Anyone read Dust Lands?
Anyone read Dust Lands?
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.
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.
Out of ****:
Chef- ** 1/2
The Interview- ** 1/2
White Bird in a Blizzard- ** 1/2
Frank- *** 1/2
A Walk Among the Tombstones- ***
This might be my favorite Hap and Leonard novel.Quoting ContinentalOp (view post)
So good. One of Lansdale's strongest novels. It's so concise, and tight.
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
[]
The Boat People - 9
The Power of the Dog - 7.5
The King of Pigs - 7
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
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
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!
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 scene[]Quoting D_Davis (view post)
Out of ****:
Chef- ** 1/2
The Interview- ** 1/2
White Bird in a Blizzard- ** 1/2
Frank- *** 1/2
A Walk Among the Tombstones- ***
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
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)
[]
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.
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.Quoting Isaac (view post)
I gave up on those after the 100 pages of the first volume.Quoting TGM (view post)
Totally not my kind of fantasy.
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