I love the way my publisher, Ward Wood’s, books are all lining up so nicely on the left. And I made sure there would be plenty of room for more. Actually, this isn’t even all of my friends’ books. I have another similar shelf at our place on Martha’s Vineyard ( just in case any of you were feeling left out). How lucky am I to have such talented friends? It may take me a while to get to read their books, but I make sure I buy a copy of every book written by people I know. I figure if we don’t support each other’s work, who will?

While I’m talking books, I thought I’d make a list of the books I’ve read this year (prose actually, though there’s been stacks of poetry as well).  The list is actually longer than this, but these are ones not written by friends. Take a look:

Dog-heart, Diana McCauley
The Marriage Plot,  Jeffrey Eugenides
Yemen Chronicle,  Steven Caton
Capital, John Lanchester
The Way of the Kings, Andre Malroux
The Paris Wife, Paula McLain
Memory Chalet, Tony Judt
The Summer Without Men, Siri Hustvedt
Echo House, Ward Just
Stranger’s Child, Alan Holinghurst
The Shadow Lines, Amitav Ghosh
The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
The New Perspective, K. Arnold Price
Canada, Richard Ford
The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobsen

Add to that the books of friends and my fellow Ward Wood writers and it’s quite a long list. I can hardly believe it myself. And it looks like I’m seeing the year out, and probably a good part of the year in, by reading the cult classic, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace — all 1079 pages of it.