Top 10 Books First Read During 2013

[Dead & Messed Up]

Books

1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
3. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
5. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
6. The End of Faith (Sam Harris, 2004)
7. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
8. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
9. Writing Movies For Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Ben Garant, 2011)
10. Do the Work (Steven Pressfield, 2011)

Comics

1. All Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008)
2. Batman: Haunted Knight (Loeb & Sale, 1996)

[Melville]

1. Essays in Pragmatism (William James, 1880-1907) - 8.5
2. Schizo #4 (Ivan Brunetti, 2006) [comic] - 8.5
3. Selected poems and letters (Keats, 1816-1820) - 8
4. Philosophy of Existence (Karl Jaspers, 1938) - 8
5. Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1798) - 7.5
6. The Courage to Be (Paul Tillich, 1952) - 7
7. Pensees (Blaise Pascal, 1669) - 7
8. Ice (Anna Kavan, 1967) - 7
9. The Third Policeman (Flann O'Brien, written 1940/published 1967) - 7
10. All-Star Superman (Morrison and Quitely, 2009) [comic] - 6.5
11. Teatro Grottesco (Thomas Ligotti, 2007) - 5.5
12. Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger, 1961) - 5
13. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960) - 4.5
14. At the Mountains of Madness (HP Lovecraft, 1936) - 4
15. Dream Story (Arthur Schnitzler, 1926) - 3.5

[Mysterious Dude]

1. The Master and Margarita (1967, Bulgakov)
2. The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962, Fuentes)
3. Camel Xiangzi (1937, Lao She)
4. The Blind Owl (1937, Hedayat)
5. Pather Panchali (1929, Bandopadhyay)
6. The Tunnel (1948, Sábato)
7. The Color Purple (1982, Walker)
8. The Man Who Was Thursday (1908, Chesterton)
9. Ham on Rye (1982, Bukowski)
10. Candide (1759, Voltaire)
11. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886, Stevenson)
12. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, Wilde)
13. Untouchable (1935, Anand)
14. More Than Human (1953, Sturgeon)
15. Fathers and Sons (1862, Turgenev)
16. The Feast of the Goat (2000, Vargas Llosa)
17. Gargoyles (1967, Bernhard)
18. The Call of the Wild (1903, London)
19. Animal Farm (1945, Orwell)
20. The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1881, Reed)
21. Plantation Boy (1932, José Lins do Rego)
22. Alice in Wonderland (1865, Carroll)
23. Nightwood (1936, Barnes)
24. Return of the Spirit (1933, Tawfiq Al-Hakim)
25. Mrs. Dalloway (1925, Woolf)

This year, I decided to read some classic books that are so short, there's no excuse not to read them (Alice in Wonderland, The Call of the Wild and Animal Farm). None of them will become favorites of mine, but at least I'm more well-read. I only read 19 books in 2012.

[dreamdead]

1. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
2. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
3. Albert Camus’s The Plague
4. Don DeLillo’s Libra
5. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
6. Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!
7. Don Lee’s Country of Origin
8. Paul Harding’s Tinkers
9. Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood
10. Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men
[

Show Spoiler

11. Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds
12. Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer
13. Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
14. Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat
15. Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
16. Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life
17. Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse
18. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye
19. Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood
20. Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom
21. Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects
22. Stephen King’s The Long Walk
23. Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam
24. Joe Hill’s Nos4a2
25. Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means
26. Nicole Krauss’s Great House

]

Nonfiction:
1. Wendy Moore’s How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
2. Joshua Zeitz’s Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity and the Women Who Made America Modern

[Benny Profane]

1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
2. Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson
3. Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
4. The Stand - Stephen King


The Count of Monte Cristo is phenomenal so far. Can't put down. Only 960 pages to go.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Did you dislike The Stand, or just love everything above it? I've been tempted to pick it up.

[D_Davis]

If you like King at all, I would definitely recommend The Stand. Not sure if my opinion (on this matter) is valued at all (since I'm butting in), but it's a fantastic novel. I'll probably do another re-read this year along with my Dark Tower re-read. Next to Lonesome Dove, The Stand is the novel I like most because of its characters - I loved my time spent with all the people in the novel. It's not up to the same level as Lonesome Dove, but it's close.

[Kurosawa Fan]

If you like King at all, I would definitely recommend The Stand. Not sure if my opinion is valued at all, but it's a fantastic novel. I'll probably do another re-read this year along with my Dark Tower re-read. Next to Lonesome Dove, The Stand is the novel I like most because of its characters - I loved my time spent with all the people in the novel. It's not up to the same level as Lonesome Dove, but it's close.

