Books of 2013
1.
Rob Sheffield – Turn Around Bright Eyes: Rolling Stone’s Sheffield rediscovers
love in a karaoke
bar after the tragic death of his first wife.
2.
Dave Eggers – The Circle: A dystopian look at a future dominated by the worst
instincts of social
networking.
3.
Diane Ravitch – The Reign of Error: Ravitch continues her evolution from standards
reform insider
to its most incisive and important critic.
4.
Tracey Chevalier – The Last Runaway – One of my favorite historical fiction writers
tackles the
abolition movement through the prism of quilt-making.
5.
David Byrne – How Music Works: The former Talking Heads front-man shares
stories about his
musical life and the insights about the inner workings of music that he’s
gained from it.
6.
Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl: Flynn’s debut novel is a clever mystery about
the disappearance of
a young wife that will keep you guessing until the last page.
7.
Lawrence Wright – Going Clear: A thorough-going expose of Scientology that
felt like a follow-up
to P.T. Anderson’s explosive 2012 film “The Master.”
8.
Ian McEwan – Sweet Tooth: A taut Cold War drama based around the delicate
relationship between
a spy and a writer.
9.
Parmy Olson – We are Anonymous: A beautifully researched book about the world
of political hacking
and the fascinating individuals involved with Anonymous, 4Chan and Wikileaks.
10. Sarah Gerkensmeyer – What You Are Now Enjoying: A haunting collection of short stories by one of my colleagues here at Fredonia.
Notable Others:
• Jimmy Burns – La Roja
• Paul Carr and Brad Porfilio – The Phenomenon of Obama
• Lisa Delpit – Mathematics is for White People
• Ben Fountain – The Long Half-time Walk of
Billy Lynn
• Henry Giroux – Youth in Revolt
• Robert Powell - Juarez
• Jeremy Scahill – Dirty Wars
• David Sedaris – Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls
Disappointments:
• Alain de
Botton – How to Think More About Sex: A depressingly reactionary look at one of
the most beautiful, yet confusing aspects of humanity from an author who once wrote convincingly about the value of reading Proust.
I'd love to see what you've had on your bed-side table this year.
I'd love to see what you've had on your bed-side table this year.
posted by The Blue Devil @ 11:24 PM
1 Comments:
Good list BDB. I guess being snow-bound in the dark with nothing but preserved fish to eat from November to May has it's up-side too.
I too loved Turn Around, Bright Eyes, Gone Girl, Billy Flynn's Long...., and Sweet Tooth.
I also read and recommend Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding, Nicholson Baker's Traveling Sprinkler, Alissa Nutting's Tampa, Peter Temple's Truth, John Le Carre's A Delicate Truth, Rachel Kushner's Flamethrowers, Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, Lauren Groff's Arcadia, Wells Tower's Everything Ravenged, Everthing Burned, and Phillipe Auclair's biography of Thierry Henry Lonely at the Top.
I wanted to like Donovan Hohn's Moby Duck, but gave up after so many of his digressions about the strain that he was putting on his family by going to sea for months on end. This book clocks in at 416 pages and it could have been a much better book if he'd had a stricter editor that cut him to 316 pages.
I also really enjoyed John Ajvide Lindqvist's and Ebba Segerberg's book Let Me In and the movies made from the book, so I expected to enjoy Handling the Dead. It's an interesting concept, where the dead return to life as zombies, but without the blood-lust for living flesh. What the hell do you do with the sudden doubling, tripling, quadrupling of the earth's population with no end in sight? They're making an obvious parallel that the author was making with the influx of non-Europeans to Scandinavia and the reaction of the Right to them. But after a really interesting premise, it just fizzled out in a very Welleian manner. Disappointing.
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