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]