Top 10 Books First Read During 2012

[Kurosawa Fan]

Thought I might as well get this started, since I just finished my first one.


1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins


Read it in two days, so it was certainly doing something right, but it sure took it easy on Katniss throughout the entire Games, and the book definitely suffered from failing to develop a decent villain. I'll probably read the other two, but will wait until summer. I'm not feeling compelled to squeeze them all in before my semester begins.

[Mara]

It's okay. She has real pacing problems, but there's something there.

I think that's one reason I'm kind of excited about the film-- it seems like, with the right treatment, it could correct the problems of the book and be a slick little adventure.

[Kurosawa Fan]

It's okay. She has real pacing problems, but there's something there.

I think that's one reason I'm kind of excited about the film-- it seems like, with the right treatment, it could correct the problems of the book and be a slick little adventure.

Yeah, it sure was convenient that

when Katniss finds Peeta and has to nurse him back to health, no one looks for them and nothing happens. Also, she's spared killing anyone aside from the the boy who kills Rue, and the mercy-killing of Cato. She's essentially scaled down to a passive survivalist for the great majority of the competition.

[lovejuice]

My first reading of the year is Manuel Puig's "Heartbreak Tango." Puig is among my favorite authors but this book is quite a garbage. :sad:

[Melville]

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) [comic] - 9.5
The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Yukio Mishima, 1963) - 8.5
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [reread] - 8
The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) - 7.5
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Struwwelpeter: Fearful Stories & Vile Pictures to Instruct Good Little Folks (Heinrich Hoffmann, 1845) [picture book] - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24)

overall - 7
The Metamorphosis [reread] - 10

Tales of Love and Loss (Hamsun, 1895-1905) - 7
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, 1953) [short story] - 7
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)

Apology [reread] - 7.5
Crito [reread] - 7.5
Euthyphro [reread] - 7
Gorgias - 5

Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) [comic] - 7
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)

Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5

Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
Building Stories (Chris Ware, 2012) [comic] - 6.5
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) [comic] - 6
The Essential Tales of Chekhov (Chekhov, 1886-1899) - 6
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor, 1952) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49)

overall - 5
The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia, The Black Cat, some others - great

The Corrections (Franzen, 2001) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) - 4
Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle, c. 340BC) - 4
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

[Duncan]

1. Middlemarch, George Eliot
2. The Histories: Book 1, Herodotus
3. The Castle, Franz Kafka
4. Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, J.D. Salinger
5. Antwerp, Roberto Bolano
6. Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
7. Summertime, J.M. Coetzee
8. Blow-Up and Other Stories, Julio Cortazar
9. The Soft Machine, William S. Burroughs

[ContinentalOp]

Here we go again. Gonna shoot for 30 books this year.

1. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon- 5

[dreamdead]

1. Pym, Mat Johnson

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

[Lucky]

Shooting for a book a month.

1. Light Years - James Salter

[D_Davis]

1. Imajica, by Clive Barker

Very good, but I doubt it will end up on my top 10 list at the end of the year. Man, it took me a long time to get through the ~1,000 pages as well.

[kuehnepips]

1. Stephen L. Carter: The Emperor of Ocean Park
2. James Sallis: The Killer Is Dying
3. Kobr/Klüpfel: Rauhnacht

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter



Off to a great start.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

1. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolano)
2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (J.D. Salinger)
3. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
4. Other Electricities (Ander Monson)
5. 1Q84 (Haruki Murukami)
6. Tinkers (Paul Harding)

52 books, here I come!

[Benny Profane]

1. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolano)
2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (J.D. Salinger)
3. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
4. Other Electricities (Ander Monson)
5. 1Q84 (Haruki Murukami)
6. Tinkers (Paul Harding)

52 books, here I come!


Would like to know how this is possible in 18 days.

17.5 days, to be exact.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Would like to know how this is possible in 18 days.

17.5 days, to be exact.

In short, unemployment. :|

To be fair I was midway through Blood Meridian at the beginning of the year and finished it on the second or so, and three of the other books (the Salinger, Monson, Harding) are under 200 pages each and relatively quick reads.

Pace will definitely be slowing now that I'm planning to tackle some longer books and hopefully working will afford me less time to be reading.

[dreamdead]

1. Pym, Mat Johnson
2. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. Imajica, by Clive Barker

[Chac Mool]

1. Rope Burns (F.X. Toole)
2. Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
3. Krakatoa (Simon Winchester)

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
2. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)

[Dukefrukem]

1. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Great book.

I too also finished Hunger Games. I didn't find it particularly compelling. A lot of hype, reminded me of the hype surrounding Da Vinci Code, which was also underwelming. If they decide to make a trilogy out of the movies, I’ll move to the other two books.

I'm gonna read King's new Time Travel book next.

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. Imajica, by Clive Barker

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

Well, now I'm spoiled for the rest of the year. F&Z held up as well as I could have hoped and the Fowles is one of the best books I've ever read, possibly the best ever set in the Victorian era. Absolutely remarkable.

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
4. Imajica, by Clive Barker

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
2. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

Never thought I'd rank that below The Hunger Games. It deserves that spot. That's one of the more unpleasant things I've read in awhile. Misogynistic and ugly. Very unfortunate way to start the semester.

[Mara]

2. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

Too bad, because there are a few hilarious scenes and characters. But the underlying messages and hateful ending are really disturbing.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Too bad, because there are a few hilarious scenes and characters. But the underlying messages and hateful ending are really disturbing.

Yeah, Grumio was pretty great. He consistently made me laugh.

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
3. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Chac Mool]

1. Rope Burns (F.X. Toole)
2. Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
3. Krakatoa (Simon Winchester)

Updated with Asimov's lean but compelling sci-fi epic.

[dreamdead]

1. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
2. Pym, Mat Johnson
3. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
4. Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
4. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
5. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
6. Imajica, by Clive Barker

[kuehnepips]

1. Joseph Roth: Radetzkymarsch
2. Eugen Ruge: In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts
3. Stephen L. Carter: The Emperor of Ocean Park
4. James Sallis: The Killer Is Dying
5. Kobr/Klüpfel: Rauhnacht
6. Philipp Kerr: A Five Year Plan
7. S.J. Watson: Before I Go To Sleep

[Winston*]

Titus Groan, Peake (re-read)
Gulliver's Travels, Swift
Iron Council, Mieville
'Salems lot, King
City of Saints and Madmen, Vandermeer
Elric of Melnibone, Moorcock


Fantasy!

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Richard III by Shakespeare
2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
3. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

That's better, Shakespeare. Not perfect, but better.

[Winston*]

That's better, Shakespeare. Not perfect, but better.

I'm sure he's relieved.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm sure he's relieved.

As he should be. I'll be keeping him abreast of my opinions all semester.

[Winston*]

As he should be. I'll be keeping him abreast of my opinions all semester.

Good tip. In all of your work this semester, remember to put "Shakespeare" in quotation marks. Your lecturer will appreciate it.

[D_Davis]

Titus Groan, Peake (re-read)
Gulliver's Travels, Swift
Iron Council, Mieville
'Salems lot, King
City of Saints and Madmen, Vandermeer
Elric of Melnibone, Moorcock
Fantasy!

Wow, look at you!

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
3. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
4. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Melville]

1. The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
2. Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
3. A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
4. Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (translator Paul Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
5. Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
6. (32 of the) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5

The Silent Cry was big, intricate, and strange. The prose and dialogue read like the monotone speech of a robot obsessed with the grotesque, with both the narration and the characters endlessly explaining the meaning of every minute occurrence, all in the same morbid, unnaturally technical tone. Such an explicit style is sometimes frustrating, but it's also compelling in its idiosyncrasy, and it suits the state of the narrator, who is variously detached from and repulsed and vaguely baffled by existence. The characters in general feel themselves flung into existence, into themselves and what they are culpable for, and they grapple with it. Japan's post-war social decay provides an undertone to this, but it's placed within a broad depiction of how the characters' take personal meaning from their place in a larger personal and cultural history; the way they define themselves and see the world is not just colored by, but integrally connected to the way they interpret that history, which can never truly be known, since its events are buried by time and appropriated into a web of cultural meanings. The ending, which the book so carefully builds to, is profoundly moral: it's a call to action, to risking something and going beyond oneself, and thereby achieving wholeness and meaning for oneself.

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
4. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
5. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
6. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, Manly Wade Wellman
7. Imajica, by Clive Barker
8. Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

[dreamdead]

1. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
2. Pym, Mat Johnson
3. Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah
4. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
5. Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson

[Robby P]

1. 'The Imperfectionists', Tom Rachman
2. 'Freedom', Jonathan Franzen
3. '11/22/63', Stephen King

Rachman's book is such a truly wonderful debut novel. Magnificent use of a very clever narrative device and such a brilliant mix of humor, tragedy and empathy. The ending just devastated me. I can't wait to read it again some day.

Moving on to Howard Jacobson's 'The Finkler Question' next.

[dreamdead]

1. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
2. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
3. Pym, Mat Johnson
4. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
5. Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris
6. Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah
7. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
8. Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson
9. Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

[kopello]

1. Ragtime (Doctorow)
2. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Hoffer)
3. The Revolution (Paul)
4. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
5. Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour (O'Malley)
6. The Man in the High Castle (Dick)
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe (O'Malley)
8. Ghost World (Clowes)
9. The Film Snob's Dictionary (Kamp)

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0
3) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
4) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
5) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[Benny Profane]

2) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0


The MC fresh/rotten is now at 50% on this one.

Nice.

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
4. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
5. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
6. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
7. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, Manly Wade Wellman
8. Imajica, by Clive Barker
9. Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

[Derek]

The MC fresh/rotten is now at 50% on this one.

Nice.

