My 2009 Reading List

2009 has been an interesting reading year. I spent the first three months in Brazil, where books written in English were really hard to come by. Yes, there are book stores in Brazil, but only in the big cities. Of the three months I spent in Brazil, one month of it was in the Amazon where bookstores are nonexistent. I thought I was going to die. Needless to say, my Portuguese reading fluency surged by leaps and bounds as I found myself reading anything I could get my hands on. Words, words, words: I must consume words was the mantra of the day.

In cities such as Sao Paulo and Recife, typically the large book stores would carry a small section of English titles. Their collections, however, often consisted of a couple of shelves with a dismayingly large quantity of Danielle Steele novels. This might be good for her sales numbers, but sad for my reading pleasures.

And, yes, there are used book stores in Brazil too. As one might assume, the selection there is even more dismal, and as I suggested in an earlier blog entry, typically the English section would be placed adjacent to the pornography, often in a back room or behind a screen. English or porn: only in Brazil would both choices make the reader want to scuttle in shame for the darkest corner of the store.

Despite these challenges, I did manage to read some good books this year. The following is my list, although because of my travels I may be missing one or two titles. Enjoy!

Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America 1800-2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Arons, Nicholas Gabriel. Waiting for Rain: The Politics and Poetry of Northeast Brazil. Tuscson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2004.

Beavan, Colin. No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.

Brooks, Geraldine. People of the Book: A Novel. New York: Penguin, 2008.

Butler, Kim D. Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition Sao Paulo and Salvador. New Brunswick: Ruthers University Press, 1998.

Garwood, Christine. Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2007.

Gordimer, Nadine. My Son's Story. London: Penguin Books, 1990.

Grann, David. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

Hessler, Peter. Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

MacMillan, Margaret. Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History. New York: Modern Library, 2009.

Mann, Charles. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Matthiessen, Peter. Shadow Country. New York: Modern Library, 2008.

Rakove, Jack N. Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1996.

Scudamore, James. Heliopolis. London: Harvill Secker, 2009.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island. London: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1993 (reprint).

Stewart, Matthew. The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

Strel, Martin and Matthew Mohlke. The Man Who Swam the Amazon: 3274 Miles on the World's Deadliest River. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2008.

Trevor, William. Love and Summer: A Novel. London: Viking, 2009.