1999

Fiction: 15

Nonfiction: 8

Another low-numbers year because I was still in graduate school. I felt a little overwhelmed during the spring semester, but got it all back again (thanks to fellow students and one particular professor) in the fall with a renewed vigor and an intensity of focus and purpose I hadn't known I was capable of summoning.

1. Lost In Translation (memoir) - Eva Hoffman.
Hoffman's family immigrated when she was a young teenager. Interesting look at second language acquisition and what gets given up when assimilation takes place. Perfect title, so evocative.

2. The Professor And The Madman (nonfiction) - Simon Winchester. The bizarre but true story of how the OED came to be written. This one fairly screams: REREAD!

3. Any Woman's Blues (novel) - Erica Jong. Uh-oh. LitAmnesia. But it seems like the episodes of this were getting fewer and farther between.

4. The Poisonwood Bible (novel) -Barbara Kingsolver.
I suppose this is considered her best novel, but it's not my favorite -- seemed to go on way too long. On the other hand, since it's Kingsolver, I'm willing to give it another try.

5. McTeague (novel) - Frank Norris. 1899 novel. A masterpiece of naturalism. No wonder Erich von Stroheim went crazy over it and made the classic 1924 movie Greed.

6. Terms of Endearment (novel) - Larry McMurtry.
A mother and daughter story...I think it's the third book in McMurtry's Houston series. I'm always surprised and pleased at how well he portrays women.

7. The Wishbones (novel) - Tom Perotta. This book was so much fun. Nice description, background, character development, observations -- you name it -- of life in the mid-90s in a wedding band. Protagonist is early 30s (so is his girlfriend) and about to leave an extended adolescence and 15-year courtship to venture into marriage. Perotta's style is engaging.

8. The Day Diana Died (nonfiction) - Christopher Andersen. A day that need not have happened.

9. Evensong (novel) - Gail Godwin. Good strong sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter. It's ten years later and Margaret has become an Episcopalian priest. This book ties in so well with the other one that I wonder if Godwin wrote both books as one, initially.

10. Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts On Faith (essays) - Anne Lamott. Nice collection, but I was disappointed to realize that I'd already read most of these essays in Lamott's "Word By Word" column at Salon.

11. Affliction (novel) - Russell Banks. A bleak and wintry novel about Wade Whitehouse, a man whose life has been eroding for years and now he's at the breaking point. The novel is seen through the eyes of Wade's younger brother Rolfe and there are terrifying flashbacks to childhood with their raging and abusive father. Inexorable. Downer. But an outstanding character study. This was also made into a fine movie with Nick Nolte (one of his best performances) and James Coburn that sticks close to the novel and is also unrelentingly depressing.

12. Amy and Isabelle (novel) - Elizabeth Strout. Well-written and immensely readable, but the basic plot line seemed like a homage to Peyton Place.

13. Middlemarch (novel) - George Eliot. I tried unsuccessfully twice before to read this novel, then finally finished it. What a gem. It's long but well worth the time and patience invested. It has truly become one of the books of my life, to be read and savored again and again. George Eliot is so immensely, intensely intelligent.

14. Voices of Silence: Lives of the Trappists Today (nonfiction) - Frank Bianco. Bianco does a wonderful job of reporting on contemplative life in monasteries, particularly Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, where Thomas Merton was a monk. Bianco interviews several monks, many of them at critical stages in their spiritual development. He also discusses the psychological sea-change that occurs as monks spend more and more time in the monastery. Plenty of food for thought for those interested in the mysteries involved in the ongoing search for both God and self-awareness.

15. The Catcher In The Rye (novel) - J.D. Salinger. * Re-read* My son was 14, about to enter the 9th grade and I felt like the time was right to introduce him to Holden Caulfield. This was one of our last mother-son reads. I'm happy to report that he became a fan of the novel and has re-read it many times.

16. White Oleander (novel) - Janet Fitch. Astrid's mother is a strange lady -- a poet and single mother who murders her ex-lover with a poison brew made of white oleander flowers. She is found guilty and sent to prison and Astrid is left to somehow survive a series of disastrous foster homes. I read it avidly, but now, upon reflection, it seems like a typical Oprah book club pick.

