As part of my new year's resolutions, I vowed to finish off the stack of books that have gathered on the shelf on my side of the bed. Here's the list and my current tally. I don't HAVE to read each book in bed, but it somehow seems more honest if I do.

The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough

Chasin' That Devil's Music by Gayle Dean Wardlow

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader

Dark Water by Koji Suzuki
Suzuki is a J-horror writer best known for Ring, which for some reason remains an obsession of mine. Suzuki is an interesting guy. He was originally known as a child-rearing expert in Japan, writing columns about being a stay-at-home dad, before switching to horror. He's an experienced sailor, he rode from Key West to San Francisco by motorcycle once, and does all sorts of other physical and outdoorsy things. This collection contains "Floating Water," which was later translated into the (sorry, Koji) more frightening film "Dark Water" (which, admittedly, owed many of its scares to Ju-On: The Grudge. All the stories are based on the theme of water in some way, which made me think about how horror can be universal and regional at the same time. On an island nation, it's no wonder that water carries such a high intimidation factor (compare this to the USA, where horror usually takes place on land and in remote locations). Interesting read, though I keep suspecting that the translators are missing a lot of the quirks and tics that supposedly make Suzuki the Stephen King of Japan.

The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax

Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford

The Oxford Annotated Bible by God and Friends
(Not such a big deal. I've read the New Testament before, and I'm almost done with Leviticus. Piece of cake, or should I say, piece of manna?)

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh

Orientalism by Edward Said

Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

From Cottage to Bungalow: Houses and the Working Class in Metropolitan Chicago, 1869-1929 by Joseph C. Bigott

To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan (Trivia: The author was caught setting fires a year ago. Site for survivors can be found here. If you were Catholic and Chicagoan, the story of the tragedy was/is ingrained in you.)

Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emry

White Noise by Don DeLillo

A Stack of Architectural Prairie Digests That's not the correct title... I'll look it up when I get home.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

SAS Urban Survival Book by John "Lofty" Wiseman

You Can't Win by Jack Black (No, not that Jack Black.)

The Odyssey by Homer

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan

Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre

A manila folder of clipped Harper's and New Yorker articles.

As part of my new year's resolutions, I vowed to finish off the stack of books that have gathered on the shelf on my side of the bed (Mike has her own bookshelf on her side, but that's her problem). Here's the list and my current tally. I don't HAVE to read each book in bed, but it somehow seems more honest if I do.

The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket
Still a delightful series of kid's books. I look forward to reading them to my child, imparting their simple buddhistic message: to live is to suffer.

The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
Pretty interesting book. You've heard the expression "watching a car wreck in slow motion"? Try reading a book that covers a flood that killed 2,000 people at the same pace.

Chasin' That Devil's Music by Gayle Dean Wardlow
Oh, Gayle. Dean of blues researchers; so-so writer of essays. What editor allowed this to get past the galley stage with its thorough yet ponderous series of Wardlow's accounts of encounters with Delta bluesmen back in the 60s? So many questions left unanswered, compounded by the accompanying interview tapes, containing a few meager snippets that show Wardlow to be a insightful interviewer and his subjects to be great storytellers. A big problem is that Wardlow tried to back everything up with facts and documents. Trouble is, sometimes letting the printed record reign kills a good story. Some nice parts about Elmore James, Wardlow's take on the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil (he didn't), and, again, intriguingly brief conversations with friends and relatives of cyphers like Charlie Patton, as well as the last of the bluesmen living in the 1960s (including Ishman Bracey and Booker Washington). Get it if you're a researcher.

The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader

Dark Water by Koji Suzuki

The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax

Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford

The Oxford Annotated Bible by God (Not such a big deal. I've read the New Testament before, and I'm almost done with Leviticus. Piece of cake, or should I say, piece of manna?)

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh

Orientalism by Edward Said

Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

From Cottage to Bungalow: Houses and the Working Class in Metropolitan Chicago, 1869-1929 by Joseph C. Bigott

To Sleep with the Angels by David Cowan (Trivia: The author was caught setting fires a year ago. Site for survivors can be found here. If you were Catholic and Chicagoan, the story of the tragedy was/is ingrained in you.)

Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emry

White Noise by Don DeLillo

A Stack of Architectural Prairie Digests That's not the correct title... I'll look it up when I get home.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

SAS Urban Survival Book by John "Lofty" Wiseman

You Can't Win by Jack Black (No, not that Jack Black.)

The Odyssey by Homer

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Of Paradise and Power by Robert Kagan

Fantomas by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre

A manila folder of clipped Harper's and New Yorker articles.