These are the books I’ve read this year (at least the ones I remember).
1. 
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.
This is why dreams can be such dangerous things; they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes consume us completely.
Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.
I’m planning to reread this book before the year ends. It’s beautiful.
2. 
It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong
The truth is, if you ask me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would choose cancer. Odd as it sounds, I would rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a father.
Lance Armstrong is one of my heroes.
3. 
The Wedding by Danielle Steel
I bought this book in front of my school because I was so bored and I wanted to read something simple.
4. 
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
One of my favorite books of all time. Elizabeth Bennet is my idol.
5. 
Emma by Jane Austen
A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of her regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.
6. 
Out by Natsuo Kirino
This book gave me the creeps. The descriptions were so elaborate and vivid. I could almost smell the blood.
7. 
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
He’s a wallflower.
I have decided that maybe I want to write when I grow up. I just don’t know what I would write.
“Do you always think this much, Charlie?”
“Is that bad?”
“Not necessarily. It’s just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
“Is that bad?”
“Yes.”
Lovely book. Simple, but speaks volumes.
8. 
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
The world—much as we want it to—does not accord with our intuition… Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right. They deliberately test their intuition.
In order to make it (an idea) contagious is to alter it in such a way that extraneous details are dropped and others are exaggerated so that the message itself comes to acquire a deeper meaning.
If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.
This is one of the most helpful books I’ve read related to my course. The writing is very simple. Malcolm Gladwell writes it as it is.
9. 
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
I am an Alcoholic and a Drug Addict and a Criminal.
I’m disappointed that this book turned out to be a lie.
10. 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, Christopher is autistic. Everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning for him. Routine, order and predictability shelter him from the messy, wider world. Then, at fifteen, Christopher’s carefully constructed world falls apart when he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork, and he is initially blamed for the killing.
Very interesting, but not so exciting. Sometimes I had to reread parts just so I was sure I had read it.
11. 
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Hmmm. This was cute.
12. 
Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami
Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn’t make it a living, breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.
This was the first Haruki Murakami book I’d read. I’d heard wonderful things about him and his books. I was a bit disappointed. Maybe because I didn’t really get the point of this book.
13. 
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
With my eyes closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance deep inside me. This was enough to make me happy.
If you only read books that everyone else it reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves for doing that.
I liked this one better.
It’s interesting how on both books that I’ve read by Haruki Murakami, both of the main characters love to write and read.
14. 
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
“Do we seem as crazy as everyone thinks?”
“Who thinks that?”
She didn’t reply, only stuck her hand out the door to test for rain.
“Cecilia was weird, but we’re not.” And then: “We just want to live. If anyone would let us.”
It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn’t heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.
It still baffles me why the sisters committed suicide. Was it really just because they wanted freedom?
