So you expect some occasional book-related content on a website called Englishmajor.com? I suppose you're entitled. To tell the truth, I've not been reading as much as I used to: about 40 books in 2002, a dozen or so fewer than usual. That doesn't count books I abandoned halfway (probably due to my own fractured attention span, not the quality of the book) and travel books I thumbed through and drooled on. As a side note, I didn't buy a book all year, except for a street atlas of New York City. All hail the public library.

Anyway, here were some of my favorites from last year, generally published in other years, but like I said, I ain't buyin'.

Fiction Your Professors Would Not Call "Literature"

The Talisman - Stephen King

The Diamond Age - Neal Stephenson

Generation X - Douglas Copeland

Demonology - Rick Moody

I Know This Much Is True - Wally Lamb

Literature(tm)

The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

uh, I guess that was it. *blush*

Non-fiction

I'm a Stranger Here Myself and A Walk In The Woods - Bill Bryson

Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America - Barbara Ehrenreich (flawed in some ways and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but I still feel obliged to recommend it)

Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals: The Hidden Epidemic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Ian Osborn

Lonely Planet Books Skimmed And Drooled On

Germany

Taiwan

Middle East

Great Lakes

California and Nevada

Hawaii

This year: still less reading, more writing.