Cherronesus, Metropotamia, Pelisipia, and more!

In Bound for Canaan, his book on the underground railroad, Fergus Bordewich describes a plan worked on by Thomas Jefferson in 1784, while Jefferson was a member of the Continental Congress. The arrangement would have restricted the extent of slavery in the growing nation:

[N]ewly opened lands between the Appalachians and the Mississippi … were destined to fill with settlers. [Jefferson’s plan] would have prohibited slavery in all the western territories … south as well as north. Had [the] plan been adopted slavery would never have been extended to the present states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, or presumably to those west of the Mississippi. Congress failed to approve the plan by a single vote.

That’s one of those points in history you can point to and say, but for one vote things would have been different. 

Besides the dispensation concerning slavery, Thomas Jefferson’s report on the Western Territory also included suggested borders for new states and names for those states. Some of the names are little different from what came to be. Some are rather different. Here they are:

SYLVANIA

MICHIGANIA

CHERRONESUS

ASSENISIPIA

METROPOTAMIA

ILLINOIA

SARATOGA

WASHINGTON

POLYPOTAMIA

PELISIPIA

source: Bound for Canaan: the underground railroad and the war for the soul of America by Fergus M. Bordewich

beggar woman, wandering pilgrim, insane literary colored man, and more!

Gerrit Smith was a wealthy white abolitionist in 19th century New York state. He had a “Grecian mansion” and “owned at least 750,000 acres.” Smith was generous, too. Besides handing out donations to individuals and organizations with a special interest in funding anti-slavery work, Smith explored ways to deed over thousands of acres to former slaves in the hope they might become self-sufficient farmers.

He sounds like a pretty great guy. Smith kept a diary and in it recorded a little bit about each of the many travelers he welcomed to his big house. I love the excerpts that appear in Fergus Bordewich’s Bound for Canaan, a book on the underground railroad. I have to share:

Mrs. Crampton, a beggar woman, spent last night with us. Charles Johnson, a fugitive slave from Hagerstown, took tea at our house last evening and breakfasted with us this morning.

Mr. William Corning, a wandering pilgrim, as he styles himself, dines with us. He is peddling his own printed productions.

Poor Graham, the insane literary colored man, has been with us a day or two.

Elder Cook and William Haines of Oneida depot arrive this evening. Mr. H. is a ‘medium,’ and speaks in unknown tongues.

Dr. Winmer of Washington City, with five deaf mutes and blind child take supper and spend the evening with us.

We find Brother Swift and his wife and daughter at our house, where they will remain until they get lodgings. There come this evening an old black man, a young one and his wife and infant. They say they are fugitives from North Carolina.

A man from ____ brings his mother, six children and her half sister, all fugitives from Virginian.

An Indian and a fugitive slave spent last night with us. The Indian has gone on, but Tommy McElligott (very drunk) has come to fill his place.

source: Bound for Canaan: the underground railroad and the war for the soul of America by Fergus M. Bordewich

Notes toward an autobiography by others

In her book The Argonauts Maggie Nelson says:

My writing is riddled with … tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

I was surprised once when someone told me after a poetry reading, “You speak with such authority.” Like Maggie Nelson I grew up including “tics of uncertainty” in my writing. It reflected my thinking, didn’t it? Who really knows. Knows! Being certain of something should make you suspicious. Be open to other possibilities and, at least occasionally, what seems impossible.

I remember as a kid there was a period I added the word “no” to anything sarcastic, i.e., “That’s the most beautiful dirt clod I’ve ever seen — no!” I don’t know how I picked it up, and I don’t remember anybody bringing my use of it to my attention, but at some point it hit my ear wrong. Why was I so frequently contradicting myself? It took conscious work to purge the “no”. 

When I noticed I was constantly using phrases like “I think” and “it seems to me” in my writing and that other writers weren’t I wondered where the difference was. Were the others writing what they thought? Yes. You are reading them to find out what they think, I said to myself. They don’t have to write “I think” because it is understood that what they are writing is what they think. This made sense to me. So whenever “I think” appeared redundant — “I think ice cream is too cold!” — I would cut it out. “Ice cream is too cold!” is not a universal opinion thus I must not be speaking for everyone. I must be speaking for myself!

Leaving out “tics of uncertainty” creates an illusion of certainty. Or, as Maggie Nelson says, evokes “a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to [the speaker].” You get used to figuring out whether the person speaking is speaking from a place of authority, a place of personal experience, a place of knowledge, by following their argument a bit. Does it hold together? Does it make sense? Does it match your experience? They may be more wrong than right but still be worth attending to. 

Nelson goes on to say she opens a lot of her letters or emails with “Sorry,” as in “Sorry for the delay. Sorry for the confusion. Sorry for whatever.” She adds, “I’ve had to train myself to wipe the sorry off.”

I’ve done that too. Who really cares that I’m sorry when I haven’t written a blog post in months? You’re writing one now, Glenn. What is it you’re putting fingers to keyboard to say? Other than that you are sorry, of course. Other than that you are terribly sorry and you feel bad about neglecting the blog and doing other things which are not important either.

source: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

You can play

I was a fan of a number of bands on Lookout! Records. From Green Day to Pansy Division to The Mr. T Experience. I like the way Kevin Prested’s history of the label starts right out with an anecdote featuring one of those aspects of punk that I’ve always found really appealing, that is, you can play. You don’t think you can play? Pshaw. Here’s a guitar or a bass or a mic to sing into. The rest of us will help you out. We have a gig next week.

In 1984 Larry Livermore was publishing Lookout Magazine (print-runs of 50 copies) when he started a punk band. Why let go a good name? Livermore called his band The Lookouts. His girlfriend left the band not long after it was begun, it seems. But Livermore wasn’t ready to give up.  

[Larry] Livermore salvaged the drum kit left behind by his ex-girlfriend and now ex-drummer [of the Lookouts]. Sue Rhine met Larry at the gay club The Stud in San Francisco, and after sharing some dance floor moves, they reconvened outside to get better acquainted.

Sue Rhine: … When [Larry] suggested that I ought to consider being the drummer for his punk band, I laughed out loud. I had never thought about playing drums before. Was this a joke or maybe a very strange pickup line? He insisted he was indeed quite serious about this and explained that, based on my dancing, he could detect some sort of natural rhythm. He told me that he had a drum set, a rehearsal space, and that he could easily show me what to play.

Sue Rhine does try. But the one gig she plays doesn’t go well. At least, she decides her “wimpy drumming and lack of stamina” aren’t up to her own standards, and she decamps to Maui. 

There have been those who didn’t give up so easily. Some went far. Most didn’t. But they made music, or, I like to think, made a righteous noise.  

source: Punk USA: the rise and fall of Lookout! Records by Kevin Prested

Good work is good work

Clearly Meant is a thrice-yearly interview and reading series I host at the Berkeley Public Library’s Claremont Branch. The reading takes place on a Saturday afternoon, from 2:00 to 3:00. The second year of the series finished up in June. 

The series is fairly unusual in that it is a small local reading that focuses on one poet. The poet reads her work, then sits for an interview with me and a discussion with the audience. There is no open mic.

To get word out about the poet and the reading I create an eight page chapbook that is handed out free at every library branch. I make fliers and post them. I list the reading in local online event calendars. BPL has a Facebook page and I try to get the reading promoted through that.  

Audience turnout, however, really depends on whether the poet promotes the reading to her friends and fans. If the poet doesn’t bring in friends and fans, we have a small audience. There just aren’t many who will show up for a reading by an unknown poet.

