This year I decided a bit late that I would participate in Reddit's 52 book challenge on /r/52book. When I decided to join the challenge it was already the end of March or maybe mid April. The object is to read 52 books in the 52 weeks of the year, a book a week essentially. Simple enough, but I had handicapped myself by starting late. I began week 13 or 14, I was behind by 7 or 8 books. It meant starting a race already in progress, the simple task became an uphill battle. It was fun, I got to take a few road trips across the united states, cast magic spells, see the tragedy of war, visit old worlds, pull a con or two, go down down a rabbit-hole, run miles and miles, and travel through history. Here's a list of the books I made it through and also a short list of the books that were especially enjoyable or noteworthy.
1) Achilles in Vietnam - Jonathan Shay
2) The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
3) Night - Eli Wiesel
4) Stories - various authors, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sorento
5) Lullaby - Chuck Palahniuk
6) The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
7) Love is a Mixed Tape - Rob Sheffield
8) The Gunslinger - Stephen King
9) Killing Yourself to Live - Chuck Klosterman
10) The Mysterious Affair at Styles - Agatha Christie
11) Slaughterhouse V - Kurt Vonnegut
12) Different Seasons - Stephen King
13) 9 Stories - JD Salinger
14) Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
15) The Drawing of the Three - Stephen King
16) The Waste Lands - Stephen King
17) The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done - Sandra Newman
18) What is this Thing Called Love? - Gene Wilder
19) The Visible Man - Chuck Klosterman
20) On the Road - Jack Kerouac
21) I was told there'd be cake - Sloane Crossly
22) Wizard and Glass - Stephen King
23) Big Fish - Daniel Wallace
24) Rotters - Daniel Kraus
25) Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
26) Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
27) The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
28) Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King
29) The Things They Carried - Tim O'Brien
30) Song of Susannah - Stephen King
31) How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe - Charles Yu
32) Bossypants - Tina Fey
33) The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
34) A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
35) Princess Bride - William Goldman
36) The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson
37) This Must be the Place - Anna Winger
38) The Dark Tower - Stephen King
39) Tell the Wolves I'm Home - Carol Rifka Brunt
40) Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? - Mindy Kaling
41) Redshirts - John Scalzi
42) Best American Non-Required Reading 2011 - Edited by Dave Eggers
43) We Are What We Pretend to Be - Kurt Vonnegut
44) What I talk about when I talk about Running - Haruki Murakami
45) Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
46) The 100-Year-Old Man - Jonas Jonasson
47) The Broken Lands - Kate Milford
48) How to be Alone - Jonathan Franzen
49) IV - Chuck Klosterman
50) A Working Theory of Love - Scott Hutchins
51) Holidays on Ice - David Sedaris
52) Let the Great World Spin - Colum McCann
53) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
54) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King
A saga told in seven parts, The Dark Tower series could be said to be King's crowning achievement. Inspired equally in parts by the Lord of the Rings and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, it is a series that is epic if not anything else. It was my cornerstone through the year as each part was longer than the one before it, I would read a volume then take a break for a week or two, eating up smaller books in the meantime. The seven books that compose the series are as follows: The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Wastelands, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, and The Dark Tower. I had never read anything by Stephen King up until this year since I had always thought that everything by him was too scary or twisted, I found out that at least in this series that isn't the case the whole time.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Simultaneously a trip through the past and the future and video games. The story starts 30 years in the future with a billionaire starting a competition to find an Easter egg hidden in the immersive virtual reality program that nearly everyone is a part of. The clues to the puzzle remained locked away within 80's pop culture and trivia. It is an action-packed, clever, and a treat for fans of video games, nostalgia or just geek culture.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
I had always been reluctant to try something by Hemingway, I think because I was under the impression that all of his work dealt with depressive topics and wars. A friend of mine leant me a copy of A Moveable Feast saying I would love it, and I did. It was a portrait of life in 1920's Paris with other famous artists like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and others. It was magical, like looking through a spyglass into another age. Also Hemingway talks about the process of writing and gives some good insights.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
A coming of age story with a bit of a twist. About a girl growing up in the 80's during the emergence of the AIDs epidemic that her Uncle has just died from. Its a love-story, a tale of self discovery and of loss. Plus the title is irrelevantly awesome which I can appreciate.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
A dysfunction family driven by the parents' desire to create situation art in public and create a reaction. Its whimsical, dark, and reads like a Wes Anderson film.
This Must be the Place by Anna Winger
The title comes from a talking heads song; always a good place to start. Its a quiet story of two people lost in the world and in their lives. One is an American woman adjusting to a new life in Berlin, the other is a German man going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Displacement and loneliness through different lenses.
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
This was one of the last books I read this year and I would have to say it was definitely one of my favorites. In 1974 Phillip Petit strung a steel-cable between tops of the World Trade Center towers and then proceeded to walk between them. This is his story, but at the same time it's not. The book is made up of short stories that follow different people in New York city. They are all effected by the tightrope walker in some way. Through each story McCann depicts a snap shot of New York in that year that is gritty at times and full of unbelievable beauty. The characters are broken, and beautiful, and very alive.
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Really a challenge isn't a challenge without a roadblock; this was mine. I fought with this book, I gave up and walked away only to come back months later and finish. Cloud Atlas and I had a tumultuous relationship, like two people that fall in love too fast and realize that the they're not sure if they really know each other beyond their lips. I had to take a step back and look inside myself while the book and cast of characters did the same. Okay, but really, the Cloud Atlas is told in 6 parts, each except for the last are cut in half. You get to read the first half of each story, the full sixth, then the second half of each, now in descending order. I think the thing that gave me the most trouble with it was that as I would get invested in a set of characters and style of writing, bam, that bit would be over and it was onto the next part leaving you hanging as to what happened next. I found that incredibly frustrating. It is written exceedingly well and asks big questions and small questions about what it means to be free and what it means to be alive. But if you too have problems here's something I recommend, read up til the sixth part, watch the movie adapted by the Wachowski siblings (it was phenomenal) let it digest in your mind for a month or so, then come back to the novel and give it another go.
YA Books
I read a handful of young adult novels this year. Here is what I thought of them:
Rotters by Daniel Krauss
This was my horror pick for the year and I'm not much of a fan for horror books or movies as I'm a scaredy cat when it comes to such things. Rotters is about a boy who's mother has just passed away and is sent to live with his estranged father and learn about the under ground society of grave robbers. I'll give away no more than that, but it is an electrifying ride.
Broken Lands by Kate Milford
Brooklyn, the 1870's, the civil war has recently ended and the Brooklyn bridge is nearing the end of construction. New York is a cross roads for change, for control between good and evil. It is a race bettween a young card shark who plays on the boardwalk, a chinese girl with a magnificent talent for fireworks, and inhuman creatures, all for control of the crossroads.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
A mysterious circus pops up in the dead of night to put on breath-taking performances. No one knows when the circus will appear or when it will leave, but when it arrives it is a joy to behold. The Night Circus is a magical book to be sure. My problem with the book was her use of present tense which I thought got in the way of the narrative at times making things unnecessarily clunky. Other than that it was quite good.
Book to skip: Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
This is one of the extremely rare cases where I would say skip the book and watch the movie instead. Its a story of distinguishing between a father's tall-tales and the truth hidden in the stories. Its a fun story, but I think Tim Burton's version makes the tall tales seem a bit taller and blurs the line between fantasy and reality even better.
I enjoyed pretty much the entirety of the books I read this year, but these were some of the more notable ones from the list. Oh, and here's some music if you're still here after all that:
Benjamin Gibbard with Trio Ellas on Conan
Something's Rattling(Cowpoke)
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