I can understand people disliking it. Franzen's pessimistic outlook almost borders on misanthropy, but his uncanny ability to always further plumb the neuroses and psychosis of his characters is just so damn engrossing. Mara's right that there's nothing impressive about the story in this one, but in a way, it's more an extended chamber drama, intensely focused on the relationships between the characters and the way they shape and change each others psychological make-ups. To me, it was much more interesting to see how the seemingly endless cause and effects play out in each of their minds rather than have a more detailed, cohesive story. I do think Lalitha's death was a bit convenient, almost unnecessarily cruel, but Franzen redeemed himself with a rather strong ending after that. It's no The Corrections, but not many books are...so yeah, I'm with you on the Franzen fanboy train.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

1. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolano)
2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (J.D. Salinger)
3. V. (Thomas Pynchon)
4. Beloved (Toni Morrison)
5. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
6. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Cormac McCarthy)
7. Habibi (Craig Thompson)
8. Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe)
9. Other Electricities (Ander Monson)
10. 1Q84 (Haruki Murukami)

[dreamdead]

1. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
2. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
3. Pym, Mat Johnson
4. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
5. Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris
6. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
7. Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah
8. Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
9. Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson
10. Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

[Benny Profane]

1. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolano)
2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (J.D. Salinger)
3. V. (Thomas Pynchon)
4. Beloved (Toni Morrison)
5. Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy)
6. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Cormac McCarthy)
7. Habibi (Craig Thompson)
8. Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe)
9. Other Electricities (Ander Monson)
10. 1Q84 (Haruki Murukami)



Wow, you've got 4 of my all-time faves on that list.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 9.5
2. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0
3. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
4. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon- 5

[Melville]

The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24) - 7
Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4


The Kafka collection was surprisingly mixed in quality: some of the greatest things I've read—The Metamorphosis was even better than I remembered— but also some very tedious things. The stories with a particular focus on agitation and repetition (alongside the usual absurdity) were great, and they seem obvious influences on Beckett and Bernhard. Thirty-five pages of the obsessive anxiety of a burrowing animal = literary gold.

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
4. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
5. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
6. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys
7. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, Manly Wade Wellman
8. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
9. Imajica, by Clive Barker
10. Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Hamlet by Shakespeare
2. Richard III by Shakespeare
3. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
5. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare

Good stuff.

[D_Davis]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 9.5
2. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0


I need to read both of these. I see more hardboiled fiction in my future.

[dreamdead]

1. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
2. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
3. Zone One, Colson Whitehead
4. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
5. Pym, Mat Johnson
6. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
7. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
8. Marisol, José Rivera
9. Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah
10. Radio Golf, August Wilson



In the Heart of America, Naomi Wallace
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
Cloud Tectonics, José Rivera
Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris
Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson
Each Day Dies with Sleep, José Rivera
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
3. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
4. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
5. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[D_Davis]

1. Matadora, by Steve Perry
2. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
3. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
4. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
5. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
6. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys
7. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, Manly Wade Wellman
8. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
9. Imajica, by Clive Barker
10. Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

The rest, in rating order

5-stars


4-stars


3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars


1-star

[TGM]

1. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
2. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
3. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
4. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[ContinentalOp]

I need to read both of these. I see more hardboiled fiction in my future.

The Maltese Falcon blew me away. It's the second time I've tried to read it too. It felt too much like the movie version (which I love) the first time around, so I stopped reading. A couple years later, it's one of the best books I've ever read. Spade is twice the son of a bitch he was in the movie, the writing and dialogue are crisp, the structure is expertly crafted and the point of view is fascinating. No direct psychological insight, just detailed behavior and physical descriptions.

Double Indemnity is a complex, focused and ultimately haunting read. Kind of like reading Jim Thompson except the main character is aggressively normal to a point, which I really admired.

[dreamdead]

Been gorging on plays a lot this weekend.

1. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
2. At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft
3. Zone One, Colson Whitehead
4. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
5. Pym, Mat Johnson
6. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
7. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
8. Marisol, José Rivera
9. Radio Golf, August Wilson
10. Saffron Dreams, Shaila Abdullah


In the Heart of America, Naomi Wallace
The War Boys, Naomi Wallace
Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories, Philip Roth
Cloud Tectonics, José Rivera
Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris
Fiskadoro, Denis Johnson
The Gift, Allan Havis
The American Play, Suzan-Lori Parks
Each Day Dies with Sleep, José Rivera
Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

[Irish]

The Maltese Falcon blew me away. It's the second time I've tried to read it too. It felt too much like the movie version (which I love) the first time around, so I stopped reading. A couple years later, it's one of the best books I've ever read. Spade is twice the son of a bitch he was in the movie, the writing and dialogue are crisp, the structure is expertly crafted and the point of view is fascinating. No direct psychological insight, just detailed behavior and physical descriptions.

Double Indemnity is a complex, focused and ultimately haunting read. Kind of like reading Jim Thompson except the main character is aggressively normal to a point, which I really admired.

Heh, great write ups. I like that take on Cain. Have you read Serenade?

100% agree about Falcon. The movie is great but the book is better and wow, te ending is 1,000 times more powerful.

I really felt Spade's internal struggle not to break down & give in as he kept repeating "I ain't gonna play the sucker for you."

[Hugh_Grant]

1. 'The Imperfectionists', Tom Rachman
2. 'Freedom', Jonathan Franzen
3. '11/22/63', Stephen King

Rachman's book is such a truly wonderful debut novel. Magnificent use of a very clever narrative device and such a brilliant mix of humor, tragedy and empathy. The ending just devastated me. I can't wait to read it again some day.

Moving on to Howard Jacobson's 'The Finkler Question' next.

I didn't like The Imperfectionists as much as everyone else seemed to, but I always tell me six degrees of separation story with Rachman. A high school boyfriend went to Columbia U. for grad school in journalism where he became friends with...Rachman. (I guess that's two degrees?)

The Finkler Question is on my to-read list.

[kuehnepips]

I read David Peace's - 1974 + 1977 + 1980 + 1983 in a row.

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins) A
2. Haywire (Justin R Macumber) B+
3. Battle Royale (Koushun Takami) B-

I finished my first book this year, but now that I have a Kindle fire I'll definitely be reading quite a bit more.

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
3) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0
4) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
5) Apology (Plato) 7.0
6) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
7) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0
8) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
9) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
10) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[Melville]

2) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
Thoughts? I happened to finish it this morning. I thought it was some of the shoddiest philosophy I've ever read. All its arguments are specious (which makes for many amusing moments, given that Socrates' arguments, no matter their ridiculousness, are virtually always met with by a 'certainly' or 'inevitably' from the other speakers). Its definition of justice is a non-definition, relying on reason always leading to justice. And its ideas are repulsive: art is a mere copy of a copy, worthwhile only to provide models of good behavior, and most of it should be banned in the ideal society, which is one of blind obedience, strict lack of variation, eugenics, infanticide, totalitarianism, and propaganda. The repulsiveness puts the theory of forms, which I didn't mind so much in his other dialogues, in a very negative light: by essentially elevating concepts to the status of 'true reality' and lowering everything else to the status of a copy (or phenomenal representation) of that reality, Plato denigrates actual life with all its nuance, depth, and variety, and the call for strict self-control and totalitarian government makes sense in such a context, since it must be striving for a lifeless, anti-real ideality. Nietzsche was right: the whole thing is disgustingly anti-life.

The stuff about forms, particularly the allegory of the cave, does lend some interest to the more repulsive aspects, though.



The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24) - 7
Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

[Milky Joe]

I recommend reading what Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom have to say on the subject of just how ironic Plato was being.

[Derek]

Thoughts?


I recommend reading what Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom have to say on the subject of just how ironic Plato was being.

Haven't read either of them, but I certainly felt at times that in following his definition of justice and good so thoroughly to its logical endpoints that he was clearly not always in support of the conclusions he came too. I also found it a surprisingly humorous text, even when Socrates came off as condescending and while I agree with Melville that some of the ideas are repulsive, particularly its notions of art and censorship, these seemed not to part of Socrates belief systems (he made a point of praising several forms of art that eventually, due to the restrictions already in place in the "utopian" republic being discussed, were deemed bannable) but rather part of the evil that would come from setting up such a restrictive yet philosophically sound (in some minds at least) political system.

I should also note that I'm coming at this as a relative philosophy n00b (aside from an Intro class yeeeears ago and some sprinkles of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault since) so part of the joy was engaging with a text like this and see how Socrates builds his arguments.

[Melville]

Haven't read either of them, but I certainly felt at times that in following his definition of justice and good so thoroughly to its logical endpoints that he was clearly not always in support of the conclusions he came too.
I didn't get any sense of that, or of any irony in his arguments (except when responding to others' assertions early on, or mocking Athens later on). In his earlier dialogues, he takes some idea, carries it to its 'logical' endpoint, and then shows that that endpoint isn't at all what was wanted or that the original idea was incoherent—but he explicitly says so, and the dialogue ends with a newfound uncertainty. In The Republic, he argues that this society is the ideal, then spends two hundred more pages showing that some approximation to it is actually attainable and giving it a metaphysical justification in his theory of forms. Also, Plato in reality did try to help a king become a philosopher king and establish an ideal society.


some of the ideas are repulsive, particularly its notions of art and censorship
Not the eugenics and infanticide? :P


these seemed not to part of Socrates belief systems (he made a point of praising several forms of art that eventually, due to the restrictions already in place in the "utopian" republic being discussed, were deemed bannable)
He praises their poetic strengths, but basically only as a sop; he then explains that those strengths are being put to a bad use. And he even has a whole chapter providing a metaphysical justification for why ditching most art isn't so bad.


but rather part of the evil that would come from setting up such a restrictive yet philosophically sound (in some minds at least) political system.
Where is there any indication in the text that he thinks this (or anything else) is a significant evil in the political system, or that he thinks the political system is unsound?


I should also note that I'm coming at this as a relative philosophy n00b (aside from an Intro class yeeeears ago and some sprinkles of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault since) so part of the joy was engaging with a text like this and see how Socrates builds his arguments.
It is certainly based on a more explicitly logical method of argumentation than Nietzsche, Deleuze, or Foucault. But how he builds his arguments was my biggest problem with the book. It's all vague, misleading analogies and ridiculous leaps in logic presented as if they were rock solid deductions. I remember his other dialogues being more logically sound, but I haven't read them in years. I plan to reread some this year.

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
3. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
4. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
5. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
6. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Derek]

I didn't get any sense of that, or of any irony in his arguments (except when responding to others' assertions early on, or mocking Athens later on). In his earlier dialogues, he takes some idea, carries it to its 'logical' endpoint, and then shows that that endpoint isn't at all what was wanted or that the original idea was incoherent—but he explicitly says so, and the dialogue ends with a newfound uncertainty. In The Republic, he argues that this society is the ideal, then spends two hundred more pages showing that some approximation to it is actually attainable and giving it a metaphysical justification in his theory of forms. Also, Plato in reality did try to help a king become a philosopher king and establish an ideal society.

