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Thread: Top 10 Books First Read During 2013

  1. #101
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Books

    1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
    3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1884)
    4. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    5. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
    6. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
    7. The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham, 1925)
    8. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
    9. How to Be Good (Nick Hornby, 2001)
    10. The Body Snatchers (Jack Finney, 1955)
    [
    ]

    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. Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers, Vol. 1 (Lee & Kirby, 2002)
    7. Hellboy: Darkness Calls (Mignola & Fegredo, 2007)

  2. #102
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    Novels:
    • 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)
    • The White Castle (Orhan Pamuk, 1985)
    • In America (Susan Sontag, 2000)
    • The Corrections (Jonathan Franzen, 2001)

    Short story collections:
    • Twice Told Tales (Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1837/42)
    • Selected Short Stories [Popular Penquin Classics] (Guy de Maupassant, 1880-90)
    • For Esmé—With Love and Squalor (J.D. Salinger, 1953)
    Updated for the end of November. Total number of books read: Eighteen.
    Just because...
    The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022) mild
    Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) mild
    The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022) mild

    The last book I read was...
    The Complete Short Stories by Mark Twain


    The (New) World

  3. #103
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    With the end of the year right around the corner, looks like the best book I read all year continues to be:




    I'm still thinking about it constantly, and greatly look forward to a re-reading. I'm sure I'll get even more out of this dense and puzzling book each time I revisit it. It is more profound than Gravity's Rainbow, more entertaining than Doctor Sleep, and has better characters than anything else I read this year. It's a bona fide masterpiece of speculative fiction, and probably a masterpiece of English literature in general.

    It is a dark and twisted, puzzling tale of identity, sexuality and social unrest in a post-modern, post-apocalyptic world with a circular narrative with multiple points of entry. A truly unique work that is equally captivating as it is baffling.

  4. #104
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Books

    1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    2. The Tao Te Ching (tr. Sam Hamill, 2005)
    3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain, 1884)
    4. The House on the Borderland (William Hope Hodgson, 1908)
    5. Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847)
    6. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
    7. Full Dark No Stars (Stephen King, 2010)
    8. The Painted Veil (W. Somerset Maugham, 1925)
    9. Horns (Joe Hill, 2010)
    10. People of the Dark, Vol. 2 (Robert E. Howard, 1932-1935)
    [
    ]

    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. Marvel Masterworks: The Avengers, Vol. 1 (Lee & Kirby, 2002)
    7. Hellboy: Darkness Calls (Mignola & Fegredo, 2007)

  5. #105
    Not a praying man Melville's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    With the end of the year right around the corner, looks like the best book I read all year continues to be:

    Funny, you once recommended that to me as a sci-fi book I might like but that you could never get into.


    Books
    1. Visions: Stories and Photographs (Leonid Andreyev,~1900-1910) - 8.5
    2. Essays in Pragmatism (William James, 1880-1907) - 8.5
    3. Selected poems and letters (Keats, 1816-1820) - 8
    4. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Muriel Spark, 1961) - 8
    5. Philosophy of Existence (Karl Jaspers, 1938) - 8
    6. Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1798) - 7.5
    7. The Courage to Be (Paul Tillich, 1952) - 7
    8. Pensees (Blaise Pascal, 1669) - 7
    9. Ice (Anna Kavan, 1967) - 7
    10. The Third Policeman (Flann O'Brien, written 1940/published 1967) - 7
    11. No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy, 2005) - 6
    12. Teatro Grottesco (Thomas Ligotti, 2007) - 5.5
    13. Franny and Zooey (J.D. Salinger, 1961) - 5
    14. Rabbit, Run (John Updike, 1960) - 4.5
    15. At the Mountains of Madness (HP Lovecraft, 1936) - 4
    16. Dream Story (Arthur Schnitzler, 1926) - 3.5
    17. The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764) - 2.5

