The book stack: 2007

[zenithblue]

Here's my reading list from this year, linked to reviews when I've written them.

Contemporary-ish Novels
1. Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan 
2.Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
3. Getting Mother's Body by Suzan-Lori Parks
4. Like Never Before by Ehud Havazelet
5. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
6. The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
8. Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett
9. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
10. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
11. So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
12. Symptomatic by Danzy Senna

Classics-ish Novels
13. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
14. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (re-read)
15. Children are Civilians Too by Heinrich Böll
16. Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (re-read)
17. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip K. Dick
18. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Short Story Collections
19. Female Trouble by Antonya Nelson
20. Things You Should Know by A.M. Homes
21. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Poetry
22. The Woman Who Fell From the Earth by Joy Harjo

Plays
23. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
24. Frozen by Briony Lavery
25. Afternoon of the Elves by Y. York
26. The Yellow Boat by David Saar
27. As You Like It by William Shakespeare
28. Bless Cricket, Crest Toothpaste, and Tommy Tune by Linda Daugherty

Non-Fiction/Memoir
29. All God's Children by Rene Denfield
30. The Mistress' Daughter by A.M. Homes

Comics
31. Fun Home by Alison Bechdal
32. Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
33. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
34. A Tale of One Bad Rat by Brian Talbot
35. Rex Libris by James Turner
36. Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson
37. More BOP by Alex Robinson
38-46. Fables Volumes 1-8 by Bill Wilmingham
47-52. Fruits Basket Volumes 13-17 by Natsuki Takaya
53-54. Hopeless Savages Volumes 1-2 by Jen Van Meter
55. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home by Joss Whedon

Children's Books
56. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
57. The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton

Additionally, I read about 500 more pages of excerpted stories and articles for school, a year's worth of New Yorkers (which I mostly kept up with), and a year's worth of Alaska Quarterly Reviews. Not too bad, for a year in which I hauled my ass and all my belongings halfway across the country.

So here's the run-down: favorites include Richard Powers' amazing Echo Maker, Murakami's Hard Boiled..., McCarthy's Road, and Bechdal's Fun Home. The most exciting new (well, new-to-me) writer I encountered this year was William Trevor, but he's not on the list because I didn't read a whole book. I plan to remedy that in the coming year.

The only thing I flat out hated was Danzy Senna's ridiculous Symptomatic, though  Homes' memoir and Denfield's excoriating true-crime book made the list of disappointments.  Also, Fables is the second most over-rated comic I've read in a while (right after Y: The Last Man). It's all right for a bit of fluff, but it's not nearly as innovative as people make it out to be.

Now that I'm back in school, I'm looking at changing my book-list (I usually read to fill a certain number of categories, to make sure I'm reading somewhat diverse stuff). I plan to concentrate on re-reading things that will be helpful to me as I begin my own novel, so there will be
more re-reads than usual.

Now back to my sexy New Year's plans of jammie-jams and Rock Band. Peace.

Comments

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I LOVE Y: The Last Man. I don't think Fables is innovative, but it is fun. But Y was definitely the big discovery for me this year, especially getting back into graphic novels.

I've been meaning to read some Trollope soon. What did you think of Cloud Atlas? Lots of my flist read it this year, and I wonder if it's because I go on and on about it all the time. :)

I'm feeling an E.M. Forster-Umberto Eco-Tolstoy kick coming on, for this coming year.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

To be fair, I only read one TPB of Y. I just found it really clumsily handled, and the psychological/sociological observations were nothing new, so there was nothing for me to get behind. I didn't actually flat out hate it until roughly twenty billion different people recommended it to be as "the best adult comic title around."

I liked Cloud Atlas pretty well--I found it a little uneven. There were portions I flat-out loved, and there were portions that felt like they didn't live up to their potential. I did like that it was a risky, unusual structure, quite a bit.

Ooh, I love Forster. What are you reading first?

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

Keep reading Y. It gets better. Oh, wait - that probably didn't help, being the twenty billion and oneth person. :)

I read Howard's End this year and loved it (I think I forgot to put it on my top list! EEP! Must edit!). A Passage to India is next, I think. Do you suggest anything else?

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

I love Maurice and A Room With a View. Haven't read Passage yet but it's been on my list for a while.

[scarredbyitall.livejournal.com]

I absolutely could not get into The Road. Maybe I am just temporarily burned out on post-apocalyptic lit.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

It was kind of a hard read in any case. Not hard intellectual, but hard like beholding-a-festering-wound sort of hard.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Agreement on Y and Fables being overrated; I've noticed a strong trend towards people latching onto competent but not particularly original stuff and proclaiming it to be GENIUS!, but that might just be a sign that people have gotten around to producing content that's derivative of works I have comprehensive knowledge of. Vertigo's slipped quite a ways from its peak - even 100 Bullets didn't go anywhere, despite all the hoopla that surrounded its launch. I'd say that the energy had moved to Wildstorm, but aside from Sleeper and Ex Machina, both of which are on the old side, I can't think of anything outstanding that they've put out recently.

What did you think of the Buffy trade? I found myself torn between mild amusement and the feeling that it was unnecessary fan service, narrative extension for extension's sake...

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

I expected very little from the Buffy trade, so I was pretty much mildly amused. It wasn't the flavor of the Buffy I like. It was more action-hijincks instead of horror-comedy. But then, everything after season 3 has been downhill anyway.

That said, I really loved the last story in the trade. It seems to me that's where the narrative juice is in this brave new Buffyverse: away from the main players, with the new and possibly less-known slayers.

[lagizma.livejournal.com]

I am in the middle of All God's Children. The author is awesome at incorporating hardcore academic research and source notes right into the text. I love her style.

As for The Mistress's Daughter: I loved the first half in that "stay up all night and devour it" manner, and the second half was readable, but meandering and mediocre. She published the first half in The New Yorker (duh...you probably read it there), and it is truly a masterpiece, whereas the second half feels like "damn I've been working on this 10 years and need to get it out."

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Totally agreed on the Homes book, man. I love that first half. It was amazing. And then...we get all this mediocre saccharine crap? WTF?

I'm glad you're enjoying All God's Children...I agree that her writing is mostly pretty good, but I still resent the generalizations she makes in there about street families. I'm not so sure they hold up.

[lagizma.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to reading some criticism of All God's Children. I got worried when the few slang terms I did know were defined wrong, like "dank" as "a type of marijuana" instead of "an adjective to describe characteristics of marijuana" that the others might be similarly poorly defined.

I made my mom get the book via ILL for me in RI, because the ENTIRE Los Angeles County system does not own a copy. I was about 3/4 of the way through when I had to fly home. :( I have to see if Kern County has a copy.