I suppose it could have been strengthened by explictly questioning the end point, but I simply didn't walk away from The Republic thinking that Socrates actually felt that the ideal republic formed via pure reason was either attainable or completely desirable.


Not the eugenics and infanticide? :P

I say this jokingly, but walk through a Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon and see how down on eugenics you are. But yeah, infanticide is going a bit far.


He praises their poetic strengths, but basically only as a sop; he then explains that those strengths are being put to a bad use. And he even has a whole chapter providing a metaphysical justification for why ditching most art isn't so bad.

I'd have to reread that section, but I agree there is something troubling about his justification and I don't remember much humor or irony.


Where is there any indication in the text that he thinks this (or anything else) is a significant evil in the political system, or that he thinks the political system is unsound?

It is certainly based on a more explicitly logical method of argumentation than Nietzsche, Deleuze, or Foucault. But how he builds his arguments was my biggest problem with the book. It's all vague, misleading analogies and ridiculous leaps in logic presented as if they were rock solid deductions. I remember his other dialogues being more logically sound, but I haven't read them in years. I plan to reread some this year.

There certainly were some giant leaps in logic, but for the most part, I found it logically sound and more interestingly, a fascinating look at reason and social, cultural and political mores of 4th Century BC shaping a distinct and exact political philosophy, even if it's not one that should ever be applied.

[D_Davis]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Matadora, by Steve Perry
3. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
4. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
5. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
6. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
7. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys
8. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman
9. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
10. Imajica, by Clive Barker



The rest, in rating order

5-stars


4-stars


3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars
Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

1-star

[TGM]

1. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
2. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
3. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
4. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
5. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[ThePlashyBubbler]

5. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano


Thoughts?

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 9.5
2. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9.0
3. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0
4. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
5. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
6. John Dies at the End by David Wong- 7.0
7. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon- 5

[ContinentalOp]

Heh, great write ups. I like that take on Cain. Have you read Serenade?

100% agree about Falcon. The movie is great but the book is better and wow, te ending is 1,000 times more powerful.

I really felt Spade's internal struggle not to break down & give in as he kept repeating "I ain't gonna play the sucker for you."
I haven't read Serenade but I'll look it up.
There's a scene where Spade is raging excessively in front of O'Shaunosey (sp) after being punched in the face by one of the detectives that's glossed over in the movie version but serves as a very interesting and frightening bit of character development in the novel. I think scenes like this were vital to making the ending so powerful. It's my favorite scene in the book because it shows him at his lowest point, when he can't bottle up his emotions under the cool mask anymore, foreshadowing and contributing toward the masterful ending.

[D_Davis]

6. John Dies at the End by David Wong- 7.0


I love this book something fierce. Best book I read the year it came out. So absolutely gonzo and creative, genuinely funny, and surprisingly creepy.

[kuehnepips]

The new JFK-King is just a fucking waste of time. :sad:


I love this book something fierce. Best book I read the year it came out. So absolutely gonzo and creative, genuinely funny, and surprisingly creepy.

Was funny the first 100 pages or so ... *sigh*

I guess I'm too old for this.

[Benny Profane]

Thoughts?

I don't know what to make of it. I feel like I'm missing something. It has the same over-arching Bolano sense of dreamy despair and doom, but it never crystallizes into anything powerful. Characters are weakly drawn, themes are probed but not fully explored. The board game at the center of the story is entirely uninteresting. Bolano's prose dazzles occasionally but it's obvious that this isn't the work of the mature writer he eventually became. And yet I still liked a lot of it. It's really hard to pin down.

[ContinentalOp]

I love this book something fierce. Best book I read the year it came out. So absolutely gonzo and creative, genuinely funny, and surprisingly creepy.

I'm more in kuehnepips's camp. I'd describe the book the same way as you, except only during the first third and the last third, which were full of brilliance. The middle dragged for me. It got really repetitive and didn't build on the first section of the book. In fact, I can barely remember what happened for about 100-150 pages. It recovered later when they changed the setting (and what a setting). Very much looking forward to the movie adaptation.

[D_Davis]

The new JFK-King is just a fucking waste of time. :sad:



Was funny the first 100 pages or so ... *sigh*

I guess I'm too old for this.


Disagree with both.

Also, I'm 37 and loved John Dies in the End. Age has nothing to do with it; I hope I'm never too old for wacky fun, especially when it's executed with this much earnestness. Does it have it's problems? Sure - lot's. But I also wish there were more books as fun to read.

[D_Davis]

I'm more in kuehnepips's camp. I'd describe the book the same way as you, except only during the first third and the last third, which were full of brilliance. The middle dragged for me. It got really repetitive and didn't build on the first section of the book. In fact, I can barely remember what happened for about 100-150 pages. It recovered later when they changed the setting (and what a setting). Very much looking forward to the movie adaptation.

I can see that. But 2/3 being good is far more good than most books, and the 2/3 that is good is bloody fantastic.

It's also a perfect introduction into bizarro fiction.

[Irish]

I haven't read Serenade but I'll look it up.
There's a scene where Spade is raging excessively in front of O'Shaunosey (sp) after being punched in the face by one of the detectives that's glossed over in the movie version but serves as a very interesting and frightening bit of character development in the novel. I think scenes like this were vital to making the ending so powerful. It's my favorite scene in the book because it shows him at his lowest point, when he can't bottle up his emotions under the cool mask anymore, foreshadowing and contributing toward the masterful ending.

Hehe, you're making me want to give it another read.

Serenade is probably my favorite out of all the roman noirs from this period because the mystery is interior to the protagonist; it's not a straight whodunit mystery.

Btw, if you haven't already, get your hands on a copy of Red Harvest. I read it one sitting. You couldn't have pried that book out of my hands with all the force in the world. (It's the book that was the basis for A Fistful of Dollars, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and influenced a host of other movies).

Also, have you read The Big Sleep? That's another one where the book's ending is wildly different than the movie's, and a lot more satisfying.

[kuehnepips]

... I'm 37 ...

Youngster. :lol:

Started reading Llosa's Celt's Dream but will quit soon. Anyone finished it?

*passes bottle to ContinetalOp*

[dreamdead]

1. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
2. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
3. Mat Johnson’s Pym
4. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
5. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
6. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
7. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
8. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
9. José Rivera’s Marisol (play)
10. August Wilson’s Radio Golf (play)
11. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
12. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
13. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America (play)
14. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys (play)
15. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
16. José Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics (play)
17. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (play)
18. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (play)
19. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
20. Allan Havis’ The Gift (play)
21. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play (play)
22. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep (play)
23. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
2. Macbeth by Shakespeare
3. Hamlet by Shakespeare
4. Richard III by Shakespeare
5. The Tempest by Shakespeare
6. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
7. Our Nig by Harriet Wilson
8. The World Split Open by Ruth Rosen
9. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
10. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
11. The Green Revolution by Kirkpatrick Sale

[ContinentalOp]

Hehe, you're making me want to give it another read.

Serenade is probably my favorite out of all the roman noirs from this period because the mystery is interior to the protagonist; it's not a straight whodunit mystery.

Btw, if you haven't already, get your hands on a copy of Red Harvest. I read it one sitting. You couldn't have pried that book out of my hands with all the force in the world. (It's the book that was the basis for A Fistful of Dollars, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and influenced a host of other movies).

Also, have you read The Big Sleep? That's another one where the book's ending is wildly different than the movie's, and a lot more satisfying.

I'm intrigued. Serenade will be mine.
Oh, yeah, I've read Red Harvest. A couple times now. I'm ContinentalOp, bro! ;) Had the same experience, especially the first time around. It was a game changer for me. I read up on Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars and Miller's Crossing first, found out that Hammett was the main influence behind all of them and decided to read my first hard boiled crime novel. Haven't looked back since. Red Harvest is literary yet pulp as fuck and efficient yet stylish as all get out.
I've read the Big Sleep and can't remember any differences between the book and the film except for the ending. I'd love to see a modern adaptation with that stronger, more surprising ending/epilogue and with someone goofier than Bogart as Marlowe. Although the movie wasn't quite as good, I thought Dick Powell made a better Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (an adaptation of Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely).
I'm on a Ross MacDonald kick right now. He's close to surpassing both Hammett and Chandler for me, even though I'm crazy about both.

[ContinentalOp]

I can see that. But 2/3 being good is far more good than most books, and the 2/3 that is good is bloody fantastic.

It's also a perfect introduction into bizarro fiction. Yeah, I'd love to read more bizarro fiction now. And you're right about the stronger parts. There are passages that are etched into my brain, they're so mind-blowing. Hopefully the movie will bring to life some of my favorites, including the generic interrogation room cop (and his mustache) and the hip-hop slang obsessed white kid (the ball smasher) in the trailer.

[D_Davis]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Matadora, by Steve Perry
3. Orphan Palace, by Joseph Pulver
4. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
5. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
6. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
7. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
8. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys
9. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman
10. Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany




The rest, in rating order

5-stars


4-stars
Imajica, by Clive Barker

3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars
Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

1-star

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
3) Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut) 8.0
4) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0
5) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5
6) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
7) The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty) 7.0
8) Apology (Plato) 7.0
9) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
10) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0

The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0
Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) 5.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
3. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
4. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
5. Open City - Teju Cole
6. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
7. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)


My slowest pace in years.

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins) A
2. Haywire (Justin R Macumber) B+
3. Battle Royale (Koushun Takami) B-

I finished my first book this year, but now that I have a Kindle fire I'll definitely be reading quite a bit more.

added Catching Fire. I can't wait to read Mockingjay now.

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
3. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
4. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
5. Bug (Tracy Letts)
6. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[dreamdead]

1. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
2. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
3. Mat Johnson’s Pym
4. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
5. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
6. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
7. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
8. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
9. José Rivera’s Marisol (play)
10. Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty (play)


11. Stephen King's 11/22/63
12. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
13. August Wilson’s Radio Golf (play)
14. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
15. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
16. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America (play)
17. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys (play)
18. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
19. José Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics (play)
20. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
21. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (play)
22. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (play)
23. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
24. Allan Havis’ The Gift (play)
25. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play (play)
26. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep (play)
27. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[Raiders]

1. The Savage Detectives (Bolano, 1998)
2. A Storm of Swords (Martin, 2000)
3. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
4. A Feast for Crows (Martin, 2005)
5. Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, 1838)
6. Palo Alto: Stories (Franco, 2010)

I'm doing terrible. I really wanted to do better than last year's pace, and am failing miserably.