17. The Old Man And The Sea (novel) - Ernest Hemingway. I read this in honor of Hemingway's 100th birthday.

18. Let Me Alone (novel) - Anna Kavan. A few years after this novel's 1930 publication, the author, Helen Woods, changed her name to Anna Kavan after the main character in Let Me Alone. Anna (the character) has a rough life: mother died, father committed suicide, boarding school, loveless marriage -- some of it in exotic locales. Kavan's writing is clear and direct, like a punch. She published about 20 novels during her lifetime and 5 more were found and published after her death in 1968. I've always wanted to read other novels by her, but have never found one in all this time.

19. Merde (nonfiction) - Ralph A. Lewin. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about shit. The language is starchy and academic, but he's so enthusiastic about his subject!

20. Co-Dependent No More (nonfiction) - Melody Beattie. Remind me to run right out and avoid my friends who want me to read self-help books! This one was particularly annoying. Where to begin? The writing style was really meandering. Also, the book was set in type that was annoying to the eye. In addition, "bullets" to make a few salient points are fine, but Beattie uses them page after page. Skim this one if you must, but seek out other books about co-dependency that are better written.

21. Sons And Lovers (novel) - D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence at his best, describing the life of Paul Morel and his family in working-class England at the turn of the century, as well as his love affairs with Miriam and Clara. Paul is an artist and when he discusses his work, it comes off as stilted and artificial, not to mention a little boring. Since Paul is a self-portrait of Lawrence, he probably should have just gone whole hog and made him a writer as well. Other than that, it's a wonderful novel -- language, narrative, characters, setting.

22. Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 By Jeffrey Cartwright (novel) - Stephen Millhauser. This dark comedy is a parody of literary biographies and also a microscopic examination of the life of childhood. I've heard it described as being like Pale Fire, except with younger characters. Definitely on my re-read shelf!

23. Teacher (memoir) -Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Ashton-Warner was New Zealand author who spent many years working with young Maori children. This outstanding book describes her pioneering efforts using organic language to build a bridge between cultures.

1998

Right before the beginning of the year, I had a *click* moment when I realized that I could go to graduate school. But what to study? I spent several months working on my decision. Even though I was still unsure about things, I felt calmer and this is reflected in my reading. There's not so much LitAmnesia for 1998. By the fall of that year, I had begun an MA-TESL course. The work was challenging and sometimes overwhelming at times, but I was happy and excited. Reading for pleasure took a back seat, but that was okay.

1. The Silent Woman (nonfiction) - Janet Malcolm. Exploring poet Sylvia Plath's life, Malcolm interviews Plath's friends and acquaintances during those last years of her life and makes some interesting observations about the nature of biography.

2. Our Noise (novel) - Jeff Gomez. First published as a serialized zine. Excellent portrayal of Generation X. Twenty-something slackers living in the town of Kitty, Virginia. Coffeehouses, thrift stores, flashbacks to the 1980s, a zine called g*df*ck -- what's not to love?

3. Lady Chatterley's Lover (novel) - D. H. Lawrence. I read this book while house-sitting for a friend. She had a waterbed and it seemed like the perfect place to read LCL. I loved Mellors' Yorkshire accent (once I got my eye adjusted to reading the thorny dialect) but I hated that he was the one who made all the pronouncements about love and sex, men and women when Connie probably knew as much (or more) than he did. Love the story, anyway. This is Lawrence's best-known and most controversial novel and I'll argue that it's also Lawrence at his best.

4. In Cold Blood (novel) - Truman Capote. Such a strange combination -- a violent subject coupled with Capote's meticulous, almost delicate prose. Adds to the chill and horror of what happened at the Clutter farmhouse in Kansas on that night back in 1959.

5. Look For The Woman (nonfiction) - J. Robert Nash. A historical encyclopedia of women who were famous (infamous) criminals.

6. Birthday Letters (poetry) - Ted Hughes. After Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963, her widower, Ted Hughes began a series of poems chronicling the story of their relationship. This book was published shortly before Hughes' death in 1998.

7. Reviving Ophelia (nonfiction) - Mary Pipher, Ph.D. According to Pipher, so many things can get adolescent girls off track during this crucial part of their development and mess them up permanently regarding their feelings of self-worth. Instead of leaving them to their own devices and also open to traps like boys and sex and the media with its warped messages about body image, they should be encouraged to do volunteer work or sports or similar things in which they can repeatedly prove their capability and develop their gifts with will counteract those other influences and build self-esteem. I highly recommend this book to everyone who knows a girl in this age bracket. It would also be helpful for women who are still carrying unnecessary baggage around.

8. Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulumia (memoir) - Marya Hornbacher. The part I remember most vividly is when Hornbacher was making herself throw up so much that the weight of her vomit burst the pipes in her uncle's home. Hornbacher offers as a quick aside that the same problem exists in girls' dormitories and sorority houses at universities all over the US.

9. Cold Mountain (novel) - Charles Frazier. Set during the Civil War, Inman struggles to get back to his true love, Ada, who is experiencing challenges of her own after her father dies. I love Frazier's use of old-fashioned words and phrases while maintaining a modern style.

10. A Patchwork Planet (novel) - Anne Tyler. Barnaby is an ex-juvenile delinquent who still hasn't gotten his life together at the age of 29. He works for an agency called Rent-A-Back which does errands for senior citizens. His well-to-do family is frustrated with him, and his 7-year-old daughter really doesn't know what to make of him. I would love to hear the audiobook version of this novel, which is read by David Morse, an actor that I always enjoy watching.

11. NixonCarver (novel) - Mark Maxwell. An amusing, quirky fantasy about the former president being good buddies with poet/short story writer Raymond Carver. They have long conversations about just about everything. This novel actually made me like Nixon a little better. Lovely portrait of Carver.

12. Fasting: The Ultimate Diet (nonfiction) - Allan Cott, M.D. Yes, it is.

13. High Fidelity (novel) - Nick Hornby. This was my introduction to Hornby's work. Rob Fleming works in a record store and makes lists about music and his life. Since this book takes its title from an Elvis Costello song, I had the nicest earworm going on as I read.

14. Backtalk: Four Steps To Ending Rude Behavior In Your Kids (nonfiction) - Audrey Ricker, Ph.D and Carolyn Crowder, Ph.D. The authors give simple but not easy advice to follow: Recognize backtalk when you hear it (includes eye-rolling and put-upon sighing) and let the child know you recognize it, figure out a consequence for the backtalk, apply the consequence, then disengage from the rude behavior. There's also a chapter for dealing with backtalk in adult children!

15. Fasting: A Neglected Discipline (nonfiction) - David R. Smith. This book discusses fasting as a spiritual practice to be used in conjunction with prayer.

16. Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (nonfiction) - Kathleen Norris. When Norris became interested in church again as an adult, she found the vocabulary of religion a little off-putting because it was often confusingly abstract. This book describes in her calm, lucid and always excellent prose how she was able to make meaning of this language in her own spiritual journey.

17. The Everlasting Story of Nory (novel) - Nicholson Baker. A fun book about life through the eyes of a nine-year-old. As always with Baker's books, it was too short -- I wanted more!

18. Helen and Teacher (biography) - Joseph P. Lash. A starchily dignified and restrained joint biography of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

19. The Fermata (novel) - Nicholson Baker. And everyone thought Vox was dirty! The main character finds a way to pause time and uses this power to undress women and look at them then redress them before starting time again. Very junior high, but Baker keeps it lively and interesting.

20. Fool For Love (play) - Sam Shepard. A half-brother and sister in a rocky love relationship deal with all of their issues in a tacky motel in the Mojave Desert. In spite of everything, I was bored and not propelled to go out and read any more Shepard plays. Too bad -- I really want to like his writing because I really like his acting. Plus, even though he's in his 60s now, he's still really hot.

21. A Widow For One Year (novel) - John Irving. LitAmnesia. Damn. I thought I had it whipped.

22. Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Woman Behind The Legend (biography) - John E. Miller. A little dry and academic in tone, but an interesting mother-daughter portrait of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. Apparently things weren't always smooth between Laura and Rose. Miller doesn't believe that Lane rewrote her mother's books, but anyone who has read The First Four Years and the other books in the series can see the marked difference. After reading this, I had to make a pilgrimage to Laura's home in the Ozarks, less than two hours from where I lived.

23. Genie: A Scientific Tragedy (nonfiction) - Russ Rymer. Heartbreaking true story of "Genie" who was abused by her father in a particularly odd manner -- nearly from babyhood, he kept her alone in a room tied to a potty chair. No one was allowed to communicate with her and he only "spoke" to her in grunts and growls. Family Services finally got wind of this and rescued Genie when she was a young teenager, but it was too late for her to acquire language except for a word croaked out here and there and some birdlike noises. Interested in this 20th century "wild child", scientists competed to study Genie and test their theories. No one was really focused on getting her the help she needed. Finally, after a court battle, she was returned to her mother who put her in a home for mentally disabled adults. There is also a PBS documentary of this case which features footage of Genie.

