Sunday, January 18, 2009

Book Lists - Part II


So I read a ton of books from that list and felt all happy and satisfied. For a while. A very small while. Here's what the list looked like after I totted up what I'd read:

Book List 2008
  1. A Cloistered War - Maisie Duncan
  2. A Field Guide To Writing Fiction - A.B. Guthrie Jr.
  3. A History of Malaysia - Barbara Watson Andaya & Leonard Andaya
  4. A History of Modern Indonesia - M.C. Ricklefs
  5. A History of Selangor - J. M. Gullick
  6. A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton
  7. A Place Where The Sea Remembers - Sandra Benitez
  8. A Point of Light - Zhou Mei
  9. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
  10. A Tagore Reader - Amiya Chakravarty
  11. A Will For Freedom - Romen Bose
  12. Abraham's Promise - Philip Jeyaretnam
  13. Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
  14. Anthology of Japanese Literature - Donald Keene
  15. Art & Fear - David Bayles & Ted Orland
  16. Asian Labour In The Japanese Wartime Empire - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
  17. Baba Nonnie Goes To War - Ron Mitchell
  18. Bang Bang in Ampang - Norman Cleaveland
  19. Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers - Vendela Vida, Ed.
  20. Between Two Oceans - Murkett, Miskic, Farrell, & Chiang
  21. Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
  22. Buffalo Gals - Ursula K. LeGuin
  23. Burglars can't be Choosers - Lawrence Block
  24. Busman's Honeymoon - Dorothy Sayers
  25. Captives of Shanghai - David H. & Gretchen G. Grover
  26. Chandranath - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
  27. Chinese Blue and White - Ann Frank
  28. Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
  29. Clay Walls - Kim Ronyoung
  30. Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
  31. Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
  32. Early Views of Indonesia/Pemandangan Indonesia di Masa Lampau - Annabel Teh Gallop
  33. Encyclopedia of China - Dorothy Perkins
  34. Fantasies of the Six Dynasties - Tsai Chih Chung
  35. Faster - James Gleick
  36. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
  37. Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
  38. From Pacific War to Merdeka - James Wong Wing On
  39. Fu Lu Shou - Jeffrey Seow
  40. Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers
  41. Golden Boy and Other Stories from Burma - Saw Wai Lwyn Moe
  42. Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
  43. Glory - Vladimir Nabokov
  44. Have His Carcase - Dorothy Sayers
  45. How I Adore You - Mark Pritchard
  46. How To Write A Damn Good Novel - James N. Frey
  47. In Pursuit of Mountain Rats - Anthony Short
  48. In The Grip of a Crisis - Rudy Mosbergen
  49. In the Midst of Death - Lawrence Block
  50. Kempeitai, Japan's Dreaded Military Police - Raymond Lamont-Brown
  51. Kempeitai:The Japanese Secret Service Then And Now - Richard Deacon
  52. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
  53. Krait:The Fishing Boat That Went To War - Lynette Ramsay Silver
  54. Kranji - Romen Bose
  55. Labour Unrest in Malaya - Tai Yuen
  56. Lest We Forget - Alice M. Coleman & Joyce E. Williams
  57. Life As The River Flows - Agnes Khoo
  58. Living Hell - Goh Chor Boon
  59. Malay Folk Beliefs - Mohd Taib Osman
  60. Malaya and Singapore During the Japanese Occupation - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
  61. Malaysia - R. Emerson
  62. Modern Japan, A Historical Survey - Hane Mikiso
  63. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
  64. Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy Sayers
  65. Night Butterfly - Tan Guan Heng
  66. No Cowardly Past - James Puthucheary
  67. Old Filth - Jane Gardam
  68. Operation Matador - Ong Chit Chung
  69. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
  70. Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
    Palli Samaj (The Homecoming) - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
  71. Power Politics - Arundhati Roy
  72. Prehistory of the Indo-Malayan Archipelago - Peter Bellwood
  73. Red Star Over Malaya - Cheah Boon Kheng
  74. Revolt in Paradise - K'tut Tantri
  75. Rhymes of Li Yu Tsai - Chao Shu Li
  76. Robert van Gulik - Janwillem van de Wetering
  77. Rosie - Anne Lamott
  78. Rouge of the North - Chang Ai Ling
  79. Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
  80. Shantung Compound - Langdon Gilkey
