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Thread: Top Books First Read in 2018

  1. #1
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Top Books First Read in 2018

    It's that special time of year!

  2. #2
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    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)
    Last edited by Dead & Messed Up; 02-02-2018 at 03:05 PM.

  3. #3
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    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
    Last edited by ledfloyd; 04-01-2018 at 03:38 PM.

  4. #4
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    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
    Last edited by dreamdead; 02-28-2018 at 12:11 AM.
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

  5. #5
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    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)

  6. #6
    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)
    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

  7. #7
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    4. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)
    How was this?

  8. #8
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    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.

  9. #9
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    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)
    Last edited by Dead & Messed Up; 03-06-2018 at 02:55 PM.

  10. #10
    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)
    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

  11. #11
    Quote Quoting baby doll (view post)
    [*]Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)[/b][/list]
    I like this more than Gatsby.

  12. #12
    Szczepan Twardoch: "Der Boxer", best book so far this year. I don't know if its available in English.

  13. #13
    Quote Quoting kuehnepips (view post)
    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).
    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

  14. #14
    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)
    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

  15. #15
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    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
    Last edited by ledfloyd; 07-28-2018 at 09:56 PM.

  16. #16
    Once A Pilgrim
    by James Deegan

    My War Gone By, I Miss It So
    by Anthony Loyd
    Last edited by kuehnepips; 05-16-2018 at 01:50 PM.

  17. #17
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    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)

  18. #18
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    1. The Bone Clocks (David Mitchell)
    2. Youth, It's Painful (Kim Ran Do)
    3. Buppesannivas (Rompang)
    4. Telegraph Avenue (Michael Chabon)
    Midnight Run (1988) - 9
    The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) - 8.5
    The Adventures of Robinhood (1938) - 8
    Sisters (1973) - 6.5
    Shin Godzilla (2016) - 7.5

  19. #19
    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)
    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

  20. #20
    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)
    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

  21. #21
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    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
    [
    ]

    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
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

  22. #22
    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)
    • Light in August (William Faulkner, 1932)
    • Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)
    • God's Bits of Wood (Ousmane Sembène, 1960)
    • Sabbath's Theater (Philip Roth, 1995)


    Short Stories:
    • The Complete Fairy Tales (Charles Perrault, 1691-1697)
    • 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)
    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

  23. #23
    Novels:
    • 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)
    • Light in August (William Faulkner, 1932)
    • Tender Is the Night (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1934)
    • God's Bits of Wood (Ousmane Sembène, 1960)
    • Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson, 1980)
    • Sabbath's Theater (Philip Roth, 1995)

    [
    ]

    Short Stories:
    • The Complete Fairy Tales (Charles Perrault, 1691-1697)
    • 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:
    • Personal Views: Explorations in Film—Revised Edition (Robin Wood, 1976/2006)
    • Figures Traced in Light: On Cinematic Staging (David Bordwell, 2005)
    • 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)
    • The Philosophical Hitchcock: "Vertigo" and the Anxieties of Unknowingness (Robert B. Pippin, 2017)

    [
    ]
    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

  24. #24
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Updates!

    Fiction

    1. Contact (Carl Sagan, 1985)
    2. The Demolished Man (partial) (Alfred Bester, 1953)
    3. Coldheart Canyon (Clive Barker, 2001)
    4. The Children of Men (partial) (PD James, 1992)
    5. Mr. B. Gone (Clive Barker, 2001)

    Non-Fiction

    1. The Poetics (Aristotle, tr. Malcolm Heath, 335 BCE)
    2. On Tyranny (Timothy Snyder, 2017)
    3. This Changes Everything (Naomi Klein, 2014)
    4. Hot: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth (Mark Hertzgaard, 2012)
    5. The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person (Harold S. Kushner, 2012)
    6. The Great Courses: Hinduism (Mark W. Muesse, 2003)
    7. 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)
    2. Shivers (Junji Ito, assorted)
    3. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 1 (Moore & O'Neill, 1999-2000)

  25. #25
    Quote Quoting dreamdead (view post)
    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.

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