24. Anne Sexton: A Biography (biography) - Dianne Wood Middlebrook. Quite controversial, because Middlebrook was allowed access to tapes and notes from Sexton's sessions with her psychiatrist.

25. Interlanguage Phonology: The Acquisition of A Second Language Sound System (nonfiction) - Georgette Ioup and Steven Weinberger, eds. Graduate school reading.

26. How Languages Are Learned (nonfiction) - Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada. More graduate school reading about second language acquisition.

27. Approaches and Methods In Language Learning (nonfiction) - Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers. Historical overview at different ways to learn language. they run the gamut from boring (Grammar-Translation Method) to completely whack (Suggestopedia).

28. The Multilingual Self: An Inquiry Into Language Learning (nonfiction) - Natasha Lvovich. Lvovich, a native of Russia, began studying French when she was young. Because she only used it in an art/culture context, it never really felt like a true second language as English did a few years later when she emigrated to the US with her family and had to operate in English on every possible level. Lvovich also briefly discusses her young daughter's language issues -- the girl's first language is Russian, which they spoke at home, but the daughter didn't like it and was constantly code-switching into English. She told her mother that she "felt ugly" when she had to speak in Russian. Interesting and extremely readable firsthand account of second language learning. You don't have to be an ESL/EFL teacher or a linguistics expert to enjoy this book.

29. Marry Me (novel) - John Updike. Updike returns to one of his favorite themes -- adultery -- in this novel. As much as I enjoy Updike, I felt as if I'd read this book before.

1997

This was a year of feeling -- and actually being -- quite unsettled. I shivered and howled out there in storms of my own making. Somehow, there was still reading. I always had the books and by the end of the year I was seriously working out how I really wanted my life to be.


1. Regeneration (novel) - Pat Barker. Very fine WWI novel. I feel ready for a re-read.


2. A History of Reading (nonfiction) - Alberto Manguel. I remember bits about how a teenaged Manguel read aloud to his fellow Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges and how reading silently used to be viewed as an interesting feat. Manguel explores all facets of reading and books all over the world. Another one I'd like to re-read.


3. Recipes From The Dump (novel) - Abigail Stone. The only thing I remember about this novel is that the author's email was on the back flap where the biographical information is printed. I'd never seen that before, so I sent her an email and she kindly responded.


4. Mary (autobiography) - Mary Mebane. I believe this might be a 2-volume autobiography and I read volume 1. As an African-American coming of age in the 1950s, Mary had to face problems presented by the white world, but she also had to struggle against prejudices in the black community. Intelligent, balanced writing. Received an honorable mention Coretta Scott King Award.


5. Anagrams (novel) - Lorrie Moore. Re-read.


6. Night Bird: Conversations With Francoise Sagan (nonfiction) - Jean-Jacques Pauvert, David Macey (translator). A series of conversations about life, love and work with French novelist Sagan, who is most famous for her novel Bonjour Tristesse. This book was published in 1954 when Sagan was only 18 years old and became an international hit. From that time, Sagan lived a jet-set life which included two husbands, two children, lovers of both gender, fast cars, gambling and drugs. In her conversations with Pauvert, which were done in the late 1970s, she comes off quite existential.


7. A Live Coal In The Sea (novel) - Madeleine L'Engle. I don't remember anything about this novel.


8. After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie (novel) - Jean Rhys. I was captivated by Rhys' stark portrait of Julia Martin, who was once young and beautiful and has lived off of men all her adult life. Not really willing to make the compromises needed to keep these relationships going, she finds new prospects getting fewer and farther between and she's living out her life in dingy hotels, scraping for money.


9. Good Morning, Midnight (novel) - Jean Rhys. Sasha Jensen is living in Paris, if you can call it living. She's definitely at the end of her rope, living in a dismal room, drinking constantly and worried about money. She's bitter, angry and afraid of the human race in general, referring to them as a "pack of hyenas." She gets involved with a younger man who works as a gigolo, but hasn't got the energy to put into an affair.l Depressing, but so well written. Good Morning, Midnight is so angry and bleak that there immediately sprang up a false rumor that Jean Rhys had committed suicide shortly after writing this novel.


10. Voyage In The Dark (novel) - Jean Rhys. Anna is a younger version of Sasha and Julia. She's just come to England from the West Indies and works some underpaid job in the theatre. An older man makes her his mistress then tires of her, bringing on the familiar Rhys-ian downward spiral.


