Top Books First Read in 2018

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's that special time of year!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Pulling over books from 2017 I didn't finish...

Fiction

1. Coldheart Canyon (partial) (Clive Barker, 2001)
2. Mr. B. Gone (Clive Barker, 2001)

Non-Fiction

1. On Tyranny (partial) (Timothy Snyder, 2017)
2. Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (Mark Hertzgaard, 2012)
3. The Great Courses: Hinduism (Mark W. Muesse, 2003)
4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)

Theater

1. Waiting for Godot (partial) (Samuel Becket, 1953)

Comic Books

1. Gyo (Junji Ito, 2001-2002)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Finished On Tyranny (very good), started and finished Deathtrap by Ira Levin, which was also very good, if a bit precious at times with its meta-winking. It'd be really fun to see the play performed.

Fiction

1. Coldheart Canyon (partial) (Clive Barker, 2001)
2. Mr. B. Gone (Clive Barker, 2001)

Non-Fiction

1. On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder, 2017)
2. Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (Mark Hertzgaard, 2012)
3. The Great Courses: Hinduism (Mark W. Muesse, 2003)
4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)

Theater

1. Deathtrap (Ira Levin, 1978)
2. Waiting for Godot (partial) (Samuel Becket, 1953)

Comic Books

1. Gyo (Junji Ito, 2001-2002)

[D_Davis]

4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)

How was this?

[Dead & Messed Up]

How was this?

Fairly strong. It didn't illuminate a new value of Job's story so much as wrestle with the implications in the same way I think most people of faith do, but the author does his academic diligence by digging into the translation variance of key passages and unpacking the likely multiple authors. He also seriously considers possible sacrileges like God not being all-powerful. I respected that, even if he ultimately comes to the conclusions you might expect.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Fiction

1. Coldheart Canyon (partial) (Clive Barker, 2001)
2. The Children of Men (partial) (PD James, 1992)
3. Mr. B. Gone (Clive Barker, 2001)

Non-Fiction

1. On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder, 2017)
2. This Changes Everything (partial) (Naomi Klein, 2014)
3. Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (Mark Hertzgaard, 2012)
4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)
5. The Great Courses: Hinduism (Mark W. Muesse, 2003)

Theater

1. Waiting for Godot (partial) (Samuel Becket, 1953)
2. Deathtrap (Ira Levin, 1978)

Comic Books

1. Gyo (Junji Ito, 2001-2002)

[Dead & Messed Up]

Finished the Naomi Klein book. The Great Courses book on Islam is pretty thin soup right now, seems a lot more interested in course-correcting perceptions of Islam (which is fair, given it was produced less than two years after the WTC attack when panic over Islam would've been at a high).

Fiction

1. Coldheart Canyon (partial) (Clive Barker, 2001)
2. The Children of Men (partial) (PD James, 1992)
3. Mr. B. Gone (Clive Barker, 2001)

Non-Fiction

1. On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder, 2017)
2. This Changes Everything (Naomi Klein, 2014)
3. Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (Mark Hertzgaard, 2012)
4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)
5. The Great Courses: Hinduism (Mark W. Muesse, 2003)
6. The Great Courses: Islam (John Esposito, 2003)

Theater

1. Waiting for Godot (partial) (Samuel Becket, 1953)
2. Deathtrap (Ira Levin, 1978)

Comic Books

1. Gyo (Junji Ito, 2001-2002)

[ledfloyd]

I'm going to try to be serious about this this year; I also want to read lots of long books.

Fiction
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. The Waterworks by E.L. Doctorow
4. Slade House by David Mitchell

Non Fiction
1. Postwar by Tony Judt

Poetry
1. There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce by Morgan Parker

Comics
1. The Fixer and Other Stories by Joe Sacco
2. Beverly by Nick Drnaso
3. Who is Black Panther? by Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr.
4. The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison and Jon J. Muth

[dreamdead]

Here's this year's rundown so far:

Fiction:
Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Stories)
Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone
Min Jin Lee's Pachinko
Charles Schuyler's Black No More
Junot DÃ*az's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Kayla Rae Whitaker's The Animators
Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties (Stories)
Aimee Phan's We Should Never Meet: Stories
Joseph Geha's Through and Through: Toledo Stories
Renee Gladman's Event Factory

Nonfiction
Michelle Kuo's Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Frienship (this was phenomenal)
Stephen Bauman, Matthew Sorens, and Issam Smeir's Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis

[ledfloyd]