The smallest audience we had up to this June was a turnout of eight, if I remember right. That was for the most well-known of the poets I’ve so far invited. I figured the small turnout was because the poet didn’t expend much effort at promotion. That’s fine. Promotion shouldn’t be the poet’s job. Promoting is a separate energy and different from creating. Our other events have drawn 15 to 20 attendees. 

Until this June. The Clearly Meant for June had a grand total of one audience member. 

I’ve been a featured reader where that sort of thing has happened. You could cancel, I suppose, but there you are, holding your stack of poems, a little magazine bookmarked with its pink Post-It, you’ve practiced your patter. I bet there are people who have performed to a totally empty room. 

If the room were totally empty I imagine I would walk away. But if one person is there, well, when you read to an audience of any size each person hears your words as one person, you might as well let your poems out of silence to the person who has brought her ears.

The June poet read for us, an audience of two: me and the audience member who was also a poet. He uses the Claremont Branch frequently and has come to other Clearly Meant readings. The June poet and I sat down for the interview. After some Q&A we added our audience member and he was pretty interesting too.

I chose the June poet partly because I knew she was very active in the community. She hosts a reading series at a bookstore. She helps organize an annual poetry festival. I see her at literary events around the area. I looked forward to a lively discussion with her and her fans. 

Perhaps the turnout was small because another poetry event was scheduled at the same time at another branch of the library. Perhaps the turnout was small because it was an unusually hot day and people considering their options chose against the one that required sitting in a little unair-conditioned room. After the reading, the June poet told me the Clearly Meant reading was one of three events where she was featured that weekend. Perhaps the turnout was small because she was overexposed. Perhaps it was just random. We pay the featured poet (another rare thing for a poetry series), so having a tiny audience is looked at askance by the budget people. A series very few attend is a series that gets canceled. That’s too bad, but that’s what happens. 

I’m prepping for another Clearly Meant in October. I’ve designed the flier and am working on the chapbook. I get paid for putting this all together because Clearly Meant is an official library program. Good for me! It’s nice to be paid for something you like to do. Even people who don’t attend the reading will read the poet’s work because the chapbooks do get picked up. That’s a good thing. Anyway, good work is good work. I hope we get a room full of eager listeners in October. But who knows?

In July I was reading a collection of essays by Kim Addonizio, a writer who lives in Oakland. Kim Addonizio has published books of poetry, novels, a couple books on how to write. She’s almost famous! But her essay “How to Succeed in Po Biz” is a jumble of anxieties and mishaps. 

“Many are they who harbor the burning desire to become successful poets and rise to the top of their profession,” Addonizio begins. “To see one’s name on the cover of a slender paperback, to have tens and perhaps even dozens of readers, to ascend to a lecture podium in a modest-size auditorium after being introduced by the less successful poet, who is unsure of the pronunciation of your name — these are heady rewards.” 

Note the number of readers the “successful poet at the top of [her] profession” can expect: “tens.” It’s sarcasm. But it’s true. I would be “the less successful poet” in this scenario. 

Later in the essay, Addonizio spins out a more dramatic version of the reading. Besides the negotiation over the honorarium and the rigors of travel, Addonizio contemplates how unsociable she is. “You are a writer, after all, and prefer to be alone in your own house with your cat. You don’t really like your fellow humans, except for your boyfriend, whose stories and mannerisms can be usefully stolen and put into your writing.” Ultimately the reading takes place before “an audience of three in a six-hundred-seat auditorium. …Tell yourself [i]t is the work that you love, and sometimes you even get paid for it. Tell yourself you are lucky, that people envy you.”

source: Bukowski in a Sundress: confessions from a writing life by Kim Addonizio. 2016. Penguin Books, New York. 

Titles Read in 2008

January - May

Watchword issue 9, 2006, Liz Lisle, editor

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

Spectral Snow: the dark fantasies of Jack Snow by Jack Snow

Premonitions: the Kaya anthology of new Asian North American poetry edited by Walter K. Lew

Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes

The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry: first annual edition edited by Alan F. Pater

Ants Dissolve in Moonlight by W. B. Keckler

Some Nights No Cars at All by Josh Rathkamp

In the Hub of the Fiery Force: collected poems of Harold Norse, 1934 - 2003 by Harold Norse

Shark’s Tooth by Marc Elihu Hotstadter

New and Collected Poems by Ishmael Reed

Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons, poems 2001 - 2006 by Al Young

Golden Handcuffs Review Winter/Spring 2007, vol. 1 no. 8, Lou Rowan, editor

Flying in Water by Barbara Tomash

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Cannibal Casserole: new and selected poems, 1996 - 2006 by Julia Vinograd

When God Gets Drunk by Julia Vinograd

Jubilee by Roxane Beth Johnson

A Poetry House Built with Four-by-Fours: an ongoing collection of pseudo-immortal poems, chapter 1 by Mel C. Thompson

Eleven Eleven: a journal of literature and art vol. 4, 2007, Ben Lerner, faculty editor

The Cave Paintings of Baja California: discovering the great murals of an unknown people by Harry W. Crosby

Another World: a second anthology of works from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project edited by Anne Waldman

King-Cat Classix: the best of King-Cat Comics and Stories by John Porcellino

King-Cat Comics and Stories #68, 2007, by John Porcellino

Breaking the Fever by Mary Mackey

Iron House: stories from the yard by Jerome Washington

The Fixer: a story from Sarajevo by Joe Sacco

Tarahumara: Where Night Is the Day of the Moon by Bernard L. Fontana

Tantalum issue 1, 2006, editors: Yasmine Alwan and Cynthia Nelson

Teaching a Stone to Talk: expeditions and encounters by Annie Dillard

The Devil’s Teeth: a true story of obsession and survival among America’s great white sharks by Susan Casey

The Violent Land by Jorge Amado, translated by Samuel Putnam

That Salty Air by Timothy Sievert

American Splendor #1 - 4, 2008, by Harvey Pekar, et al

Dark Star Safari: overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico edited and with an introduction by Miguel Leon-Portilla

Waterwalking in Berkeley poems by Alan Bern

The Dream of Water: a memoir by Kyoko Mori

Too Much Coffee Man: How to Be Happy by Shannon Wheeler

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Notes from Travels by D. L. Emblen

Mineshaft #21, Spring 2008, edited & published by Everett Rand and Gioia Palmieri

Dreams Are Another Set of Muscles by David Shaddock

Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty by Greg Rucka & Ed Brubaker, writers; Michael Lark, art

Alexander the Great: selected texts from Arrian, Curtius, and Plutarch edited by Tania Gergel

Words in Your Face: a guided tour through twenty years of the New York City poetry slam by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

Madonna: Like an Icon by Lucy O’Brien

Sorry for Snake #3, March 2008, edited by Jack Morgan and Sara Mumolo

UR-VOX: journal of the underlying voice #2, 2002, Lee Ballentine, editor

Innocent Killers by Hugo Van Lawick and Jane Goodall

The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson

Deep Survival: who lives, who dies, and why: true storeis of miraculous endurance and sudden death by Laurence Gonzalez

The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Wlater Bates

Fence #13 (vol. 7, no. 1), Rebecca Wolff, editor

Ploughshares Spring 2002, vol. 28, no. 1, Cornelius Eady, guest editor; Don Lee, editor

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A Glimpse of Nothingness: experiences in an American Zen community by Janwillem van de Wetering

