Books read and to be read

After 5 years, Nick Hornby has just given up his monthly column ‘Stuff I’ve Been Reading’ in The Believer magazine. I had started my list of books I've read after being inspired by Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree. Coincidentally, after 1.5 years, I stopped updating the list this year too.

Hmmm...

P.S. In another post at his blog, Hornby writes about his favorite 13 books of the last 25 years. I have heard of just 2 of them: #4, which I learned about in the last two weeks and #3, which I coincidentally saw just yesterday at the public library.

1. The Giant’s House - Elizabeth McCracken
2. The Accidental Tourist - Anne Tyler
3. Empire Falls - Richard Russo
4. This Boy’s Life - Tobias Woolf
5. The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
6. What A Carve-Up! - Jonathan Coe
7. The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
8. The Blind Side - Michael Lewis
9. Spies - Michael Frayn
10. Feed - MT Anderson
11. The Railway Man - Eric Lomax
12. Revolution In The Head - Ian McDonald
13. The Van - Roddy Doyle.

Obviously, despite so much reading, there is a lot to read. Some would say, why read? I ask myself why even write more books? So many thousands of books published each year, so many thousands of trees killed to achieve this, and so many libraries full of books people never read. What a wasted enterprise!* Like this blog (but at least it isn't killing any trees.)

* I know... this is not me talking. Just one of those cynical pessimistic moods today! I'll emerge out of it. Eventually.