Book Binge!

I’ve recently come into some free time, and resolved to start writing more. In anticipation of these events, in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I went on a book binge.

Having studied English in college and after, I’ve read a pretty decent array of classic fiction, but partly because I was so busy with the old and canonical, aside from the year I subscribed to The New Yorker and read the short story every week on the treadmill at the gym, I haven’t kept up very well on newer fare.

Therefore, I’ve decided to try to educate myself about recent fiction. I went on Ask Metafilter and asked people to recommend to me books written in the last ten years or so, in a more or less realist style, by more or less youngish authors, more or less about the experience of being a youngish person in the present day. The MeFites gave me many suggestions, and then I went crazy on some Powells and some Abebooks.com, and picked up a few more things that hadn’t been on their lists (and maybe don’t even fit with my criteria).

I’ve just set up my shelves, and this is what I’ve got now that the dust has settled:

Aimee Bender – The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Douglas Coupland – Microserfs
Amanda Davis – Wonder When You’ll Miss Me
Joshua Ferris – Then We Came to the End
Mary Gaitskill – Veronica
Mary Gaitskill – Because They Wanted To
Myla Goldberg – Wickett’s Remedy
Myla Goldberg – Time’s Magpie
A.M. Homes – The Safety of Objects
Miranda July – No One Belongs Here More Than You
Ken Kalfus – Thirst
Matthew Klam – Sam the Cat and Other Stories
Jonathan Lethem – The Fortress of Solitude
Tao Lin – Bed
Tao Lin – Eeeee Eee Eeee
Kelly Link – Magic For Beginners
Sam Lipsyte – The Subject Steve
David Mazzotta – Business As Usual
Claire Messud – The Emperor’s Children
Lorrie Moore – Like Life
Julie Orringer – How To Breathe Underwater
Gail Parent – Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York
Tom Perrotta – Joe College
Marisha Pessl – Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Julia Slavin – The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg at the Maidstone Club

Clearly I have my late winter and spring cut out for me!

I also have some other books lying around, which are not part of the project but which I’d like to read anyway:

Jacques Barzun – On Writing and Publishing
Raymond Chandler – The Long Goodbye
Mark Epstein – Thoughts Without A Thinker
Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July – Learning to Love You More
Soren Kierkegaard – The Sickness Unto Death
Eric G. Wilson – Against Happiness
Paramahansa Yogananda – Autobiography of a Yogi