Top 10 Books First Read in 2015

[Mara]

Brand new year, guys.

1. Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore
2. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
3. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder
4. Fairest by Marissa Meyer
5. The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski
6. Panic by Lauren Oliver

[kuehnepips]

1. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
2. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
3. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
4. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
5. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
6. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
7. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
8. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. From Hell (Alan Moore, 1988-97)

Good start.

[ledfloyd]

Brand new year, guys.

1. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Thoughts on this? I was thinking of picking it up.

[Mara]

Thoughts on this? I was thinking of picking it up.

It's well-written and introspective. IMO it leans too heavily on pop culture, making it a little hard to invest in chapters where I wasn't familiar with what she was critiquing. It also makes me worry that the book won't age well.

But Gay has an honest, relate-able, compassionate, and funny way of looking at the world. It's worth checking out.

[Benny Profane]

1. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe

[kuehnepips]

1. Auf dass uns vergeben werde by A.I. Homes
2. Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

[Our Aurora]

1. Tenth of December - George Saunders
2. The Book of Strange New Things - Michel Faber
3. Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
4. Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor
5. Yes Please - Amy Poehler
6. Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

[dreamdead]

Fiction:
1. Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
2. Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling
3. Patrick Wang’s The Monologue Plays

Nonfiction:
1. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
2. Peter Enns’s The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

Yamamoto's got about four or five stories there that beautifully capture conflicting attitudes from Japanese Americans from the 1940s-1980s who were interned in Arizona, as she herself was. Lots of fascinating content for those interested in seeing how minorities perceive those atrocities, and how there's intercultural bonding in her "A Fire in Fontana."

[baby doll]

Novels:
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Short story collections:
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
2. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
3. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
4. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
5. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
6. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
7. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
8. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

I've been on a tear. I barely read anything last year so one of my New Year's Resolutions was to read one book a month this year and I ended up reading 8 just this month!

[Mara]

I've been on a tear. I barely read anything last year so one of my New Year's Resolutions was to read one book a month this year and I ended up reading 8 just this month!

Ooh, some really great ones, too.

I'm reading and critiquing a manuscript by a friend, which somehow takes about ten times as long as reading a regular novel.

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano

[Watashi]

I've been trying to read a book a week, but with teaching and Disney, it's going to be tough.

Here's what I have so far:

1. The Picture of Dorian Gray
2. Animal Farm
3. Flowers for Algernon

Granted, I'm mostly going to be reading books I will be teaching/or want to teach in my later high school classes.

I will try to tackle Moby Dick soon though.

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
3. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
4. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
5. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
6. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
7. Flight by Sherman Alexie
8 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
9. Quiet by Susan Cain
10. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie


11. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
12. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
13. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
14. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
3. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
4. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
5. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
6. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
7. Flight by Sherman Alexie
8 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
9. Quiet by Susan Cain
10. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie


11. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
12. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
13. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
14. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente


I think I'm going to have to take a break on reading anymore Alexie books for awhile. I really enjoyed the first two but by the third in three weeks I was getting diminishing returns due to the similar subject matter.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Short story collections:
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Non-fiction:
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

[EyesWideOpen]

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
3. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
4. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
5. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
6. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
7. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
8. Flight by Sherman Alexie
9. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
10. Quiet by Susan Cain



11. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
12. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
13. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
14. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
15. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente


New #1!

[baby doll]

Novels:
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Non-fiction:
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

[Mara]

Being sick has put me so, so far behind on my reading. But Wedlock by Wendy Moore is fantastic. It's a non-fiction, fascinating look at a divorce case that was pivotal for women's rights in the 18th century.

[EyesWideOpen]

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
3. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
4. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
5. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
6. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
7. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
8. Flight by Sherman Alexie
9. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
10. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie


11. Quiet by Susan Cain
12. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
13. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
14. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
15. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
16. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[dreamdead]

Fiction:
1. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
2. Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sowers
3. Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
4. Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue
5. Toshio Mori’s Yokohama, California: Stories
6. Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
7. Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea
8. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
9. Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling
10. Patrick Wang’s The Monologue Plays

Nonfiction:
1. Cyrus Patell’s Emergent U.S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late-Twentieth Century
2. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
3. Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
4. Fareed Zakaria’s In Defense of a Liberal Education
5. Peter Enns’s The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
6. Stephen Apkon’s The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens

[Gittes]

I was not aware of Zakaria's book until just now. I may have to check that out.

