Must have been #101...

The New York Times has published its list: 100 Notable Books of the Year.

Hmmm. I haven't read any of them...at least, not all the way through.

I've read "significant" chunks of the 9/11 Commission Report. Since I assigned some chapters for my American Foreign Policy class, that is not much of a claim.

I should read Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies and have read excerpts around the web. Plus, I've seen him selling the book on multiple TV programs.

Also, I fully intend to read Graham Allison's book on Nuclear Terrorism. Sometime...maybe on sabbatical.

I am familiar with Ron's Suskind's book on Paul O'Neill's time at Treasury, The Price of Loyalty, thanks largely to extensive coverage by Brad DeLong.

Thanks to a co-author, I've cited Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. Plus, I read many of the original stories in the Post. Does that count?

I blogged about Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas. I've watched him on C-SPAN...does that count?

My Dad owns Bill Clinton's My Life, so I guess there's an outside chance I might read it on some future visit. It looks more like a doorstop.

My wife was going to read Philip Roth's The Plot Against America for her book club, but the library copy didn't arrive in time. If we eventually buy the paperback, we'll probably both read it (though I don't read that much fiction).

Somehow, Nayef Samhat's coauthored book Democratizing Global Politics didn't make the list. Must have been #101...


Thanks to NewMexiken for the link to the Times.


Update: So, what did I read this year? Well, some academic books of course. Many were reviewed for the Grawemeyer prize so I probably shouldn't just list them here. I blogged about reading Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power (my copy is signed because I got to interview the author for a campus forum)....and I read Martha Finnemore's The Purpose of Intervention.

In my free time, I read a lot of Raymond Chandler, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop (thanks Chris Y.), an assortment of Graham Greene, Elmore Leonard, and James Ellroy, some baseball non-fiction books (including one by Rob Neyer, a former Jayhawk like me)...and some Kinky Friedman. I'm almost done with Steven Jay Gould's collection of baseball writings, which I received for Christmas last year.