Top 10 Books First Read During 2011

[endingcredits]

1. The Ghost Sonata, A. Strindberg [play] - 7
2. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, D. Grann - 6

[megladon8]

You've already read a book a day?

[Mysterious Dude]

Ghost Sonata is a play; probably didn't take that long to read. Good play, too.

I bet he started Lost City of Z before new year's day.

[Duncan]

1. Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
2. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
3. Underworld, Don DeLillo
4. Youth, J.M. Coetzee
5. The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa
6. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
7. The Rebel, Albert Camus
8. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
9. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
10. Pantagruel, Rabelais

Others in order of preference, more or less:
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Solomon Gursky Was Here, Mordecai Richler
A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter
The First Man, Albert Camus
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Point Omega, Don DeLillo
Boyhood, J.M. Coetzee
If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino
The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes
1984, George Orwell
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
The Fall, Albert Camus
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter
Omensetter's Luck, William H. Gass
By Night in Chile, Roberto Bolano
Kim, Rudyard Kipling
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, John le Carre
selected poems of e.e. cummings, E.E. Cummings
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
The Pale King, David Foster Wallace
True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
Foe, JM Coetzee
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Wittgenstein's Nephew, Thomas Bernhard
Nemesis, Philip Roth
Slow Learner, Thomas Pynchon
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Meditations in an Emergency, Frank O'Hara
Old Goriot, Honore de Balzac
The Night Before Christmas, Nikolai Gogol
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler
The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov
The Ghost Sonata, August Strindberg
Love and Summer, William Trevor
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Cannibal, John Hawkes
The End of the Affair, Graham Greene
The Golden Bowl, Henry James (gave up)
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Humbling, Phillip Roth
Stories, Anton Chekhov
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

[lovejuice]

1. A Bend in the River (V.S. Naipaul)
Is it good? I have it on my book shelf.

[Duncan]

Is it good? I have it on my book shelf.

There's good and bad. I thought the first half was amazing. It's hard not to be impressed by Naipaul's writing. He just exudes control. The prose isn't flashy, but it's precise, polished and exhaustively illuminating of a time and place. I'd actually be interested in your opinion on his politics, because as a guilt-tripping white, westerner, some of his ideas grind, or are at least contrary to PC liberalism. But it's totally refreshing to have some of these issues discussed in an unembarrassed way.

It lost me a bit in the second half. He structures it sort of from the ground up, so he begins with characters literally straight out of the bush, the town in shambles post-rebellion. But he needs a device to give his narrator access to the higher echelons, so Naipaul has him have an affair with a top official's wife. I didn't find anything about it very convincing, and I found parts of it borderline misogynist. ("Women are stupid. But if women weren't stupid the world wouldn't go round," said by a character, so not directly attributable to Naipaul's views. But it's just sort of accepted without comment. I don't know.) And I just don't understand the psychology of the affair at all.

That said, I'd definitely recommend it. There's a lot to be impressed by, and it's obvious that you're dealing with an intense, insightful intellect.

[endingcredits]

You've already read a book a day?

Lost City of Z was a rollover from 2010. This new book I'm working through, The Faculty Of Useless Knowledge by Dombrovsky, won't be complete for a while. Its Joycean in style but has more intricate chronological structure, a preoccupation with time, and the gulag.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Metamorphosis by Kafka

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

[Benny Profane]

1. Junky - William Burroughs
2. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
2. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[Melville]

The Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege - 8.5
Weathercraft, Jim Woodring [graphic novel] - 8.5
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty - 8
The Petty Demon, Sologub - 8
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume - 7.5
The Devils, Dostoevsky - 7.5
Nostromo, Conrad - 7
Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway [short story] - 7
Quadraturin, Krzhizhanovsky [short story] - 7
Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre [essay] - 6.5
The Lottery, Shirley Jackson [short story] - 6.5
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Abridged), Locke - 6
A Rose for Emily, Faulkner [short story] - 6
Endgame, Beckett [play] - 6
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene - 6
Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre - 5.5
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry - 5.5
Ethics, Spinoza - 5
Oblomov, Goncharov - 4.5
Walden, Thoreau - 4.5
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes - 4
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley - 3
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett - 3
The Stars My Destination, Bester - 1
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - 1

[megladon8]

1.) "The Plucker" by Brom - 3.5

[Duncan]

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - 1

Good start.

[Melville]

Good start.
Yeah, every book I read for the rest of the year will benefit from not being Harry Potter. It was surprisingly awful. And in unexpected ways, too.

[endingcredits]

Yeah, every book I read for the rest of the year will benefit from not being Harry Potter. It was surprisingly awful. And in unexpected ways, too.

I expected to hate it and did.

[megladon8]

I was always under the impression that the "Harry Potter" books were actually supposed to be quite good.

I've heard and read many serious readers saying that Rowling is a pretty decent writer.

[Duncan]

I read it around the time they were first getting popular--maybe when the second book was released--and remember thinking it was alright, but not good enough to continue with the series. Would have been about 13 or 14 at the time.

[D_Davis]

I read the first couple, and they were OK. Had I been younger, I would've dug the hell out of them, that's a fact.

In terms of writing and craft, I'd rank them along side those Redwall books.

[endingcredits]

1. The Ghost Sonata, A. Strindberg [play] - 7
2. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, D. Grann - 6

Comics:
1. Berlin: City of Smoke, Book Two, J. Lutes - 7.5
2. Berlin: City of Stones, Book One, J. Lutes - 6

[Duncan]

In terms of writing and craft, I'd rank them along side those Redwall books.Now those I was young enough to love. Must have read like 10 of them.

[D_Davis]

Now those I was young enough to love. Must have read like 10 of them.

I liked those a lot too when I was younger.

I was shocked to recently find out that the series has kept going, and going, AND GOING.

Good god, there are like 20 damn books now.

[megladon8]

When I was a kid the series' I loved were books like "The Hardy Boys" and stuff like that.

My dad passed all of his original printings of those down to my brother and I.

I never read "Redwall". When I got into fantasy around the age of 10-12, I was reading stuff like "Dragonlance" and "Forgotten Realms".

I also liked some Anne McCaffrey (sp?) stuff.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Harry Potter story is fun to follow along, but the books aren't particularly well-written.

[Chac Mool]

1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell)
2. Under Heaven (Guy Gavriel Kay)

[D_Davis]

1. Never Knew Another, J.M McDermott

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[Derek]

1) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
2) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5

[Kurosawa Fan]

Wind-Up Bird apathy always gets rep from me.

[megladon8]

I've never understood the apathy that Murakami's entire body of work receives here on MatchCut.

[Benny Profane]

I've never understood the apathy that Murakami's entire body of work receives here on MatchCut.

I've only read Kafka on the Shore but it was FUCKING HORRIBLE.

[D_Davis]

I've never understood the apathy that Murakami's entire body of work receives here on MatchCut.

It's another weird thing about MC. Every constant reader I know IRL likes Murakami, and yet if you go to MC you'd think he was one of the worst authors of all time. I think I've read more good things about Dan Brown or Twilight here.

[Ezee E]

It's another weird thing about MC. Every constant reader I know IRL likes Murakami, and yet if you go to MC you'd think he was one of the worst authors of all time. I think I've read more good things about Dan Brown or Twilight here.
Can't say I've seen anyone like Dan Brown or Twilight here. Except K-Fan's wife for Twilight. Maybe Mara... Can't confirm that though.

[D_Davis]

Can't say I've seen anyone like Dan Brown or Twilight here. Except K-Fan's wife for Twilight. Maybe Mara... Can't confirm that though.

I was just exaggerating to make a point.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm fairly certain there are far more people on MC who like Murakami than dislike.

[Duncan]

Disliked Sputnik Sweetheart.

[Benny Profane]

1. Junky - William Burroughs
2. Tinkers - Paul Harding
3. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

[Milky Joe]

Murakami is majorly, majorly overrated.

[D_Davis]

Murakami is majorly, majorly overrated.

I guess that was the benefit of reading him before anyone was talking about him. I picked up Hard-Boiled Wonderland... on a whim sometime in the late '90s and I liked it; it reminded me of discovering PKD when I was a kid after watching Blade Runner. Haven't read a lot by him, but I do really like that book. Although I'm not sure why I haven't read more. Maybe I should remedy that this year.

[D_Davis]

Actually, I probably won't read more Murakami because in looking over my shelves I realized that I have either sold, or let me ex take the Murakami books (she liked him quite a bit).

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. 1919, John Dos Passos
3. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
4. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[kuehnepips]

1. The System of the World - Neal Stephenson

I'll read everything from this guy.