[dreamdead]

I'm assuming you've done research to note that Zakaria's book is about liberal arts education, and not a politically liberal education. :)

Anyway. It has some nice historical facts, how the liberal arts exist as a vehicle for empathy and understanding, how they're there to undercut the hierarchal and perpetual family line that process through the Ivy leagues, and how the current commentators (David Brooks and others) are looking for the wrong things when they critique the millennial for not holding more to ideals. I think the final few pages are a little cursory and circuitously structured, when he turns to highlighting Bill Gates and others for their financial contributions to ideas, but it's overall an interesting read, and at 170 pages, it's a blur.

[Gittes]

I'm assuming you've done research to note that Zakaria's book is about liberal arts education, and not a politically liberal education. :)

Yep, that was my first assumption, and that's also why I'm intrigued. My quick look at its Amazon.com page also confirmed this.



Anyway. It has some nice historical facts, how the liberal arts exist as a vehicle for empathy and understanding, how they're there to undercut the hierarchal and perpetual family line that process through the Ivy leagues, and how the current commentators (David Brooks and others) are looking for the wrong things when they critique the millennial for not holding more to ideals. I think the final few pages are a little cursory and circuitously structured, when he turns to highlighting Bill Gates and others for their financial contributions to ideas, but it's overall an interesting read, and at 170 pages, it's a blur.

Thanks for the additional info. The stigmatization of liberal arts degrees (i.e., condescending, narrow-minded dismissals of the value of such pursuits) can get pretty wearying and lame, so that's partly why I'm drawn to this book.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Non-fiction:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)

[Irish]

What do you think of this whole brouhaha?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/29/writers-join-protest-charlie-hebdo-pen-award

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt

[EyesWideOpen]

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
10. Flight by Sherman Alexie


11. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
12. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
13. Quiet by Susan Cain
14. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
15. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
16. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
17. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
18. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[baby doll]

What do you think of this whole brouhaha?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/29/writers-join-protest-charlie-hebdo-pen-awardGranting that French Muslims are an oppressed minority, lousy cartoonists picking on an easy target is probably the least of their problems. In any case, religion should be made fun of. Because it's ridiculous. If some Muslims can't take it, they can move to the Islamic State and see how they like it there. As for the PEN award, the very idea of giving out a prize for free speech is insufferably smug since the whole point is to make the people handing out the awards look good; it's no different from people tweeting "Bring Back Our Girls" or "Boycott Woody Allen" to show how virtuous they are, or writing an op-ed piece on why Charlie Hebdo shouldn't get an award to show how much you care about oppressed Muslims.

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt
Finance for Non-financial Managers - Gene Siciliano

[Dukefrukem]

Getting your MBA Benny?

I've read the Goal and Lean Turnaround.

[Benny Profane]

No MBA. I didn't take a lot of business classes in college, and am just trying to fill in some gaps to help me at work.

[ledfloyd]

That Kahneman book is the closest thing I've found to a user's manual for the human mind. So good.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Non-fiction:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)

Total number of books read: seventeen.

[EyesWideOpen]

Updated:

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
9. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
10. Flight by Sherman Alexie


11. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
12. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
13. Quiet by Susan Cain
14. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
15. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
16. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
17. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
18. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[Winston*]

Updated:

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald


Hey, neat.

[EyesWideOpen]

Hey, neat.

Your post about it was the reason I read it so thanks. Hadn't even heard of it until then.

[ledfloyd]

I haven't posted in here yet? I could've sworn I had.

1. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
2. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
3. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
4. Letters - Kurt Vonnegut
5. Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology - Belt Publishing

I didn't start reading for pleasure until early May, I'm happy with five books in a month. I also reread Inherent Vice.

[Mara]

I haven't been updating this at all. I'm not going to bother listing every book I've read... just the ones that might end up top-ten worthy.

1. Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore
2. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
3. The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
4. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by Laura Ingalls Wilder
5. The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
6. Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

[Benny Profane]

1. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
2. Julius Caeser - William Shakespeare
2. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
2. King Lear - William Shakespeare
3. The Silent Cry - Kenzaburo Oe


Business Books - Unranked

The 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace - Hiroyuki Hirano
The Lean Turnaround - Art Byrne
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - Eliyahu Goldratt
Finance for Non-financial Managers - Gene Siciliano
Decide - Steve McClatchy

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Germinal (1885, Émile Zola)
2. Bastard Out of Carolina (1992, Dorothy Allison)
3. The House on the Borderland (1908, William Hope Hodgson)
4. The Torture Garden (1899, Octave Mirbeau)
5. Bel Canto (2001, Ann Patchett)
6. The Wild Boys (1969, William S. Burroughs)
7. Sans Famille (1878, Hector Malot)
8. Man Plus (1976, Frederik Pohl)
9. Swamplandia! (2011, Karen Russell)
10. Mother (1906, Maxim Gorky)
11. Peter Pan (1911, J.M. Barrie)