I certainly value your opinion--I've bought books based on your praise--but when it comes to King, I've been disappointed by many of his longer works, and don't want to invest the time into The Stand only to come away feeling like I did after It. Benny's taste aligns pretty well with my own, so I'm interested to hear his thoughts on it.

[D_Davis]

I certainly value your opinion--I've bought books based on your praise--.

Sorry - just meant on this particular topic, since I was butting in.

It's very different than It, and, at least for me, a much quicker read. I finished the unabridged version in 5 working days.

[D_Davis]

1. The Master and Margarita (1967, Bulgakov)

I'll definitely be reading this by year's end.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Books

1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
3. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
5. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
6. The End of Faith (Sam Harris, 2004)
7. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
8. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
9. Writing Movies For Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Ben Garant, 2011)
10. Do the Work (Steven Pressfield, 2011)

Comics

1. Superman: Birthright (Waid & Yu, 2004)
2. All Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008)
3. Batman: Haunted Knight (Loeb & Sale, 1996)

[Benny Profane]

Did you dislike The Stand, or just love everything above it? I've been tempted to pick it up.

I definitely liked it. It kind of pounds you over the head with its themes at times but its a very good story, expertly told. I actually liked it more in the beginning when the supernatural elements had yet to be introduced. I was interested in it more as a "how to regroup and rebuild society after a catastrophe" story than a "good vs. evil" showdown. Mother Abigail and Flagg did nothing for me as concepts or as characters.

[Raiders]

1. The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood, 2000)
2. Naked (David Sedaris, 1998)
3. Jimmy Corrigan (Chris Ware, 2000)
4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee & Walker Evans, 1941)
5. Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry, 1985)
6. Blankets (Craig Thompson, 2003)
7. All That Is (James Salter, 2013)
8. The Edible Woman (Margaret Atwood, 1969)
9. Island (Aldous Huxley, 1962)

Like all of them to a degree, though the last three are great authors spinning their wheels, especially Huxley who flips his most famous work on its head and proceeds to preach at us his world affairs treatise for a few hundred pages. It's as occasionally mesmerizing and often as laborious as it sounds. It does have a certain fascination though, reading it 50 years later.

[Mara]

I really love The Blind Assassin. That may be due for a reread.

[D_Davis]

I'm not keeping lists of stuff anymore, but I'll be surprised if I read something better than Delany's Dhalgren this year.

[megladon8]

I will be constantly re-arranging this throughout the year...

1.) Way Station (Clifford D. Simak, 1963)
2.) It (Stephen King, 1985)
3.) The Divinity Student (Michael Cisco, 1999)
4.) House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000)
5.) The Walls of the Castle (Tom Piccirilli, 2012)
6.) The Crimson Petal and the White (Michel Faber, 2002)
7.) Kin (Kealan Patrick Burke, 2011)
8.) My Work is Not Yet Done (Thomas Ligotti, 2002)
9.) The Light is the Darkness (Laird Barron, 2011)
10.) Headstone City (Tom Piccirilli, 2006)

...

[

Show Spoiler

11.) Of Blood and Honey (Stina Leicht, 2011)
12.) All You Need is KILL (Hiroshi Sakurazaka, 2004)
13.) The Pilo Family Circus (Will Elliott, 2006)
14.) Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
15.) Penpal (Dathan Auerbach, 2012)
16.) Mandibles (Jeff Strand, 2003)
17.) Come Closer (Sara Gran, 2003)
18.) The Hoard (Alan Ryker, 2012)
19.) Mama Fish (Rio Youers, 2009)
20.) The Void (Brett J. Talley, 2012)
21.) A Whale for the Killing (Farley Mowat, 1972)
22.)The Cannibal Within (Mark Mirabello, 2005)

]

[Dead & Messed Up]

Books

1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
3. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
5. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
6. The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham, 1925)
7. The End of Faith (Sam Harris, 2004)
8. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
9. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
10. Writing Movies For Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Ben Garant, 2011)

[

Show Spoiler

• Do the Work (Steven Pressfield, 2011)

]

Comics

1. Superman: Birthright (Waid & Yu, 2004)
2. All Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008)
3. Batman: Haunted Knight (Loeb & Sale, 1996)

[baby doll]

• Notes From Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864)
  
• Selected Short Stories [Penquin Popular Classics] (Guy de Maupassant, 1880-90)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, 1890-91)
• Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895)
• The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)
• Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared) (Franz Kafka, 1927)
• Laughter in the Dark (Vladimir Nabokov, 1932)
• Despair (Vladimir Nabokov, 1934)
• Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
• The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen, 2001)

Updated for the end of August-beginning of September. Total number of books read: Fourteen.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Books

1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
3. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
5. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
6. The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham, 1925)
7. How to Be Good (Nick Hornby, 2001)
8. The End of Faith (Sam Harris, 2004)
9. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
10. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)

[

Show Spoiler

• Writing Movies For Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Ben Garant, 2011)
• Do the Work (Steven Pressfield, 2011)
• Know Your Angels (John Ronner, 1993)

]

Comics

1. Superman: Birthright (Waid & Yu, 2004)
2. All Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008)
3. Batman: Haunted Knight (Loeb & Sale, 1996)
4. Superman For All Seasons (Loeb & Sale, 1998)

[Raiders]

Finally got to ten...

