Quotes Without Context

"If my life wasn't funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable."
-Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

"[A]n unhealthy soul requires a healthy body."
-Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Silence

In April of 2008 I had the rug pulled out from under me. My already weak career trajectory took a sharp turn. I was no longer employed in publishing. Everything I wanted, my entire adult life, became completely unreachable to me. And for a couple weeks, I stopped reading. I couldn't do the one thing that I'd always done well. Picking up a book made me want to vomit. My entire life was different.

The first book I opened, when I could make my eyes work again, was The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Yeah, I wasn't in a great mood.

Eventually, I went back to reading fiction, but it's no longer the passion it was. It's simply instinctive now. I can't blog about books anymore, because as soon as I finish them, they slide off me, like dollar-store fridge magnets.

The weird part about all this, is the number of books I have read this year; it's actually up from last year. Even with the two-week blackout. Maybe because I'm not thinking anymore, just devouring.

So here's the 2008 list of the 58 books I read.