[dreamdead]

3. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)


Any thoughts on this one, Raiders? I haven't read it since 2003, and so it's paled as I've read other DeLillo texts in the intervening years, but hope to give it another read this year.

[Raiders]

Any thoughts on this one, Raiders? I haven't read it since 2003, and so it's paled as I've read other DeLillo texts in the intervening years, but hope to give it another read this year.

I don't think it has aged well. Felt like a lot of ado about not a whole lot; kind of a template for postmodern novels, which isn't really the novel's fault--it is funny and evocative--but it felt kind of empty. Almost like a trial run for a bigger, deeper novel where the same points are made in a narrative filled with interesting characters. Still, I very much enjoyed reading it. It was my first DeLillo, and I am intrigued to read more. He is a clever writer.

[D_Davis]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry
3. Matadora, by Steve Perry
4. Orphan Palace, by Joseph Pulver
5. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
6. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
7. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
8. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
9. The Quest of the DNA Cowboys
10. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman





The rest, in rating order

5-stars


4-stars
Imajica, by Clive Barker
Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany

3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars
Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

1-star

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
3. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
4. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
5. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
6. Open City - Teju Cole
7. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
8. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[TGM]

1. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
2. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
3. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
4. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
5. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
6. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[Melville]

The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)
Apology - 7.5
Crito - 7.5
Euthyphro - 7
Gorgias - 5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24) - 7
Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

Comics

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) - 10

[Spaceman Spiff]

Comics

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) - 10


Wow! The full on 10? Best comic ever?

[Melville]

Wow! The full on 10? Best comic ever?
Right now the only things I'd put it behind are Jimmy Corrigan and Quimby. It might drop after another read, but it's definitely one of the most astounding things (book or comic) I've ever read. Did you read the scanned version I linked to?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Right now the only things I'd put it behind are Jimmy Corrigan and Quimby. It might drop after another read, but it's definitely one of the most astounding things (book or comic) I've ever read. Did you read the scanned version I linked to?

Yep. I did immediately after I saw your post.

Fuckin' floored me. What a terrifying (and ultimately beautiful) work.

EDIT: Also, thoughts on Quimby? I haven't read it in years so I've forgotten much about it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
2. Macbeth by Shakespeare
3. Hamlet by Shakespeare
4. Richard III by Shakespeare
5. The Tempest by Shakespeare
6. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
7. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
8. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
9. Our Nig by Harriet Wilson
10. The World Split Open by Ruth Rosen


11. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
12. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
13. The Green Revolution by Kirkpatrick Sale

[Irish]

You're really ranking Bartleby over Hamlet and MacBeth?

Going to page back & see if that's been discussed, but if it hasn't, I'd be interested in hearing the thought process.

[Derek]

Speaking of Bartleby, I really want this:

http://img2.etsystatic.com/000/0/6198667/il_fullxfull.225989346.jpg

[Benny Profane]

You're really ranking Bartleby over Hamlet and MacBeth?

Going to page back & see if that's been discussed, but if it hasn't, I'd be interested in hearing the thought process.


Better question: He's really ranking MacBeth over Cloud Atlas?

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
3. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
4. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
5. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
6. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
7. Bug (Tracy Letts)
8. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)[/QUOTE]

[D_Davis]

5. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)


I expected this to shoot to your number 1 spot.

[Kurosawa Fan]

You're really ranking Bartleby over Hamlet and MacBeth?

Going to page back & see if that's been discussed, but if it hasn't, I'd be interested in hearing the thought process.

In fairness, Bartleby was a completely fresh read, whereas Hamlet and Macbeth suffer from the countless aping, parodies, and my overall familiarity with the texts. In terms of my enjoyment of the material from my Shakespeare class this past semester, I found I was much more involved with the plays I knew nothing about beforehand. I recognized their flaws while reading, and found Hamlet and Macbeth to have superior value, but the latter just hummed along exactly as expected, hitting all the notes I'd heard and seen so many times before. Consider it an unfair combination of my reading those plays so "late" in my life and the exposure to the material in our modern world.


Better question: He's really ranking MacBeth over Cloud Atlas?

Cloud Atlas, as remarkable as it was at times and as talented as Mitchell is as a writer, suffered from a couple very serious flaws for me. I'm planning on expounding in the Book Discussion Thread sometime tonight or tomorrow, as I was jotting down notes while reading and have a lot of thoughts to flesh out.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I expected this to shoot to your number 1 spot.

I wasn't really engaged until halfway through the volume, when the line of prophets began. Up until then, I thought it was cute world-building with an eye towards religious iconoclasm. The writing is a successful evocation of religious texts, with their repetition and formalities and "poetics," but that style put me off for a while. The second half became more interesting, with humanity struggling to parse the desires of the gods and coming up woefully short. The combination of European and Eastern influences on the pantheon feels cohesive when it could've felt patchwork.

Good stuffs, to be sure.

[D_Davis]

I think it's one of the most brilliant things I've ever read. Dunsany says more in under 100 pages than most fantasists say in over a thousand. For me it represents the very best world building there is. Also, Dunsany's prose is outstanding; stylistically, he far surpasses any of the weird authors that he directly influenced, namely Lovecraft and Smith.

[romantisaurusrex]

1Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche
2The Will to Power by Nietzsche
3Coolidge: An American Enigma by Sobel
4Economics of Good and Evil by Tomas Sedlacek
5The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
6The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace
7In Bed with the Word by Daniel Coleman
8The Wisdom of Whores by Elizabeth Pisani
9Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Appiah
10The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

[romantisaurusrex]

5) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5

I love your whole list, this one in particular. Fear and Trembling and Works of Love are some of the greatest contributions to aesthetic thought that I've read.



Rereads:
Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

This is my favorite book of all time.

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
3. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
4. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
5. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
6. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
7. Open City - Teju Cole
8. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
9. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)


Anyone read this, or another novel by him? Very surreal, very funny.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
3. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
4. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
5. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
6. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
7. Open City - Teju Cole
8. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
9. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)


Anyone read this, or another novel by him? Very surreal, very funny.

I've got it sitting on my shelf, and will probably get around to it soon. I read At Swim Two Birds a few years ago and had trouble getting into it but been wanting to give it another chance.

[Milky Joe]

Anyone read this, or another novel by him? Very surreal, very funny.

It's hilariously brilliant, his masterpiece, one of the best novels of the 20th century. The Irish have such a wicked sense of humor.

[Derek]

I love your whole list, this one in particular. Fear and Trembling and Works of Love are some of the greatest contributions to aesthetic thought that I've read.

Then I'll definitely be putting the latter on my reading list.


This is my favorite book of all time.

Mine as well...I used to have a cat named Bloomberg. :) It had been a decade since I read it, so I was honestly a little worried as to how it'd hold up. Fortunately, it was even better than I remembered, particularly the final third where Zooey confronts Franny about the prayer.

[dreamdead]

I likely read Salinger's novel too late in my life. It's good; I'm hoping Franny and Zooey, which is up next, resonates more.

1. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
2. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
3. Mat Johnson’s Pym
4. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
5. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
6. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
7. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
8. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
9. José Rivera’s Marisol (play)
10. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher and the Rye


11. Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty (play)
12. Stephen King's 11/22/63
13. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
14. August Wilson’s Radio Golf (play)
15. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
16. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
17. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America (play)
18. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys (play)
19. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
20. José Rivera’s Cloud Tectonics (play)
21. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
22. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (play)
23. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (play)
24. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
25. Allan Havis’ The Gift (play)
26. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play (play)
27. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep (play)
28. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[romantisaurusrex]

Then I'll definitely be putting the latter on my reading list.

Mine as well...I used to have a cat named Bloomberg. :) It had been a decade since I read it, so I was honestly a little worried as to how it'd hold up. Fortunately, it was even better than I remembered, particularly the final third where Zooey confronts Franny about the prayer.

I carry my beat up pocket copy everywhere. I've thought about it a lot and the reason I think it resonates so much with me is how strongly I relate to Franny's character flaws--her spiritual greed, her self-involvement, her ascetic tendencies. The frustration and despair she feels at the world not living up to her idealism.


I likely read Salinger's novel too late in my life. It's good; I'm hoping Franny and Zooey, which is up next, resonates more.



I really love Catcher, but it is nothing like anything else Salinger did. The Glass family books/stories were definitely his best works, and probably more realistic/philosophical as an adult.

[Irish]

I carry my beat up pocket copy everywhere. I've thought about it a lot and the reason I think it resonates so much with me is how strongly I relate to Franny's character flaws--

If you can find them, dig up some of the reviews & reactions to the original magazine story before Zooey was published.

Quite a few people thought Franny was pregnant.

I love Franny as a stand alone story. I think it's the best thing Salinger ever published, and I detest Zooey, which has all the trademarks of the worst Glass family stuff: incessant navel gazing & a crippling self importance.

[dreamdead]

1. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
2. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
3. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
3. Mat Johnson’s Pym
5. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
6. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
7. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
8. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
9. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
10. Stephen King's 11/22/63


11. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher and the Rye
12. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered
13. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
14. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
15. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
16. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
17. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
18. Jess Walters's The Financial Lives of the Poets
19. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
20. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

Plays:
José Rivera’s Marisol (play)
Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty (play)
August Wilson’s Radio Golf (play)
Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America (play)
Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys (play)
Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (play)
Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (play)
Allan Havis’ The Gift (play)
Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play (play)
Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep (play)

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe) 8.5
3) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
4) Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut) 8.0
5) Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) 8.0
6) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0
7) Light Years (James Salter) 7.5
8) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5
9) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
10) The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty) 7.0

11) Apology (Plato) 7.0
12) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
13) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0
14) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
15) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
16) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0
17) Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) 5.5
18) A Dance With Dragons (George R.R. Martin) 5.5
19) Miami (Joan Didion) 4.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[Derek]

1. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey

:pritch:

Saw your comments, but glad you loved it enough to place it so high!

[TGM]

1. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
2. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
3. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
4. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
5. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
6. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
7. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

Heh, the more John Carter books I end up reading, the more it makes me really hate the awful movie...

[Benny Profane]

7) Light Years (James Salter) 7.5



A pretty high score. Any thoughts on this?

