Borges’s collection counts as one book (not considering I haven’t read all of the stories, but at least 5 or 6). Anyway, I’m quite content with surpassing last year’s effort. And I still have time to read the twelfth one.
Also see the list of books read last year.