I have just started Moby Dick, so I won't be updating this for a while.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Non-fiction:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)

I also read:
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)

[ledfloyd]

1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
2. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
3. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
4. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
5. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
6. Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut
7. Letters - Kurt Vonnegut
8. Car Bombs to Cookie Tables: The Youngstown Anthology - Belt Publishing
9. Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov

[EyesWideOpen]

1. H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
2. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
4. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
5. Night Film by Marisha Pessl
6. Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
7. Alex & Me by Irene M. Pepperberg
8. Yes Please by Amy Poehler
9. Tim and Eric's Zone Theory: 7 Easy Steps to Achieve a Perfect Life by Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim
10. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica



11. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
12. The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
13. Flight by Sherman Alexie
14. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
15. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
16. Quiet by Susan Cain
17. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
18. The Nimrod Flipout by Etgar Keret
19. The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
20. I Don't Know What You Know Me From by Judy Greer
21. Girl Walks Into a Bar by Rachel Dratch
22. The Orphans by Matthew Sullivan
23. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente

[ledfloyd]

1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
2. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
3. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
4. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
5. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
6. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
8. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
9. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
10. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K Dick

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Non-fiction:
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)

[ledfloyd]

1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
2. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
3. Dune - Frank Herbert
4. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
5. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
6. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
7. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
8. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
9. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
10. The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut

[dreamdead]

Novels:
1. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
2. Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sowers
3. Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
4. Marilynne Robinson’s Lila
5. Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue
6. Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt
7. Toshio Mori’s Yokohama, California
8. Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
9. Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety
10. Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea
11. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
12. Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling
13. Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train

Nonfiction:
Cyrus Patell’s Emergent U.S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late-Twentieth Century
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Fareed Zakaria’s In Defense of a Liberal Education
Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter
Peter Enns’s The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time
Stephen Apkon’s The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens

Plays:
David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine
David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls
David Henry Hwang's Trying to Find Chinatown: Selected Plays
Patrick Wang’s The Monologue Plays

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Non-fiction:
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)
Rio Bravo (Robin Wood, 2003)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Hunter (Donald Westlake [as Richard Stark], 1962)
Theory of Film Practice (Noël Burch, 1969/73)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Brainquake (Samuel Fuller, 1993)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Non-fiction:
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)
Rio Bravo (Robin Wood, 2003)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)
The Film Sense (Sergei Eisenstein, 1942)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith, 1951)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Hunter (Donald Westlake [as Richard Stark], 1962)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov, 1962)
Theory of Film Practice (Noël Burch, 1969/73)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Brainquake (Samuel Fuller, 1993)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Grimus (Salman Rushdie, 1975)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Non-fiction:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1988/2002)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts [Updated and Expanded Edition] (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
Cassavetes on Cassavetes (Ray Carney, 2001)
Rio Bravo (Robin Wood, 2003)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
The Film Sense (Sergei Eisenstein, 1942)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith, 1951)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
The Hunter (Donald Westlake [as Richard Stark], 1962)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov, 1962)
Theory of Film Practice (Noël Burch, 1969/73)
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Brainquake (Samuel Fuller, 1993)
Woody Allen on Woody Allen (Stig Björkman, 1993)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
The Hunter (Donald Westlake [as Richard Stark], 1962)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories (Herman Melville, 1853-1924)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Miss Julie and Other Plays (August Strindberg, 1887-1907)
Non-fiction:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1988/2002)
On the History of Film Style (David Bordwell, 1997)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
Cassavetes on Cassavetes (Ray Carney, 2001)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
The Film Sense (Sergei Eisenstein, 1942)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith, 1951)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov, 1962)
The Deep Blue Good-by (John D. MacDonald, 1964)
Signs and Meanings in the Cinema (Peter Wollen, 1969/72)
Theory of Film Practice (Noël Burch, 1969/73)
Grimus (Salman Rushdie, 1975)
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Brainquake (Samuel Fuller, 1993)
Woody Allen on Woody Allen (Stig Björkman, 1993)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)
Rio Bravo (Robin Wood, 2003)

[ledfloyd]

1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
2. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon
3. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
4. Dune - Frank Herbert
5. In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan
6. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
7. Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan
8. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut
9. Summer Knight - Jim Butcher
10. Foundation - Isaac Asimov

[D_Davis]

1. The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler
2. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets - David Simon
3. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
4. Dune - Frank Herbert