[Raiders]

2) The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe) 8.5


Awesome. That's like, four people now who love this one, right? We're getting there.

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
3. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
4. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
5. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
6. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
7. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
8. Open City - Teju Cole
9. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
10. Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Raiders]

1. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Wilson, 1975)
2. The Savage Detectives (Bolano, 1998)
3. A Storm of Swords (Martin, 2000)
4. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
5. A Feast for Crows (Martin, 2005)
6. Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, 1838)
7. Palo Alto: Stories (Franco, 2010)

[D_Davis]

1. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Wilson, 1975)


Nice!

Are you at all familiar with anything else by Robert Anton Wilson? If not, and you are at all interested, I highly recommend this audio interview:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/510XAF4EH5L._SS500_.jpg (http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Anton-Wilson-Explains-Everything/dp/1591793750)


One of the greatest minds to have ever lived.

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
2. Macbeth by Shakespeare
3. Hamlet by Shakespeare
4. Richard III by Shakespeare
5. The Tempest by Shakespeare
6. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
7. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
8. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
9. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
10. Our Nig by Harriet Wilson


11. The World Split Open by Ruth Rosen
12. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
13. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
14. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
15. The Green Revolution by Kirkpatrick Sale


The Inferno had some great imagery, but man is it bogged down by all the incessant name-dropping. Really kills the experience.

[TGM]

1. On Writing - Stephen King
2. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
3. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
4. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
5. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
6. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
7. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
8. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[D_Davis]

1. On Writing - Stephen King


Yes! Great book.

[dreamdead]

1. E.M. Forster's Howards End
2. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory
4. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
5. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
6. Mat Johnson’s Pym
7. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
8. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
9. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
10. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse


11. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
12. Stephen King's 11/22/63
13. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher and the Rye
14. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered
15. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
16. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
17. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
18. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
19. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
20. Jess Walters's The Financial Lives of the Poets
21. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
22. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

Plays:
1. José Rivera’s Marisol (play)
2. Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty (play)
3. August Wilson’s Radio Golf (play)
4. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America (play)
5. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys (play)
6. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (play)
7. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (play)
8. Allan Havis’ The Gift (play)
9. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play (play)
10. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep (play)

[TGM]

1. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
2. On Writing - Stephen King
3. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
4. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
5. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
6. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
7. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
8. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
9. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

Now reading: Misery - Stephen King

[Derek]

A pretty high score. Any thoughts on this?

Wish I caught this closer to when I read it, but I especially liked the first 2/3. I found the disintegration of their marriage more interesting than the post fallout, though the whole thing is beautifully written, the elliptical structure making it both economical and poetic.


Awesome. That's like, four people now who love this one, right? We're getting there.

Yup, it's fantastic. Which of his books would you recommend next?

[Raiders]

Yup, it's fantastic. Which of his books would you recommend next?

A Personal Matter but hell, all of 'em are great. I have read:

Silent Cry
A Personal Matter
Rouse up o Young Men of the New Age
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids
Changeling
A Quiet Life

Only the last one was less than stellar and even it is pretty damn good and some of its faults may stem from its translation (the prose struck me as a little more stiff).

I think up next for me for him is Hiroshima Notes or Somersault.

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) Ubik (Philip K. Dick) 9.0
3) The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe) 8.5
4) The Pale King (David Foster Wallace) 8.5
5) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
6) The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler) 8.0
7) Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut) 8.0
8) Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) 8.0
9) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0
10) Light Years (James Salter) 7.5

11) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5
12) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
13) The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty) 7.0
14) Apology (Plato) 7.0
15) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
16) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0
17) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
18) Life of Pi (Yann Martel) 6.5
19) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick) 6.5
20) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
21) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0
22) Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) 5.5
23) A Dance With Dragons (George R.R. Martin) 5.5
24) Miami (Joan Didion) 4.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10[/QUOTE]

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
4. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
5. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
6. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
7. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
8. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
9. Open City - Teju Cole
10. The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano


- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Raiders]

1. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Wilson, 1975)
2. The Hunters (Salter, 1956)
3. The Savage Detectives (Bolano, 1998)
4. A Storm of Swords (Martin, 2000)
5. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
6. A Feast for Crows (Martin, 2005)
7. Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, 1838)
8. Palo Alto: Stories (Franco, 2010)

Benny, you read this one by Salter? As a psychological profile and as a work of beautiful sparse prose, it is exceptional, even surpassing Light Years. I think its subject is perhaps not as resonant, especially if aerial warfare doesn't interest you, but it is a superbly written and constructed novel.

[Benny Profane]

1. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Wilson, 1975)
2. The Hunters (Salter, 1956)
3. The Savage Detectives (Bolano, 1998)
4. A Storm of Swords (Martin, 2000)
5. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
6. A Feast for Crows (Martin, 2005)
7. Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, 1838)
8. Palo Alto: Stories (Franco, 2010)

Benny, you read this one by Salter? As a psychological profile and as a work of beautiful sparse prose, it is exceptional, even surpassing Light Years. I think its subject is perhaps not as resonant, especially if aerial warfare doesn't interest you, but it is a superbly written and constructed novel.

Wasn't even on my radar but it is now, thanks! I was planning on reading Dusk and Other Stories by him next. Read a lot of great things about it.

[D_Davis]

Glad you liked Lonesome Dove, Benny.

[dreamdead]

1. E.M. Forster's Howards End
2. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory
4. Alice Walker's The Color Purple
5. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
6. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
7. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
8. Mat Johnson’s Pym
9. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
10. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One


11. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
12. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
13. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
14. Stephen King's 11/22/63
15. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher and the Rye
16. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered
17. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
18. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
19. Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games
20. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
21. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
22. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
23. Jess Walters's The Financial Lives of the Poets
24. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
25. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

Plays:
1. José Rivera’s Marisol
2. Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty
3. August Wilson’s Radio Golf
4. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America
5. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys
6. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park
7. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City
8. Allan Havis’ The Gift
9. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play
10. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 9.5
2. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9.0
3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman- 9.0
4. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0
5. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
6. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
7. John Dies at the End by David Wong- 7.0
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon- 5.0

I've been slacking.

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
3. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
4. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
5. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
6. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. Chogyam Trungpa)
7. Bug (Tracy Letts)
8. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
9. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
5. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
6. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
7. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
9. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
10. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
4. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
5. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
6. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
7. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
8. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
9. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
10. Open City - Teju Cole


- The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)


Stories from this writer's debut and only publication. Not very stylish, but an interesting voice, and very engaging. Definitely an author I will keep my eye on. Quick read, I recommend.

[Melville]

The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)
Apology - 7.5
Crito - 7.5
Euthyphro - 7
Gorgias - 5
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)
Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24) - 7
Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

Comics

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) - 10
Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) - 7
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) - 6

[Milky Joe]

Surprisingly high rating from you for Kerouac. Since you dug it you should check out Desolation Angels and then Big Sur, in that order.

[Melville]

Surprisingly high rating from you for Kerouac. Since you dug it you should check out Desolation Angels and then Big Sur, in that order.
It's peppered with dopey sentiments and casual sexism, but it perfectly captures just what it wants to. Dean Moriarty is a great Holy Fool. And the prose is electric America.

I've heard good things about Big Sur.

[Milky Joe]

Big Sur is the ugly backside of On the Road, as dark and pure a depiction of late-60s, post-hippiedom fallout as there ever was. It's not exactly a pleasant read.

[dreamdead]

1. E.M. Forster's Howards End
2. J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory
4. Alice Walker's The Color Purple
5. Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day
6. Stephen King's The Stand
7. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
8. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
9. Mat Johnson’s Pym
10. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral


11. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
12. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
13. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
14. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
15. Stephen King's 11/22/63
16. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher and the Rye
17. Chang-rae Lee's The Surrendered
18. Catherine Chung's Forgotten Country
19. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
20. Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games
21. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
22. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
23. Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
24. Jess Walters's The Financial Lives of the Poets
25. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
26. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

Plays:
1. José Rivera’s Marisol
2. Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty
3. August Wilson’s Radio Golf
4. Naomi Wallace’s In the Heart of America
5. Naomi Wallace’s The War Boys
6. Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park
7. Christopher Shinn’s Dying City
8. Allan Havis’ The Gift
9. Suzan-Lori Parks’ The American Play
10. Jose Rivera’s Each Day Dies with Sleep

[Hugh_Grant]

1. Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa - Peter Godwin
2. The Age of Anxiety: A History of America's Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers - Andrea Tone
3. Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys
4. Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN - James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales
5. The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods - Hank Haney

Paltry list, but I could give you a list of hundreds of student papers. :) The Haney book did not impress, but I have to admit that it has given my husband and me several quotable lines. It's like a bad movie that somehow lingers in the memory thanks to some ridiculous scenes.

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
5. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
6. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
7. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
10. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan

11. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 9.5
2. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9.0
3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman- 9.0
4. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0
5. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
6. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
7. Rumble Tumble by Joe R. Lansdale- 7.5
8. John Dies at the End by David Wong- 7.0
9. The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett- 6.5
10. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon- 5.0

[Raiders]

1. Heartsnatcher (Boris Vian, 1953)
2. The Illuminatus! Trilogy (Wilson, 1975)
3. The Hunters (Salter, 1956)
4. The Savage Detectives (Bolano, 1998)
5. A Storm of Swords (Martin, 2000)
6. White Noise (DeLillo, 1985)
7. A Feast for Crows (Martin, 2005)
8. Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens, 1838)
9. Palo Alto: Stories (Franco, 2010)

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
5. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
6. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
7. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke

11. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
12. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
4. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
5. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
6. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
7. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
8. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
9. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
10. A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter



- Open City - Teju Cole
- The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)


[/QUOTE]

[dreamdead]

1. E. M. Forster’s Howards End
2. J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene’ The Power and the Glory
4. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
5. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
6. Stephen King’s The Stand
7. Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls
8. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
9. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
10. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
11. Mat Johnson’s Pym
12. C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
13. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
14. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
15. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
16. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
17. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
18. Stephen King’s 11/22/63
19. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher and the Rye
20. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
21. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
22. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
23. Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
24. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games
25. Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country
26. James Wood’s How Fiction Works
27. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
28. Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
29. Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets
30. Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons
31. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
32. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[ThePlashyBubbler]

