… or more accurately, what you wanted.

I’ve compiled everyone’s comments from my last post, as well as the recommendations of some coworkers and friends.  To say the least,  the next year’s reading will be interesting:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. New York: Penguin Books.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook. New York: Bantam Books.
Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. New York: Viking Children’s Books.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis. New York: William Morrow.
In the Woods by Tana French. New York: Viking.
The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay. New York: Doubleday.
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. New York: Bantam.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. New York: Vintage Books.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and John Higgins. New York: DC Comics.
Fool by Christopher Moore. New York: Willam Morrow.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. New York: Perennial.
A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin. Chicago: Swallow Press.
Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. New York: Atria Books.
Triptych by Karin Slaughter. New York: Delacorte Press.
The Book of Joe by Jonathan Tropper. New York: Delacorte Press.

A few things worth pointing out:

1. The total page count is 7,930 pages, give or take.
2. The shortest book (Nin’s A Spy in the House of Love) is 140 pages. The longest book (Bolaño’s 2666) is 989 pages.
3. The genres represented include fantasy, suspense, erotica, humor, and western.
4. The intended audiences for the selected books range from children, to young adults, to adults.
5. All of the books listed (except one) were written in the past century. Austen’s  Pride and Prejudice is the oldest title, by far. Moore’s Fool is the most recent.

I only excluded one recommendation, simply because the suggested book seemed far more academic than what I was looking for.  I’m using this experience to get back into pleasure reading, and while academic texts are enjoyable for some people (including me, sometimes), I’m trying to get back into recreational reading for its own sake.

In other news, my final assignment of the semester is due in a mere eight days, and I expect my brain to shut down for a couple days after that.  And once I recover, I’ll start reading Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

Thank you for your suggestions, everyone!  In the meantime, wish me luck.