Well, I think it’s just about time for me to post the list of the new (to me) books that I’ve read this year. It’s sort of an annual tradition–if you don’t count the fact that I actually posted my 2007 list at the beginning of 2008, so it’s actually … I’m not entirely sure.

At any rate, this is my chance to prove to the world that I am a slow reader, with middle-brow tastes who’s actually lying, and is pretty darn low-brow, damn it! I’m not proud of this. I am merely a stupid simple man, trying to grasp the wonders of the written word. Here’s the first five. The rest are after the jump.

1. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera:

A happy and cheerful way to start the year, no? No, something about the winter months drives me to consider how pointless and ephemeral our lives are. Also, I had always wondered why Prague was such a popular off-year destination for college students in the 90′s. Uh, I still don’t know.

2. Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen, by Malcolm Kohll:

I’ve always felt that one of the blind-spots in my Doctor Who fandom is that I have not read very many of the classic Target novelizations. This year, I made up for that. Expect to see a few more of these on the list.

3. Spaceman Blues, by Brian Francis Slattery:

A lovely, moving book–that I read as an ebook, which was still weird to me, at the time. It’s a vivid portrait of a New York under alien attack, community, and the lengths a man will go to in order to find the love of his life. Actually, I know so little about New York that I can’t be entirely sure as to what parts are fiction, and what parts are real. Do you guys have underground cities and extra-terrestrial revenge squads?

4. Contrary to Popular Belief, by Joey Green:

I have previously reviewed this book.

5. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, by Martin Gardener:

A classic of Skeptical literature–practically a founding document. It might be difficult to recall, but there was a time when skeptics weren’t busy fighting to keep evolution in schools, or to dissuade terrified parents from allowing their children to become disease infested germ bombs by refusing to get them vaccinated. No, way back when it was all about UFO’s, perpetual motion, and General Semantics. It seems almost cute, now.

6. Babel-17, by Samuel R. Delany:

Actually, it was the Wikipedia article on General Semantics that guided me towards this book, in a roundabout way that I can’t quite remember at the moment. Something about how language shapes thought, or something like that. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and the concepts were interesting.

7. SeinLanguage, by Jerry Seinfeld:

If you’re a comedian with a hit TV show and a popular stand-up act, writing a book is easy. You fill 98% of it with jokes everyone’s already heard you do, add some filler, and the next thing you know, you’ve got a best-seller on your hands! For the life of me, I can’t remember a single detail about this book. I certainly didn’t take any notes while reading it.

8. Penny Arcade: Attack of the Bacon Robots, by Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik:

Come on, you know these guys already. Their name says quality. Actually, their name says Penny Arcade, but your mind interprets it as quality.

9. An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories, edited by Ivan Brunetti:

I found this near the Bacon Robots thing, and assumed that it was some sort of sign. Portents notwithstanding, this collection ranges from the harrowing to the humorous, and those are the only emotional states I can grasp, so it was perfect for me. I have been slacking on the graphic fiction front, so I’ll have to remedy that in the future.

10. Side Effects, by Woody Allen:

I don’t quite get Woody Allen–and I don’t mean that I don’t understand his jokes. I just can’t help but wonder: Is he a weaver of words? A builder of cinematic worlds? A player of jokes, a holy fool, and mad philosopher, a sad old man–or just some sick fucker with a lot of money?

11. The Public Domain, by James Boyle:

Previously reviewed.

12. The Seven Percent Solution, by Nicholas Meyer:

I don’t tend to like non-Conan-Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, and I think that Freud was either a self-deluded quack, or in-over-his-head fraud, but this book was kind of okay. Nick Meyer was a big wheel in the world of Star Trek, so I’ll cut him a break.

13. Doctor Who: Carnival of Monsters, by Terrance Dicks:

Serviceable. Look, I’m not going to try to justify these too aggressively. I like Doctor Who, all right?

14. The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope:

This book represents the first step in my continuing addiction to the Project Gutenberg website. It was, in its day, a popular book–I think. It’s gone on to influence so many books, movies, and television shows that, in a way, it still is.

