Goodbye 2007 - A long post, I'm sorry!

Preface: If anyone knows how to hide chunks of text with a link to them so that I don't devour your screen, please tell me?

2007 is over and with it the 50 book challenge that I bestowed upon myself with support from a livejournal community of the same name. I've had a livejournal for something like 5 years now, and at first it was a typical lj, silly, angsty, neglected. Then it was just neglected. Now it's my reading journal. It occured to by that having two blogs is sort of silly! Seeing as I spend a fair amount of time writing about the books I read (Or I like to think I do) I thought I should start sharing some of those writings over here!

I started the 50 book challenge because despite my childhood obsession with reading, being involved with another person really sucked up all my free time and in the two and a half years I was with him I probably read a total of ten books. Then I found the challenge. I started it on January 7th, 2007, but ended it on January 1st having read 48 books. I decided that for ease of keeping track in the future I would start counting from the 1st of the year.

Blah blah! without further ado, my 2007 reading list!

This year in books, with the most favorite bolded, most boring italicized, and links to my thoughts on the ones I wrote about:

1. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
2. Sleeping in Caves: A Sixties Himalayan Memoir by Marilyn Stablein
3. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
4. This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn by Aiden Chambers
5. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
7. Naked by David Sedaris
8. Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
9. Walking After Midnight by Katy Hutchison
10. Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
11. Empire Rising by Thomas Kelly
12. You Gotta Have Balls by Lily Brett
13. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins
14. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
15. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
17. War of the Flowers by Tad Williams
18. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
19. The Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews
20. Books 1-10 of the Analects of Confucius
21. The Inner Chapters of Chuang tzu
22. Assorted Readings from The Shorter Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature
23. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction
24. Mythology by Edith Hamilton
25. The Monkey and the Monk
26. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu
27. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
28. The Story of the Stone Vol. 1 by Xueqin Cao
29. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong, Memoir of 1805
30. Selected Japanese Ghost Stories: The Crysanthemum Vow, The Reed-Choked House, The Serpent's Lust
31. Selected Chinese Ghost Stories: Ren's Story, The Rakshas and the Sea Market, Ying-ning, Yuan Mei, In the Country of Women
32. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (audiobook)
33. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (audiobook)
34. Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki
35. Selected Stories from Lu Hsun
36. Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki
37. Dune by Frank Herbert (Audiobook)
38. Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (Audiobook)
39. Peter Pan by J. M. BarrieThe Borrowers by Mary Norton
41. The Borrowers Afield by Mary Norton
42. Trickster's Choice by Tamora Pierce (Audiobook)
43. The Borrowers Afloat
44. The Borrowers Aloft
45. The Borrowers Avenged
46. Lapidary Journal
47. Art Jewelry Magazine
48. Trickster's Queen by Tamora Pierce (Audiobook)


Unfinished but in progress:
49. The Hand-Sculpted House
50. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle

For 2008 I resolve to read 50 books total, at least 6 in Spanish, and the following books:
Children of Dune
Life of Pi
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Slaughterhouse 5
Como Agua Para Chocolate
Naked Lunch
The Makioka Sisters
At least one of the many James Joyce books I have