  81. Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
  82. Sisters and Strangers (Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills) - Emily Honig
  83. Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
  84. Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo
  85. Strange Tales of Liao Zhai - Tsai Chih Chung
  86. Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
  87. Strong Poison - Dorothy Sayers
  88. Taming the Wind of Desire - Carol Laderman
  89. Tao Te Ching - Ursula K. LeGuin
  90. That Fellow Kanda - AUPE
  91. The Age of Diminished Expectations - Paul Krugman
  92. The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
  93. The Art of Fiction - John Gardner
  94. The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
  95. The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama
  96. The Bafut Beagles - Gerald Durrell
  97. The Beatitudes - Lyn LeJeune
  98. The Book of Tea - Okakura Kazuko
  99. The Brooklyn Follies - Paul Auster
  100. The Burglar In The Library - Lawrence Block
  101. The Burglar In The Rye - Lawrence Block
  102. The Burglar Who Liked To Quote Kipling - Lawrence Block
  103. The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
  104. The Crippled Tree - Han Suyin
  105. The Death of Woman Wang - Jonathan D. Spence
  106. The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
  107. The Double Tenth Trial - C. Sleeman, S.C. Silkin, Eds.
  108. The End of the War - Romen Bose
  109. The Family: They Fuck You Up - Granta
  110. The Gift - Lewis Hyde
  111. The Grand Guignol - Mel Gordon
  112. The Life of an Amorous Woman - Saikaku Ihara
  113. The Makioka Sisters - Junichiro Tanizaki
  114. The Malay Archipelago - Alfred Russell Wallace
  115. The Malayan Union Controversy, 1942-1948 - Albert Lau
  116. The Marquis - A Tale of Syonan-To - S.J.H. Conner
  117. The Nanking Massacre - M.E.Sharpe
  118. The Nine Tailors - Dorothy Sayers
  119. The Origins of The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific - Iriye Akira
  120. The Other Side of War - Zainab Salbi, Ed.
  121. The Pacific War - Ienaga Saburo
  122. The Plague - Albert Camus
  123. The Price of Peace - Foong Choon Hon, Ed.
  124. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
  125. The Sabahan: The Life and Death of Tun Fuad Stephens - P.J. Granville-Edge
  126. The Singapore Grip - J.G. Farrell
  127. The Sins of the Fathers - Lawrence Block
  128. The Situation and The Story - Vivian Gornick
  129. The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
  130. The Unabomber Manifesto - Ted Kaczynski
  131. The War in Malaya - A.E. Percival
  132. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
  133. The World of the Shining Prince - Ivan Morris
  134. Three Came Home - Agnes Newton Keith
  135. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
  136. Tokyo Rose - Masayo Duus
  137. Totto-chan - Kuroyanagi Tetsuko
  138. Travels in Siam - Henri Mouhot
  139. Tripmaster Monkey His Fake Book - Maxine Hong Kingston
  140. Vietnamese Traditional Water Puppetry - Nguyen Huy Hong
  141. War & Memory in Malaysia & Singapore - P. Lim Pui Huen, Diana Wong, Eds.
  142. Woman of the Inner Sea - Thomas Kenneally
  143. Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
  144. Women of China - Bobby Siu
  145. Women, Outcastes, Peasants & Rebels - Kalpana Bardhan
  146. Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
  147. Writing Fiction - A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
  148. Writing Past Dark - Bonnie Friedman
  149. You'll Die in Singapore - Charles McCormac
  150. Your Memory: A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley
  151. A Choice of Evils - Meira Chand
  152. Force 136:Story of A Resistance Fighter in WWII - Tan Chong Tee
  153. King Rat - James Clavell
  154. Murder on the Verandah - Eric Lawlor
  155. No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigasu
  156. Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon, Yap Hong Kuan
  157. Singa, Lion of Malaya - Gurchan Singh
  158. Singapore The Pregnable Fortress - Peter Elphick
  159. Sinister Twilight - Noel Barber
  160. Sold For Silver - Janet Lim
  161. Syonan - My Story (The Japanese Occupation of Singapore) - Mamoru Shinozaki
  162. The Fall of Shanghai - Noel Barber
  163. The Jungle is Neutral - F. Spencer Chapman
  164. The War Of The Running Dogs - Noel Barber
  165. You'll Never Get Off The Island - Keith Wilson