1. Dubliners (James Joyce)
2. The Savage Detectives (Roberto Bolano)
3. The Sound and the Fury (William Faulkner)
4. Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour (J.D. Salinger)
5. Hopscotch (Julio Cortazar)
6. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Raymond Carver)
7. The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera)
8. Moby Dick (Herman Melville)
9. Under the Net (Iris Murdoch)
10. V. (Thomas Pynchon)

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Flowers for Algernon (1966, Daniel Keyes)
2. Les Misérables (1862, Victor Hugo)
3. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929, Erich Maria Remarque)
4. The Forever War (1974, Joe Haldeman)
5. Malone Dies (1951, Samuel Beckett)
6. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965, Philip K. Dick)
7. Carry Me Down (2006, M. J. Hyland)
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, Gabriel GarcÃ*a Márquez)
9. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960, Walter M. Miller, Jr.)
10. Childhood’s End (1953, Arthur C. Clarke)

[Melville]

The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24) - 7
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, 1953) [short story] - 7
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)
Apology - 7.5
Crito - 7.5
Euthyphro - 7
Gorgias - 5
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)
Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5
Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
The Essential Tales of Chekhov (Chekhov, 1886-1899) - 6
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49) - 5
The Corrections (Franzen, 2001) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

Comics

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) - 10
Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) - 7
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) - 6

[dreamdead]

1. E. M. Forster’s Howards End
2. J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene’ The Power and the Glory
4. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
5. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
6. Stephen King’s The Stand
7. Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls
8. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
9. Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist
10. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
11. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
12. C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
13. Don Lee's The Collective
14. Mat Johnson’s Pym
15. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
16. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
17. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
18. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
19. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
20. Stephen King’s 11/22/63
21. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher and the Rye
22. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
23. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
24. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
25. Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
26. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games
27. Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country
28. James Wood’s How Fiction Works
29. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
30. Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
31. Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets
32. Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons
33. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
34. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
4. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again - David Foster Wallace
5. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
7. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
8. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
9. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka
10. The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien



- A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
- Open City - Teju Cole
- The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
5. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
6. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
7. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke

11. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
12. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
13. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

Lord, A Feast For Crows was an editing nightmare. One of the sloppiest books I've read in a long time. Martin pointlessly abandons his established format, and it's not for the better. There are instances where I didn't even know whose POV I was reading from until several pages into a chapter, only for it to turn out being a major character since the beginning of the series. Then there's random POV characters just seemingly thrown in there for the hell of it, shown only once and never to be returned to again. And for all other POV characters, the book feels very unbalanced. Every other chapter is a damn Cersei or Brienne chapter, with all other character being lucky if we actually return to their POV at some point. There were times where this book's horrible editing frustrated me to the point where I had to stop reading.

And overall, by the end of it, I don't feel like all that much was actually accomplished. Like the first two books, this one felt like it was in constant "build up" mode. Yet, unlike those first two books, this one never actually built up to anything. Martin claims at the end of the book that he split the characters so that he could tell a complete story, yet I don't get that at all from this book. It felt like a total anti-climax, like nothing of worth actually got accomplished, and I fail to see how he couldn't have very easily trimmed this part of the story down to at least half its length.

This book was a huge disappointment coming off of the first three, but I hear that the fifth's supposed to be better, so here's hoping...

[D_Davis]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Comanche Moon, by Larry McMurtry
3. The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry
4. Dead Man's Walk, by Larry McMurtry
5. Celebrant, by Michael Cisco
6. Matadora, by Steve Perry
7. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
8. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
9. The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke
10. The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook






The rest, in rating order

5-stars
Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman

4-stars
Imajica, by Clive Barker
Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
Orphan Palace, by Joseph Pulver
The Quest of the DNA Cowboys


3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars
Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

1-star

[Melville]

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) [comic] - 9.5
The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [reread] - 7.5
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Struwwelpeter: Fearful Stories & Vile Pictures to Instruct Good Little Folks (Heinrich Hoffmann, 1845) [picture book] - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24)

overall - 7
The Metamorphosis [reread] - 10

Tales of Love and Loss (Hamsun, 1895-1905) - 7
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, 1953) [short story] - 7
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)

Apology - 7.5
Crito - 7.5
Euthyphro - 7
Gorgias - 5

Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) [comic] - 7
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)

Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5

Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) [comic] - 6
The Essential Tales of Chekhov (Chekhov, 1886-1899) - 6
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49)

overall - 5
The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia, The Black Cat, some others - great

The Corrections (Franzen, 2001) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) - 4
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

[kuehnepips]

...
Wuthering Heights ]

What happended Adam? Mad drunk in love or both?

[ThePlashyBubbler]

This book was a huge disappointment coming off of the first three, but I hear that the fifth's supposed to be better, so here's hoping...

For what it's worth, there is something of a reason why Feast ended up the way it did. It was originally intended to be titled "A Dance of Dragons," and was to include all the character POVs as in the first 3 books. Midway through, however, Martin found that he was amassing way too much material for one book, and in particular was having problems plotting out one of the character's storyline.

As a result, and because of the way in which the characters in the series are incredibly spread out at this point, Martin decided to release what essentially would have been half the book, which became "Feast." The remaining characters would be saved for the second half, still called "Dragons," so he'd have some extra time to figure it all out. Of course, then it took him an additional seven years to finish it.

So, yeah, the fifth book is better, in part because it features some of the better characters (ie. all the ones who were missing from Feast). It also eventually catches up to the end of Feast, timeline-wise, with a couple hundred pages left, and the end of the book reincorporates those from Feast.

The stuff with the random one-off character POV chapters gets enhanced somewhat in the next book, but they still aren't my favorite. Hopefully moving forward he can keep it just succinct enough to fit everybody into one book, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Melville]

Mad drunk in love or both?
Yes. That aside, very interesting book, even if at least half of it works more in theory than in practice. I don't think I was paying attention the first time.

[Milky Joe]

Glad you gave it another chance. I have a bit of a crush on Emily Brontë. A loner, dark and moody, just my kinda gal. ;)

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
4. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again - David Foster Wallace
5. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
7. Working - Studs Terkel
8. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
9. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
10. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka



- The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
- A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
- Open City - Teju Cole
- The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
3. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
4. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. Chogyam Trungpa)
5. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
6. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
7. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Stephen King)
8. Bug (Tracy Letts)
9. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
10. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 10
2. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris- 9.0
3. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9.0
4. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman- 9.0
5. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8.0
6. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
7. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
8. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain- 7.5
9. Rumble Tumble by Joe R. Lansdale- 7.5
10. John Dies at the End by David Wong- 7.0

[Derek]

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) Ubik (Philip K. Dick) 9.0
3) The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe) 8.5
4) The Pale King (David Foster Wallace) 8.5
5) 2666 (Roberto Bolano) 8.5
6) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
7) The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler) 8.0
8) Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut) 8.0
9) Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) 8.0
10) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0

11) Light Years (James Salter) 7.5
12) Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) 7.5
13) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5
14) Death in the Andes (Mario Vargas Llosa) 7.5
15) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
16) Neuromancer (William Gibson) 7.0
17) The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty) 7.0
18) Apology (Plato) 7.0
19) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0
20) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0
21) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
22) Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 7.0
23) Life of Pi (Yann Martel) 6.5
24) Angelmaker (Nick Harkaway) 6.5
25) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick) 6.5
26) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
27) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0
28) Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) 5.5
29) A Dance With Dragons (George R.R. Martin) 5.5
30) The Contortionist's Handbook (Craig Clevenger) 5.5
31) Miami (Joan Didion) 4.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
5. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
6. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
7. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
10. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

11. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
12. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
13. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
14. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean

So A Dance With Dragons was certainly better than A Feast For Crows, but I'm still not sure what to make of it. It was entertaining enough, fixing quite a few of (but not all of) the problems present in A Feast For Crows, while allowing for things to actually happen this time around.

But the thing is, by the time we got to the end, I pretty much got annoyed, one by one, by each and every single one of his big "twists", to the point where I'm honestly not even sure I care anymore where the story goes on from here. That, and the fact that half the characters appear to be going absolutely nowhere, have really killed my interest with the series. I almost wish he could have found a way to wrap things up (or at least wrap things up enough) in A Storm of Swords, because it's only been downhill from there...

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
5. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
6. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
7. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
8. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
9. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
10. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

11. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
12. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
13. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
14. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean
15. Animal Farm - George Orwell

Subtlety? What the hell is that?! And 'show don't tell'? HA! Fuck that shit!

[D_Davis]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Comanche Moon, by Larry McMurtry
3. The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry
4. Devil Read, by Joe R. Lansdale
5. Dead Man's Walk, by Larry McMurtry
6. Celebrant, by Michael Cisco
7. Matadora, by Steve Perry
8. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
9. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
10. The Big Blowdown, by George Pelecanos







The rest, in rating order

5-stars
Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman
The Wizards and the Warlords, by Hugh Cook
The Turtle Boy, by Kealan Patrick Burke


4-stars
Imajica, by Clive Barker
Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany
Orphan Palace, by Joseph Pulver
The Quest of the DNA Cowboys


3-stars
Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

2-stars
Wildest Dreams, Norman Partridge

1-star

[Irish]

15. Animal Farm - George Orwell

Subtlety? What the hell is that?! And 'show don't tell'? HA! Fuck that shit!

On one hand: Sure. I can see the point.

On the other hand: You can't play satire as subtle, because you risk running afoul of Poe's Law.

Complaining about the lack of it in Animal Farm is almost like criticizing Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto for not including believable characters.

If it runs contrary to the author's true purpose, it shouldn't be there, regardless of what writing coaches might tell you.

[amberlita]

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Comanche Moon, by Larry McMurtry
3. The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry
4. Devil Read, by Joe R. Lansdale
5. Dead Man's Walk, by Larry McMurtry
6. Celebrant, by Michael Cisco
7. Matadora, by Steve Perry
8. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
9. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
10. The Big Blowdown, by George Pelecanos


Did I tell you I read The Queen's Gambit, Davis? Really really enjoyed it. I know how to play chess but I know very little about the notation system, which is used frequently in the book. Nevertheless it was still very suspenseful and riveting without being distancing.