..., or let me ex take the Murakami books (she liked him quite a bit).

That's why she's an ex, right? :lol:

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw

[D_Davis]

That's why she's an ex, right? :lol:

Heh...that's right. I just couldn't stay married to someone who liked that hack.

[megladon8]

See, yeah, it seems the MatchCut consensus definitely leans toward Murakami hatred.

I really don't get it. "Sputnik Sweetheart" floored me.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
2. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
3. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

The last one would make Morrissey cry. Of shame.

[Derek]

See, yeah, it seems the MatchCut consensus definitely leans toward Murakami hatred.

I really don't get it. "Sputnik Sweetheart" floored me.

I don't hate him. His writing was fine, but in Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, he talked about a lot of big ideas, but never actually dove into or explored them, instead opting for pseudo-spiritual, interconnected consciousness mumbo jumbo that never amounted to much.

[D_Davis]

...instead opting for pseudo-spiritual, interconnected consciousness mumbo jumbo that never amounted to much.

Heh. That's probably why I like it. I love that "pseudo-spiritual, interconnected consciousness mumbo jumbo." That's like, my life in a phrase.

[Milky Joe]

Yeah, as much as I find his writing overly simplistic, his characters and plots hackneyed and meandering on the level of a Nintendo game, the world definitely needs more "pseudo-spiritual, interconnected consciousness mumbo jumbo" than less. I'd take a thousand Murakami's to get rid of a single David Sedaris.

[Winston*]

1. A Tale of Two Cities
2. Devil in a Blue Dress
3. The Lost City of Z

Need to spend more time reading.

[Derek]

I'd take a thousand Murakami's to get rid of a single David Sedaris.

:lol:

We're not likely to see eye to eye on much.

[Derek]

Heh. That's probably why I like it. I love that "pseudo-spiritual, interconnected consciousness mumbo jumbo." That's like, my life in a phrase.

Well, it's mumbo jumbo because it's poorly developed and the interconnectedness, particularly his shared dreams with the Kano sisters and his teleporting within the well, are never given any real thematic weight or depth. It's a pretty shallow book that talks endlessly about self-realization, examining the world and ones place in it (ideas that could interesting or at least be dealt with in interesting ways), but never actually relates those ideas in any deep meaningful way. Instead, we get stories of war atrocities shoehorned in and Creta Kano giving dream blowjobs.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
4. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
5. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw


Mara, have you read this? While I was reading it, I couldn't help thinking you would love it. Not sure why, but I felt certain it was perfect for you.

[Mara]

It's... a short story? I could probably commit to that.

[Kurosawa Fan]

It's... a short story? I could probably commit to that.

Yep. Well, novella would probably be more accurate. My edition is 56 pages.

[Mara]

Yep. Well, novella would probably be more accurate. My edition is 56 pages.

Does this (http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/libraryw.htm) look complete? If so, I'll check it out this week. Sounds cool.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Does this (http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/libraryw.htm) look complete? If so, I'll check it out this week. Sounds cool.

Skimming over it, it looks complete.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
4. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
5. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
6. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[kuehnepips]

1. The System of the World - Neal Stephenson
2. Never Knew Another, J.M McDermott

[Milky Joe]

1. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments: A Mimic-Pathetic-Dialectic Composition - An Existential Contribution by Johannes Climacus (ed. Søren Kierkegaard)
2. The Point of View For My Work As An Author: A Report to History by Søren Kierkegaard
3. C by Tom McCarthy

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
4. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
5. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
6. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
7. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
8. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. 1919, John Dos Passos
4. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
5. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
6. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
7. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[Derek]

1) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
2) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
3) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0
4) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Junky - William Burroughs
3. Tinkers - Paul Harding
4. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. 1919, John Dos Passos
4. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
5. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
6. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
7. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
8. World and Town, Gish Jen
9. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
10. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
11. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
5. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
6. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
7. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
8. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
9. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Junky - William Burroughs
3. Tinkers - Paul Harding
4. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
5. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
6. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

[dreamdead]

5. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West


Have you already read The Day of the Locust? I find that much more of a primal cry against 1920s culture and excess...

[Benny Profane]

Have you already read The Day of the Locust? I find that much more of a primal cry against 1920s culture and excess...

Reading it next. Both stories are in the same book, but ML came first so that's what I read first.

ML reminded me a lot of Sartre and Camus, in a good way. Didn't check the copyright date to see who came before who.

I liked it a lot.

[Lazlo]

1. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Junky - William Burroughs
3. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
4. Tinkers - Paul Harding
5. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
6. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
7. The Lost City of Z - David Grann


Honestly, 2 - 7 are difficult to rank and basically interchangeable. They're all on nearly the same level of very good. Solid year, so far.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
2. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
3. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
4. The Dead by James Joyce
5. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
7. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
8. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
9. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
10. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
11. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
12. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[D_Davis]

This was an unexpected turn...


1. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
2. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
3. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
4. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
5. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty

[ContinentalOp]

1. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
2. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
3. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
4. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
5. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[D_Davis]

1. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
2. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
3. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
4. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
6. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
5. The Dead by James Joyce
6. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
8. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
9. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
10. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw


11. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
12. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
13. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
5. The Dead by James Joyce
6. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
7. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
9. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
10. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


11. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
12. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
13. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
14. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[D_Davis]

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Such a great book.

[Kurosawa Fan]

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

Such a great book.

Amazing. It feels like it could have been written today. It's a brutal experience, but is so beautifully written it's near-impossible to put down. That history course was responsible for the best and the worst books I've read thus far.

[Derek]

1) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
2) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
3) Pan (Knut Hamsun) 8.0
4) Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Gilles Deleuze) 8.0
5) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0
6) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
5. The Dead by James Joyce
6. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
7. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
9. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
10. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


11. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
12. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
13. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
14. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
15. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
4. 1919, John Dos Passos
5. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
6. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
7. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
8. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
9. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
10 World and Town, Gish Jen


11. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
12. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
13. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
4. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
5. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
6. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
7. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
4. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
5. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
6. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
7. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
8. Zoo - Otsuichi

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
4. New Noir - John Shirley
5. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
6. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
8. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
9. Zoo - Otsuichi

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
4. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
5. New Noir - John Shirley
6. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
7. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
8. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
9. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
10. Zoo - Otsuichi

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
5. The Dead by James Joyce
6. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
7. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
9. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
10. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


11. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
12. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
13. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
14. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
15. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
16. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Raiders]

14. The Crucible by Arthur Miller

:|

[Kurosawa Fan]

:|

It's ranked lower than I would feel in a normal year because of the quality of literature I've been reading. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I felt that some of the "courtroom" drama was a bit corny and overdone. Still, any allegory against McCarthyism is okay in my book.

EDIT: In fact, I raised it one spot. It should have been over City of Ember. But really, everything I've been reading has been sooo good that it's been really hard to rate. The only two books I haven't liked are the last two.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Collating fiction and non-fiction:

01. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
02. A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright)
03. Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
04. Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter)
05.
06.
07.
08.
09.
10.

Not exactly where I want to be, but time will open up soon.

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
5. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2009)

I would imagine that the first two aren't likely to change. Like/love the first four. Franzen's was alternately brilliant and frustrating.

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
4. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
5. New Noir - John Shirley
6. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
7. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
8. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
9. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
10. Towing Jehovah - James Morrow


11. Zoo - Otsuichi

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
4. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
5. The Dead by James Joyce
6. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
7. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
8. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
9. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
10. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


11. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
12. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
13. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
14. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
15. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
16. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
17. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Make that three books I haven't liked this year. Bummer.

[Benny Profane]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
5. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2009)

I would imagine that the first two aren't likely to change. Like/love the first four. Franzen's was alternately brilliant and frustrating.

Freedom came out last year.

Care to elaborate on that and the Updike?

[D_Davis]

Make that three books I haven't liked this year. Bummer.

I just went though a few like that myself. Two of them I didn't even finish.

[Raiders]

Freedom came out last year.

Care to elaborate on that and the Updike?

I like Franzen (also enjoyed but wasn't blown away by The Corrections) and he has a knack for living up to his "Great American Author" tagline. Social circumstances, underlying politics, interpersonal dynamics--he excels at these things and creates immensely readable material. But, I find his ear for dialogue to be stilted, particularly of the political slant, and his expression of his ideas often somewhat laborious. I think of Harding's book I just finished and the wealth of personal detail and even societal circumstances that he creates at such economical pacing and Franzen is the opposite; the penultimate chapter here in particular is very poorly paced. Above all, Franzen strikes me as a highly intelligent and sensitive writer whose expression of his ideas is madly uneven.

