Top 10 Books First Read During 2012

[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.

[

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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 [

Show Spoiler

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 [

Show Spoiler

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)
[

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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 [

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mustache

]) and the hip-hop slang obsessed white kid ([

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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



[

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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

[

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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)


[

Show Spoiler

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.