[dreamdead]

1. E. M. Forster’s Howards End
2. J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory
4. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
5. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
6. Stephen King’s The Stand
7. Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls
8. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
9. Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist
10. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
11. Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder
12. Don Lee’s The Collective
13. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
14. Mat Johnson’s Pym
15. C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
16. John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers
17. John Updike’s Rabbit Run
18. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
19. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
20. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
21. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
22. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
23. Stephen King’s 11/22/63
24. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher and the Rye
25. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
26. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
27. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
28. Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
29. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games
30. Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country
31. James Wood’s How Fiction Works
32. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
33. Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
34. Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons
35. Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets
36. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
37. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[D_Davis]

Did I tell you I read The Queen's Gambit, Davis? Really really enjoyed it. I know how to play chess but I know very little about the notation system, which is used frequently in the book. Nevertheless it was still very suspenseful and riveting without being distancing.

Nice! Glad you liked it.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 10
2. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris- 9
3. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9
4. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman- 9
5. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8
6. Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith- 8
7. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
8. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5
9. Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett by Richard Layman- 7.5
10. Rumble Tumble by Joe R. Lansdale- 7.5

[D_Davis]

7. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5


Have you read all of the Nick Stefanos books?

[Benny Profane]

1. Underworld - Don DeLillo
2. Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
3. Sometimes a Great Notion - Ken Kesey
4. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never do Again - David Foster Wallace
5. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
6. Black Swan Green - David Mitchell
7. Working - Studs Terkel
8. Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe
9. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned - Wells Tower
10. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka



- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
- The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien
- A Sport and a Pastime - James Salter
- Open City - Teju Cole
- The Third Reich - Roberto Bolano
- Here and Now! - Pat Martino (autobiography)

Can't believe it's been so long since my last update. Now re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces. It's holding up well so far.

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
3. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
4. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
5. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. Chogyam Trungpa)
6. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
7. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
8. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Stephen King)
9. Bug (Tracy Letts)
10. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
11. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[ContinentalOp]

Have you read all of the Nick Stefanos books?
Yes, I have. My favorite is Nick's Trip, followed by Down by the River... Not crazy about The Firing Offense's excessive detail in terms of the main character's job as a electronics salesman/ad man but it has its moments. I like the playfulness of NT. It's freewheeling unlike any Pelecanos I've ever read and has some suspenseful and dramatically effective climaxes too. Down by the River... is a lot darker and more somber and an entertaining story to boot.

[D_Davis]

Yes, I have. My favorite is Nick's Trip, followed by Down by the River... Not crazy about The Firing Offense's excessive detail in terms of the main character's job as a electronics salesman/ad man but it has its moments. I like the playfulness of NT. It's freewheeling unlike any Pelecanos I've ever read and has some suspenseful and dramatically effective climaxes too. Down by the River... is a lot darker and more somber and an entertaining story to boot.

Nice. I've only read A Firing Offense, and I liked it. I also really liked Nick's father's part in The Big Blowdown. I recently ordered all of the other Nick books, so I'm really looking forward to reading them.

[Benny Profane]

If this weren't a "first" read in 2012 thread, A Confederacy of Dunces would be at the top of my list. It's just so genius. So glad I re-read it.

[Melville]

The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) [comic] - 9.5
The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 8.5
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [reread] - 8
The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) - 7.5
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Struwwelpeter: Fearful Stories & Vile Pictures to Instruct Good Little Folks (Heinrich Hoffmann, 1845) [picture book] - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24)

overall - 7
The Metamorphosis [reread] - 10

Tales of Love and Loss (Hamsun, 1895-1905) - 7
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, 1953) [short story] - 7
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)

Apology [reread] - 7.5
Crito [reread] - 7.5
Euthyphro [reread] - 7
Gorgias - 5

Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) [comic] - 7
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)

Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5

Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
Building Stories (Chris Ware, 2012) [comic] - 6.5
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) [comic] - 6
The Essential Tales of Chekhov (Chekhov, 1886-1899) - 6
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor, 1952) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49)

overall - 5
The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia, The Black Cat, some others - great

The Corrections (Franzen, 2001) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) - 4
Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle, c. 340BC) - 4
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
3. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
4. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
5. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
6. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. Chogyam Trungpa)
7. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
8. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
9. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Stephen King)
10. Bug (Tracy Letts)

11. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
12. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[TGM]

1. Misery - Stephen King
2. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
3. On Writing - Stephen King
4. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
5. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
6. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
7. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
8. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
9. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
10. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin

11. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
12. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
13. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
14. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
15. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean
16. Animal Farm - George Orwell

[dreamdead]

1. E. M. Forster’s Howards End
2. J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene’ The Power and the Glory
4. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
5. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
6. Stephen King’s The Stand
7. Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls
8. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
9. Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist
10. Don DeLillo’s The Names
11. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
12. Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder
13. Don Lee’s The Collective
14. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
15. Mat Johnson’s Pym
16. C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
17. Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
18. John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers
19. John Updike’s Rabbit Run
20. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
21. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
22. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
23. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
24. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
25. Stephen King’s 11/22/63
26. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher and the Rye
27. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
28. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
29. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
30. Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue
31. Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
32. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games
33. Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country
34. James Wood’s How Fiction Works
35. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
36. Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
37. Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons
38. Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets
39. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
40. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis
2. Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville
3. Macbeth by Shakespeare
4. Hamlet by Shakespeare
5. Corliolanus by Shakespeare
6. Richard III by Shakespeare
7. The Tempest by Shakespeare
8. A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
9. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
10. Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare


11. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
12. The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
13. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
14. When Sherman Marched North From the Sea by Jacqueline Campbell
15. Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
16. Our Nig by Harriet Wilson
17. A Winter's Tale by Shakespeare
18. The World Split Open by Ruth Rosen
19. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
20. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
21. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
22. A Revolutionary Conscience: Theodore Parker and Antebellum America by Paul Teed
23. The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
24. The Green Revolution by Kirkpatrick Sale


Getting caught up after classes. I think that's everything outside of comics, which I'll update in the comic thread. EVERYONE should read the Mutis novel. Fucking amazing. Cannot stress it enough.

[TGM]

1. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
2. Misery - Stephen King
3. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
4. On Writing - Stephen King
5. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
6. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
7. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
8. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
9. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
10. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

11. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
12. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
13. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
14. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
15. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
16. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean
17. Animal Farm - George Orwell

Now reading 1984 - George Orwell

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
2. The Prince (Niccolo Machiavelli)
3. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
4. The Gods of Pegana (Lord Dunsany)
5. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)
6. V For Vendetta (Alan Moore, David Lloyd)
7. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (tr. Chogyam Trungpa)
8. The Double-Shadow and Other Stories (Clark Ashton Smith)
9. John Dies At the End (David Wong)
10. The Wind Through the Keyhole (Stephen King)

11. Bug (Tracy Letts)
12. Kingdom Come (Alex Ross, Mark Waid)
13. God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens)
14. Buddha's Teachings (Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai)

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone read Dust Lands?

[D_Davis]

I doubt I'll finished another new book this year (just started my first re-read of King's It), so here are my top 10 books first read in 2012:

1. The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis
2. Comanche Moon, by Larry McMurtry
3. Celebrant, by Michael Cisco
4. Devil Red, by Joe R. Lansdale
5. Dead Man's Walk, by Larry McMurtry
6. The Last Picture Show, by Larry McMurtry
7. Matadora, by Steve Perry
8. In Other Worlds, by A.A. Attanasio
9. When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott
10. The Big Blowdown, by George Pelecanos

Looks like McMurtry is the big winner this year.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett- 10
2. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris- 9
3. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain- 9
4. The Chill by Ross MacDonald- 9
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman- 9
6. Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale- 8.5
7. Double Indemnity by James M. Cain- 8
8. Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith- 8
9. Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go by George Pelecanos- 7.5
10. What It Was by George Pelecanos- 7.5

Want to mix it up more next year. My family enabled my crime novel obsession though this Christmas. Got another Lansdale and a Chester Himes to read.

[D_Davis]

6. Vanilla Ride by Joe R. Lansdale- 8.5


This might be my favorite Hap and Leonard novel.

So good. One of Lansdale's strongest novels. It's so concise, and tight.

[dreamdead]

This finishes up this year. Hopefully I'll continue to average 40 or so next year...

1. E. M. Forster’s Howards End
2. J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey
3. Graham Greene’ The Power and the Glory
4. Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
5. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
6. Stephen King’s The Stand
7. Allegra Goodman’s Kaaterskill Falls
8. Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake
9. Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist
10. Don DeLillo’s The Names
11. H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
12. Margaret Atwood’s Moral Disorder
13. Don Lee’s The Collective
14. Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club
15. Mat Johnson’s Pym
16. C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce
17. Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
18. John Dos Passos’s Three Soldiers
19. John Updike’s Rabbit Run
20. Philip Roth’s American Pastoral
21. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One
22. John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
23. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
24. Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
25. Stephen King’s 11/22/63
26. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher and the Rye
27. Alden Bell’s The Reapers are the Angels
28. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night
29. Shaila Abdullah’s Saffron Dreams
30. Stephen King's The Shining
31. Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue
32. Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered
33. Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach
34. Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games
35. Catherine Chung’s Forgotten Country
36. James Wood’s How Fiction Works
37. Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Stories
38. Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
39. Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons
40. Jess Walter’s The Financial Lives of the Poets
41. Denis Johnson’s Fiskadoro
42. James Andrew Miller and Tom Schales’s These Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN

[Melville]

Final list for the year:


The Trumpets They Play! (Al Columbia, 1998) [comic] - 9.5
The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe, 1967) - 9
Under the Autumn Star (Hamsun, 1906) - 8.5
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea (Yukio Mishima, 1963) - 8.5
On the Road (Kerouac, 1957) - 8.5
Concrete (Thomas Bernhard, 1982) - 8
A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings (Hamsun, 1909) - 8
Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte, 1847) [reread] - 8
The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) - 7.5
Arthur Rimbaud: Complete Works (trans. Schmidt, 1868-1900) - 7.5
Struwwelpeter: Fearful Stories & Vile Pictures to Instruct Good Little Folks (Heinrich Hoffmann, 1845) [picture book] - 7.5
The Complete Stories (Kafka, 1909-24)

overall - 7
The Metamorphosis [reread] - 10

Tales of Love and Loss (Hamsun, 1895-1905) - 7
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Flannery O'Connor, 1953) [short story] - 7
Early/Socratic Dialogues (Plato, c. 399-387 BC)