For the Updike book, I was shocked to discover it was the first of his I have read (not even Eastwick). Brilliant stuff, really. It is only #3 out of the sheer awesomeness of the first two. Updike, based on this book anyway, is a magnificent creator and surveyor of characters, especially dischordant and unlikable ones. Rabbit himself is among the most intriguing protagonists I have ever read. The immediacy of the present-tense writings very poignantly expresses Rabbit's desire to escape. I don't agree with labeling him as an "anti-hero," rather it seems to me Updike intentionally portrays him as sincere and his actions springing from a place of internal necessity so that the convictions are always there even if the morality is not. Updike's depicition of the overall milieu and his imagery is profound.

[Duncan]

Quarterly update:

1. Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
2. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
3. The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa
4. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
5. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
6. 1984, George Orwell
7. The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes
8. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
9. Old Goriot, Honore de Balzac
10. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Other in order of preference, more or less:

The Ghost Sonata, August Strindberg
Love and Summer, William Trevor
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Stories, Anton Chekhov
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Junky - William Burroughs
3. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
4. Tinkers - Paul Harding
5. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
6. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
7. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
8. The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
4. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
5. New Noir - John Shirley
6. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
7. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
8. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
9. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
10. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty



11. Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
12. Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
4. 1919, John Dos Passos
5. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
6. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
7. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
8. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
9. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
10. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda


11. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
12. World and Town, Gish Jen
13. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
14. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
15. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[D_Davis]

1. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
2. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
3. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
4. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
5. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
6. New Noir - John Shirley
7. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
8. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
9. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
10. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge




11. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
12. Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
12. Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
13. Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

[ContinentalOp]

1. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
2. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
3. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
4. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
5. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
6. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
7. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
6. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
7. New Noir - John Shirley
8. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
8. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
10. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale





11. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
12. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
13. Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
14. Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
15. Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
6. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
7. New Noir - John Shirley
8. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
8. The Narrator - Michael Cisco
10. Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale





11. Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
12. Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
13. Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
14. Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
15. Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

I sought out Vanilla Ride, but found Captains Outrageous instead. A guy who wrote Batman TAS episodes and crime novels, I must check out.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Light in August by William Faulkner
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
6. The Dead by James Joyce
7. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
8. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
9. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
10. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant


11. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
12. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
13. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
14. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
15. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
16. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
17. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
18. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

That's the last book for the semester. On to reading for pleasure! Although, almost everything I read for my classes was excellent.

[D_Davis]

I sought out Vanilla Ride, but found Captains Outrageous instead. A guy who wrote Batman TAS episodes and crime novels, I must check out.

Lansdale is awesome. He's the modern day Mark Twain with a genre influence. He's won all kinds of prestigious awards, and is one of the better prose stylists I've read. His ear for dialog in unparalleled, and he excels at characterization.

He's done work in comic books with Jonah Hex and Conan. He's written westerns and pure Americana (The Magic Wagon, The Boar, A Fine Dark Line), pure mystery/thriller (The Bottoms, Freezer Burn, Cold in July), comedy/horror (Godzilla's Twelve Step Program, Bubba Ho-Tep, Dead in the West), and some of the most amazing and downright brutal and disturbing short fiction you will ever read (Steppin' Out, Summer '68 and Drive-In Date). And on top of all this the aforementioned Hap and Leonard series, some of the most purely entertaining crime fiction around.

Have fun discovering his stuff. It's a good time to be getting into Lansdale because more of his stuff is in print now. Unfortunately for casual fans, a lot of his stuff is OOP or only released through small boutique publishers. But now the H&L books are all back in print, as well as Sunset and Sawdust and a few others. And he has a brand new book coming out later this year.

[Marley]

That's the last book for the semester. On to reading for pleasure! Although, almost everything I read for my classes was excellent.

What was the name of the class that you took? Glad you enjoyed Conrad's "Secret Agent" which was one of the better books I read last year. I much prefer that one to 'Heart of Darkness."

Oh, I also just finished Faulkner's Sound and the Fury (my first by the author) and while it was a challenging read, I find myself liking it more upon further reflection. If you have read this one, care to share a few thoughts? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, which makes my little brain hurt.

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
6. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
7. New Noir - John Shirley
8. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
9. The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco






Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

[Kurosawa Fan]

What was the name of the class that you took? Glad you enjoyed Conrad's "Secret Agent" which was one of the better books I read last year. I much prefer that one to 'Heart of Darkness."

Oh, I also just finished Faulkner's Sound and the Fury (my first by the author) and while it was a challenging read, I find myself liking it more upon further reflection. If you have read this one, care to share a few thoughts? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, which makes my little brain hurt.

It was two separate classes, and not all of those books were from those classes. The first was 301, "Writing Interpretive Papers." We read The Library Window, The Secret Agent, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and various Sherlock Holmes stories, including "The Speckled Band" and "The Final Problem." The second class was 313, "American and British Literature from 1865-Present." We read a ton in that class, including the Henry James, Heart of Darkness, the Faulkner, The Crucible, etc.

As for The Sound and the Fury, it's been a long time since I read it, but I can say that I was more attracted to its fractured plot and density than I was Light in August's straight-forward, on-the-nose allegories. Fury forced me to read with more care, and I feel like the experience was more rewarding. Still, both books are beautifully written and very emotional experiences. I can't wait to read more of Faulkner's novels, particularly As I Lay Dying, Absalom! Absalom!, and Sanctuary.

[Benny Profane]

Light in August is truly awesome. Glad you liked it. It's been over a decade, but it's one I should revisit. At the time I finished it, it was one of the best books I've ever read.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Light in August is truly awesome. Glad you liked it. It's been over a decade, but it's one I should revisit. At the time I finished it, it was one of the best books I've ever read.

Had it not been for a few bludgeoning moments on Faulkner's behalf (Joe Christmas literally running from his supposed ancestry when he finds himself in a black part of town being the most egregious offender) it would rank among the best books I've ever read even at this point in my life. It was pretty fantastic.

[Raiders]

I have read As I Lay Dying about four times now. It's just so magnificent. I actually haven't read Light in August and I was going to add it to my Kindle, but it looks like the entire Faulkner library is set for August 17th, so I will have to either wait or get a physical copy.

[Mara]

I have read As I Lay Dying about four times now.

I haven't read it since high school, but this book blew my mind. I should revisit it.

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
4. 1919, John Dos Passos
5. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
6. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
7. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
8. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
9. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
10. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen


11. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
12. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
13. World and Town, Gish Jen
14. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
15. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
16. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[Melville]

Faulkner ranked:

The Sound and the Fury - 10 (in my top 5, my favorite structure of any book, the most interesting exploration of time and its relation to consciousness and character, all wrapped in gothic decay and obsession)
As I Lay Dying - 9 (the dead bitter mother's chapter of bitterness and the father's contrasting joy in his false teeth are the high points for me)
Light in August - 8 (I remember the ending tying the themes together too neatly, but I don't remember how)
Absalom, Absalom - 8 (the thickest gothicism and mythic history)
Go Down, Moses - 6.5 (much worse bludgeoning than Light in August)

Not sure what else I should read by him.

[Raiders]

Faulkner ranked:

The Sound and the Fury - 10 (in my top 5, my favorite structure of any book, the most interesting exploration of time and its relation to consciousness and character, all wrapped in gothic decay and obsession)
As I Lay Dying - 9 (the dead bitter mother's chapter of bitterness and the father's contrasting joy in his false teeth are the high points for me)
Light in August - 8 (I remember the ending tying the themes together too neatly, but I don't remember how)
Absalom, Absalom - 8 (the thickest gothicism and mythic history)
Go Down, Moses - 6.5 (much worse bludgeoning than Light in August)

Not sure what else I should read by him.

I rather liked A Fable which I had always heard mixed things about (though it won the Pulitzer). It's a little more tedious than his typical work and I remember finding some of the Christ allegory mixed with post-Great War sentiment a little specious though it does wrap itself up beautifully.

A professor of mine considered A Rose for Emily the greatest short story of all time.

I have actually only read four books by him as well, which will certainly change once his catalogue is added to the Kindle store.

As I Lay Dying - 10
The Sound and the Fury - 10
A Fable - 8
The Reivers - 7

[Melville]

A professor of mine considered A Rose for Emily the greatest short story of all time.
I'm going to assume your professor shares my taste and add that to my to-read list.

[Kurosawa Fan]

"A Rose for Emily" and "Barn Burning" are always staples of English courses. I've read both multiple times.

