2013 Books in Review

[cynic51]

I read 47 books in 2013 and an additional 19 graphic novels for a grand total of 66. Not great, but better than last year.

* = graphic novel

Zachary Karabell - Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal - T 1/1
Simon Singh - The Code Book - W 1/2
Jim Crace - The Pesthouse - M 1/7
Michael Macrone - Brush Up Your Shakespeare - Su 1/13
Phil & Kaja Foglio - Agatha H. and the Airship City - M 1/14
Robert Silverberg - The World Inside - F 1/25
William Gibson - Zero History - W 1/30
Lois McMaster Bujold - Captain Vorpatril's Alliance - W 1/30
Harry Harrison - Make Room! Make Room! - W 2/13
Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen - Great By Choice - Su 2/24
Herman Melville - Moby-Dick - W 3/06
Chip Heath & Dan Heath - Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - R 3/07
*Greg Rucka & Ed Brubaker - Gotham Central: Corrigan - M 3/18
*Kelly Roman & Michael DeWeese - The Art of War - W 3/20
*Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden & Ben Stenbeck - Baltimore: The Plague Ships - Su 3/24
*Frank Miller - Holy Terror - Su 3/24
*David Finch, Paul Jenkins, Richard Friend - Batman The Dark Knight v1: Knight Terrors - Su 3/24
*Harvey Pekar & Joseph Remnant - Harvey Pekar's Cleveland - W 3/27
*Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker & Michael Lark - Gotham Central: Jokers and Madmen - S 3/30
Chip Heath & Dan Heath - Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard - W 4/03
Mercedes Lackey - Trio of Sorcery - S 4/06
Bill Simmons - The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy - R 4/12
*Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker & Michael Lark - Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty - S 4/13
Dennis O'Neill - Batman: Knightfall - S 4/13
Catherynne M. Valente - Six-Gun Snow White - M 4/22
Catherynne M. Valente - The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland And Led the Revels There - Su 5/12
Michael Watkins - The First 90 Days - S 6/15
Patricia Briggs - Iron Kissed - R 6/20
Stephen Marche - How Shakespeare Changed Everything - Su 6/23
*Mark Millar & John Romita Jr - Kick-Ass 2 Prelude: Hit-Girl - M 7/01
*Mark Millar & John Romita Jr - Kick-Ass 2 - M 7/01
John Pollack - The Pun Also Rises - R 7/04
James Ellroy - White Jazz - F 7/05
William Shakespeare - The Merchant of Venice - S 7/06
David Weber - A Rising Thunder - M 7/15
Craig Robinson - Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure - R 7/18
James Ellroy - L.A. Confidential - F 7/19
Anthony Burgess - Nothing Like the Sun - Su 8/04
*Anthony Del Col, Conor McCreery, Andy Belanger - Kill Shakespeare v.1: A Sea of Troubles - R 8/15
*Anthony Del Col, Conor McCreery, Andy Belanger - Kill Shakespeare v.2: The Blast of War - R 8/15
Adam Shepard - Scratch Beginnings - S 8/17
David Weber - Shadow of Freedom - Su 8/18
James Ellroy - The Black Dahlia - R 8/22
*Peter Milligan - 5 Ronin - S 8/31
Ryan North - Poor Yorick - M 9/03
Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk - F 9/13
Erik Rutkow - American Canopy: Trees, Forests, and the Making of a Nation - T 9/17
Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue - W 10/09
James Ellroy - The Big Nowhere - R 10/10
*J. Michael Straczynski & others - Before Watchmen - Su 10/27
John Stuart Mill - On Liberty - Su 10/27
Mike Doughty - The Book of Drugs - R 10/31
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland - R 10/31
John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up - Su 11/03
David Kushner - Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created An Empire and Transformed Pop Culture - F 11/08
*Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev - DareDevil 66-81 - S 11/09
*Ed Brubaker, Michael Lark, Stefano Guidano, Clay Mann - DareDevil: Lady Bullseye - Su 11/10
*Mark Waid & Greg Rucka - Here Comes DareDevil v2 - M 11/11
*Mark Waid - Here Comes DareDevil v3 - M 11/11
Stephen King - The Wind Through the Keyhole - Su 11/17
John Brunner - The Shockwave Rider - T 11/19
Roger Ebert - Life Itself - W 11/27
John Brunner - The Traveller in Black - R 12/12
Stephen King - Full Dark, No Stars - W 12/18
Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth - S 12/21
Cormac McCarthy - Suttree - M 12/23
Charlaine Harris - Dead Ever After - M 12/23
Jared Diamond - The World Until Yesterday - M 12/30