Fiction
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
2. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
4. Underworld by Don DeLillo
5. The Waterworks by E.L. Doctorow
6. The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty
7. Slade House by David Mitchell

Non Fiction
1. Postwar by Tony Judt
2. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
3. The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver
4. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Poetry
1. There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyonce by Morgan Parker

Comics
1. My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris
2. The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez
3. Hip-Hop Family Tree by Ed Piskor
4. The Fixer and Other Stories by Joe Sacco
5. Hawkeye by Matt Fraction and David Aja
6. Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stellfreeze
7. God and Science: The Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez
8. Beverly by Nick Drnaso
9. Why Art? by Eleanor Davis
10. Lost Cat by Jason
11. Who is Black Panther? by Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr.
12. The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison and Jon J. Muth

[kuehnepips]

Once A Pilgrim
by James Deegan

My War Gone By, I Miss It So
by Anthony Loyd

[baby doll]

Novels:

• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764)

Short Stories:

• The Gambler and Other Stories (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1848-1877)

Non-Fiction:

• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Daisuke Miyao, 2007)

[baby doll]

Novels:

• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764)
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (George Eliot, 1861)
• Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)

Short Stories:

• The Gambler and Other Stories (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1848-1877)

Non-Fiction:

• Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1835)
• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Daisuke Miyao, 2007)

[kuehnepips]

[*]Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)[/b][/list]

I like this more than Gatsby.

[baby doll]

I like this more than Gatsby.

I'm partial to Gatsby myself, as it has an economy and concentration that's missing from both Tender Is the Night and the unfinished The Last Tycoon (which are the only other Fitzgerald books I've read so far).

[kuehnepips]

Szczepan Twardoch: "Der Boxer", best book so far this year. I don't know if its available in English.

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)
• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764)
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (George Eliot, 1861)
• Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)

Short Stories:

• The Gambler and Other Stories (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1848-1877)
• Girls at War and Other Stories (Chinua Achebe, 1952-1972)

Non-Fiction:

• Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1835)
• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Daisuke Miyao, 2007)
• Brechtian Cinemas: Montage and Theatricality in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins, and Lars von Trier (Nenad Jovanovic, 2017)

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)
• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764)
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (George Eliot, 1861)
• Washington Square (Henry James, 1880)
• Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)

Short Stories:

• The Gambler and Other Stories (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1848-1877)
• Girls at War and Other Stories (Chinua Achebe, 1952-1972)
• The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose (Woody Allen, 1966-1980)

Non-Fiction:

• Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1835)
• Personal Views: Explorations in Film—Revised Edition (Robin Wood, 1976/2006)
• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Daisuke Miyao, 2007)
• Brechtian Cinemas: Montage and Theatricality in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins, and Lars von Trier (Nenad Jovanovic, 2017)

[baby doll]

Novels:

• Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift, 1726)
• The Castle of Otranto (Horace Walpole, 1764)
• Persuasion (Jane Austen, 1817)
• The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal, 1839)
• Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (George Eliot, 1861)
• Washington Square (Henry James, 1880)
• Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)
• Sabbath's Theater (Philip Roth, 1995)

Short Stories:

• The Gambler and Other Stories (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1848-1877)
• Girls at War and Other Stories (Chinua Achebe, 1952-1972)
• The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose (Woody Allen, 1966-1980)

Non-Fiction:

• Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1835)
• Personal Views: Explorations in Film—Revised Edition (Robin Wood, 1976/2006)
• Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Daisuke Miyao, 2007)
• Brechtian Cinemas: Montage and Theatricality in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Peter Watkins, and Lars von Trier (Nenad Jovanovic, 2017)

[Peng]

1. The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell)
2. Youth, It's Painful (Kim Ran Do)
3. Buppesannivas (Rompang)
4. Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon)

[dreamdead]

Updated through mid-July. The most non-fiction I've read in years, and that top 10 of fiction is already worthy...

1. Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Stories)
2. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
3. Tommy Orange’s There There
4. Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone
5. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America
6. Min Jin Lee's Pachinko
7. Charles Schuyler's Black No More
8. Kayla Rae Whitaker's The Animators
9. Gabriel GarcÃ*a Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch
10. Rachel Cusk’s Kudos
[

Show Spoiler

11. Junot DÃ*az's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
12. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
13. Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties (Stories)
14. Victor LaValle’s The Changeling
15. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We
16. Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
17. Elif Batuman’s The Idiot
18. Aimee Phan's We Should Never Meet: Stories
19. Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
20. Nell Zink’s Mislaid
21. Frank Chin’s Donald Duk
22. Mary H.K. Choi’s Emergency Contact
23. Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin
24. Jamie Quatro’s Fire Sermon
25. Joseph Geha's Through and Through: Toledo Stories
26. Livia Llewellyn’s Furnace: Stories
27. Renata Adler’s Speedboat
28. Peadar Ó GuilÃ*n’s The Call
29. Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God
30. Renee Gladman's Event Factory

]

Nonfiction
1. Michelle Kuo's Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Frienship
2. Stephen Bauman, Matthew Sorens, and Issam Smeir's Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis
3. Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays
4. Peter C. Brown, Henry L Roediger III, and Mark A McDaniel’s Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
5. Carina Chocano’s You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
6. Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
7. Karen Tei Yamashita’s Letters to Memory
8. Alan Jacobs’s How to Think

Poetry:
Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution
Terrance Hayes’s Lighthead
Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire
Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Not Here

[kuehnepips]

4. Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone

This was a HUGE hit in Germany a couple of years ago; didn't know it got translated.

[dreamdead]

I don't expect to finish anything else in time for any changes to this last post:

New Reads for 2018
Fiction:

1. Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (Stories)
2. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
3. Jenny Erpenbeck's Go, Went, Gone
4. Tommy Orange’s There There
5. Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America
6. Min Jin Lee's Pachinko
7. Charles Schuyler's Black No More
8. Kayla Rae Whitaker's The Animators
9. Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four
10. Rachel Cusk’s Kudos
[

Show Spoiler

11. Gabriel GarcÃ*a Márquez’s Autumn of the Patriarch
12. Ali Smith’s Autumn
13. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
14. Victor LaValle’s The Changeling
15. Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
16. Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties (Stories)
17. Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire
18. Gabe Habash’s Stephen Florida
19. Junot DÃ*az's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
20. Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We
21. Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
22. Danzy Senna’s New People
23. Elif Batuman’s The Idiot
24. Aimee Phan's We Should Never Meet: Stories
25. Mary H.K. Choi’s Emergency Contact
26. Chester Himes’s A Rage in Harlem
27. Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman
28. Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
29. Nell Zink’s Mislaid
30. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black
31. Lauren Groff’s Florida: Stories
32. Brandon Hobson’s Where the Dead Sit Talking
33. Frank Chin’s Donald Duk
34. Hye-young Pyun’s The Hole
35. Rachel Khong’s Goodbye, Vitamin
36. Ben Fountain’s Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories
37. You-jeong Jeong’s The Good Son
38. Jamel Brinkley’s A Lucky Man
39. Jennifer Clement’s Gun Love
40. Jamie Quatro’s Fire Sermon
41. Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious
42. Joseph Geha's Through and Through: Toledo Stories
43. Livia Llewellyn’s Furnace: Stories
44. Renata Adler’s Speedboat
45. Kathleen Collins’s Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
46. Peadar Ó GuilÃ*n’s The Call
47. Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
48. Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God
49. Renee Gladman's Event Factory

]

Nonfiction
1. Michelle Kuo's Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Frienship
2. Stephen Bauman, Matthew Sorens, and Issam Smeir's Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis
3. Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays
4. Nicole Chung’s All You Can Ever Know
5. Peter C. Brown, Henry L Roediger III, and Mark A McDaniel’s Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
6. James M. Lang’s Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty
7. Michiko Kakutani’s The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
8. Carina Chocano’s You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages
9. Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
10. Karen Tei Yamashita’s Letters to Memory
[

Show Spoiler

11. Alan Jacobs’s How to Think

]

Poetry:
1. Seamus Heaney’s New Selected Poems: 1966-1987
2. Cathy Park Hong’s Dance Dance Revolution
3. Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X
4. Carolyn Forché’s The Country Between Us
5. Terrance Hayes’s Lighthead
6. Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec
7. Cathy Park Hong’s Engine Empire
8. Kevin Young’s Brown
9. Terrance Hayes’s American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
10 Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come for Us
[

Show Spoiler

Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Ghost Of
Justin Philip Reed’s Indecency
Hieu Minh Nguyen’s Not Here

]

[transmogrifier]

I think Irish is my anti-me with regards to what we like and don't like.

[Peng]

After an uncommonly good 2017, I really slacked off 2018 reading-wise.

1. The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell)
2. The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E. L. Konigsburg)
4. Youth, It's Painful (Kim Ran Do)
5. Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Companion (Matt Zoller Seitz)
6. Buppesannivas (Rompang)
7. Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon)
8. May We Be Forgiven (A.M. Homes)