What I Read in 2010
Another year has come to a close, and again I find myself saddened that the list of books I read this year is shorter than the preceding year (albeit by only a handful).
What follows is a list of books I completed in 2010. My six favorite are in bold with little summaries, although you will also find links to most of the blog entries on the books as well.
01. Making Your Own Days by Kenneth Koch (poetry manual)
02. McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 31 (literary magazine)
03. McSweeney's Book of Poets Picking Poets (interesting poetry anthology)
04. Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley (explication of poetic rap lyrics)
05. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (epic YA novel, part one)*
06. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (novel)
07. Norwood by Charles Portis (funny novel)*
08. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman (epic YA novel, part two)
09. Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me by Craig Seligman (nonfiction critical study)
10. Point Omega by Don DeLillo (novel)
11. Home Land by Sam Lipsyte (novel)
12. Illness As Metaphor by Susan Sontag (essays about illness in culture)
13. Ravens by George Dawes Green (thriller)
14. Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever by Justin Taylor (short stories)
15. This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson (nonfiction about revolutionizing library systems)
16. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang by Pauline Kael (film criticism)
KKBB is a collection of essays by the venerable Ms. Kael on cinema. Though she writes almost exclusively about a period in the early through late 60s, her writing is exuberant and precise and her perspectives on trends in cinema eerily prefigure the contemporary cinematic landscape. While KKBB would be most rewarding for fellow cinema buffs, Kael's writing is a masterclass in wit, concision and clarity.
17. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (exhaustingly long Victorian novel)
18. Model Home by Eric Puchner (novel)
19. One D.O.A., One on the Way by Mary Robison (short story-esque novel)
20. Ghosts of Wyoming by Alison Hagy (short stories)
21. Chicken with Plums by Marianne Sajrapi (graphic novel about a musician)
22. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood (novel)
23. Tinkers by Paul Harding (novel, Pulitzer Prize winner)*
24. Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (novel)
25. Irish Girl by Tim Johnston (short stories)
26. Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames (novel)
27. The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee by Sarah Silverman (memoirish thing)
28. The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman (gospel-style novel)*
29. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (short storyish novel)*
30. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (noir)
FML (not to be confused with the other, more popular acronym of the same name) is a tour-de-force of balls-to-the-wall writing. Chandler invents a good many brilliant, confusing, exciting figures of speech and his writing reads like nothing you've read before. Nothing that doesn't steal heavily from Chandler, that is.
31. Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis (novel)
32. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (novella)
33. Three Delays by Charlie Smith (novel)
34. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (novel)*
35. Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (sucky short stories)
36. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (novel)
Bender speaks to me like few of her peers do, albeit in tongues. TPSOLC is a beautifully weird, elusive and elliptical novel about what it means to feel too much, what it means to be overcome by the difficulty of simply being. It struck a chord for me that I'm still feeling echoes of several months later.
37. The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter (novel)
*38. Citrus County by John Brandon (novel)
A terrifying little book about the capacity for wrongdoing that lives in each of us. Brandon makes the quiet, frustrating struggle to overcome inner evil heroic in an unexpected way and he earned every bit of my admiration for his refusal to pander with easy answers to problematic lives. A disturbing, beautiful little book.
39. As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem (novel)
40. All My Friends Are Superheroes by Andrew Kaufman (short storyish novel)
41. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace (essays)
Perhaps the most personally influential thing I read in 2010. I am in love with DFW. Nuff said.
42. How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu (novel)
43. Cell by Stephen King (thriller)
44. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (nonfiction about evolution from a botanical standpoint)*
I didn't blog on this one, and I'm not sure why as it was one of my favorites I read this year. Pollan examines the history (sociological, botanical, evolutionary) of four different plants: the apple, the potato, the tulip and marijuana in an attempt to suss out the meaning of the incredibly diverse and remarkable pleasures life offers man. On its surface, it reads like a polemic against the development of monocultures, but at heart it is an ode to evolution and human culture, and the beautiful dance between the two through the guise of artificial selection and biodiversity.
45. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (novel)
46. X'ed Out by Charles Burns (graphic novel)
47. You Were Wrong by Matthew Sharpe (novel)
48. Fear Street Saga #1: The Betrayal by R.L. Stine (YA novel, part one)
49. Fear Street Saga #2: The Secret by R.L. Stine (YA novel, part two)
50. Fear Street Saga #3: The Burning by R. L. Stine (YA novel, part three)
By far my favorite book to blog on this year was Stephen King's Cell, which proves my theory that it's easier to write about something I hate than something I love. And I am especially proud of my title for the blog entry on Jess Walter's novel about a financial guru turned pot dealer: Stocks and Bongs.
Also of note this year were two wonderfully written guest blog entries:
GB1: Geek Love by Katherine Dunn reviewed by extrachrisb
GB2: Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart reviewed by MB
Happy New Year and happy reading!
49 Books...are you kidding me. If I could ever read that many books in a year I would be thrilled! Do you know how awesome that is! For this whole year that is what I am doing (no not reading 49 books) but I am going to keep track of what I read. This is just nuts...way to go!
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