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

The Power of Babel: a natural history of language by John H. McWhorter

Word on the Street: debunking the myth of a ‘pure’ Standard English by John McWhorter

My Lives by Edmund White

Smile When You’re Lying: confessions of a rogue travel writer by Chuck Thompson

The Buried Book: the loss and rediscovery of the great epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch
June

My Song Is the Light: California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology 2007 edited by Mary Lee Gowland

6 X 6 #15, Spring 2008

Free Lunch #30, 38, 39; Ron Offen, editor

The Youngest Science: notes of a medicine-watcher by Lewis Thomas

Otherhood by Reginald Shepherd

Astonishing X-Men: vol. 1: Gifted; vol. 2: Dangerous; vol. 3: Torn; vol. 4: Unstoppable Joss Whedon, writer; John Cassaday, artist

Circus World by Barry B. Longyear

Poems by Herman Hesse, translated by James Wright

The Little Dog Laughed by Joseph Hansen

July - October

Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O’Hara: a memoir by Joe LeSueur

13 poems in black and white by Jason Biehl

Crashing the Gate: netroots, grassroots, and the rise of people-powered politics by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

Monterey Poetry Review vol. 1, no. 2, Spring 2005

Wishing for Wings by Assotto Saint

In Search of Nature by Edward O. Wilson

Prize Poems, 1913 - 1929 edited by Charles A. Wagner

The Complete Peanuts, vol. 2: 1952 to 1954 by Charles M. Schulz

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Galileo’s Daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love by Dava Sobel

Complications: a surgeon’s notes on an imperfect science by Atul Gawande

Yeti #2, 2002?

The Believer vol. 6, no. 5, July/August 2008

When I Was Cool: my life at the Jack Kerouac School by Sam Kashner

The Ten-Cent Plague: the great comic-book scare and how it changed America by David Hajdu

Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler

The Late Show by David Trinidad

Dinosaurs: the most complete, up-to-date encyclopedia for dinosaur lovers of all ages by Thomas R. Holtz, Jr

Visible Word, Sound: from vision to voice chapbook for Geof Huth reading at Canessa Gallery, San Francisco

Hemlock Fare #1 and 2, by Daniel J. Beck

Signs of Life: channelsurfing through 90s culture edited by Jennifer Joseph and Lisa Taplin

Primary Trouble: an anthology of contemporary American poetry edited by Leonard Schwartz, Joseph Donahue, and Edward Foster

Great Mirrors Shattered: homosexuality, orientalism, and Japan by John Whittier Treat

Light from a Nearby Window: contemporary Mexican poetry edited by Juvenal Acosta

Pagan Babies by Greg Johnson

Conan, vol. 1: The Frost-Giant’s Daughter and other stories by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord and Thomas Yeates

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

All the Small Poems by Valerie Worth

Road Fever: a high-speed travelogue by Tim Cahill

Skid by Dean Young

Cometbus #51: The Loneliness of the Electric Menorah by Aaron Cometbus

Ojingogo by Matthew Forsythe

Capacity by Theo Ellsworth

November - December

Tranny: Boys Will Be Girls by Fiona Mallratte (Steve Lafler)

The Elephant’s Secret Sense: the hidden life of the wild herds of Africa by Caitlin O’Connell

My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: the life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habegger

Ampersand Squared: an anthology of pwoermds edited by Geof Huth

Texistence by Geof Huth and mIEKAL aND

National Geographic April 2008, vol. 213, no.4

The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the beginnings of superstardom in America by Larry McMurtry

Laika by Nick Abadzis

Head and Heart: American Christianities by Garry Wills

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

[When I initially posted this list I had misplaced a notebook recording the summer of 2008, so I left a gap with a note to that effect. I have found the notebook! Thus the list as posted is now as complete as my book log. - August 13, 2018]

Titles Read in 2007

January - February

Beeswax Magazine no. 2, spring/summer 2006

Gay Marriage, Real Life: ten stories of love and family by Michelle Bates Deakin

The Iron Giant: a story in five nights by Ted Hughes

Book Business: publishing past, present, and future by Jason Epstein

The Scarecrow and Tin-Man of Oz by W. W. Denslow

Berkeley Poetry Review no. 35, 2004; no. 36, 2005, and no. 37, 2006

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Searching for Mercy Street: my journey back to my mother, Anne Sexton by Linda Gray Sexton

Poems for the Millennium: the University of California book of modern and postmodern poetry, vol. 2: From Postwar to Millennium edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

A Bunch of Keys: selected poems by Mitsuo Takahashi

The Quitter by Harvey Pekar, Dean Haspiel

The Mail from Anywhere by Brad Leithauser

Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert, et al

Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: essays on Native American life today by Leslie Marmon Silko

The Best American Comics 2006 edited by Harvey Pekar; series editor: Anne Elizabeth Moore

Twinkle and Chubbins: their astonishing adventures in nature-fairyland by L. Frank Baum, introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn; illustrations by Maginel Wright Enright

John Dough and the Cherub by L. Frank Baum; illustrated by John R. Neill

Misquoting Jesus: the story behind who changed the Bible and why by Bart D. Ehrman

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Young Avengers, vol. 1: Sidekicks by Allan Heinberg, writer; Jim Cheung, pencils; etc.

Carnet de Voyage: travel journal, volume one by Craig Thompson

Confessions of the Other Mother: nonbiological lesbian moms tell all edited by Harlyn Aizley

26: a journal of poetry and poetics issue no. e

Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks

Geisha by Andi Watson

Breakfast After Noon by Andi Watson

Syllogism no. 5, 2001

Saint Morrissey: a portrait of this charming man by an alarming fan by Mark Simpson

Rules of the House by Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

Matter, no. 8: Land 2006, edited by Todd Simmons

Critical Citadel by Jon Vermilyer, Nicholas Breutzman, Koren Shadmi, Raymond Sohn, Matt Berinier, Eamon Espey, Panayiotis Terzis

Ur-Vox no. 4, 2007, edited by Lee Ballentine

Global City Review, no. 16: Simple Virtues spring 2006

Aimee and Jaguar: a love story, Berlin 1943 by Erica Fischer, translated by Edna McCown

The World in the Evening by Christopher Isherwood

The Magic Whip by Wang Ping

Free Lunch no. 36, autumn 2006, edited by Ron Offen

Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh

The Pleasures of C by Edward Smallfield

The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes

Within the Margin by Truong Tran

Richard Speakes: a sampler of his poems by Richard Speakes

Lynn Lyman Trombetta: a sampler of her poems by Lynn Lyman Trombetta

The Botany of Desire: a plant’s-eye view of the world by Michael Pollan

North Coast Review issue 2: Expericon; Vince Storti, editor

A Small Place by Jamaica Kinkaid

The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of by Joseph Hansen

Skinflicks by Joseph Hansen

How to Cure a Fanatic by Amos Oz

The Secret Powers of Naming by Sara Littlecrow-Russell

The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century vol. 2, edited by Douglas Messerli

The Company of Animals: a naturalist’s adventures in the jungle of Malaya by Ronald McKie

The Three Way Tavern: selected poems by Ko Un, translation by Clare You and Richard Silberg

March

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Mirage #4/Period(ical) no. 138, February 2007, and no. 139 (March 2007), edited by Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy

Liaison by Joyce Wadler

Twist of Address by Spencer Selby

6 X 6 no. 11, spring 2006

Air by Paul Vangelisti

Inscape by Adam Joshua Sass

Atlanta Review vol. XIII, no. 1, fall/winter 2006

The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga edited by Ilya

By the Dozen: sixty short poems by Don Emblen

A Public Space vol. 1 no.2, summer 2006; edited by Brigid Hughes

Living Free: the story of Elsa and her cubs by Joy Adamson

Electric Girl by Michael Brennan

Electric Girl, vol. 2 by Michael Brennan

Emma by Jane Austen

Small Town issue 2, spring 2003; edited by Logan Ryan Smith

April - September

The Trainwreck Union Presents: Switchyard. The Two-handed Engine edited by The Trainwreck Union

Holiday Funeral by Nick Mullins

Man Enough: a queer romance by Bill Roundy

Blood Seeds Become Poetry by Jonathan Hill

Capacity #6, 2005; by Theo Ellsworth

Nome Sang #1, 2007; by A. Vanderhoof

Gaylord Phoenix #4, 2007; Edie Fake

Little Moments edited by John Lowe

World Poetry: an anthology of verse from antiquity to our time edited by Katharine Washburn and John S. Major and Clifton Fadiman

Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: a frontline chronicle from Bolivia’s war on globalization by William Powers

The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century vol. 4, edited by Douglas Messerli

Stranger in a Strange Land: encounters in the disunited states by Gary Younge

Free Lunch #7, spring 2007; edited by Ron Offen

Rock Names by Adam Dolgins

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond

Mad Night by Richard Sala

Gravedigger by Joseph Hansen

Nightwork by Joseph Hansen

New American Writing no. 24, 2006; edited by Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover

Beeswax Magazine no. 3, January 2007; edited by John Peck and Laureen Shifley

Slipstream no. 22, 2002; edited by Robert Borgatti, Livio Farallo, Dan Sicoli

Digerati: 20 contemporary poets in the virtual world edited by Steve Mueske

Gratitude to You for the Food of Our Abundance by Judy Grahn, art by Tona Luisa Osher

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Any Old Wolf by Murray Silverstein

Wind: a journal of writing and community no. 87, 2002; edited by Chris Green

Jessica Farm by Joshua Simmons

Dishwasher: one man’s quest to wash dishes in all fifty states by Pete Jordan

Dishwasher #16, 2007, by Pete Jordan

Nobody’s Angel by Thomas McGuane

The Living House of Oz by Edward Einhorn, illustrated by Eric Shanower

Mornings in Mexico / Etruscan Places by D. H. Lawrence

Home Places: contemporary Native American writing from Sun Tracks edited by Larry Evers and Ofelia Zepeda

Hiroshima Notes by Kenzaburo Oe, translated by David L. Swain and Toshi Yanezawa

Haircut and other stories by Ring Lardner

Up Above the World by Paul Bowles

Want List and other poems about aging by D. L. Emblen, with block prints by Linda Emblen

Fuff nos. 1, 4, 5, 6; by Jeffrey Lewis

Parthenon West Review issue 4, 2006; edited by David Holler and Chad Sweeney

The Journal vol. 26 no. 1, spring/summer 2002; edited by Kathy Fagan, Michelle Herman

Monday Night: a journal of literature and art no. 3, 2004; edited by Jessica Wickens, Rob Pierce, Sharon McGill, Allison Landa

The Loved One: an Anglo-American tragedy by Evelyn Waugh

The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, and other intimate literary portraits of the Bohemian Era by Edward Field

Forever Free by Joy Adamson

Memoirs of a Bastard Angel: a fifty-year literary and erotic odyssey by Harold Norse

The Gay Metropolis: 1940 - 1996 by Charles Kaiser

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

A Primate’s Memoir by Robert M. Sapolsky

The Saint Ann’s Review: a journal of contemporary arts and letters summer/fall 2006, edited by Beth Bosworth

Twilight - Los Angeles, 1992: on the road: a search for American character by Anna Deavere Smith

The Twinkle Tales by L. Frank Baum, illustrations by Maginel Wright Enright

580 Split: a journal of arts and letters issue 9, 2007; Erika Staiti, managing editor

Indian Days of the Long Ago: Indian life and Indian lore by Edward S. Curtis

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Anne Sexton: a biography by Diane Ward Middlebrook

Bay Poetics edited by Stephanie Young

Mine by Tung-Hui Hu

City of Night by John Rechy

Blue Latitudes: boldly going where Captain Cook has gone before by Tony Horwitz

October

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

The Complete Peanuts, vol. 1: 1950 to 1952 by Charles Schulz

The Poem Behind the Poem: translating Asian poetry edited by Frank Stewart

Brandstetter and Others: five fictions by Joseph Hansen

Backtrack by Joseph Hansen

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

A Boy in Winter by Maxine Chernoff

Southern Poetry Review 45:1, 2007?, Robert Parham, editor

Muelos: a stone age superstition about sexuality by Weston La Barre

Lucky by Gabrielle Bell

Asian American Poetry: the next generation edited by Victoria M. Chang

November - December

Meanwhile Take My Hand by Kirmen Uribe, translated by Elizabeth Macklin

Hunger: an unnatural history by Sharman Apt Russell

The Virginia Quarterly Review: a national journal of literature and discussion Fall 2006, vol. 92 no. 4, Ted Genoways, editor

The Mouse and His Child by Russell C. Hoban

Sunflower Splendor: three thousand years of Chinese poetry edited by Wu-Chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo

Thinking in Pictures and other reports from my life with autism by Temple Grandin

The Book of Boy Trouble: gay boy comics with a new attitude edited by Robert Kirby and David Kelly

Poetry International #11, 2006/2007, edited by Fred Moramaro

Amnesty International Summer 2007, vol. 33 no. 2, edited by Gwen Fitzgerald

Instant City: a literary exploration of San Francisco no. 4, 2007, editors: Gravity Goldberg and Eric Zassenhaus

Glitz by Elmore Leonard

Ceremonies by Essex Hemphill

I Love Led Zeppelin: pany-dropping comics by Ellen Forney

Volt: a magazine of the arts, vol. 13: The War Issue 2007, edited by Gillian Conoley

1491: new revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Eye of the Whale: epic passage from Baja to Siberia by Dick Russell

Titles Read in 2006

January - February

Wicked: the life and times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Evolution’s Rainbow: diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people by Joan Roughgarden

The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll

Heights of the Marvelous: a New York anthology edited by Todd Colby

Jane’s World vol. 1, by Paige Braddock

Jane’s World vol. 2, by Paige Braddock

Menagerie Manor by Gerald Durrell

What We Carry by Dorianne Laux

Smoke by Dorianne Laux

Hard-Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow

Family Values: a Lesbian mother’s fight for her son by Phyllis Burke

One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

Bad Bears in the Big City: an Irving and Muktuk story by Daniel Pinkwater

Ox-cart Man by Donald Hall

Poems for the Millennium: the University of California book of modern and post-modern poetry, vol. 1: From Fin-de-Siecle to Negritude edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris

The Season on Our Sleeves: selected short poems by Bill Knott

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1914 - 1923 by Franz Kafka, edited by Max Brod, translated by Martin Greenberg, with the cooperation of Hannah Arendt

Bunnicula: a rabbit-tale of mystery by James Howe and Deborah Howe

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

From Raft to Raft by Bengt Danielsson, from the narrative of Alain Brun, translated by F. H. Lyon

The Wicked Witch of Oz by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, illustrated by Eric Shanower

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Book of Hats by Allen Cohen, drawings by Ann Cohen