    Comic books
    1. Elektra: Assassin (Frank Miller & Bill Sinkiewicz, 1987) - 9
    2. Elektra Lives Again (Frank Miller & Lynn Varley, 1990) - 8.5
    3. Schizo #4 (Ivan Brunetti, 2006) - 8.5
    4. Blankets (Craig Thompson, 2003) - 7.5
    5. Thor: God of Thunder, Vol. 1: The God Butcher (Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic, 2012) - 7.5
    6. All-Star Superman (Morrison & Quitely, 2008) - 6.5
    7. Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller, Vol. 3 (Frank Miller & Klaus Janson, 1982-83) - 6
    8. Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller, Vol. 2 (Frank Miller & Klaus Janson, 1981-82) - 6
    9. Wolverine: Origin (Paul Jenkins, Andy Kubert, and Richard Isanove, 2001) - 6
    10. Wolverine: Logan (Brian K. Vaughan & Eduardo Risso, 2008) - 4.5
    11. Wolverine: Get Mystique (Jason Aaron & Ron Garney, 2008) - 4
    12. Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon & Neal Cassady, 2004-08) - 3.5
    13. Days of Future Past (Chris Claremont & John Byrne, 1980) - 2.5
    14. Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (Frank Miller & John Romita Jr, 1993) - 2.5
    15. Wolverine: Enemy of the State (Mark Millar, John Romita Jr, and Kaare Andrews, 2006) - 2
    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

  6. #106
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Melville (view post)
    Funny, you once recommended that to me as a sci-fi book I might like but that you could never get into.
    Took me 2-3 times to get into it. But now I'm betting I re-read it every other year or so.

  7. #107
    I don't think I'll finish any more books by the year's end, so we'll call this definitive. A successful year, I'd say.

    1. The Master and Margarita (1967, Mikhail Bulgakov) ****
    2. The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962, Carlos Fuentes) ****
    3. Camel Xiangzi (1937, Lao She) ****
    4. The Blind Owl (1937, Sadegh Hedayat) ****
    5. Captains of the Sands (1937, Jorge Amado) ****
    6. The Road (2006, Cormac McCarthy) ****
    7. Pather Panchali (1929, Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay) ****
    8. Rabbit, Run (1960, John Updike) ****
    9. Fifth Business (1970, Robertson Davies) ****
    10. The Late Mattia Pascal (1904, Luigi Pirandello) ***½

    11. The Tunnel (1948, Ernesto Sábato) ***½
    12. The Man Who Was Thursday (1908, G.K. Chesterton) ***½
    13. The Color Purple (1982, Alice Walker) ***½
    14. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, Oscar Wilde) ***½
    15. Le Père Goriot (1835, Honoré de Balzac) ***½
    16. A Road with No End (1952, Mochtar Lubis) ***½
    17. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886, Robert Louis Stevenson) ***½
    18. Gulliver's Travels (1726, Jonathan Swift) ***½
    19. Candide (1759, Voltaire) ***½
    20. Ham on Rye (1982, Charles Bukowski) ***½

    21. Untouchable (1935, Mulk Raj Anand) ***
    22. More Than Human (1953, Theodore Sturgeon) ***
    23. Fathers and Sons (1862, Ivan Turgenev) ***
    24. The Feast of the Goat (2000, Mario Vargas Llosa) ***
    25. My Ántonia (1918, Willa Cather) ***
    26. Gargoyles (1967, Thomas Bernhard) ***
    27. The Call of the Wild (1903, Jack London) ***
    28. Animal Farm (1945, George Orwell) ***
    29. Memed, My Hawk (1955, Yasar Kemal) **½
    30. Season of Migration to the North (1966, Tayeb Salih) **½

    31. Alice in Wonderland (1865, Lewis Carroll) **½
    32. The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1881, Talbot Baines Reed) **½
    33. Plantation Boy (1932, José Lins do Rego) **½
    34. Nightwood (1936, Djuna Barnes) **
    35. Return of the Spirit (1933, Tawfiq Al-Hakim) **
    36. Mrs. Dalloway (1925, Virginia Woolf) *

    I've also made another personal accomplishment; upon finishing Gulliver's Travels today, I've now read 50 of the top 100 books on my consensus list.

    Edited to add The Road, which brings the total to 36, an average of three books a month. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to repeat that.

