2011 in Books — By the numbers
Books Read
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
What’s to Become of the Boy?: Or, Something to Do with Books, Heinrich Böll
The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm: A Lexicon for Those of Us Who Are Better and Smarter Than the Rest of You, James Napoli
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Bobby Henderson
The Eichmann Trial, Deborah E. Lipstadt
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, Rebecca Goldstein
Monte Cassino, Sven Hassel
Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask, Jim McRae
The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass, Bill Maher
Bossypants. Tina Fey
11/22/63, Stephen King
Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr, Michael Deakin
The President, Georges Simenon
Grumpy Old Rock Star, Rick Wakeman
A Peace of My Mind, Exploring the Meaning of Peace One Story At a Time, John Noltner
Here Comes Trouble, Michael Moore
After the Apocalypse: Stories, Mauren F. McHugh
Feast Day of Fools, James Lee Burke
The Revisionists, Thomas Mullen
The Third Reich: A Novel, Roberto Bolaño
Lost Memory of Skin, Russell Banks
When She Woke, Hillary Jordan
My Friend Jesus Christ, Lars Husum
1Q84, Haruki Murakami
The Last Testament: A Memoir by God, David Javerbaum
The Prague Cemetery, Umberto Eco
Running Away to Home: Our Family’s Journey to Croatia in Search of Who We Are, Where We Came From, and What Really Matters, Jennifer Wilson
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, Charles J. Shields
Dakota, Or What’s a Heaven For, Brenda K. Marshall
Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, Anna Funder
A History of the World Since 9/11: Disaster, Deception, and Destruction in the War on Terror, Dominic Streatfeild
Caligula: A Biography, Aloys Winterling
Machine Man, Max Barry
George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Olivia Harrison
American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America, David O. Stewart
Anatomy of a Disappearance, Hisham Matar
November 22, 1963, Adam Braver
Chronicle in Stone, Ismail Kadare
The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe
The Leftovers, Tom Perrotta
Johnny Moon, Mike Palecek
What It Is Like to Go to War, Karl Marlantes
Train To Nowhere: Inside an Immigrant Death Investigation, Colleen Bradford Krantz
Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris, David King
This Beautiful Life, Helen Schulman
Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, Janet Reitman
Cain, Jose Saramago
Discontents, James Wallace Birch
The Submission, Amy Waldman
The Golden Mean: A Novel of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, Annabel Lyon
Six: A Football Coach’s Journey to a National Record, Marc Rasmussen
Encyclopaedia of Hell: An Invasion Manual for Demons Concerning the Planet Earth and the Human Race Which Infests It, Martin Olson
Wisdom of Progressive Voices, Joanne Boyer (ed.)
Principle over Party: The Farmers’ Alliance and Populism in South Dakota, 1880-1900, R. Alton Lee
Turbulence, Giles Foden
The Boomer’s Guide to Story: A Search for Insight in Literature and Film, Roemer McPhee
The Missing of the Somme, Geoff Dyer
God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales, Penn Jillette
The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Steve Wick
Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground, Jonathan Kay
The Knowledge of Good & Evil, Glenn Kleier
A Stolen Life: A Memoir, Jaycee Dugard
State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
Coming Unglued: Six Stories About Things Falling Apart
The Curfew, Jesse Ball
Turn of Mind, Alice LaPlante
Here’s the Deal: Don’t Touch Me, Howie Mandel
The Train Was On Time, Heinrich Böll
I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive, Steve Earle
Rule 34, Charles Stross
The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell
Bel Canto, Ann Patchett
Robopocalypse, Daniel H. Wilson
The Perfect Nazi: Uncovering My Grandfather’s Secret Past, Martin Davidson
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, Ben Mezrich
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, James Frey
The Tunnel, Ernesto Sabato
Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11, Kathryn Olmsted
Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970, David Browne
Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Thomas Weber
The Sojourn, Andrew Krivak
Doc, Mary Doria Russell
Ephemera, Jeffery M. Anderson
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, Jon Ronson
Embassytown, China Miéville
Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, John A. Farrell
Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, & Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust, Samuel P. King and Randall W. Roth
Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, Lili’uokalani
Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese
Conquered City, Victor Serge
Hawaii:: A History of the Big Island, Robert F. Oaks
The Illumination, Kevin Brockmeier
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson
7 Dirty Words: The Life and Crimes of George Carlin, James Sullivan
Animal Farm, George Orwell
After Midnight, Irmgard Keun
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Laura Hillenbrand
Let There Be Pebble: A Middle-Handicapper’s Year in America’s Garden of Golf, Zachary Michael Jack
Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music, Ellen Willis
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, Milton Rokeach
Kapitoil, Teddy Wayne
The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, David L. Ulin
You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News: Shocking but Utterly True Facts, Cracked.com
Pereira Maintains, Antonio Tabucchi
Unfamiliar Fishes, Sarah Vowell
Volt, Alan Heathcock
Love All the People, Bill Hicks
Street Player: My Chicago Story, Danny Seraphine
Enigmatic Pilot: A Tall Tale Too True, Kris Saknussem
The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz: The First English Translation of Verne’s Original Manuscript, Jules Verne
First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond Earth, Marc Kaufman
Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World, Kevin Grange
Half a Life, Darin Strauss
Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories, John Joseph Adams (ed.)
The Stones Cry Out, Hikaru Okuizumi
My Reading Life, Pat Conroy
Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead, Peter Manseau
Kings of the Earth, John Clinch
To a Mountain in Tibet, Colin Thubron
The Paperbark Shoe, Goldie Goldbloom
The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, Seth Mnookin
The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda, Mercè Rodoreda
Other Earths, Nick Gevers and Jay Lake (eds.)
Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth, Lisa Napoli
Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son’s Story, Patrick Cockburn and Henry Cockburn
The Unnamed, Joshua Ferris
Journal of an Ordinary Grief, Mahmoud Darwish
Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness, Frank Brady
Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson
First Contact: Or, It’s Later Than You Think, Evan Mandery
The Gospel of Anarchy, Justin Taylor (Review)
My Dead Dad Was in ZZ Top: 100% Real,* Never Before Seen Documents from the World of Rock and Roll, Jon Glaser (Review)
Crime: Stories, Ferdinand von Schirach
While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut
Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross
Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, Alexandra Horowitz
Escape from the Land of Snows: The Young Dalai Lama’s Harrowing Flight to Freedom and the Making of a Spiritual Hero, Stephan Talty
Just Kids, Patti Smith
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century, Adam Parfrey (ed.)
Exile and the Kingdom, Albert Camus
Sleepwalk with Me: and Other Painfully True Stories, Mike Birbiglia
Still Alice, Lisa Genova
How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond, John Powell (Review)
American Subversive, David Goodwillie
Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