[Raiders]

I'm going to assume your professor shares my taste and add that to my to-read list.

To make it easy for you:

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/Rose/el-text-E-Rose.htm

[dreamdead]

"A Rose for Emily" and "Barn Burning" are always staples of English courses. I've read both multiple times.

An old undergrad professor used to teach "A Rose for Emily" in conjunction with literary theory, so that we'd re-read the story about six times, looking for areas where Faulkner's text offers ways into it with regard to Marxism, deconstructionism, LGBT, psychoanalysis, racial politics, and others. It was a fascinating experiment, suggesting the seemingly endless and malleable ways that a text can be read.

[Hugh_Grant]

An old undergrad professor used to teach "A Rose for Emily" in conjunction with literary theory, so that we'd re-read the story about six times, looking for areas where Faulkner's text offers ways into it with regard to Marxism, deconstructionism, LGBT, psychoanalysis, racial politics, and others. It was a fascinating experiment, suggesting the seemingly endless and malleable ways that a text can be read.

Sounds like a colleague of mine who takes about two months out of the semester to teach the story.

[Raiders]

I was not aware this was taught to such an extent. It was indeed part of my undergrad English course curriculum, but we only spent one session on it if I remember correctly.

[Kurosawa Fan]

An old undergrad professor used to teach "A Rose for Emily" in conjunction with literary theory, so that we'd re-read the story about six times, looking for areas where Faulkner's text offers ways into it with regard to Marxism, deconstructionism, LGBT, psychoanalysis, racial politics, and others. It was a fascinating experiment, suggesting the seemingly endless and malleable ways that a text can be read.

We're doing that in my 301, Writing Interpretive Papers, this semester. We studied several theories in conjunction with different novels, short stories, and poems, and now have to apply what we learned about Marxist theory, new historicism, deconstructionalism, formalism, and myth criticism by interpreting the Sherlock Holmes story "The Speckled Band" with four of those theories for our final exam.

[Melville]

I'm glad I never took an English class.

[Hugh_Grant]

We're doing that in my 301, Writing Interpretive Papers, this semester. We studied several theories in conjunction with different novels, short stories, and poems, and now have to apply what we learned about Marxist theory, new historicism, deconstructionalism, formalism, and myth criticism by interpreting the Sherlock Holmes story "The Speckled Band" with four of those theories for our final exam.

I'm glad to hear you're learning this at the 300-level. A place where I used to teach had freshmen read about schools of literary theory in a 102 course. Teaching the context of deconstruction to students who struggled with basic understanding of the texts? Very hard.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm glad to hear you're learning this at the 300-level. A place where I used to teach had freshmen read about schools of literary theory in a 102 course. Teaching the context of deconstruction to students who struggled with basic understanding of the texts? Very hard.

We were introduced to it in 201, but just superficially. In 301, that's been the sole focus of the class. I'm also glad it wasn't wasted on me in a 100 level class. I would have blown it off.

[D_Davis]

I'm glad I never took an English class.

Heh. Nothing turned me off of reading more than having to read what I had to read in high school and college English lit classes.

In school = reading's the worst thing ever
out of school = read ~60 books a year

[Kurosawa Fan]

Couldn't disagree more. Reading in my lit classes has opened my eyes to finding what had until now been unseen depths in novels. Sometimes theory and interpretation can take things too far and go in directions I don't necessary agree with, but reading interpretations and gaining historical and political perspective on the literature I've been reading has been infinitely rewarding. It's not just about consumption, it's about getting the most out of the experience.

[Melville]

Couldn't disagree more. Reading in my lit classes has opened my eyes to finding what had until now been unseen depths in novels. Sometimes theory and interpretation can take things too far and go in directions I don't necessary agree with, but reading interpretations and gaining historical and political perspective on the literature I've been reading has been infinitely rewarding. It's not just about consumption, it's about getting the most out of the experience.
The part that would bother me is having to analyze books using particular interpretative schemes.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The part that would bother me is having to analyze books using particular interpretative schemes.

Well, it's just to show that you understand the concepts. You don't have to agree with the reading. In fact, every professor I've had (which is only three) will allow you to show a particular interpretation, and then use another theory to argue why you think the first interpretation lacks validity.

[D_Davis]

It's not just about consumption.

Yeah - it's never about consumption.

[Melville]

Well, it's just to show that you understand the concepts. You don't have to agree with the reading. In fact, every professor I've had (which is only three) will allow you to show a particular interpretation, and then use another theory to argue why you think the first interpretation lacks validity.
I think most of my essays would end up revolving around analyses of the theories themselves.

[Dead & Messed Up]

01. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
02. A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
03. *Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
04. Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
05. *Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
06. Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)
07.
08.
09.
10.

I hear Sandman gets much better as it goes, so I'm looking forward to reading the second trade paperback. The book on Islam was pretty dry, and it's only in the epilogue that the author engages current Islam's relationship to Western Civilization, but the book's jam-packed with history and functions reasonably well as a foundation for further exploration. Interesting!

[Kurosawa Fan]

I think most of my essays would end up revolving around analyses of the theories themselves.

Well, you and I aren't agreeing on much tonight. :lol:

Anyone who holds to one particular theory as gospel, and only views a work through that lens is worthy of derision, but to dismiss the theories as valuable tools is a mistake.

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. New Noir - John Shirley
9. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco







The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Light in August by William Faulkner
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Dead by James Joyce
8. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
9. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
10. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant


11. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
12. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
13. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
14. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
15. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
16. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
17. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
18. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
19. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Marley]

I read Great Gatsby for the first time as well a while back and even with its iconic status, I was surprised that it lived up to my high expectations. I'll be reading Tender is the Night by the end of the year for sure.

[Kurosawa Fan]

It was actually a reread, but I'm including it because I first read it as a teenager, and this was like reading it for the first time again. I realized just how little I got out of it the first time through. But yes, magnificent novel. A harrowing tale of the devastation of a life led by financial excess, and how that leads to the consumption of human value. Gorgeously written as well.

[Marley]

Your summation is spot on and Fitzgerald's style was definitely a pleasure to read. For some reason, Gatsby was not part of the english curriculum in high-school (I don't even remember what we were forced to read in senior year); thus, it is somewhat embarrassing to admit that I only got around to reading it almost 10 years later. Then again, there are so many "classics" that I have yet to read. From your list, Huckleberry Finn is one of them. :frustrated:

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. New Noir - John Shirley
9. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco


The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
3. Junky - William Burroughs
4. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
5. Tinkers - Paul Harding
6. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
7. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
8. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
9. The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
4. 1919, John Dos Passos
5. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
6. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
7. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
8. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
9. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
10. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda

11. The Zero, Jess Walter
12. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
13. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
14. World and Town, Gish Jen
15. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
16. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
17. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[Kurosawa Fan]

:sad:

[dreamdead]

:sad:

Falling outside the top ten at this point isn't all that surprising. I'm a huge fan of that top five, and the bottom five are likewise pretty stellar, even if I'm not as emotionally captivated by them. Walter's novel is pretty good, and certainly more consistent a text than Franzen's "Great American Novel." There are a handful of passages here where Walter is just aces on, such as his critique of class strata posted on the memorial walls around Ground Zero, or how the ground itself suggests history:

“The ground is where history lay. They didn’t put the Gettysburg memorial somewhere else. They put it at Gettysburg, or some version of that place, of that ground. They were the same: ground and place—plowed and scraped and rearranged, sure, but still you knew that in this place the soil was tamped with bone and gristle and bravery. That was important. The ground was important, imprinted with every footfall of our lives, the DNA of the profound and the banal, every fight, chase, panhandle, kiss, fall, dog shit, con game, stickball hit, car wreck, bike race, sunset stroll, fish sale, mugging—the full measure and memento of every unremarkable event, and every inconceivable moment. Remy turned from side to side, taking the whole thing in, feeling incomplete, cheated in some way, as if they’d taken away his memory along with the dirt and debris. Maybe his mind was a hole like this—the evidence and reason scraped away. If you can’t trust the ground beneath your feet, what can you trust? If you take away the very ground, what could possibly be left” (307).

That bit spoilered above is gorgeous. And the tone is justifiably great. I'm just not all that thrilled by the ending or the final twist, which comes off as unnecessarily caustic and damaging to a book that I fear Walter didn't know how to end.