11. Bonjour Tristesse (novel) - Francoise Sagan. With its talk of affairs and mistresses, this novel seemed so very French to me. Teenage Cecilie enjoys life with her free-spirited, easygoing father, and she's also embarking on a summer romance. The merde hits the fan when she realizes that her father and her mother's old friend, Anne are falling in love. Cecilie enlists her new boyfriend in a plot to keep her father from remarrying.


12. Bird By Bird (nonfiction) - Anne Lamott. Funny and perceptive advice about writing. I especially loved Lamott's advice for avoiding a libel suit!


13. Rosie (novel) - Anne Lamott. LitAmnesia.


14. Quartet (novel) - Jean Rhys. I think this was one of her early ones and not quite as well crafted as the others.



15. Alias Grace (novel) - Margaret Atwood. Grace is in prison, but is she really a murderess? Based on a true case in 19th c. Canada.


16. The Rector's Wife (novel) - Joanna Trollope. Tidy little vignettes strung together. Almost too chill and neat as if she was writing the novel to go straight to Masterpiece Theatre.


17. Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year (nonfiction) - Anne Lamott. Whenever my coolest friends are expecting their first child, I present this book to them.

18. I Was Amelia Earhart (novel) - Jane Mendelsohn. Fantasy about Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan surviving the 1937 disappearance and living on some island. It reads like prose poetry. I had just seen The Piano when I read this book, so I've always imagined it as a film by Jane Campion.

19. Hard Laughter (novel) - Anne Lamott. Lamott's fiction doesn't stay with me as well as her nonfiction. LitAmnesia.



20. Wide Sargasso Sea (novel) - Jean Rhys. The story of Antoinette Bertha Mason of the West Indies before she married Edward Rochester and became the madwoman in the attic featured in Jane Eyre.

21. The Soul Of A New Machine (nonfiction) - Tracy Kidder. Although I'm a Kidder fan, this one was a bit of a slog for me with all the technical jargon.

22. Drinking: A Love Story (memoir) - Caroline Knapp. Knapp's account of her years as a functioning alcoholic. It's scary because she shows the sheer attractiveness of alcohol addiction. This memoir also contains one of the most insufferable ex-boyfriends to ever walk the face of the earth, and Knapp does a great job of poking sly fun at him.

23. We Were The Mulvaneys (novel) - Joyce Carol Oates. LitAmnesia.

24. The Family Nobody Wanted (memoir) - Helen Doss. The Dosses were one of the first families in the United States to support adoption of children of different or mixed races. Altogether, they adopted 12 children.

25. A Very Private Eye (memoir) - Barbara Pym. LitAmnesia.

26. The Long Loneliness (autobiography) - Dorothy Day. Day is one of the prominent figures in the history of "social Christianity". During her life, she moved from anarchism to socialism to Catholicism. She founded a newspaper called The Catholic Worker and opened "Houses of Hospitality" in the inner cities and later on farms where communes of people could settle. During wartime, she and the newspaper maintained a pacifistic stance. Day died in 1980, a revered figure in the American Catholic church. She is in the first stage of being considered for sainthood. A movie about her life called Entertaining Angels came out about 10 years ago.

27. Zines! (nonfiction) - V. Vale. Before there were blogs, people did fanzines, or zines, for short. This compilation features samples from the best, including Mystery Date by Lynn Peril and Thrift Score by Al Hoff as well as frank, in-depth interviews with their creators. Blogging is wonderful, but I sometimes miss the days of wielding The Big Stapler.

28. A Clockwork Orange (novel) - Anthony Burgess. Classic dystopian novel about Alex and his hoodlum friends. I read an edition that had a glossary at the back for Alex's strange slang, which Burgess created for the novel. That edition also omitted the final chapter in which Alex expresses remorse for his former violent behavior.

29. Five For Sorrow, Ten For Joy (novel) - Rumer Godden. A woman who has had hard knocks throughout her life and has worked as a prostitute, ends up at a convent and gradually changes her life and becomes a nun.
.
30. A Time To Dance, No Time To Weep (memoir) - Rumer Godden. LitAmnesia.

