books stacked on my floor to be read

1. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
2. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
3. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
4. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen

books i need to read now

Okay, new list. I'll keep adding to the previous one, slowly. These are books that need reading (in no particular order; bold indicates priority):

1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
2. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass (new translation by Breon Mitchell)
3. The Bin Ladens, by Steve Coll
4. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
5. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
6. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
7. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
8. Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
8. The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
9. Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara
10. Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
11. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
13. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
14. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
15. The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas
16. The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebhur
17. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
18. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
19. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

That should be a good start.

i am going to try to list all the books i have read this year

Came across something called the 50 books project. Obvious goal was for the participants to read 50 books in 2009. I didn't get close, but here's a list of what I did read. There must be more that I'm forgetting and I'll add as I remember others. In no particular order:

1. The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly
2. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
3. The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Mantle of the Prophet, by Roy Mottahedeh
5. Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
6. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
7. Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
8. Slow Man, by J.M. Coetzee
9. 2666, by Roberto Bolano
10. Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt
11. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
12. The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan
13. Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount
14. Open, by Andre Agassi
15. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (in translation)
16. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
17. Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook
18. Athletic Development, by Vern Gambetta
19. Homicide, by David Simon
20. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
21. A Tranquil Star, by Primo Levi (again)
22. The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong (again)
23. No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
24. In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent
25. A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon
26. A Wanderer in the Perfect City, by Lawrence Weschler
27. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
28. The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (again)
29. Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow
30. The Little Prince, by Antoine du Saint-Exupery
31. Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
32. A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley

tight words/names/titles

Can't be bothered to go back through all my old posts and find the original list, so I'm just going to recreate and expand. Here will be an ongoing list of words, names and titles that I think are awesome and worth noting.

• D'Brickashaw Ferguson - football player
• Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters - by JD Salinger
• Go Tell it on the Mountain - by James Baldwin
• phenylalanine - amino acid
• Takeo Spikes - football player
• Let the Right One In - movie
• International Church of the Reign of God - church
• United House of Prayer for All People - church
• Wide Sargasso Sea - by John Steinbeck
• Malagasy - a person from Madagascar
• The Curve of Binding Energy - by John McPhee