Damn. That's a top 4 that'll be tough to beat.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Germinal (1885, Émile Zola)
2. In Cold Blood (1966, Truman Capote)
3. Native Son (1940, Richard Wright)
4. Bastard Out of Carolina (1992, Dorothy Allison)
5. Rite of Passage (1968, Alexei Panshin)
6. The House on the Borderland (1908, William Hope Hodgson)
7. The Torture Garden (1899, Octave Mirbeau)
8. Bel Canto (2001, Ann Patchett)
9. Moby Dick (1851, Herman Melville)
10. The Wild Boys (1969, William S. Burroughs)

11. Sans Famille (1878, Hector Malot)
12. Man Plus (1976, Frederik Pohl)
13. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (1956, João Guimarães Rosa)
14. Swamplandia! (2011, Karen Russell)
15. Mother (1906, Maxim Gorky)
16. Peter Pan (1911, J.M. Barrie)

The ones at the bottom aren't all that bad, really.

[baby doll]

Novels:
Les Liaisons dangereuses (Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, 1782)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen, 1811)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851)
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell, 1855)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy, 1891)
The Thin Man (Dashiell Hammett, 1934)
The Hunter (Donald Westlake [as Richard Stark], 1962)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth, 1969)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George V. Higgins, 1971)
Short story collections:
The Girl With the Golden Eyes and Other Stories (Honoré de Balzac, 1831-35)
Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories (Herman Melville, 1853-1924)
The Simple Art of Murder (Raymond Chandler, 1934-50)
The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury, 1946-52)
Collected Stories (Saul Bellow, 1951-95)
Plays:
A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare, 1595 or '96)
Miss Julie and Other Plays (August Strindberg, 1887-1907)
Non-fiction:
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, 1988/2002)
On the History of Film Style (David Bordwell, 1997)
More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (James Naremore, 1998/2008)
Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Kristin Thompson, 1999)
Cassavetes on Cassavetes (Ray Carney, 2001)

I also read:
Tao Té Ching [R.B. Blakney translation] (Lao Tzu, pretty fucking old)
Villette (Charlotte Brontë, 1853)
Death in Venice and Other Stories (Thomas Mann, 1897-1912)
Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937)
My Mother, Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man (Georges Bataille, 1941-67)
The Film Sense (Sergei Eisenstein, 1942)
Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh, 1945/59)
The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith, 1951)
Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
No Longer at Ease (Chinua Achebe, 1960)
Pale Fire (Vladimir Nabokov, 1962)
The Deep Blue Good-by (John D. MacDonald, 1964)
Films and Feelings (Raymond Durgnat, 1967)
Signs and Meanings in the Cinema (Peter Wollen, 1969/72)
Theory of Film Practice (Noël Burch, 1969/73)
Grimus (Salman Rushdie, 1975)
The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (David Bordwell, 1981)
Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (Michel Chion, 1990)
The Volcano Lover: A Romance (Susan Sontag, 1992)
Brainquake (Samuel Fuller, 1993)
Woody Allen on Woody Allen (Stig Björkman, 1993)
Making Movies (Sidney Lumet, 1995)
The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Christopher Hitchens, 2001)
Rio Bravo (Robin Wood, 2003)
Nippon Modern: Japanese Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s (Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, 2008)

[dreamdead]

Everything but comics read in 2015:

Novels:
1. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
2. Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sowers
3. Hisaye Yamamoto’s Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
4. David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
5. Marilynne Robinson’s Lila
6. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout
7. Zadie Smith’s NW
8. Nam Le’s The Boat: Stories
9. Elliot Ackerman’s Green on Blue
10. Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (Carol)
11. Yuichi Seirai’s Ground Zero: Nagasaki
12. Thomas Sweterlisch’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow
13. Toshio Mori’s Yokohama, California
14. Joanna Russ’s The Female Man
15. Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety
16. Margaret Atwood’s The Stone Mattress: Stories
17. Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles: Stories
18. Louis Chu’s Eat a Bowl of Tea
19. Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last
20. Toni Morrison’s A Mercy
21. Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling
22. Mine Okubo’s Citizen 13660
23. Paula Hawkins’s The Girl on the Train

Nonfiction:
Cyrus Patell’s Emergent U.S. Literatures: From Multiculturalism to Cosmopolitanism in the Late-Twentieth Century
Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
Fareed Zakaria’s In Defense of a Liberal Education
Monica Sone’s Nisei Daughter
Peter Enns’s The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time
Stephen Apkon’s The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens

Plays:
David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine
David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls
Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & the What
Lucas Hnath’s The Christians
David Henry Hwang’s Trying to Find Chinatown: Selected Plays
Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand
Patrick Wang’s The Monologue Plays