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
5. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971)
6. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. New Noir - John Shirley
9. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco


The Rest - In No Order

Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
4. 1919, John Dos Passos
5. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
6. Erasure, Percival Everett
7. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
8. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
9. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
10. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud


11. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
12. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
13. The Zero, Jess Walter
14. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
15. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
16. World and Town, Gish Jen
17. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
18. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
19. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. New Noir - John Shirley
9. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco


The Rest - In No Order

Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan

[Benny Profane]

1. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
2. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
3. Junky - William Burroughs
4. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
5. Tinkers - Paul Harding
6. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
7. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
8. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
9. The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan

[megladon8]

1.) "Seize the Day" by Saul Bellow - 10
2.) "The Plucker" by Brom - 3.5


I really need to get caught up in my reading.

[ContinentalOp]

1. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
2. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
3. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
4. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
5. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
6. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5
7. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
8. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
9. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
10. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. New Noir - John Shirley
9. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
10. The Narrator - Michael Cisco


The Rest - In No Order

Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
9. New Noir - John Shirley
10. Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale



The Rest - In No Order

The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
6. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
7. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
8. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
9. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
10. New Noir - John Shirley



The Rest - In No Order

The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[dreamdead]

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
4. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
5. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
6. 1919, John Dos Passos
7. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
8. Erasure, Percival Everett
9. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
10. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss



11. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
12. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
13. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
14. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
15. The Zero, Jess Walter
16. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
17. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
18. World and Town, Gish Jen
19. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
20. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
21. Saturday, Ian McEwan

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
6. Tinkers - Paul Harding
7. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
8. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
9. The Lost City of Z - David Grann
10. The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
5. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971)
6. The Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes, 2002)
7. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
*The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)

[Derek]

1) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
2) Hopscotch (Julio Cortozar) 8.5
3) The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) 8.5
4) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
5) Pan (Knut Hamsun) 8.0
6) The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) 8.0
7) Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Gilles Deleuze) 8.0
8) Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum) 7.0
9) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0
10) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5

11) Raising Kane (Pauline Kael) 3.0

[D_Davis]

I think there is a very good chance that by the end of the year this top 10 will be comprised of mostly Manly Wade Wellman stories. What an amazing discovery. Trying to track down his non-fiction books for which he was nominated the Pulitzer.


1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
3. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
4. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
5. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
6. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
7. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
8. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
9. Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman




The Rest - In No Order

New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[D_Davis]

1. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
2. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
3. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
4. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
5. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
6. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
7. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
8. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
9. All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman




The Rest - In No Order

Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
6. Tinkers - Paul Harding
7. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
8. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
9. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
10. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
6. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman




The Rest - In No Order

All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[dreamdead]

Several new entries.

1. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
2. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
3, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
4. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
5. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
6. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
7. 1919, John Dos Passos
8. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
9. Erasure, Percival Everett
10. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

11. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
12. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
13. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
14. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
15. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
16. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
17. The Zero, Jess Walter
18. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
19. Terrorist, John Updike
20. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
21. World and Town, Gish Jen
22. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
23. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
24. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
25. Saturday, Ian McEwan
26. Push, Sapphire

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter- Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac

I'm treating the above as one book, since it is a continuing saga of episodes. These have now become my all-time favorite book(s).

2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
6. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman




The Rest - In No Order

The Fox Woman & Other Stories - A. Merritt
The Hounds of Tindalos - Frank Belknap Long
The Thief of Broken Toys - Tim Lebbon
Chasing the Dragon - Nicholas Kaufmann
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Light in August by William Faulkner
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Dead by James Joyce
8. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
9. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
10. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James


11. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
12. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
13. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
14. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
15. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
16. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
17. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
18. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
19. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
20. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
21. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
22. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
2. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
3. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
4. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
5. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
6. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
7. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
8. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5
9. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
10. The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith- 7


11. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
12. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
13. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[Mysterious Dude]

I finally have a list I'm not ashamed of. Some of you guys read too fast.

1. Dream Story (Schnitzler)
2. Notes from Underground (Dostoyevsky)
3. Hunger (Hamsun)
4. Moravagine (Cendrars)
5. The Bell Jar (Plath)
6. L'Enfant (Vallès)
7. The Eden Hunter (Horack)
8. Journey to the End of the Night (Céline)
9. Beneath the Lion's Gaze (Mengiste)
10. Tropic of Cancer (Miller)

[Hugh_Grant]

My dry eyes have improved somewhat, so I've been reading again.

1. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
2. Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
3. Harare North, Brian Chikwava
4. The Line, Olga Grushin
5. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, Matthew Inman
6. The Lost City of Z, David Grann
7. The Last Days of Dead Celebrities, Mitchell Fink

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
6. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman


The Rest - In No Order

All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories

1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley

[Duncan]

Thinking this is where I'll end up at mid-year:

1. Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
2. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
3. The War of the End of the World, Mario Vargas Llosa
4. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman
5. The Rebel, Albert Camus
6. A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul
7. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
8. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
9. Pantagruel, Rabelais
10. A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter

Others in order of preference, more or less:
If on a winter's night a traveler, Italo Calvino
The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes
1984, George Orwell
Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger
The Fall, Albert Camus
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Angela Carter
The Pale King, David Foster Wallace
True History of the Kelly Gang, Peter Carey
Foe, JM Coetzee
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
Meditations, Marcus Aurelius
Old Goriot, Honore de Balzac
The Ghost Sonata, August Strindberg
Love and Summer, William Trevor
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Stories, Anton Chekhov
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
6. Tinkers - Paul Harding
7. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
8. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
9. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
10. The Lost City of Z - David Grann

The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan

[Kurosawa Fan]

Ouch. Should I hold off on purchasing? Or is this a case of tough competition?

[D_Davis]

Ouch. Should I hold off on purchasing? Or is this a case of tough competition?

I've heard nothing but amazing things about it. I'll definitely be buying it next month.

[Benny Profane]

Ouch. Should I hold off on purchasing? Or is this a case of tough competition?

The latter. It's a very good book. Not as compelling as Devil, but more historically interesting and relevant.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Cool, thanks.

[ledfloyd]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West

three of my all time favorites here. perhaps i should check out the other two.

[Benny Profane]

three of my all time favorites here. perhaps i should check out the other two.

You should. I have exceptional taste.

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
6. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman


The Rest - In No Order

All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)

1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories

1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley

[Derek]

1) Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion) 9.0
2) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
3) Hopscotch (Julio Cortozar) 8.5
4) The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) 8.5
5) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
6) Pan (Knut Hamsun) 8.0
7) The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) 8.0
8) Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Gilles Deleuze) 8.0
9) Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum) 7.0
10) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0

11) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5
12) Raising Kane (Pauline Kael) 3.0

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. Light Years (James Salter, 1975)
5. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
6. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971)
7. The Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes, 2002)
8. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)

[Hugh_Grant]

1. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
2. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
3. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
4. Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
5. Harare North, Brian Chikwava
6. The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey
7. The Line, Olga Grushin
8. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, Matthew Inman
9. The Lost City of Z, David Grann
10. The Last Days of Dead Celebrities, Mitchell Fink

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac (Tie)
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
6. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
7. Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman


The Rest - In No Order

The Right Hand of Doom & Other Tales of Solomon Kane - Robert E. Howard
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)
1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories
1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley
4. The Red Death of Mars - Robert Moore Williams

[dreamdead]

1. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
2. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
3. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
4, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
6. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
7. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
8. 1919, John Dos Passos
9. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
10. Erasure, Percival Everett

11. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
12. Under the Dome, Stephen King
13. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
14. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
15. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
16. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
19. The Zero, Jess Walter
20. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
21. Terrorist, John Updike
22. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
23. World and Town, Gish Jen
24. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
25. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
26. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
27. Saturday, Ian McEwan
28. Push, Sapphire

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac (Tie)
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
6. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
7. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman


The Rest - In No Order

Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
The Right Hand of Doom & Other Tales of Solomon Kane - Robert E. Howard
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)
1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories
1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley
4. The Red Death of Mars - Robert Moore Williams

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)

[dreamdead]

1. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
2. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
3. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
4, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
6. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
7. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
8. 1919, John Dos Passos
9. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
10. Erasure, Percival Everett

11. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
12. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
13. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
14. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
15. Under the Dome, Stephen King
16. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
19. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
20. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
21. The Zero, Jess Walter
22. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
23. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
24. Terrorist, John Updike
25. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
26. World and Town, Gish Jen
27. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
28. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
29. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
30. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
31. Saturday, Ian McEwan
32. Push, Sapphire

[Derek]

1) Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion) 9.0
2) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
3) Hopscotch (Julio Cortozar) 8.5
4) The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) 8.5
5) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
6) Pan (Knut Hamsun) 8.0
7) The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) 8.0
8) Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Gilles Deleuze) 8.0
9) A Passage to India (E.M. Forster) 7.5
10) Down and Out in Paris and London (George Orwell) 7.0

11) Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum) 7.0
12) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0
13) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5
14) Raising Kane (Pauline Kael) 3.0

[Melville]

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Thoughts on this? I'm not a fan, but still kind of surprised by its low placement.


