Street fund and books, 2010

Here's my annual summary of my street fund of the money I found and the list of books I read in 2010.

Street fund total $25.01

101 pennies

10 nickels

40 dimes

14 quarters

6 $1 bills

1 $10 bill

1 diez centavos coin from Mexico, which I will put at Dad's grave

Books

In 2010 I read 129 books. I began the year with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and ended with James Barrie's Peter Pan. Peter Pan creeped me out of existence, and Pan is a mean-spirited, narcissistic little snot. I think that, to protect young readers, we need to keep Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland out of the hands of us adults, who are more easily traumatized than kids.

Some of the cool books I read in 2010 include these.

• Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann. I loved the beautiful structure and language in this novel.
• Confederates in the Attic, Tony Horwitz. Horwitz revisits the Civil War in the unvanquished South (although I kept saying to myself, "You lost. Get over it.")
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Jacqueline Kelly. This is a very funny coming-of-age story in which Calpurnia struggles against gender roles in 1899.
• Skippy Dies, Paul Murray. Skippy dies five pages into the book, and the rest of the story is told in flashback. Among the topics the kids are concerned with are time travel, M-theory, bungee jumping, and the true meaning of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken."
• Room, Emma Donaghue. This is my favorite book of the year. It knocked my socks off. Izzy, you should read it!
• It Was the War of the Trenches, Jacques Tardi. I love the graphic genre. This account of daily life in the trenches in World War I is very affecting.