15. A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs:

Ah, a thrilling adventure tale on an impossible, implausible Mars. A story from the days when heros didn’t really need challenges in order for us to root for them. John Carter just transmigrates his ass to Mars, where thankfully his lifetime exposure to Earth gravity makes him an unstoppable superman on the red planet. If you can tolerate the political and philosophical backwardness of it all–it’s basically about a guy who shows up and tames the savage natives, kinda–then you might enjoy it. (And, holy Jesus did we say some vile shit about American Indians back then.)

16. Another Day in Cubical Paradise, by Scott Adams:

This isn’t what I meant by graphic fiction. Ah, skip it.

17. From the Very Big Desk of…, by Charles Barsotti:

Business cartoons from the New Yorker. Amusing enough, but depressing if you read them all in one sitting.

18. Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith:

This is a hard book to classify. Is it crime fiction? Well, there’s a crime to be solved. But there’s more to it (not that simply being crime fiction is any bad thing). What this book’s really got going for it is the intense sense of dread that comes from its description of life under  Stalinist rule. It’s interesting that terms like “horror novel” and “thriller” are familier to us, yet there’s nothing apposite for books that make us feel that cold, pervasive, dreadful feeling.

19. Rupert of Hentzau, by Anthony Hope:

The sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda. Not as good, in my opinion, but I suppose it had to be written. The first book ended in heartbreak and the escape of one of the dastardly villans, so I guess that kind of thing has to be resolved, somehow.

20. Live From New York, by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller:

My continued viewership of Saturday Night Live emerges solely from my love and respect for the original five years of the program, which in retrospect doesn’t make much sense. (It was good, but not that good.) This book is kind of an oral history, a collection of cast and crew-members telling tales out of school. Anyway, at least I understand now why not many of Chevy’s former co-workers showed up for his roast.

21. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson:

I’ve read a lot of Neal Stephenson. And, if you’ve read any of the book’s he’s written in the last 10 years or so, so have you. I’m a fan, and I liked this book, though I’ll admit there are some issues. I’ll still continue to like the book, but I’m forced to recognize that there are some things about myself that I need to work on.

22. Wodehouse On Crime, by PG Wodehouse, edited by DR Bensen:

What’s left to be said about Wodehouse? This was a collection of some of his stories that have something to do with crime.

23. Pride And Prejudice, by Jane Austen:

Why shouldn’t I read Pride and Prejudice? I said to myself. It’s a classic book, it’s not that long, and there’s a free version of it on the Internet, so why not? I certainly wanted to see how it all came out in the end (I’ve never seen any of the adaptations, so I was completely ignorant of how it went), and it’s a reference point for a lot of contemporary works. Finally! I now understand the significance of Bridget Jones’ Diary! Wait–is that a good thing?

24. Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow:

I was of many minds whilst reading this book. Is it youth-oriented propaganda that tries too hard? (Hey kids! Crypto is dope!) Or, is it the most important written document of our time? In the end, I kind of split down the middle: As entertainment, it’s just fine, fun, and readable. As a method of indoctrinating kids into the world of civil liberties and the kind of hacker/crypto mindset that’s going to be required for the defense of our rights as citizens of an allegedly free country? Fuck, I don’t know–I hope it works, though.

25. Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin:

I’ve read reviews of this book that say it’s heavy on information about Martin’s career, and light when it comes to his personal life. I’d say that it’s really on the very beginning that’s heavy on the career stuff, because later he just resorts to saying, “Every year I got famouser and famouser, but I hated repeating that old, popular, money-generating material, you know?” I once wrote a post about Steve Martin. That sounds like the beginning of a limerick. Oh, how I wish it actually was.

26. The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson:

It turns out that when one is reading the original source of so many parodies and re-tellings, that one might find it a little tedious. After all, in the original story, the vast bulk of it is spent teasing the reader about the relationship between Jeckyll and Hyde. The problem is that when you know that they’re the same man, a good deal of tension evaporates from the book.