Elquest: The Searcher and the Sword by Wendy and Richard Pini

The Not-Just-Anybody Family by Betsy Byars

Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. military by Randy Shilts

Parthenon West first issue

Private Beach: secret messages by David Hahn

Eighty-sixed by David B. Feinberg

Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes

Venus Revealed: a new look below the clouds of our mysterious twin planet by David Harry Grinspoon

Paul Has a Summer Job by Michael Rabagliati

The San Francisco Haiku Anthology edited by Jerry Ball, Garry Gay, Tom Tico

Song of Rita Joe: autobiography of a Mi’kmaq poet by Rita Joe, with Lynn Henry

The Best American Poetry 2005 edited by Paul Muldoon; series editor: David Lehman

The M Word: writers on same-sex marriage edited by Kathy Pories

March - September

The Eye of the Needle based on a Yupik tale as told to Betty Huffman, retold and illustrated by Teri Sloat

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richarson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole

Marvel Masterworks: The X-Men, nos. 1 - 10 Stan Lee, writer; Jack Kirby, penciler

Bitter Fame: a life of Sylvia Plath by Anne Stevenson

Native Roots: how the Indians enriched America by Jack Weatherford

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

Poems from the Coffee Lands a Starbucks mini anthology

Autobiographix edited by Diana Schutz

Strugglers by Tim Fish

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. II by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

American Elf: the collected sketchbook diaries of James Kochalka, Octoer 26, 1998 to December 31, 2003 by James Kochalka

Well-Versed: poems for the road ahead an AIG mini chapbook

The Lover by Marguerite Duras, translated by Barbara Bray

Beeswax Magazine no. 1, winter 2006

Choteau Creek: a Sioux reminiscence by Joseph IronEye Dudley

The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Best Spiritual Writing 1998 edited by Philip Zaleski

Scarlet Traces by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli

8 Men and a Duck: an improbable voyage by reed boat to Easter Island by Nick Thorpe

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Go Power!: the complete Atomic City tales, vol. 1 by Jay Stephens

Fun Home: a family tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Tropical Truth: a story of music and revolution by Caetano Veloso, translated by Isabel de Sena, edited by Barbara Einzig

Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers by Mary Roach

Y: The Last Man, vol. 1: Unmanned by Brian K. Vaugh and Pia Guerra

Y: The Last Man, vol. 2: Cycles by Brian K. Vaugh and Pia Guerra

Y: The Last Man, vol. 3: One Small Step by Brian K. Vaugh and Pia Guerra

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

Pictopia no. 4, winter 1993

Sixpence House: lost in a town of books by Paul Collins

Drawn and Quarterly vol. 4, 2001 and vol. 5, 2003, edited by Chris Oliveros

Fadeout by Joseph Hansen

Queer Crips: disabled gay men and their stories edited by Bob Guter and John R. KIllacky

Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin

Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau, edited by Sherman Paul

Ice Cream by Lelyn Masters

The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: reclaiming the feminine in religion and medicine by Barbara Tedlock

The Amazing Adventures of Bill nos. 1 - 4, by Bill Roundy

Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the construction of the serial killer by Richard Tithecott

How We Die: reflections on life’s final chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland

Age of Bronze, vol. 2: Sacrifice by Eric Shanower

Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, vol. 2 by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Werner Roth

Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, vol. 3 by Roy Thomas, Werner Roth, Jack Sparling

The Acid Bath by Stephen Walsh and Kellie Strom

The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck

The Temple by Stephen Spender

The Ohlone Way: Indian life in the San Francisco-Monterey Bay Area by Malcolm Margolin

Kona Village Resort: the heritage of Ka’upulehu, the history of Kona Village author uncredited

Death Claims by Joseph Hansen

Troublemaker by Joseph Hansen

Eyes of Desire: a Deaf Gay and Lesbian reader edited by Raymond Luczak

R. Crumb’s Kafka text by David Zane Mairowitz, art by Robert Crumb

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Spontaneous Combustion by David B. Feinberg

Queer and Loathing: rants and raves of a raging AIDS clone by David B. Feinberg

Funny in Farsi: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas

Mine Tonight by Trevor Alixopulos

De: Tales by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

City of Buds and Flowers: a poet’s eye view of Berkeley edited by John Oliver Simon

Parthenon West no. 3, fall 2005, edited by David Holler and Chad Sweeney

Searoad: chronicle of Klatsand by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Work of a Common Woman by Judy Grahn

October - December

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

The Summer of Love by Debbie Dreschsler

When I Knew edited by Robert Trachtenberg

Mary Van Note’s Experiences with the Elusive Bradley Weinburger, a story of seduction, volume one by Mary Van Note

Centaur Aisle a Xanth novel by Piers Anthony

Castle Roogna a Xanth novel by Piers Anthony

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

West Branch no. 58, spring/summer 2006

Afterbeats by D. Jayne McPherson

Teen Titans: The Future is Now by Geoff Jones, Mark Waid, Mike McKone, Ivan Reis, Joe Prado, Tom Grummett, et al

Casanova Was a Book Lover: and other naked truths and curiosities about the writing, selling, and reading of books by John Maxwell Hamilton

Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

The Dragons of Blueland by Ruth Stiles Gannett

924 Gilman, the story so far … edited by Brian Edge

Boy Girl Boy by Ron Koertge

Titles Read in 2005

January

Palimpsest: a memoir by Gore Vidal

Orbiter by Warren Ellis, writer; Colleen Doran, artist

Epitaph of a Small Winner by Machado de Assis, translated by William L. Grossman

American Splendor: Our Movie Year by Harvey Pekar and various artists

A Man on the Moon: the voyages of the Apollo astronauts by Andrew Chaikin

Boy-wives and Female Husbands: studies in African homosexualities edited by Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe

King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard

New Blood edited by Neil Astley

Lunch Hour Comix by Robert K. Ullman

A Few Perfect Hours … and other stories from Southeast Asia and Central Europe by Josh Neufeld

Thank You and OK!: an American Zen failure in Japan by David Chadwick

Between the Palms: a collection of gay travel erotica edited by Michael T. Luongo

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

The Best American Poetry 2004 edited by Lyn Hejinian; series editor: David Lehman

February - July

Journey of the Pink Dolphins: an Amazon quest by Sy Montgomery

The Whole Shebang: a state-of-the-universe(s) report by Timothy Ferris

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells

What Book!?: Buddha poems from beat to hiphop edited by Gary Gach

Kyle’s Bed and Breakfast by Greg Fox

Purgatorial by Dale Jensen

The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe

Skeleton of a Bridge by Robert Mirabal

A Match to the Heart: one woman’s story of being struck by lightning by Gretel Ehrlich

Only the Lonely edited by Josh Frankel

In the Shadow of Man by Jane van Lawick-Goodall, photographs by Hugo van Lawick

The Scar Saloon by Sholeh Wolpe

Poetry vol. 181 no. 3, January 2003 - vol. 182 no. 6, September 2003; edited by Joseph Parisi

Poetry vol. 183 no. 1, October 2003 - vol. 183 no. 3, December 2003, edited by Christian Wiman

The Adventures of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

Lonely Planet Unpacked edited by Janet Austin

Rio de Janeiro: Carnival Under Fire by Ruy Castro, translated by John Gledson

Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man by John Porcellino

Too Old, Too Small, Maybe by Kirmen Uribe, et al; translations by Elizabeth Macklin

