January:
Fiction:
A Canticle for Leibowitz** by Walter M. Miller

Nonfiction:
How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

February:
Fiction:
Until We Meet Again by Anne Schraff (bloody awful, but I needed to read it to write a quiz for a student)
Catch-22** by Joseph Heller
Weeping Susannah by Alona Kimhi (translated by Dalya Bilu for the British publication)
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe (translated by Alfred Birnbaum)

Nonfiction:
Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon

March:
Fiction:
The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway

Nonfiction:
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron

April:
Fiction:
Girls At War by Chinua Achebe
The Sirens of Titan** by Kurt Vonnegut (The seeds of the short story “Harrison Bergeron” are in there.)

Nonfiction:
Bless Your Heart, Tramp and Other Southern Endearments by Celia Rivenbark (Torturous, as I failed to find her brand of humor anything but shallow and painful.)

May:
Fiction:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Angels & Demons** by Dan Brown (A good romp up until the improbable escapes and “Luke, I am your father” nonsense.)
Witness by Karen Hesse (picked it up in my classroom. It’s oddly reminiscent of Spoon River Anthology)
Tangerine by Edward Bloor (Another classroom read…it was oddly good even though it was about a seventh grader.)
Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson (I need to stop picking up random books in my class.)
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Sandman Vol. 2: The Doll’s House by Neil Gaiman (Okay, it’s a comic, but it’s more literary than that Bluford book from February.)

Nonfiction:
The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise by Michael Grunwald

June:
Fiction:
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck (Love Steinbeck)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man** by James Joyce
Backwater by Joan Baur
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (Love me some Vonnegut, too)

Nonfiction:
Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds and What We Can Do About It by Jane Healy, Ph.D.

July:
Fiction:
Blindness** by Jose Saramago (If you can get past the punctuation and fecal matter, it’s a worthwhile read.)
Small Craft Warning by Tennessee Williams

Nonfiction:
Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith (Surprisingly, there’s a love story or two in there.)

August:
Fiction:
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes (My co-teacher was doing this one with our shared classes.)
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (Awesome opus!)
Neuromancer** by William Gibson

Nonfiction:
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster
A Moving Target by William Golding

September:
Fiction:
The Sun Also Rises** by Ernest Hemingway

Nonfiction:
Hemingway: A Biography by Jeffery Meyer

October:
Fiction:
Other Voices, Other Rooms** by Truman Capote (It helps to go into it assuming it to be a very long short story more than a “novel.”)

Nonfiction:
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America by David Hajdu

November:
Fiction:
The October Country** by Ray Bradbury
California by Amra Brooks (Fabulously bent.)
Gulfstream: South Florida’s Literary Current Vol. 25 (paper ed.) various authors
Ghosts for Jesse Jewel by Amber Frangos (storytelling poetry — excellent)
American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman

Nonfiction:
Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford

December:
Fiction:
Candide** by Voltaire

Nonfiction:
Blood Done Sign My Name by Timothy B. Tyson

**Book Club Picks (Note: I was at a concert during March’s meeting and I’d read the book before so I skipped that one.)