52 Weeks of Books in 2013

  I read a lot of books this past year, 57 to be exact. I was doing the 52 book challenge for the second year in a row, the challenge is basically to read 1 book a week for the entirety of the year. I read some stunners and some that were just so-so. I traveled through history, across the galaxy, lived two life times in South East Asia, grew up with some characters, went to Japan, got chased by a killer, and chased some conspiracies. It was a wild ride for sure!

Here are the books I read this year, and then I'll say a little about a few of the stand-outs afterwards.


1.)  Best American Non-Req Reading 2012, Edited by Dave Eggers
2.) HHhH by Laurent Binet
3.) Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
4.) The Dude and the Zen Master by Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman
5.) The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
6.) after dark by Haruki Murakami
7.) Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow
8.) It Feels so Good When I Stop by Joe Pernice
9.) The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
10.) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
11.) Girl Walks into a Bar... by Rachel Dratch
12.) Lost at Sea - The Jon Ronson Mysteries by Jon Ronson
13.) The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
14.) The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin
15.) Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
16.) So Long, And Thanks for all the Fish by Douglas Adams
17.) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
18.) Shopgirl by Steve Martin
19.) The Magicians by Lev Grossman
20.) To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
21.) The Little Bookstore of Bigstone Gap by Wendy Welch
22.) Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin
23.) When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
24.) Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
25.) Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
26.) Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer
27.) Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
28.) The Writer Who Stayed by William Zissner
29.) The False Friend by Myla Goldberg
30.) Joyland by Stephen King
31.) Where'd You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple
32.) Something to Remember You By, Gene Wilder
33.) The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
34.) Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck
35.) Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty
36.) Fearless by Cornelia Funke
37.) Dad is Fat by Jim Gaffigan
38.) I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman
39.) A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
40.) Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen
41.) Damned by Chuck Palahniuk
42.) The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
43.) Call for the Dead by John Le Carré
44.) Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
45.) How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid
46.) Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
47.) Forgive me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
48.) Runaway by Alice Munro
49.) Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner
50.) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
51.) The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King
52.) Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
53.) A Monster Calls Patrick Ness
54.) The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
55.) Love, Dishonor, Marry, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff
56.) Imagination in Place by Wendell Berry
57.)The Humanity Project by Jean Thompson

                                                HHhH   by Laurent Binet

                              HHhH or Himmlers Hirn Heisst Heydrich, which translates to "Himmler's brain is Heydrich", is a novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during WW II. It is a book about history, about the author's process of writing, and a commentary on how history is perceived and recorded. I thoroughly enjoyed and was moved by this one.

                                      A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

                         A beautifully/uniquely illustrated book that looks at nightmares, stories and impending loss. Short, powerful and never pulls a punch.

                                 I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman

                     Klosterman, a writer who previously looked at entertainment and pop culture such as The Real World and showed how it was a metaphor for society, now takes on Evil. Klosterman sets out in this essay collection to answer two questions: a) what is the nature/benefit of doing evil? b) Is he, Chuck Klosterman, evil? I really like this one, he makes some good points and talks about good and evil using pop culture and a real life vigilante that maybe wasn't very heroic at all.

                                The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

             Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. I was very excited about this new novel. It is short, not even two hundred pages. Gaiman is indeed a master story teller, this is a modern fairy tale, a coming of age story and scary.

                               

                              Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

          This book has it all, and by all I mean astronauts, a woman with alopecia, autism, a love story and well...I guess that's about it, but I mean don't those sound like disparate things to all be in the same book? You should read it to find how they fit together!

                                  Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

     Maria Semple wrote one of the funniest books that I read this year, which is not surprising since she is a former writer for Arrested Development. A book about an increasingly agoraphobic mother, a daughter who just wants to go to Antarctica and an oblivious father concerned with his project at Microsoft.

                                   To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

           The best book about time travel and strict Victorian society that you will ever read. And the dog is probably the best character!
 
                           Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

            The Shambling Guide was one of my favorite books I read this summer. A woman gets an editing job, the problem is she is the only human at a work place of the undead. Now you might be thinking, but I don't want to read Twilight! Good, I don't either. Mur Lafferty writes a book that makes you want to travel, makes you wan to see New York City and takes modern fantasy seriously. Where do out of town zombies stay? What's the best succubus bar in town?

                                   Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon

                   The time is early 2001, our protagonist is a mother of two with a decertified Fraud investigation business and a separated husband sets out to make sense of more than a few conspiracies after the collapse of the Dot-Com bubble. In spite of a novel that features 9/11 this is Pynchon at his most optimistic I would say. Dizzying with mysteries and full of pop culture references, I never thought I would see Thomas Pynchon mention Dragon Ball Z in a book.


I enjoyed almost all of the books this year, but that's just an idea of some of what I read. You'll just have to check out the others on your own. Also gonna put out my best music of 2013 later this week. Stay tuned!

52 Books in a Year

      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)