The Moons of Jupiter by Kristin Leutwyler-Ozelli

Akiko, vol. 4: The Story Tree by Mark Crilley

Finder: Sin-Eater, vol. 1 by Carla Speed McNeil

Finder: Sin-Eater, vol. 2 by Carla Speed McNeil

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Adventures of Sock Monkey by Tony Millionaire

International Bob by Terry La Ban

Esio Trot by Roald Dahl

Powers: Who Killed Retro Girl? by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oerning

A History of the Devil by Gerald Messadie, translated by Marc Romano

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi, translated by Anjali Singh

Pulling Taffy by Matt Bernstein Sycamore (Mattilda)

Living Upstairs by Joseph Hansen

Epileptic by David B., translated by Kim Thompson

The Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poetry edited by Paul Auster

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Ex Libris: confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman

Song from the Forest: my life among the Ba-Benjelle Pygmies by Louis Sarno

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910 - 1913 by Franz Kafka, edited by Max Broad, translated by Joseph Kresh

Shutterbug Follies by Jason Little

The Most Important Thing and other stories by Graham Chaffee

Leviathan by Jens Harder

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut

Dylan Dog: Zed by Tiziano Sclavi, writer; Bruno Brindisi, artist

August - September

The R. Crumb Handbook by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski

Changing Ones: third and fourth genders in Native North America by Will Roscoe

Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey

Fantasy and Science Fiction June 2000

Brooklyn Dreams by J. M. DeMatteis; art by Glenn Barr

The Bird’s Nest by Shirley Jackson

The Originals by Dave Gibbons

How Loathsome written by Tristan Crane and Ted Naifeh, art by Ted Naifeh

Born Free by Joy Adamson

Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Grickle by Graham Annable

October - December

Bayaka: the extraordinary music of the Babenzele Pygmies and sounds of their forest home book and CD, by Louis Sarno

American Splendor: Unsung Hero by Harvey Pekar, art by David Collier

The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Richard E. Cytowic

Kon-Tiki: across the Pacific by raft by Thor Heyerdahl

The Heart of the Sky: travels among the Maya by Peter Canby

Death on the Fourth of July: the story of a killing, a trial, and hate crime in America by David A. Neiwert

Dora, Doralina by Rachel de Queiroz, translated by Dorothy Scott Loos

Queer Beats: how the Beats turned America on to sex edited by Regina Marler

The Morning the Sun Went Down by Darryl Babe

Hicksville by Dylan Horricks

Titles Read in 2004

January

Snowball Earth: the story of the great global catastrophe that spawned life as we know it by Gabrielle Walker

AKIRA, vols. 1 - 6 by Katsuhiro Otomo, translated by Yoko Umezawa, LInda M. York and Jo Duffy

Forturne and Glory: a true Hollywood comic book story by Brian Michael Bendis

The Wellspring by Sharon Olds

The Best of the Prose Poem: an international journal edited by Peter Johnson

Typewriter #6, edited by David Youngblood

February - April

The Amazing Cynicalman by Matt Feazell

A Lotus of Another Color: an unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian experience edited by Rakesh Ratti

What’s Michael?, vol. 4: Michael’s Mambo by Makoto Kobayashi

2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke

Zapata’s Disciple by Martin Espada

Civil Wars: a battle for gay marriage by David Moats

Going the Other Way: lessons from a life in and out of major-league baseball by Billy Bean with Chris Bull

The Best American Poetry 2003 edited by Yusef Komunyaka; series editor: David Lehman

The Eye of the Elephant: an epic adventure in the African wilderness by Delia and Mark Owens

Revolution of the Word: a new gathering of American avant-garde poetry, 1914 - 1945 edited by Jerome Rothenberg

Shooting the Boh: a woman’s voyage down the wildest river in Borneo by Tracy Johnston

Seven Peaches: the first seven Desert Peach episodes by Donna Barr

The Golem’s Mighty Swing by James Sturm

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Traditional Japanese Poetry: an anthology translated by Steen D. Carter

Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell

3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

The Frank Book by Jim Woodring

Top Ten, Book Two by Alan Moore, writer; Gene Ha and Zander Cannon, artists

New Poems 1960 by Witter Bynner

Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

The Collected Strangers in Paradise vol. 1, by Terry Moore

May

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor

The First Time I Met Frank O’Hara by Rick Whitacker

The Tapir’s Morning Bath: mysteries of the tropical rain forest and the scientists who are trying to solve them by Elizabeth Royte

Metamorphosis and other stories by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

June - September

Akiko: the Menace of Alia Rellapor vols. 1 - 3, by Mark Crilley

The Lion’s Grave: dispatches from Afghanistan by Jon Lee Anderson

Terminal City by Dean Motter and Michael Lark

Transmetropolitan: back on the street by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson

Episodes by Pierre Delattre

Borrowed Love Poems by John Yau

Twentieth Century Eightball by Daniel Clowes

Life on Another Planet by Will Eisner

The World in Us: Lesbian and Gay poetry of the next wave edited by Michael Lassell and Elena Georgiou

Landscape with Rowers: poetry from the Netherlands edited and translated by J. M. Coetzee

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus

A Small Killing by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate

White Death by Rob Morrison and Charlie Adlard

You’ve Just Been Told by Elizabeth Macklin

Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey: Uncle Gabby by Tony Millionaire

Bark by Jack Martin

The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White

House of Java by Mark Murphy

House of Java vol. 2, by Mark Murphy

The Burning Island: a journey through myth and history in volcano country, Hawai’i by Pamela Frierson

The Ages of Gaia: a biography of our living earth by James Lovelock

Make Your Own Damn Movie!: secrets of a renegade director by Lloyd Kaufman with Adam Jahnke and Trent Haaga

The Lands of Charm and Cruelty: travels in Southeast Asia by Stan Sesser

Here First: autobiographical essays by Native American writers edited by Arnold Krupat and Brian Swann

Why Marriage Matters: America, equality, and Gay people’s right to marry by Evan Wolfson

The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells

From Totems to Hip-Hop: a multi-cultural anthology of poetry across the Americas, 1900 - 2002 edited by Ishmael Reed

October - December

The Incredible Hulk: Return of the Monster, Boiling Point, Banner by Bruce Jones, John Romita Jr, Lee Weeks, Brian Azzarello, Richard Corben

The Interman vol. 1, by Jeff Parker

The Barefoot Serpent by Scott Morse

Mind of the Raven: investigations and adventures with the wolf-birds by Bernd Heinrich

How Real Men Do It: the fourth Leonard and Larry collection by Tim Barela

Elric: the Dreaming City by Roy Thomas and P. Craig Russell

Peanut Butter and Jeremy’s Best Book Ever by James Kochalka

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman

The Liars’ Club: a memoir by Mary Karr

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood

Blankets by Craig Thompson

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Yes, You Are a Revolutionary: plus seven other books by Sparrow

The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: the emotional world of farm animals by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Talking in the Dark: a poetry memoir by Billy Merrell

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

Usagi Yojimbo: book 17: Duel at Kitanoji by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book 18: Travels with Jotaro by Stan Sakai

Titles Read in 2003

January - February

The Ghost Trio by Linda Bierds

Sightings: the gray whale’s mysterious journey by Brenda Peterson and Linda Hogan

Wild One by Lucille Lang Day

Infinities by Lucille Lang Day

Curbside Boys: the New York years by Robert Kirby

The New American Poetry, 1945 - 1960 edited by Donald Allen

The Best American Poetry 2002 edited by Robert Creeley; series editor, David Lehman