  8. #108
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    1. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
    2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William Shirer
    3. Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson
    4. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexander Dumas
    5. Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
    6. The Stand - Stephen King
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  9. #109
    I'm in the milk... Mara's Avatar
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    This is nowhere near organized as a list.

    So... I guess I read 67 young adult books this year. This was the first year I kept any sort of track of my reading list, because I'm trying to treat YA as a job instead of just a hobby. That led to some really awful experiences, but I also found a few wonderful books that I probably wouldn't have found otherwise.

    I didn't track the adult books I read this year, and I'm trying to remember them. Searching MC seems the easiest route, so I read at the least: Gone Girl, Maddaddam, How to Create the Perfect Wife, A Tale of Two Cities, Burial Rites, My Story, Don Quixote, 84 Charring Cross Road, Someday Someday Maybe, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Les Miserables, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and The Devil in the White City.

    The best YA book I read this year was Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell.

    Best non-fiction was How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore.

    Best adult fiction was... hmm. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
    ...and the milk's in me.

  10. #110
    Producer Lucky's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Lucky (view post)
    1. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
    2. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)
    3. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
    4. On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
    5. The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higoshida)
    6. Sweet Tooth (Ian McEwan)
    7. The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman)
    8. The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)
    9. Angels (Denis Johnson)
    10. Magic for Beginners (Kelly Link)
    I made it to ten, barely. Should be finishing up The Corrections shortly, and it will probably end up at the top of this list. Really enjoying it.

  11. #111
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    Final list:

    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. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead
    8. Paul Harding’s Tinkers
    9. Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country
    10. Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park
    [
    ]
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

  12. #112
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    Another disappointing total this year, though it was quality over quantity as I did not have a single book I outright disliked and the entire top ten is very solid.

    1. The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood, 2000)
    2. Naked (David Sedaris, 1998)
    3. Jimmy Corrigan (Chris Ware, 2000)
    4. Enon (Paul Harding, 2013)
    5. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee & Walker Evans, 1941)
    6. Horseman, Pass By (Larry McMurtry, 1961)
    7. Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry, 1985)
    8. Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn, 2012)
    9. The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham, 1951)
    10. Blankets (Craig Thompson, 2003)

    [
    ]
    Recently Viewed:
    Thor: The Dark World (2013) **½
    The Counselor (2013) *½
    Walden (1969) ***
    A Hijacking (2012) ***½
    Before Midnight (2013) ***

    Films By Year


  13. #113
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    You gonna read the rest of the LD books? The second in the series, Comanche Moon, might actually be my favorite.

    Can't wait for my next re-read of these books. I'll probably do the series every other year or so, so they should be up for 2014.

  14. #114
    Montage, s'il vous plait? Raiders's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    You gonna read the rest of the LD books? The second in the series, Comanche Moon, might actually be my favorite.

    Can't wait for my next re-read of these books. I'll probably do the series every other year or so, so they should be up for 2014.

    Yeah, for sure. I had never read a single McMurtry and so I picked up the most famous one first (Lonesome Dove) and then decided to go back and read his first. I suppose since I have the element of hindsight, I could read them chronologically within the storyline, though reading them more as he published them seems more appealing to me as it develops the characters as McMurtry did when he was writing.
    Recently Viewed:
    Thor: The Dark World (2013) **½
    The Counselor (2013) *½
    Walden (1969) ***
    A Hijacking (2012) ***½
    Before Midnight (2013) ***

    Films By Year


  15. #115
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Right on. First time I read LD first, of course, and then the last time I read them in chron order.

    LD is definitely the best book in literary terms, but CM is my favorite because the story is just so bad ass.

    He's a great writer, and after reading a few of his other books, I think he's my favorite writer of female characters.

  16. #116
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Just realized I never did this last year. I'm almost certainly forgetting stuff.

    1. King Lear - Shakespeare
    2. The Martian Chronicles - Bradbury
    3. God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Hitchens
    4. Piccadilly Jim - Wodehouse
    5. The Princess Bride - Goldman
    6. Eleanor & Park - Rowell
    7. The Round House - Erdrich
    8. Ceremony - Silko
    9. My Uncle Oswald - Roald Dahl
    10. A Storm of Swords - Martin

    [
    ]

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