1. The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood, 2000)
2. Naked (David Sedaris, 1998)
3. Jimmy Corrigan (Chris Ware, 2000)
4. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee & Walker Evans, 1941)
5. Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry, 1985)
6. The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham, 1951)
7. Blankets (Craig Thompson, 2003)
8. All That Is (James Salter, 2013)
9. The Edible Woman (Margaret Atwood, 1969)
10. Island (Aldous Huxley, 1962)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Books

1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
3. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
4. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
5. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
6. The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham, 1925)
7. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
8. The Body Snatchers (Jack Finney, 1955)
9. How to Be Good (Nick Hornby, 2001)
10. The End of Faith (Sam Harris, 2004)

[

Show Spoiler

• The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
• Writing Movies For Fun and Profit (Thomas Lennon & Ben Garant, 2011)
• Do the Work (Steven Pressfield, 2011)
• Know Your Angels (John Ronner, 1993)

]

Comics

1. Superman: Birthright (Waid & Yu, 2004)
2. All Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008)
3. Batman: Haunted Knight (Loeb & Sale, 1996)
4. Marvel Masterworks: Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 1 (Lee & Ditko, 2003)
5. Superman For All Seasons (Loeb & Sale, 1998)
6. Hellboy: Darkness Calls (Mignola & Fegredo, 2007)

[dreamdead]

1. Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
2. Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol
3. Albert Camus’s The Plague
4. Don DeLillo’s Libra
5. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
6. Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!
7. Don Lee’s Country of Origin
8. Paul Harding’s Tinkers
9. Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood
10. Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men
[

Show Spoiler

11. Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds
12. Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer
13. Ayana Mathis’s The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
14. Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat
15. Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road
16. Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
17. Chang-rae Lee’s A Gesture Life
18. Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse
19. Don Lee’s Yellow
20. Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye
21. Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood
22. Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom
23. Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects
24. Stephen King’s The Long Walk
25. Edith Wharton’s Summer
26. Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam
27. Joe Hill’s Nos4a2
28. Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means
29. Nicole Krauss’s Great House

Nonfiction:
1. Wendy Moore’s How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
2. Amanda Ripley’s The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way
3. Joshua Zeitz’s Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity and the Women Who Made America Modern

]

[megladon8]

I will be constantly re-arranging this throughout the year...

1.) Way Station (Clifford D. Simak, 1963)
2.) It (Stephen King, 1985)
3.) The Divinity Student (Michael Cisco, 1999)
4.) House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski, 2000)
5.) The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival (John Vaillant, 2010)
6.) The Walls of the Castle (Tom Piccirilli, 2012)
7.) The Crimson Petal and the White (Michel Faber, 2002)
8.) Kin (Kealan Patrick Burke, 2011)
9.) My Work is Not Yet Done (Thomas Ligotti, 2002)
10.) Headstone City (Tom Piccirilli, 2006)

...

[

Show Spoiler

11.) The Light is the Darkness (Laird Barron, 2011)
12.) Of Blood and Honey (Stina Leicht, 2011)
13.) All You Need is KILL (Hiroshi Sakurazaka, 2004)
14.) The Pilo Family Circus (Will Elliott, 2006)
15.) Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
16.) Penpal (Dathan Auerbach, 2012)
17.) Mandibles (Jeff Strand, 2003)
18.) Come Closer (Sara Gran, 2003)
19.) The Hoard (Alan Ryker, 2012)
20.) Mama Fish (Rio Youers, 2009)
21.) The Void (Brett J. Talley, 2012)
22.) A Whale for the Killing (Farley Mowat, 1972)
23.)The Cannibal Within (Mark Mirabello, 2005)

][/QUOTE]

[Benny Profane]

1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
2. Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson
3. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
4. Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
5. The Stand - Stephen King

[baby doll]

• Twice Told Tales (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1837-42)
• Notes From Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde, 1890-91)
• Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy, 1895)
• The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925)
• Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared) (Franz Kafka, 1927)
• Laughter in the Dark (Vladimir Nabokov, 1932)
• Despair (Vladimir Nabokov, 1934)
• Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe, 1958)
• The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen, 2001)

Updated for the beginning of November. Total number of books read: sixteen.