Another year of reading gone by! I have mixed feelings looking back on 2008. On the positive side, I was able to increase my reading over the previous year (even with the arrival of my second daughter) by finishing 50 books. Also, I am near completion of my project to read the complete Greek tragedies (all of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides). On the down side, and perhaps to be expected, I was unable to keep up with my ambitious schedule which called for about 100 books to be completed, and am especially disappointed at not being able to complete Herodotus and Thucydides.
It was difficult to choose my favorites for the year. The Greek tragedies had a profound impact on me, and I imagine re-reading many of them in the near future. In particular, the Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, and Euripides’ Trojan Women and Hecuba are standouts. My favourite non-classical reads for 2008 were Good To A Fault by Marina Endicott and The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci. Endicott’s novel, short-listed for the 2008 Giller prize, was a sublime examination of the notions of goodness and altruism, a novel of ideas presented around a fascinating cast of seemingly ordinary characters. It was a very pleasant surprise from a writer I did not previously know about. Ricci’s novel was a tour-de-force, a magnificent, sprawling, open-ended examination of life and death – a thought-provoking intellectual voyage. I’ll have more to say about these two soon.
The final list for 2008:
- Alberto Manguel (2007) – The City of Words: The 2007 Massey Lectures
- Jostein Gaarder (1995) – Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy
- Aeschylus (c. 472 BC) – Persians
- Aeschylus (c. 467 BC) – Seven Against Thebes
- Aeschylus (c. 470 BC) – Suppliants
- Will and Ariel Durant (1968) – The Lessons of History
- Al Purdy (1996) – Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996
- Carlos Castenada (1968) – The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
- Robert Pirsig (1974) – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Values
- Sister Wendy Beckett (1996) – The Story of Painting
- Aeschylus (c. 458 BC) – Agamemnon
- Aeschylus (c. 485 BC) – Libation Bearers
- Aeschylus (c. 485 BC) – Eumenides
- M. Mitchell Waldrop (1992) – Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- Sophocles (c. 430 BC?) – Electra
- Euripides (c. 415 BC) – Electra
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nancy Milford (ed.) (2002) – The Collected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Sophocles (c. 440 BC) – Ajax
- Will Durant (1935) – The Story of Civilization Volume 1: Our Oriental Heritage
- Sophocles (c. 442 BC) – Antigone
- Norman Ravvin (2002) – Hidden Canada: An Intimate Travelogue
- Sophocles (429 BC) – Oedipus the King
- Sophocles (401 BC) – Oedipus at Colonus
- John Schreiner (2005) – The Wines of Canada
- Sophocles (c. 431 BC) – Women of Trachis
- Euripides (414 BC) – Heracles
- Tom Wolfe (1981) – From Bauhaus to Our House
- Robert Bly (2004) – The Insanity of Empire: A Book of Poems Against the Iraq War
- John Steinbeck (1945) – Cannery Row
- Joseph Campbell (2004) – The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work
- Euripides (431 BC) – Medea
- Euripides (428 BC) – Hippolytus
- Romeo Dallaire (2004) – Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda
- Euripides (415 BC) – The Trojan Women
- Francis Bacon (1620) – Novum Organum
- Mary Swan (2008) – The Boys in the Trees
- Rawi Hage (2008) – Cockroach
- Mark Kingwell (2008) – Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City
- Euripides (424 BC) – Hecuba
- Anthony De Sa (2008) – Barnacle Love
- Rivka Galchen (2008) – Atmospheric Distrbances: A Novel
- Euripides (c. 408 BC) – Orestes
- Margaret Atwood (2008) – Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
- Joseph Boyden (2008) – Through Black Spruce
- Pierre Berton (1974) – Drifting Home
- Bridget Stuchbury (2007) – Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them
- Marina Endicott (2008) – Good to a Fault
- Nino Ricci (2008) – The Origin of Species
- Harold Bloom (2001) – How to Read and Why
- A.F. Moritz (2008) – The Sentinel: Poems
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