What I read in 2008
For the sake of anybody who cares, here's a list of what I read last year.

(I also had subscriptions to The Bridge World, Science News, Chess Life, The ACBL Bulletin, and Asimov's Science Fiction, all of which I read pretty much as they arrived...plus various blogs and newsgroups.)

73 books total (up from 68 in 2007...of course, some were pretty short), of which 49 were SF or fantasy, 15 were non-fiction, and 9 were literary or historical fiction.


January:
Graeme Harper and Adrian Rigelsford Calling the Shots

A memoir about directing various episodes from season 2 of Doctor Who. Rather more puffy than I was hoping for.

Austin Grossman Soon I Will be Invincible
Jeff Warren The Head Trip

A non-fiction book about consciousness. Also a bit puffy, but had some stuff I hadn't known about.

Lawrence Watt-Evans The Vondish Ambassador

The print version.

Pamela Dean Going North

February:

Kat Richardson Greywalker
The Babylon 5 Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski, vol. 13
Robert Charles Wilson Axis
John Scalzi The Last Colony
"H. N. Turteltaub" The Sacred Land
"H. N. Turteltaub" Owls to Athens

For some reason I wasn't aware of the last volume of this series of historicals about a Greek merchant ship until recently. Having finally got my hands on a copy, I also re-read the penultimate volume.

China Mieville Un Lun Dun
Kat Richardson Poltergeist

March:

Lawrence Watt-Evans The Wizard Lord
Lawrence Watt-Evans The Ninth Talisman
Terry Pratchett Wintersmith
Sarah Monette Mélusine
Sarah Monette The Virtu
Gerald Durrell Birds, Beasts, and Relatives

April:

Samuel R. Delany About Writing
Peter S. Beagle The Line Between
Tobias Buckell Crystal Rain
Nevil Shute Most Secret

May:

Lois McMaster Bujold The Sharing Knife: Passage
The B5 Scripts of JMS, Vol. 14
The B5 Scripts of JMS, Vol. 15
Sharyn November, ed. Firebirds Rising
Cory Doctorow Little Brother
Chris Dolley Resonance

Chris Dolley used to be a regular on rec.arts.sf.composition, and he posted some things that made the book sound interesting. It was, although I felt it took the protagonist way too long to figure out the truth about his situation when it was obvious to me.

James H. Schmitz, edited by Eric Flint Eternal Frontier

Somehow I'd missed this collection of stories when it first came out.

Ian McDonald Brasyl

Hugo nominee.

The Art of P. Craig Russell: A Retrospective

June:

Jo Walton (Currently without a definite title; possibly Tangled Things and Texts, definitely not The Industrial Landscapes of Elfland.)
Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Babylon 5: Other Voices vol. 1
Edward McPherson The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats

Non-fiction about the world of tournament bridge, from a beginner's/outsider's perspective. Told me some things I hadn't known, like what Bob Hamman's day job is.

Dave Duncan Children of Chaos
Dave Duncan Mother of Lies

A fun two-parter, up to Duncan's usual standard, although I'm not sure why he put it in the setting he did, and I found the theurgical magic improbably mechanistic.

July:

Steven Brust Jhegaala
Steven Brust Dzur
Babylon 5: Other Voices vol. 2
Michael Swanwick The Dragons of Babel

I'm a sucker for "magic treated as technology", and this book was great, even better than The Iron Dragon's Daughter.

August:

Lawrence Watt-Evans The Misenchanted Sword

Lawrence gave away copies of this at his kaffeeklatsch at Worldcon, and I found myself re-reading it almost despite myself. It's not as polished as his later books, but it's a quick and involving read.

Martin Gardner Aha! Gotcha

One of the books I won on the panel "Win Tom Whitmore's Books".

John Chadwick The Decipherment of Linear B

This was a surprise from Katie, who had gotten it out of the UC Berkeley library. She thought I'd be interested, and she was right.

Mike Ashley, ed. The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II

As the title says, a large anthology. I'd got it cheap at a garage sale some years ago and finally got around to reading it.

Diana Wynne Jones House of Many Ways
Ron Klinger Bid Better, Much Better, After Opening 1NT

September:

David Macaulay Unbuilding
Mary Gentle 1610: A Sundial in a Grave
Dave Duncan The Alchemist's Code
Terence Reese and David Bird Famous Play Decisions
Henry Kuttner Robots Have no Tails
Ellen Kushner The Privilege of the Sword

October:

Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book
Victor Mollo Destiny at Bay
Ken Macleod The Execution Channel

A book which is rather libellous towards Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Never thought I'd be grouping Ken Macleod with Tom Kratman....

Charles Stross The Fuller Memorandum
Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Books

Yes, because of the Gaiman. Though there's only one really direct analog, plotwise.

November:

Sarah Monette The Mirador

I think I'd got this as a birthday present after reading the earlier two, but only got around to reading it half a year later.

Jo Walton Half a Crown
Michelle Bottorff Cantata in Coral and Ivory
Jane Lindskold Child of a Rainless Year

I had picked this one up on a recommendation from Tom Whitmore, and enjoyed it very much. I'll be looking for others by her. (Coincidentally, tor.com put up The Buried Pyramid just after I finished this.)

December:

Matthew Arnold On Translating Homer

Pamela Dean mentioned this in a post and it sounded interesting enough that I looked it up online.

Douglas R. Hofstadter I Am a Strange Loop

Gödel, Escher, Bach and Metamagical Themas were formative books
for me. Alas, having read those (especially the former) and a couple of popularizations about cognitive science (e.g., Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works) left me feeling that there wasn't much new in this one.

A.T. Murray, translator The Iliad

Done in a self-consciously archaic style that left me wanting a time machine so that I could go back and slap him upside the head with a wet fish. I have to admit it was usefully literal, though, and it was online for free.

Robert Fitzgerald, translator The Iliad

Much better.

"Homer" The Iliad

I wasn't sure whether to count these as fantasy or historical fiction; I finally settled on historical.

Robertson Davies The Rebel Angels
Fritz Leiber The Knight and Knave of Swords

Bought at a used bookstore many years ago, finally got around to reading.