Haven't been reading much this year...

1. The Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege - 8.5
2. Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty - 8
3. The Petty Demon, Sologub - 8
4. The Devils, Dostoevsky - 7.5
5. Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway [short story] - 7
6. Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre [essay] - 6.5
7. The Lottery, Shirley Jackson [short story] - 6.5
8. A Rose for Emily, Faulkner [short story] - 6
9. Endgame, Beckett [play] - 6
10. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene - 6
11. Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre - 5.5
12. Ethics, Spinoza - 5
13. Nightwood, Djuna Barnes - 4
14. A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett - 3
15. The Stars My Destination, Bester - 1
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - 1

[Marley]

15. The Stars My Destination, Bester - 1
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - 1

Harsh. :eek:

[Melville]

Harsh. :eek:
I didn't think so. My thoughts on Harry Potter are here (http://match-cut.org/showthread.php?p=317147#post31 7147).

[D_Davis]

I don't think Marley knows of the rule - If I love it, Melville will loath it. See The Stars My Destination as an example. I, along with many, many other SF readers consider it the greatest SF novel ever written, and Melville apparently thinks it is among the worst.

:D

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Light in August by William Faulkner
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Dead by James Joyce
8. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
9. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
10. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James


11. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
12. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
13. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
14. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
15. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
16. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
17. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
18. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
19. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
20. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
21. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
22. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
23. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
7. Tinkers - Paul Harding
8. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
9. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
10. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy


The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Kurosawa Fan]

Hell yeah. Glad you liked it so much. My esteem for the novel has only grown with time.

[Marley]

I don't think Marley knows of the rule - If I love it, Melville will loath it. See The Stars My Destination as an example. I, along with many, many other SF readers consider it the greatest SF novel ever written, and Melville apparently thinks it is among the worst.

:D

Duly noted. I'm with you that Stars My Destination is a landmark SF novel as well. Silly Melville. :crazy::lol:

[Duncan]

Thoughts on this? I'm not a fan, but still kind of surprised by its low placement. There was something about it that really bothered me at the time, but, honestly, I can't remember what that was just now. Maybe it was that, unlike some books that use extremes to illustrate a complex idea, this one felt a little like an adolescent polemic. I do remember thinking that the ending (or not quite ending) where two of them go to Iceland or something was totally absurd. Love his essays on mescalin use though.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
2. Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
3. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
4. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
5. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
6. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
7. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
8. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
9. The Walking Dead: Vol. 14 by Robert Kirkman- 7.5
10. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5

11. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
12. The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith- 7
13. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
14. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
15. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac (Tie)
2. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
3. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
4. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
5. The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
6. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
7. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
8. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
10. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman


The Rest - In No Order

The Moon Pool - A. Merritt
Lilith: A Romance - George MacDonald
The Fox Woman & Other Stories - A. Merritt
Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
The Right Hand of Doom & Other Tales of Solomon Kane - Robert E. Howard
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)
1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories
1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley
4. The First Year of My Life - Muriel Spark
5. The Red Death of Mars - Robert Moore Williams

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac (Tie)
2. The Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney
3. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
4. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
5. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
6. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
7. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
8. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale
9. The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
10. Never Knew Another - JM McDermott



The Rest - In No Order

The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
The Moon Pool - A. Merritt
Lilith: A Romance - George MacDonald
The Fox Woman & Other Stories - A. Merritt
Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
The Right Hand of Doom & Other Tales of Solomon Kane - Robert E. Howard
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)
1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories
1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley
4. The First Year of My Life - Muriel Spark
5. The Red Death of Mars - Robert Moore Williams

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
3. Light in August by William Faulkner
4. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
5. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. The Dead by James Joyce
8. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
9. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
10. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James


11. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
12. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
13. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
14. Mrs. Warren's Profession by Bernard Shaw
15. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
16. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
17. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
18. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
19. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
20. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
21. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
22. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
23. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
24. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Derek]

1) Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion) 9.0
2) Hunger (Knut Hamsun) 9.0
3) Hopscotch (Julio Cortozar) 8.5
4) The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner) 8.5
5) Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 8.5
6) The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood) 8.0
7) Pan (Knut Hamsun) 8.0
8) The Master and Margarita (Mikhail Bulgakov) 8.0
9) Death in Venice (Thomas Mann) 7.5
10) Cinema 1: The Movement Image (Gilles Deleuze) 7.5

11) A Passage to India (E.M. Forster) 7.5
12) Down and Out in Paris and London (George Orwell) 7.0
13) Discovering Orson Welles (Jonathan Rosenbaum) 7.0
14) Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence) 7.0
15) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 5.5
16) Raising Kane (Pauline Kael) 3.0

[Benny Profane]

Guess I should read this Hopscotch thinger.

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
7. Tinkers - Paul Harding
8. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
9. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
10. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy


The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
10. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West


Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Raiders]

I've reached ten books!

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
4. Light Years (James Salter, 1975)
5. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
6. A Game of Thrones (George Martin, 1996)
7. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971)
8. The Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes, 2002)
9. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
10. Road Dogs (Elmore Leonard, 2009)

Leonard's follow-up to Out of Sight is total weak-sauce. It has his strengths and charms (namely dialogue), but as a work of narrative fiction, it is remarkably boring. I haven't read Riding the Rap yet, but the Dawn character was really a low point in this book. Maybe it's that she just can't live up to Karen Sisco.

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Master Switch - Tim Wu
10. Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West


Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Hugh_Grant]

1. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
2. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid
3. The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
4. Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee
5. Lost White Tribes : The End of Privilege and the Last Colonials in Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Brazil, Haiti, Namibia, and Guadeloupe, Riccardo Orizio
6. Harare North, Brian Chikwava
7. The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, Monique Roffey
8. The Line, Olga Grushin
9. 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, Matthew Inman
10. The Lost City of Z, David Grann

11. Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
12. The Last Days of Dead Celebrities, Mitchell Fink

[dreamdead]

1. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
2. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
3. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
4, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
6. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
7. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
8. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
9. Erasure, Percival Everett
10. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss


11. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
12. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
13. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
14. 1919, John Dos Passos
15. Under the Dome, Stephen King
16. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
19. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
20. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
21. The Zero, Jess Walter
22. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
23. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
24. Terrorist, John Updike
25. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
26. World and Town, Gish Jen
27. A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
28. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
29. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
30. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
31. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
32. Saturday, Ian McEwan
33. Push, Sapphire

[D_Davis]

1. Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter - Edward M. Erdelac
1. Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name - Edward M. Erdelac (Tie)
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. The Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin
4. The Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney
5. The Great Lover - Michael Cisco
6. The Comforters, Muriel Spark
7. Crazy - William Peter Blatty
8. Who Fears the Devil? - Manly Wade Wellman
9. Version 43 - Philip Palmer
10. Vanilla Ride - Joe R. Lansdale




The Rest - In No Order

The Lost and the Lurking - Manly Wade Wellman
Never Knew Another - JM McDermott
The Gods of Pegana - Lord Dunsany
The Moon Pool - A. Merritt
Lilith: A Romance - George MacDonald
The Fox Woman & Other Stories - A. Merritt
Strangers on the Heights - Manly Wade Wellman
The Right Hand of Doom & Other Tales of Solomon Kane - Robert E. Howard
All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Kingdom Come - J.G. Ballard
New Noir - John Shirley
The Solar Invasion - Manly Wade Wellman
The Artificial Kid - Bruce Sterling
Hyenas - Joe R. Lansdale
The Narrator - Michael Cisco
Mathematicians in Love - Rudy Rucker
Tinkers - Paul Harding
Hello America - J.G. Ballard
The Man Who Never Missed - Steve Perry
Red Claw - Philip Palmer
Ubik: the Screenplay - Philip K. Dick
Dread Island - Joe R. Lansdale
Johnny Halloween - Norman Partridge
Dimitir - William Peter Blatty
Playing for Thrills - Wang Shuo
Towing Jehovah - James Morrow
Zoo - Otsuichi
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1,000,000. Armor - John Steakly

Re-Reads (don't know how many I'll have...)
1. Places Where I've Done Time - William Saroyan
2. At the Mountains of Madness - H.P. Lovecraft
3. Elric of Melnibone - Michael Moorcock