27. Zoe’s Tale, by John Scalzi:

You know it, you love it, it’s Zoe’s Tale. Scalzi seems to really like Zoe, and I’m okay with that. One of the only times it doesn’t work for an author to love a character is when something bad needs to happen to them, only it doesn’t, which then breaks the story. That’s not the case here, so it’s fine.

28. Star Wars, by George Lucas (actually, Alan Dean Foster):

Beware licensed tie-in fiction, they say. Bah! is my response. I’ve been reading tie-in fiction since I was a little boy, and it never did me any harm, he said, clenching his fists like five-mandibled jaws, as though he was so tensed with frustration that he could hardly untwist his body, in the same way that he could never untwist his mind, and thus, his writing tried very hard to describe things without actually using any adjectives!

29. The Empire Strikes Back, by Donald F. Glut:

Okay, I’ll be serious for a second. I have no use for Star Wars’ expanded universe–and, honestly and truthfully, it’s got nothing to do with the writing. I was just so disgusted by the prequel trilogy that I lost almost all interest in the Star Wars franchise. However, I stumbled on the omnibus edition of the original trilogy’s novelizations while visiting my local library, and I took a little gamble. I completely missed out on them when I was a kid, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.

30. Return of the Jedi, by James Kahn:

So, anyway, I read the original trilogy and it was pretty okay. It realize my reaction may have something to do with the fond memories of the films; maybe I’m not being completely impartial, here. I don’t much care about that because this isn’t really a review, and if your the sort of person who’s going to read the original trilogy books, nothing I can say will stop you.

31. V., by Thomas Pynchon:

In spite of the fact that I am probably too young to get this book’s funniest jokes, and the fact that I am not educated enough to pick up on many of the references, I liked this book well enough. Some parts were extraordinarily brutal, but necessary.

32. Guided By Voices: A Brief History, by James Greer:

Love the music, but I’m sort of glad that I have never met–nor am I likely to meet–Robert Pollard. It’s not that he’s a bad or boring person, but man geniuses are such a fucking chore.

33. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, vol. 1, by Charles McKay:

Somewhat related to (or, at least it was mentioned in) Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, this too may be considered a classic of skeptical literature. Unfortunately the writing can be rather grating.

34. The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon:

I used to be very interested in conspiracy theories, back when I was a teenager. Then I read the Illuminatus! trilogy, and it knocked all that shit right out of my brain. But my time in Paranoiaville will always be a cherished memory of my younger days, when I was high on my own fluctuating hormone levels, and was also quite, quite stupid.

35. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris:

This entry is to prove to anyone reading this that I do not omit any of the books that I’ve read (for the first time) on my annual list. Either you don’t care that I read this book, or my admission that I did will confirm every horrible thing you’ve ever suspected about me. If that’s the case, I might as well admit this, too: I like Public Radio!

36. Bare-Faced Messiah, by Russell Miller:

An out of print biography of L. Ron Hubbard, now available online. Massively entertaining and depressing at the same time. It’s like reading about Elvis.

37. A Comic History of England, by Bill Nye:

No, not that one. The other one. A Comic History is fairly interesting, but short–the book was never finished. Unfortunately, it’s no 1066 And All That, but it’s got its moments.

38. In Memory Yet Green, by Isaac Asimov:

I have this huge backlog of biographies that I’ve been meaning to read (so expect to see a lot of that next year, if I make it that far), and this was one of them. I really do like Asimov’s work, but I had no idea that he was apparently a dirty old man. He apparently thought it was cute.

39. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut:

I spent quite a bit of time reading Vonnegut, over the years. Still one of my favorite authors. But, can you believe that I hadn’t yet gotten around to Cat’s Cradle until this year? Me too!

40. Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet, by David Bishop (from a teleplay by Douglas Adams):

Here it is, the triumphant finale to my year in books! It’s like a Target novel, but it’s actually fan-written. It’s quite good for what it is, actually!

And now I am sad, because it’s the end.