Apology [reread] - 7.5
Crito [reread] - 7.5
Euthyphro [reread] - 7
Gorgias - 5

Paying For It (Chester Brown, 2011) [comic] - 7
Middle and Late Dialogues (Plato, c. 380-347 BC)

Theatetus - 7
Parmenides - 6.5

Murphy (Beckett, 1938) - 6.5
Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615) - 6.5
Building Stories (Chris Ware, 2012) [comic] - 6.5
Congress of the Animals (Jim Woodring, 2011) [comic] - 6
The Essential Tales of Chekhov (Chekhov, 1886-1899) - 6
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1953) - 5.5
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor, 1952) - 5.5
The Queen of Spades (Pushkin, 1834) [short story] - 5.5
(32) Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe, 1835-49)

overall - 5
The Tell-Tale Heart, Ligeia, The Black Cat, some others - great

The Corrections (Franzen, 2001) - 5
Paradise Lost (Milton, 1674) - 4.5
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) - 4
Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle, c. 340BC) - 4
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - 4
The Republic (Plato, c. 380BC) - 3

[TGM]

1. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
2. Misery - Stephen King
3. The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness
4. On Writing - Stephen King
5. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
6. The Gods of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
7. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
8. Monsters of Men - Patrick Ness
9. The Ask and the Answer - Patrick Ness
10. 1984 - George Orwell

11. The Warlord of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
12. A Dance With Dragons - George R.R. Martin
13. A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs
14. The Neon Rain - James Lee Burke
15. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan
16. A Feast For Crows - George R.R. Martin
17. Peter Pan in Scarlet - Geraldine McCaughrean
18. Animal Farm - George Orwell

And that's gonna do it for this year!

[ContinentalOp]

This might be my favorite Hap and Leonard novel.

So good. One of Lansdale's strongest novels. It's so concise, and tight.
Leonard Pine would have a field day with your last sentence. I liked it a ton. Started off with a lot of fan serving but ended up being one of Lansdale's strongest H&L tales. Read it with a lot of jealous hate because I've been trying to write an action story and I know I could never write such cohesive, vivid and frenetic action scenes. I also liked how the story takes a very nice, though not unexpected, change of direction towards the end. It seems like a reworking of Captains Outrageous, improving upon it with a better plot and better antagonists. Still thinking about that scenewhere they lose the boat, find the kids and rumble with the Big Guy.

[Derek]

Final list

1) The French Lieutenant's Woman (John Fowles) 9.5
2) Ubik (Philip K. Dick) 9.0
3) The Silent Cry (Kenzaburo Oe) 8.5
4) The Pale King (David Foster Wallace) 8.5
5) 2666 (Roberto Bolano) 8.5
6) The Republic (Plato) 8.5
7) The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler) 8.0
8) Hitchcock/Truffaut (Francois Truffaut) 8.0
9) Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston) 8.0
10) Freedom (Jonathan Franzen) 8.0

11) Light Years (James Salter) 7.5
12) Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) 7.5
13) Fear & Trembling (Soren Kierkegaard) 7.5
14) Death in the Andes (Mario Vargas Llosa) 7.5
15) Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon) 7.5
16) Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell) 7.0
17) Neuromancer (William Gibson) 7.0
18) The Optimist's Daughter (Eudora Welty) 7.0
19) Apology (Plato) 7.0
20) Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabakov) 7.0

21) The Symposium (Plato) 7.0
22) The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion) 7.0
23) Tender is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald) 7.0
24) Life of Pi (Yann Martel) 6.5
25) Angelmaker (Nick Harkaway) 6.5
26) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Philip K. Dick) 6.5
27) Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) 6.0
28) A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway) 6.0
29) Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry) 5.5
30) The Half-Made World (Felix Gilman) 5.5

31) A Dance With Dragons (George R.R. Martin) 5.5
32) The Contortionist's Handbook (Craig Clevenger) 5.5
33) Miami (Joan Didion) 4.5

Rereads:

Franny & Zooey (JD Salinger) 10

[kopello]

1. The Illustrated Man (Bradbury)
2. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (Hoffer)
3. American Gods (Gaiman)
4. A High Wind in Jamaica (Hughes)
5. The Warrior Diet (Hofmekler)
6. The Revolution: A Manifesto (Paul)
7. Ragtime (Doctorow)
8. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (DiLorenzo)
9. The Pale King (Wallace)
10. My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln (Titone)
11. The Fountainhead (Rand)
12. The Man in the High Castle (Dick)
13. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
14. Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror (Scheuer)
15. Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
16. As I Lay Dying (Faulkner)
17. End the Fed (Paul)
18. Shambling Toward's Hiroshima (Morrow)
19. Ghost World (Clowes)
20. The Film Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Filmological Knowledge (Kamp)
21. Bosnian Flat Dog (Andersson)

[Mysterious Dude]

Every book I read in 2012.

1. Our Lady of the Flowers (1943, Jean Genet)
2. Les Misérables (1862, Victor Hugo)
3. Crime and Punishment (1866, Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
4. Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964, Hubert Selby, Jr.)
5. Flowers for Algernon (1966, Daniel Keyes)
6. Malone Dies (1951, Samuel Beckett)
7. All Quiet on the Western Front (1929, Erich Maria Remarque)
8. The Forever War (1974, Joe Haldeman)
9. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965, Philip K. Dick)
10. Carry Me Down (2006, M. J. Hyland)
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967, Gabriel GarcÃ*a Márquez)
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960, Walter M. Miller, Jr.)
13. Childhood’s End (1953, Arthur C. Clarke)
14. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969, Ursula K. Le Guin)
15. The Unnamable (1953, Samuel Beckett)
16. À rebours (1884, Joris-Karl Huysmans)
17. Neuromancer (1984, William Gibson)
18. Foundation (1951, Isaac Asimov)
19. Under the Volcano (1947, Malcolm Lowry)

I probably could have read more, if not for Les Mis, but it was worth it.

[TGM]

I probably could have read more, if not for Les Mis, but it was worth it.

I definitely could have read more if it weren't for those last two Game of Thrones books, but... no, they totally weren't worth it.

[D_Davis]

I definitely could have read more if it weren't for those last two Game of Thrones books, but... no, they totally weren't worth it.

I gave up on those after the 100 pages of the first volume. :)
Totally not my kind of fantasy.

[SpaceOddity]

Last year's first reads (not in liking order):

Isabel Allende – Paula
Sarashina – As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams
Lord Dunsany – The King of Elfland’s Daughter
Winifred Holtby – South Riding
Murasaki – The Diary of Lady Murasaki
Susannah Clapp – A Card from Angela Carter
Stella Tillyard – Aristocrats
Millen Brand – The Outward Room
Tatyana Tolstaya – White Walls: Collected Stories
Pavol Dobinsky – Slovak Stories for Young and Old
Ruth Elwin Harris – The Silent Shore
Ruth Elwin Harris – The Beckoning Hills
Ruth Elwin Harris – The Dividing Sea
Ruth Elwin Harris – Gwens’ Story
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
J.L. Carr – A Month in the Country
Ford Maddox Ford – The Good Soldier
George Orwell – Coming up for Air
Eva Ibbotson – The Star of Kazan
David Almond – My Name is Mina
Jo Walton – Among Others
Zola – The Dream
Carol Shields – Swann
Edna O’Brien – The Country Girls
Edna O’Brien – Girl with Green Eyes
Edna O’Brien – Girls in their Married Bliss
Eowyn Ivey – The Snow Child
Patty Dann – Mermaids
Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie
Muriel Spark – The Ballad of Peckham Rye
Sarah Waters – The Night Watch
Elizabeth McCracken – The Giant House
Judith Schalansky – Atlas of Remote Islands
Philip Reeve – Fever Crumb
Philip Reeve – A Web of Air
Philip Peeve – Scrivener’s Moon
Shirley Jackson – The Lottery and Other Stories
Sigrid Undset – Gunnar’s Daughter
Sylvia Townsend Warner- Lolly Willowes
Arthur Conan Doyle – Hound of the Baskervilles
Noel Streatfeild – Saplings
Graham Greene – Brighton Rock
Elizabeth von Armin – All the Dogs of my Life
W. Somerset Maugham – The Painted Veil
Iris Murdoch – A Severed Head
Sarah Winman – When God was a Rabbit
A.S. Byatt – Ragnarok
Tatyana Tolstaya – The Slynx
Dostoyevsky – Netochka Nezvanova
Elizabeth Bowen – The House in Paris
Grace McCleen – The Land of Decoration
Mary Elizabeth Braddon – Aurora Floyd
Nell Leyshon – The Colour of Milk
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky – Memories of the Future
Alan Hollinghurst – The Stranger’s Child
Patrick Ness – A Monster Calls
Isabel Allende – Ines of my Soul
Edward Carey – Observatory Mansions
Susan Fletcher – Witch Light
George Eliot – Scenes of Clerical Life
Sarah Waters – Tipping the Velvet
Caitlin Moran – How to be a Woman
Jeanette Winterson – The Daylight Gate
Theophile Gautier – My Phantoms
Karen Thompson Walker – The Age of Miracles
Jonathan Franzen – The Corrections
Flaubert – Sentimental Education
Jena Webster – Dear Enemy
Marguerite de Navarre – The Heptameron
Sheri Reynolds – A Gracious Plenty
Michael Ende- The Neverending Story
Seven Viking Romances
Ford Maddox Ford – Parade’s End
Emily Bronte – Poems of Solitude
Roald Dahl – The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
Zola – The Ladies’ Paradise
Chekhov – The Shooting Party
Philip Pullman – Grim Tales for Young and Old
Amy Tan – The Joy Luck Club
Elizabeth Hay – A Student of Weather
Zitkala-Sa – American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings
Rustaveli – The Knight in Panther’s Skin
Maupassant – A Woman’s Life
John Christopher – The Death of Grass
Elizabeth Anna Hart – The Runaway
Mark Forsyth – The Horologicon
Yukio Mishima – Spring Snow
Irene Nemirovsky – Jezebel
Rumer Godden – An Episode of Sparrows
Charlotte Dacre – Zofloya: or The Moor
Irene Nemirovsky – Fire in the Blood
Tolstoy – Hadji Murat
Michael Chabon – Wonder Boys
Sara Maitland – Gossip from the Forest
Yeats – Irish Folk and Fairytales
Louise Erdrich – Love Medicine
Helen Cresswell – Moondial