Top 10 Short Stories
1. The People of the Pit - A. Merritt
2. The Space-Eaters - Frank Belknap Long
3. Equilibrium - John Shirley
4. The First Year of My Life - Muriel Spark
5. The Red Death of Mars - Robert Moore Williams

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)

[dreamdead]

Slowed down a lot since the beginning of the year... :|

1. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
2. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
3. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
4, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
5. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
6. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
7. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
8. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
9. Erasure, Percival Everett
10. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

11. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
12. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
13. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
14. 1919, John Dos Passos
15. Under the Dome, Stephen King
16. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
19. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
20. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
21. The Zero, Jess Walter
22. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson
23. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
24. Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
25. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
26. Terrorist, John Updike
27. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
28. World and Town, Gish Jen
29. A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
30. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
31. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
32. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
33. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
34. Saturday, Ian McEwan
35. Push, Sapphire

[Derek]

Slowed down a lot since the beginning of the year... :|

You probably won't even get to 50 books this year. Hang your head in shame!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (ed. Al Sarrantonio et al)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever
10. The Master Switch - Tim Wu


Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Derek]

9. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever

I've heard he wrote some interesting letters as well.

http://media.avclub.com/images/articles/article/49397/cheever_jpg_627x325_crop_upsca le_q85.jpg :)

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm just going to include everything of note from my classes this year, minus the short poetry.

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Light in August by William Faulkner
5. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
6. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
7. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
10. The Dead by James Joyce


11. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
12. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
13. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
14. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
15. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
16. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
17. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
18. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
19. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
20. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
21. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard Burton
22. Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
23. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
24. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown
25. The Faerie Queene (Book One) by Edmund Spencer
26. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
27. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
28. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
29. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
30. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
31. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
32. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
33. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
34. Beowulf by Unknown
35. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
36. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
37. Everyman by Unknown
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
2. A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson- 9
3. Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
4. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
5. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
6. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
7. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
8. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
9. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
10. The Walking Dead: Vol. 14 by Robert Kirkman- 7.5

11. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5
12. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
13. The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith- 7
14. A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos- 6.5
15. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
16. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
17. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Light in August by William Faulkner
5. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
6. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
7. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
8. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
9. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
10. The Dead by James Joyce


11. Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger
12. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
13. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
14. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
15. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
16. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
17. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
18. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
19. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
20. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
21. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
22. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard Burton
23. Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
24. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
25. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown
26. The Faerie Queene (Book One) by Edmund Spencer
27. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
28. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
29. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
30. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
31. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
32. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
33. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
34. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
35. Beowulf by Unknown
36. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
37. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
38. Everyman by Unknown
39. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[Mysterious Dude]

Six Characters is a great play. Good choice.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Six Characters is a great play. Good choice.

Yeah, that one completely blew me away. I was the only person in a class of 25 that loved it. Almost every other student complained about it every chance they got during the three classes in which we discussed it. That was dumbfounding.

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever
10. The Master Switch - Tim Wu


The Master Switch - Tim Wu
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[dreamdead]

This top 10 is pretty tight.

1. Underworld, Don DeLillo
2. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
3. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
4. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
5, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
7. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
8. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
9. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
10. Erasure, Percival Everett

11. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
12. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
13. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
14. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
15. 1919, John Dos Passos
16. Under the Dome, Stephen King
17. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
18. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
19. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
20. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
21. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
22. The Zero, Jess Walter
23. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson
24. Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
25. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
26. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
27. Terrorist, John Updike
28. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
29. World and Town, Gish Jen
30. The Professor's House, Willa Cather
31. A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
32. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
33. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
34. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
35. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
36. Saturday, Ian McEwan
37. Push, Sapphire

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
2. A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson- 9
3. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark- 9
4. Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
5. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
6. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
7. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
8. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
9. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson- 8
10. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8

11. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
12. The Walking Dead: Vol. 14 by Robert Kirkman- 7.5
13. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5
14. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
15. The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith- 7
16. A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos- 6.5
17. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
18. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
19. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

Kicking ass.

[kuehnepips]

Finally: Someone else here likes Stark's Parker series!

*passes bottle*

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Light in August by William Faulkner
5. The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
6. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
7. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
8. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill


11. The Dead by James Joyce
12. Volpone by Ben Jonson
13. Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger
14. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
15. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
16. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
17. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
18. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
19. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
20. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
21. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
22. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
23. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
24. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard Burton
25. Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
26. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
27. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
28. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown
29. The Faerie Queene (Book One) by Edmund Spencer
30. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
31. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
32. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
33. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
34. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
35. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
36. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
37. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
38. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
39. Beowulf by Unknown
40. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
41. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
42. Everyman by Unknown
43. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[lovejuice]

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello


Love it! Used to be an extra in this actually.

[ContinentalOp]

Finally: Someone else here likes Stark's Parker series!

*passes bottle*

I found the second book fascinating. I've heard it's mainly a bridge between the first and third book but I actually liked it more than the first. The stripped down writing style goes perfectly with the amoral yet principled Parker. This time around, the focus is on the professional Parker, not the vengeful, relatively emotional one of the first novel. That was the difference for me. I also loved the structure of the whole thing. What seems like the focus of the novel, the heist, becomes only an entry point. The meat, the really interesting stuff, comes later. Can't wait for the Outfit and I guess I'll have around 20 more to read after that!

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever
10. Born to Run - Christopher McDougall


The Master Switch - Tim Wu
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009)
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000)
3. Light in August (William Faulkner, 1932)
4. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960)
5. Light Years (James Salter, 1975)
6. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962)
7. A Game of Thrones (George Martin, 1996)
8. A Clash of Kings (George Martin, 1998)
9. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971)
10. The Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes, 2002)

11. The Winter's Tale (William Shakespeare, 1623)
12. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010)
13. Road Dogs (Elmore Leonard, 2009)

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Junky - William Burroughs
5. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
6. Warlock - Oakley Hall
7. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
8. Tinkers - Paul Harding
9. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever
10. Born to Run - Christopher McDougall


The Master Switch - Tim Wu
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[dreamdead]

1. Underworld, Don DeLillo
2. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
3. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
4. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
5, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
7. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
8. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
9. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

11. Erasure, Percival Everett
12. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
13. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
14. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
15. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
16. 1919, John Dos Passos
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
19. Under the Dome, Stephen King
20. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
21. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
22. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
23. The Zero, Jess Walter
24. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson
25. Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
26. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
27. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
28. Terrorist, John Updike
29. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
30. World and Town, Gish Jen
31. The Professor's House, Willa Cather
32. A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
35. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
36. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
37. Saturday, Ian McEwan
38. Push, Sapphire

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
Paradise Lost (John Milton)
The Bhagavad-Gita (tr. Eknath Easwaren)
The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (ed. Al Sarrantonio et al)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)
Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)


The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)
The Walking Dead, Volumes 12-14 (Robert Kirkman)

[D_Davis]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
2. A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson- 9
3. Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
4. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
5. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
6. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
7. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
8. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
9. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
10. The Walking Dead: Vol. 14 by Robert Kirkman- 7.5



That's a kick-ass top ten.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Light in August by William Faulkner
5. The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
6. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
7. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
8. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. Angels in America by Tony Kushner


11. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
12. The Dead by James Joyce
13. Volpone by Ben Jonson
14. Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger
15. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
16. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
17. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
18. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
19. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
20. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
21. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
22. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
23. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
24. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
25. A Number by Caryl Churchill
26. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard Burton
27. Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
28. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
29. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
30. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown
31. The Faerie Queene (Book One) by Edmund Spencer
32. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
33. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
34. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
35. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
36. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
37. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
38. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
39. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
40. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
41. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
42. Beowulf by Unknown
43. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
44. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
45. Everyman by Unknown
46. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

That completes my reading for school. Now on to reading for pleasure!

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
5. Junky - William Burroughs
6. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
7. Warlock - Oakley Hall
8. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
9. Tinkers - Paul Harding
10. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever


Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
The Master Switch - Tim Wu
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Two-Bear Mambo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9.5
2. Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale- 9.5
3. A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson- 9
4. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark- 9
5. Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale- 9
6. Nick's Trip by George P. Pelecanos- 8.5
7. The Hunter by Richard Stark- 8
8. Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos- 8
9. Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos- 8
10. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson- 8


11. The Glass Cell by Patricia Highsmith- 8
12. Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
13. The Outfit by Richard Stark- 7.5
14. The Walking Dead: Vol. 14 by Robert Kirkman- 7.5
15. The Double Life is Twice as Good by Jonathan Ames- 7.5
16. A Time of Predators by Joe Gores- 7
17. The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder by Patricia Highsmith- 7
18. A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos- 6.5
19. Chew: Taster's Choice by John Layman- 6.5
20. King's Ransom by Ed McBain- 6.5
21. You Have Killed Me by Jamie S. Rich- 4.5

[ContinentalOp]

That's a kick-ass top ten.