31. Crooked Little Heart (novel) - Anne Lamott. I know that this is the sequel to Rosie, but that's all I remember.

32. Anna LMNO (novel) - Sarah Glasscock. Anna works at one of the beauty shops in her little Texas town. She's saving her money to buy the shop from the owner. Meanwhile, she's been married almost 2 years to a South Africian named Bryan who needed a green card and is involved in some mysterious activities. There's a lot going on in this novel and Anna is a memorable character. I feel a residue of discomfort for liking this book because in a fit of enthusiasm I gave a copy of it to my friend for Christmas. She dutifully read it, but her thank-you note contained a scathing review. I had always assumed that my opinions were shit compared to hers, so I promptly gave my copy to the nearest used bookstore. A few years later I was feeling ever-so-much smarter and found another copy at Larry McMurtry's bookstore in Archer City. It was one of 3 books I grabbed that day. Whether my opinion is shit or not, I LOVE this goddamn book. It's part of my landscape.

33. Joy School (novel) - Elizabeth Berg. I can't understand why this author's novels don't stay with me. LitAmnesia.

34. The Invisible Circus (novel) - Jennifer Egan. LitAmnesia.

35. Love Invents Us (novel) - Amy Bloom. LitAmnesia and I feel bad about it.

36. The Cloister Walk (nonfiction) - Kathleen Norris. Norris, who was raised Protestant has been a Benedictine oblate for many years at a convent in Minnesota. This book covers one liturgical year that she spent full-time at the convent. Her prose is so clear and penetrating. I'd love to read this one again.

37. Bogart (biography) - Jeffrey Meyers. An enjoyable look writing at my favorite actor. I'd also like to read the Sperber-Lax bio as well as the 2006 book by film critic and historian Richard Schickel. What can I say? I'm a fan!

38. The Nuns (nonfiction) - Marcelle Bernstein. LitAmnesia.

39. Henry and Clara (novel)- Thomas Mallon. A novel about the couple who was seated in the balcony with President and Mrs. Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the night Lincoln was assassinated. Their lives were full of twists and turns and sadly, they came to an end as grisly and shocking as Lincoln's.

40. The Seven Storey Mountain (autobiography) - Thomas Merton. Like Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton had a long and circuitous path towards the religious life. He eventually became a Trappist monk at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky. Recognized as a brilliant writer even before he took vows, his writing and philosophy gave him a large worldwide following.

41. Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs (nonfiction) - Dave Barry. Barry polled readers of his column and published the winners, er..losers. I remember we all agreed about MacArthur Park.

42. Fraud (novel) - Anita Brookner. LitAmnesia. I'm sorry to say that I don't really recall plots or characters in Brookner's novels, either.

43. American Appetites (novel) - Joyce Carol Oates. The only thing I remember is that there's an accidental killing and the victim is some kind of food writer.

44. Love Warps The Mind A Little (novel) - John Dufresne. Shit! I really hate that I have LitAmnesia. I love that title!

45. Songs In Ordinary Time (novel) - Mary McGarry Morris. LitAmnesia.

46. Angela's Ashes (memoir) - Frank McCourt. McCourt's look back at his brutally poverty-stricken childhood in Limerick, Ireland during the 1930s and 40s. The first line of the book says something about how his parents should have stayed in New York City where they met and married and where Frank was born. That's damn right!

47. Bad Angel (novel) - Helen Benedict. LitAmnesia.

48. What Falls Away (memoir) - Mia Farrow. Farrow's life story, including her relationship and scandal-ridden split with Woody Allen. Written a couple of years after these events, WFA reads as if Farrow was still dazed by it all.

49. Snow Falling On Cedars (novel) - David Guterson. In the 1950s, a Japanese-American man living near Pugent Sound in Washington State is accused of murder. The autopsy scene in this book was so graphic that I had to stop reading and go throw up. Now that's good writing!

50. Pretty Boy Floyd (novel) - Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. The life and times of Charles Floyd, the famous 1930s outlaw from Oklahoma. This book has a lovely feel of the southwest that only McMurtry could provide.

51. Zeke & Ned (novel) - Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. A look at the last two Cherokee warriors, Zeke Proctor and Ned Christie. Ned has been accused of murder and has a several year's standoff with the US government, who wants to bring him to Fort Smith, Arkansas for hanging. Christie's standoff is told in sort of a strangely humorous sort of way.

52. A Virtuous Woman (novel) - Kaye Gibbons. I read her novels, but I can only remember Ellen Foster, her first one.

53. Staring At The Sun (novel) - Julian Barnes. And 1997 ends with LitAmnesia in my Christmas stocking. Ho ho ho.