Mammoth: the resurrection of an ice age giant by Richard Stone

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Kim Deitch

Starting Out in the Sixties: selected essays by Aram Saroyan

March - June

Usagi Yojimbo: Book One by Stan Sakai

Isolation and Illusion: collected short stories, 1977 - 1997 by P. Craig Russell

Safe Area Gorazde: the war in Eastern Bosnia, 1992 - 1995 by Joe Sacco

Subway Series by Leela Corman

American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders edited by Eliot Weinberger

Bizarro Comics DC Comics

The Octopus and the Orangutan: more true tales of animal intrigue, intelligence, and ingenuity by Eugene Linden

The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse edited and translated by Geoffrey Bownas and Anthony Thwaite

A History of God: the 4000-year quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Karen Armstong

Nonrequired Reading by Wislawa Szymborska

Johnny Dynamite by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty

Usagi Yojimbo: Book Two by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: Book Three by Stan Sakai

Space Usagi by Stan Sakai

It’s Been a Good Life by Isaac Asimov, edited by Janet Jeppson Asimov

An Underground Life: the memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Gad Beck with Frank Heibert, translated by Allison Brown

The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt by William Nothdurft

A Leg to Stand On by Oliver Sacks

An Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry edited and translated by Ichiro Kono and Rikutaro Fukuda

Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry edited and translated by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Yuki Sawa

Chieko’s Sky by Kotaro Takamura, translated by Soichi Furuta

Like Underground Water: the poetry of mid-twentieth century Japan translated by Naoshi Koriyama and Edward Lueders

Road to Perdition by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner

Mobius Stripper by Bana Witt

Skipping Towards Gomorrah: the seven deadly sins and the pursuit of happiness in America by Dan Savage

Black Cat Crossing by Richard Sala

Peculia by Richard Sala

Usagi Yojimbo: book four by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book five by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book six by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book seven by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book eight: Shades of Death by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book nine: Daisho by Stan Sakai

Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and me by Jaime Manrique

American Splendor Presents: Bob and Harv’s Comics written by Harvey Pekar, art by R. Crumb

Usagi Yojimbo: book ten: The Brink of Life and Death by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book eleven: Seasons by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book twelve: Grasscutter by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book thirteen: Grey Shadows by Stan Sakai

Mountain Home: the wilderness poetry of ancient China selected and translated by David Hinton

Usagi Yojimbo: book fourteen: Demon Mask by Stan Sakai

Usagi Yojimbo: book fifteen: Grasscutter II, Journey to Atsuta Shrina by Stan Sakai

The Art of Drowning by Billy Collins

Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins

Braided Creek: a conversation in poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

Diminutive Revolutions by Daniel Bouchard

Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty

July

Adventure Capitalist: the ultimate investor’s road trip by Jim Rogers

Midlife Queer: autobiography of a decade, 1971 - 1981 by Martin Duberman

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Alec: three piece suit by Eddie Campbell

Age of Reptiles: Tribal Warfare by Ricardo Delgado

Age of Reptiles: The Hunt by Ricardo Delgado

Pages by Aram Saroyan

Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry edited and translated by Graham Dunstan Martin

Mid-Century French Poets by Wallace Fowlie

Modern French Poetry edited and translated by Patricia Terry and Serge Gavronsky

Mystery in Space: pulp fiction library edited by Dale Crain

Monkey vs. Robert and the Crystal of Power by James Kolchalka

The Color of Water: a black man’s tribute to his white mother by James McBride

Nine Horses by Billy Collins

Sailing Alone Around the Room: new and selected poems by Billy Collins

The New American Splendor Anthology by Harvey Pekar and various artists

In Our Own Best Interest: how defending human rights benefits us all by William F. Schulz

A Traveler’s Guide to Mars: the mysterious landscapes of the red planet by William K. Hartmann

Travels with Charley: in search of America by John Steinbeck

Language in Danger: the loss of linguistic diversity and the threat to our future by Andrew Dalby

How to Shoot a Feature Film for Under $10,000: and not go to jail by Bret Stern

Poker Face: girlhood among gamblers by Katy Lederer

Gay Travels: a literary companion edited by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Batman: Year One Frank Miller, writer; David Mazzucchelli, artist

Kissing Kate by Lauren Myracle

Saying Yes: in defense of drug use by Jacob Sullum

Fake, vol. 1 by Sanami Matoh, translated by Nan Rymer and Stuart Hazleton

The Short and Happy Times of the Shmoo by Al Capp

”Hello,” I Lied by M. E. Kerr

Usagi Yojimbo: book sixteen: The Shrouded Moon by Stan Sakai

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Roller Coasters: a thrill seeker’s guide to the ultimate scream machines by Robert Coker

Dancing at the Edge of the World: thoughts on words, women, places by Ursula K. LeGuin

I Can’t Tell You Anything and other stories by Michael Dougan

The Big Bang, the Buddha, and the Baby Boom: the spiritual experiments of my generation by Wes “Scoop” Nisker

Persepolis: the story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi

From the Country of Eight Islands: an anthology of Japanese poetry edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato

Titles Read in 2002

January - June

Darkness in El Dorado: how scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon by Patrick Tierney

Age of Bronze, vol. 1: A Thousand Ships by Eric Shanower

The Five Ages of the Universe by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin

The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever

Selected Poems by Donald Justice

The Other Wind by Ursula K. LeGuin

Savages by Joe Kane

The Way of Life according to Laotzu by Witter Bynner

Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens

Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels: a history of the comic art by Roger Sabin

Ake: the years of childhood by Wole Soyinka

American Rhapsody by Joe Eszterhas

Locked in the Cabinet by Robert B. Reich

Dark Life: Martian nanobacteria, rock-eating cave bugs, and other extreme organisms of inner earth and outer space by Michael Ray Taylor

An Anthology of Mexican Poetry edited by Octavio Paz, translated by Samuel R. Beckett

The Sadness of Sex: stories by Barry Yourgrau

Harmless Medicine by Justin Chin

The Silk Dragon: translations from the Chinese by Arthur Sze

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman

Fugue State by Bill Berkson

The Rock Island Hiking Club by Ray A. Young Bear

The Tormented Mirror by Russell Edson

Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud

Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell

In the Belly of the Beast: letters from prison by Jack Henry Abbott

Wildlife Wars: my fight to save Africa’s natural treasures by Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell

Pedro and Me: friendship, loss, and what I learned by Judd Winick

Berlin: City of Stones book one, by Jason Lutes

Captain Britain by Alan Moore and Alan Davis

History as Mystery by Michael Parenti

July - December

Surface Tension by Elaine Equi

Decoy by Elaine Equi

The Vinyl Closet: gays in the music industry by Boze Hadleigh

Intensive Care: selected and new poems by Miroslav Holub

War Junkie by Joe Sacco

The Horror of Collier County by Rich Tommaso

House of Peace by Marc Elihu Hofstadter

Attitude: the new subversive political cartoonists edited by Ted Rall

Mecox Road by Marc Cohen

Captain Britain 1988, by Alan Davis and Jamie Delano

Jar of Fools by Jason Lutes

Sappho’s Immortal Daughters by Margaret Williamson

What Language by J. P. Dancing Bear

The Spring of My Life and selected haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Sam Hamill

Visions: painting seen through the optic of poetry by Marc Elihu Hofstadter

Library by Stephen Akey

The Chandler Apartments by Owen Hill

Love Stories: sex between men before homosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz

In Light of India by Octavio Paz, translated by E. Weinberger

A Contract with God and other tenement stories by Will Eisner

Minor Miracles by Will Eisner

If Not, Winter: fragments of Sappho by Sappho, translations by Anne Carson

The Collected Prose by Elizabeth Bishop, edited by Robert Giroux

Self-Portrait with Hand Microscope by Lucille Lang Day

Fire in the Garden by Lucille Lang Day

Volcano by Garrett Hongo

Who Buried the Breast of Dreams by Janine Canan

The Annotated Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn

To Afghanistan and Back: a graphic travelogue by Ted Rall

The Building by Will Eisner

The Dreamer by Will Eisner

Will Eisner Reader: seven graphic stories by Will Eisner

The Poetry of Surrealism: an anthology edited by Michael Benedikt

The Cubist Poets in Paris: an anthology edited by L. C. Breunig

Pharaoh, Pharaoh by Claudia Emerson Andrews

Crow Milk by Rick Agran

The Run of His Life: the people v. O. J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin

Life Everywhere: the maverick science of astrobiology by David Darling

Good Poems edited by Garrison Keillor

Top Ten, Book One by Alan Moore, Gene Ha

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood

Counterpoint by David Alpaugh

Slow Burn for Ozymandias by David Alpaugh

Excelsior!: the amazing life of Stan Lee by Stan Lee and George Mair

Modern Poets of France: a bilingual anthology edited and translated by Louis Simpson

The Third Chimpanzee: the evolution and future of the human animal by Jared Diamond

9 - 11: emergency relief edited by Jeff Mason

Breaking Open the Head: a psychedelic journey into the heart of contemporary shamanism by Daniel Pinchbeck

Murder Me Dead by David Lapham

Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry by Robert Pinsky

Mornings Like This: found poems by Annie Dillard

The Open Boat: poems from Asian America edited by Garrett Hongo

Blood Song: a silent ballad by Eric Drooker

The New Young American Poets: an anthology edited by Kevin Prufer

Family Matter by Will Eisner

L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz: a biography by Katharine M. Rogers

A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

Sky Island by L. Frank Baum

Titles Read in 2001

January - February

City Mouth by Hunt Emerson

Joining the Tribe: growing up gay and lesbian in the 90s by Linnea Due

Best American Poetry 2000 edited by Rita Dove; series editor: David Lehman

Paradox in Oz by Edward Einhorn; illustrations by Eric Shanower

Leonard’s Mountain of Claims and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould

The Parrot’s Lament and other true tales of animal intrigue, intelligence, and ingenuity by Eugene Linden

Cleansing the Doors of Perception: the religious significance of entheogenic plants and chemicals by Huston Smith

Good-bye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson

Train Go Sorry: inside a Deaf world by Leah Hager Cohen

Three Books: Body Rags; Mortal Acts Mortal Words; The Past by Galway Kinnell

March - June

Swimming with Giants: my encounters with whales, dolphins, and seals by Anne Collet with Marc Sich, translated by Gayle Wurst

The Invisible Musician by Ray A. Young Bear

A World Full of Gods: the strange triumph of Christianity by Keith Hopkins

Word of Mouth: an anthology of gay American poetry edited by Timothy Liu

David Boring by Daniel Clowes

The Velveteen Father: an unexpected journey to parenthood by Jesse Green

New Addresses by Kenneth Koch

Taliban: militant Islam, oil and fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmed Rashid

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

The Boy with the Thorn in His Side: a memoir by Keith Fleming

Invocation L. A. : urban multicultural poetry edited by Michelle T. Clinton

Blues for All of Us by Julia Vinograd

Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond

Familiar Spirits: a memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson by Alison Lurie

The One in the Many: a poet’s memoirs by David Ignatow

The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln by Scott McCloud

Keep the River on Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum

Losing Matt Shepard: life and politics by Beth Loffreda

Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerny

Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene

The Great Tranquility: questions and answers by Yehuda Amichai

Selected Poems by Giacomo Leopardi, translated by Eamon Grennan

Glottal Stop: 101 poems by Paul Celan, translated by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh

Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany

Why Elephants Have Big Ears: understanding patterns of life on Earth by Chris Lavers

July - August

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

The Lying Stones of Marrakech: penultimate reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould

Morning Is a Long Time Coming by Bette Greene

Disguised as a Poem: my years teaching poetry at San Quentin by Judith Tannenbaum

In Pharaoh’s Army: memories of the lost war by Tobias Wolff

Selected Poems, 1938 - 1988 by Thomas McGrath

Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

Barrel Fever: stories and essays by David Sedaris

Astro City: Confession 1997, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Eric Anderson

Astro City: Family Album 1998, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Eric Anderson

Cats of the Temple by Brad Leithauser

The Borden Tragedy by Rick Geary

How to Make a Terrarium by Veronica Patterson

Swan, What Shores? by Veronica Patterson

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes

The Seven Ages by Louise Gluck

The Chair: rethinking culture, body, and design by Galen Cranz

The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up by Andrew Tobias

Our Cancer Year by Joyce Brabner, Harvey Pekar, Frank Stack

Astro City: Life in the Big City 1996, Kurt Busiek, Brent E. Anderson

In the Beginning: creation stories from around the world by Virginia Hamilton; illustrations by Barry Moser

This Same Sky edited by Naomi Shihab Nye

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen vol. 1, by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill

Wendel All Together by Howard Cruse

Her Blue Body Everything We Know: earthling poems, 1965 - 1990, complete by Alice Walker

Honey, Mud, Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels: the science behind folk remedies and old wives’ tales by Robert S. Root-Bernstein and Michele M. Root-Bernstein

Three Month Fever: the Andrew Cunanan story by Gary Indiana

The Ape and the Sushi Master: cultural reflections of a primatologist by Frans de Waal

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, translated by Edith Grossman

The Motorcycle Diaries: a journey around South America by Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Chasing Che: a motorcycle journey in search of the Guevara legend by Patrick Symmes

In Hazard by Richard Hughes

Harper’s Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry edited by Duane Niatum

Crossing the Yellow River: three hundred poems from the Chinese translated by Sam Hamill

Wreckage by Ha Jin

A Long Rainy Season: haiku and tanka edited and translated by Leza Lowitz, Miyaki Aoyama, and Akemi Tomioka

Hard Road: a Cat Marsala mystery by Barbara D’Amato

Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin

It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken by Seth

The PIP Anthology of World Poetry of the 20th Century vol. 2, edited by Douglas Messerli

September - December

A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

Kanshi: the poetry of Ishikawa Jozan and other Edo-period poets translated by Burton Watson

Drawn and Quarterly vol. 3, edited by Chris Oliveros

Cured in the Going Bebop by Michael Gizzi

Ours, Yours by Julien Poirier

The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels

Object of My Affections by Stephen McCauley

Body of Waking by Muriel Rukeyser

Breaking Open by Muriel Rukeyser

The Drunken Forest by Gerald Durrell

Dark Fields of the Republic: poems, 1991 - 1995 by Adrienne Rich

Sleep Demons: an insomniac’s memoir by Bill Hayes

Selling the Hammock by Kate Gale

The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer, translated by Jacob Sloan

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Other Traditions by John Ashbery

Mandate of Heaven: a new generation of entrepreneurs, dissidents, bohemians, and technocrats lays claim to China’s future by Orville Schell

Virtual Tibet: searching for Shangri-La from the Himalayas to Hollywood by Orville Schell

Little Lit: folklore and fairy tale funnies edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly

Best American Poetry 2001 edited by Robert Hass; series editor, David Lehman