Thanks, man. Kind of addicted to crime novels this year. Although last year was about the same, just more Highsmith love, while this year has been all about Lansdale and his two awesome buddies. Thanks again for pushing me toward his work. His stuff has really made my reading year.

[dreamdead]

1. Underworld, Don DeLillo
2. The Big Money, John Dos Passos
3. Netherland, Joseph O'Neill
4. Black Rain, Masuji Ibuse
5, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
7. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
8. The Cookbook Collector, Allegra Goodman
9. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

11. Erasure, Percival Everett
12. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
13. Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie
14. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
15. City of God, E.L. Doctorow
16. 1919, John Dos Passos
17. H: A Hiroshima Novel, Makoto Oda
18. A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
19. Meridian, Alice Walker
20. The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories, Don DeLillo
21. Under the Dome, Stephen King
22. Intuition, Allegra Goodman
23. The Emperor's Children, Claire Messud
24. Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Schwartz
25. The Zero, Jess Walter
26. Train Dreams, Denis Johnson
27. Behold the Man, Michael Moorcock
28. Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
29. Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
30. Terrorist, John Updike
31. Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick
32. World and Town, Gish Jen
33. The Professor's House, Willa Cather
34. A Day at the Beach, Helen Schulman
35. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
36. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
37. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
38. The Keep, Jennifer Egan
39. Saturday, Ian McEwan
40. Push, Sapphire

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
Paradise Lost (John Milton)
The Bhagavad-Gita (tr. Eknath Easwaren)
The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
Inferno (Dante [tr. Longfellow])
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (ed. Al Sarrantonio et al)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)

Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)
The Walking Dead, Volumes 12-14 (Robert Kirkman)

[D_Davis]

Thanks, man. Kind of addicted to crime novels this year. Although last year was about the same, just more Highsmith love, while this year has been all about Lansdale and his two awesome buddies. Thanks again for pushing me toward his work. His stuff has really made my reading year.

Sure thing! The year I discovered Lansdale was one of my favorite years of reading, ever.

I need to read more Pelecanos and Thompson. I've only read one of each.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
2. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
3. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
4. Light in August by William Faulkner
5. The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
6. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
7. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
8. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
9. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
10. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger


11. Angels in America by Tony Kushner
12. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
13. The Dead by James Joyce
14. Volpone by Ben Jonson
15. Incorruptible by Michael Hollinger
16. Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen
17. The Unknown American Revolution by Gary B. Nash
18. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
19. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
20. Trifles by Susan Glaspell
21. Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
22. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
23. The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
24. The Library Window by Margaret Oliphant
25. A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
26. A Number by Caryl Churchill
27. Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah by Richard Burton
28. Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw
29. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
30. Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
31. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown
32. The Faerie Queene (Book One) by Edmund Spencer
33. Live From New York by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller
34. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
35. The Crucible by Arthur Miller
36. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
37. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
38. A Respectable Army by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender
39. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
40. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
41. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau
42. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
43. Beowulf by Unknown
44. The American Revolution: A History by Gordon Wood
45. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
46. Everyman by Unknown
47. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

[ContinentalOp]

Sure thing! The year I discovered Lansdale was one of my favorite years of reading, ever.

I need to read more Pelecanos and Thompson. I've only read one of each.

I've found the stuff from Thompson a bit more consistent and impressive stylistically, yet all three (Grifters, Killer Inside Me and AHOAW) have irked me enough that I don't want to read another one for a good while. Pelecanos does some great character work and can paint a vivid picture of real locations but can get a little repetitive with his plots to the point of annoyance. My favorites from each author are A Hell of a Woman and Nick's Trip respectively.

[D_Davis]

Cool, thanks for the info.

I also know that the Wire episodes that Pelecanos did were awesome. I think he was always responsible for the episodes in which someone died.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
Paradise Lost (John Milton)
The Bhagavad-Gita (tr. Eknath Easwaren)
The King in Yellow (Robert Chambers)
The Maker of Gargoyles and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
Inferno (Dante [tr. Longfellow])
The Colorado Kid (Stephen King)
Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories (ed. Al Sarrantonio et al)
A Catalogue of Angels (Vanita Hampton Wright) (nf)

Sandman, Vol 1 (Neil Gaiman)
Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan)
The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins) (nf)
Islam: Faith and History (Mahmoud M. Ayoub) (nf)
Witchcraft: A Secret History (Michael Streeter) (nf)
The Walking Dead, Volumes 12-14 (Robert Kirkman)

[Benny Profane]

1. Light Years - James Salter
2. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
3. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
4. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
5. Junky - William Burroughs
6. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
7. Warlock - Oakley Hall
8. The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
9. Tinkers - Paul Harding
10. The Stories of John Cheever - John Cheever


Born to Run - Christopher McDougall
The Master Switch - Tim Wu
Miss Lonelyhearts - Nathanael West
The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy - Jane Leavy
The Lost City of Z - David Grann
The Blithedale Romance - Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
Fifth Business - Robertson Davies
The Ask - Sam Lipsyte
Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach
The Lover's Dictionary - David Levithan
Roger's Version - John Updike


That's probably all for me this year. I liked everything except the bottom three. Just a great year of reading from start to finish. My top 10 is rock solid.

[Melville]

Final list for the year. Poor showing.

The Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege - 8.5
Weathercraft, Jim Woodring [graphic novel] - 8.5
Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty - 8
The Petty Demon, Sologub - 8
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume - 7.5
The Devils, Dostoevsky - 7.5
Nostromo, Conrad - 7
Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway [short story] - 7
Quadraturin, Krzhizhanovsky [short story] - 7
Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre [essay] - 6.5
The Lottery, Shirley Jackson [short story] - 6.5
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Abridged), Locke - 6
A Rose for Emily, Faulkner [short story] - 6
Endgame, Beckett [play] - 6
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene - 6
Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre - 5.5
Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry - 5.5
Ethics, Spinoza - 5
Oblomov, Goncharov - 4.5
Walden, Thoreau - 4.5
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes - 4
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley - 3
A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett - 3
The Stars My Destination, Bester - 1
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling - 1

[Raiders]

1. Tinkers (Paul Harding, 2009) 10.0
2. The Changeling (Kenzaburo Oe, 2000) 9.5
3. Light in August (William Faulkner, 1932) 9.5
4. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960) 9.0
5. Rabbit is Rich (John Updike, 1981) 8.5
6. Light Years (James Salter, 1975) 7.5
7. The Man in the High Castle (Philip K. Dick, 1962) 7.5
8. A Game of Thrones (George Martin, 1996) 7.0
9. A Clash of Kings (George Martin, 1998) 7.0
10. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Michael Chabon, 1988) 6.5

---------------------------

11. Rabbit Redux (John Updike, 1971) 6.5
12. The Lecturer's Tale (James Hynes, 2002) 6.0
13. The Winter's Tale (William Shakespeare, 1623) 6.0
14. Freedom (Jonathan Franzen, 2010) 5.5
15. Rain Dogs (Elmore Leonard, 2009) 3.0

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Notes from Underground (1864, Dostoyevsky)
2. Hunger (1890, Hamsun)
3. Dream Story (1926, Schnitzler)
4. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953, Baldwin)
5. Moravagine (1926, Cendrars)
6. The Handmaid's Tale (1985, Atwood)
7. Zombie (1995, Oates)
8. L'Enfant (1879, Vallès)
9. The Bell Jar (1963, Plath)
10. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979, Adams)

11. Bridge to Terabithia (1977, Paterson)
12. 334 (1972, Disch)
13. War and Peace (1869, Tolstoy)
14. Fight Club (1996, Palahniuk)
15. The Eden Hunter (2010, Horack)
16. Journey to the End of the Night (1932, Céline)
17. Beneath the Lion's Gaze (2010, Mengiste)
18. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971, O'Brien)
19. Tropic of Cancer (1934, Miller)
20. Absalom, Absalom! (1936, Faulkner)

Most of them were good. I feel kinda bad putting Absalom at the bottom, because it's not "bad," but I didn't enjoy reading it at all.

I probably would've read more books if I hadn't read War and Peace. And intend to read Les Miserables in 2012.