Not too shabby, wouldn't you say? In some eight months or so of dedicated reading, interspersed with film, writing, and beratement of beasties? Cooking? Gardening? Cleaning house? Visiting parental units, even. Not too shabby. We start out with 165 books (an idiot's hopeless dream by any standards), read 83 of them and end with 82:

Book List 2008, Revised
  1. A History of Modern Indonesia - M.C. Ricklefs
  2. A Point of Light - Zhou Mei
  3. A Will For Freedom - Romen Bose
  4. Agnes Smedley - J.R. & S.R. MacKinnon
  5. Asian Labour In The Japanese Wartime Empire - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
  6. Between Two Oceans - Murkett, Miskic, Farrell, & Chiang
  7. Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
  8. Chandranath - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
  9. Chinese Customs - Henri Dore
  10. Clay Walls - Kim Ronyoung
  11. Daniel Deronda - George Eliot
  12. Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavic
  13. Finnegan's Wake - James Joyce
  14. From Pacific War to Merdeka - James Wong Wing On
  15. How I Adore You - Mark Pritchard
  16. In Pursuit of Mountain Rats - Anthony Short
  17. In The Grip of a Crisis - Rudy Mosbergen
  18. Kempeitai, Japan's Dreaded Military Police - Raymond Lamont-Brown
  19. Kempeitai:The Japanese Secret Service Then And Now - Richard Deacon
  20. Krait:The Fishing Boat That Went To War - Lynette Ramsay Silver
  21. Kranji - Romen Bose
  22. Labour Unrest in Malaya - Tai Yuen
  23. Lest We Forget - Alice M. Coleman & Joyce E. Williams
    Life As The River Flows - Agnes Khoo
  24. Living Hell - Goh Chor Boon
  25. Malay Folk Beliefs - Mohd Taib Osman
  26. Malaya and Singapore During the Japanese Occupation - Paul H. Kratoska, Ed.
  27. Modern Japan, A Historical Survey - Hane Mikiso
  28. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
  29. No Cowardly Past - James Puthucheary
  30. Operation Matador - Ong Chit Chung
  31. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
  32. Outwitting the Gestapo - Lucie Aubrac
  33. Palli Samaj (The Homecoming) - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay
  34. Power Politics - Arundhati Roy
  35. Red Star Over Malaya - Cheah Boon Kheng
  36. Revolt in Paradise - K'tut Tantri
  37. Rosie - Anne Lamott
  38. Shanghai Refuge, A Memoir of the WWII Jewish Ghetto - Ernest G. Heppner
  39. Singapore & The Many-Headed Monster - Joe Conceicao
  40. Sisters in the Resistance - Margaret Collins Weitz
  41. Soldiers Alive - Ishikawa Tatsuzo
  42. Strangers Always A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai - Rena Krasno
  43. Taming the Wind of Desire - Carol Laderman
  44. The Art of the Novel - Milan Kundera
  45. The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
  46. The Double Tenth Trial - C. Sleeman, S.C. Silkin, Eds.
  47. The End of the War - Romen Bose
  48. The Gift - Lewis Hyde
  49. The Malayan Union Controversy, 1942-1948 - Albert Lau
  50. The Nanking Massacre - M.E.Sharpe
  51. The Origins of The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific - Iriye Akira
  52. The Pacific War - Ienaga Saburo
  53. The Plague - Albert Camus
  54. The Price of Peace - Foong Choon Hon, Ed.
  55. The Rape of Nanking - Iris Chang
  56. The Tin Drum - Gunther Grass
  57. The War in Malaya - A.E. Percival
  58. The Way of All Flesh - Samuel Butler
  59. Three Came Home - Agnes Newton Keith
  60. To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
  61. Tokyo Rose - Masayo Duus
  62. War & Memory in Malaysia & Singapore - P. Lim Pui Huen, Diana Wong, Eds.
  63. Women in the Holocaust - Dalia Ofer, Lenore J. Weitzman, Eds.
  64. Women, Outcastes, Peasants & Rebels - Kalpana Bardhan
  65. Writers' Workshop in a Book - Cheuse and Alvarez
  66. You'll Die in Singapore - Charles McCormac
  67. Your Memory: A User's Guide - Alan Baddeley
  68. A Choice of Evils - Meira Chand
  69. Force 136:Story of A Resistance Fighter in WWII - Tan Chong Tee
  70. King Rat - James Clavell
  71. Murder on the Verandah - Eric Lawlor
  72. No Dram of Mercy - Sybil Kathigasu
  73. Rehearsal for War - Ban Kah Choon, Yap Hong Kuan
  74. Singa, Lion of Malaya - Gurchan Singh
  75. Singapore The Pregnable Fortress - Peter Elphick
  76. Sinister Twilight - Noel Barber
  77. Sold For Silver - Janet Lim
  78. Syonan - My Story (The Japanese Occupation of Singapore) - Mamoru Shinozaki
  79. The Fall of Shanghai - Noel Barber
  80. The Jungle is Neutral - F. Spencer Chapman
  81. The War Of The Running Dogs - Noel Barber
  82. You'll Never Get Off The Island - Keith Wilson

But are your hosts at this fine blog happy and satisfied with that? Hell, no. What, you ask, did the stupid buggers do?

What else but add another fucking mountain of books to the list. By way of excuse, I offer the following: there really is a gigantoshitload of books in this fucking house and it's getting really tiresome having to wend one's way between them. And furthermore: I really do get rid of some of them, sell, donate, give away, and like that, so there actually is a possibility that I will, someday see my floor.

But, on to the next piece of self-excoriation.

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