Reading List for 2009

Happy anniversary, Salon! You're officially one year young, and it's time to celebrate. Forget the traditional party hats, and noisemakers, dearie. You are a true New Year's baby, and you get a different sort of gift: resolutions, ambitions, and (best of all) a new reading list! Hmm... and cake is always allowed. It is a party after all.

One brief amendment: a shorter list. It would seem that we, your humble and neophyte parents, mere little women, had great expectations for you this past year. We are a confederacy of dunces! We forgot that you were in the age of innocence with a heart so white and fresh from the ghost road of the underworld. You were a mere infant, a stranger in a strange land, and new to the rites of passage on the road of life. Well here's to the hours past, and to the years to come. We are ready to take possession of ourselves and amend our love's work (if not now, when?) and shorten our book list from two books every month to one. One book will be mandatory and SHALL be read (the punishment is banishment to the jungle, nay the inferno where angels fear to tread). Thus it is written, thus it is law.
Let us now return to our party going, our cakes and ale. We have reached the end of the affair.
Farewell my lovely,
Casey & Amy, proud parents of The Salon.

P.S. Can you find the 22 book titles hidden in the previous paragraph?? :)

Now for the book list...


The following literary works SHALL be read as organized by month in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Nine A.D.

January: "It's Time to Try Something New (Again)" Month

Book: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

February: "Women's Historical Fiction" Month

Book: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

March: "Personal Icon" Month (Biography/Autobiography)

Book: Choose your own. Amy, for example, is reading Me by Katherine Hepburn

April: "Big Names, Lesser Known Works" Month

Book: Sanditon and Lady Susan by Jane Austen

May: "Music Appreciation" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: You Choose.  For example, Casey is reading The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia

June: "English Is Not My Native Language" Month

Book: The Lonely Hearts Club by Raul Nunez

July: "Southern Charm" Month

Book: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty compared with The Color Purple by Alice Walker 

(A rare exception to the one book rule)

August: "I love to laugh" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: Some kind of humorous nonfiction a la Chelsea Handler or John Hodgman

September: "Bestsellers" Month

Book: TBA.  Will be decided once the years bestsellers are known.  We aren't clairvoyant, wish as we may.

October: "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry" Month (Nonfiction)

Book: How to Pick a Peach by Russ Parsons

November: "The Future's Lookin' Bleak (a.k.a. Dystopian)" Month

Book: The Island by Aldous Huxley

December: "Merry Christmas to You!" Month

Book: Buy what you want and read yourself happy into 2010!  :)

Thus concludes the listing of the books of 2009.
You're Welcome.