I summarized most of the Shakespeare items already. Some of the "your favorite books" (notably all the Ellroy) were also read in 2013. Here are some other notable entries from my 2013 reading list.

The big read for 2013 was Moby Dick. I'm not going to lie, it there are some parts of this book that are hard to push through. However, on the whole I enjoyed it. The first 200 pages in particular are very fast moving and enjoyable, and even the highly technical information about whaling was interesting to me. I'm glad I read it. I might even read it again one day.

There was a new book from Lois MacMaster Bujold. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, which means it was a good year right there. My mother finally got the book about Ivan You Idiot that she's wanted for many years. This is mid-tier Bujold, which makes it better than, oh, 90% of all the other scifi out there.

I read the last three trades of Gotham Central, which is one of the very best D.C. comics I've read. Basically, imagine if you did Law & Order in Gotham City. Then imagine that Ed Brubaker (of Criminal) and Greg Rucka wrote it. Half the cops are corrupt; all of them have to deal with rampant crime and super villains. The first trade starts off with Mr. Freeze taking down some cops; Firebug makes an appearance and of course The Joker appears. Bats is only on screen occasionally; the focus is on the Gotham PD. It would be an awesome TV if you could get all the rights.

I also read Holy Terror by Frank Miller, who has either taken leave of his senses or is crazy like a fox. I'm not sure a comic could hate somebody more than Holy Terror hates Islam. Wow. And not in a good way.

You say you want some dystopia? No problem! First off I read Make Room! Make Room!. Harry Harrison's novel features a massively overpopulated world and a New York City that makes Escape From New York look preferable. This was the basis for the film Soilent Green, although they changed an awful lot.

Or maybe you'd prefer your dystopia to be over-polluted instead of overpopulated. John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up posits an America that feels like the 1970s if instead of passing the EPA we'd gone drastically in the other direction. The world is falling apart, and the populace is ready to revolt. As cyberpunk author William Gibson said "No one except possibly the late John Brunner, in his brilliant novel The Sheep Look Up, has ever described anything in science fiction that is remotely like the reality of 2007 as we know it." It's almost as good as Stand on Zanzibar, and that's no small accomplishment.

Would you rather have your dystopia involves computers? Brunner did that too; Shockwave Rider has a proto-internet. It also has a proto-NSA. And what happens when one man tries to hide? Chaos, naturally. This book introduced the concept of a computer 'worm'. It's not as good as Stand on Zanzibar or The Sheep Look Up, but it's still more than good enough to add to your reading list.

Part of me says that Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk may end up being the Catch-22 for Afghanistan. The rest of me says that it's not quite darkly comedic enough to be a direct comparison, but the raw emotion in this book is palpable. I strongly recommend this. My sister liked it too.

I've now read all four of Jhumpa Lahiri's books. The Lowland is her latest novel, and it is superb. Stylistically it is very similar to The Namesake, with the narrators rotating from chapter to chapter as it moves through the life of a family. Lahiri once again shows remarkable empathy and understanding for her characters; I strongly recommend this. For those who prefer short stories, Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth was to my mind better than Interpreter of Maladies - and that one won the Pulitzer. In short, I've loved all four of her books and she is now firmly ensconced on my list of favorite authors.

For a few years Bill Simmons was the best ESPN columnist available. I feel he's fallen off a bit in a few years, but I still read his magnum opus, The Book of Basketball despite not being terrible interested in the NBA. This book is exhaustive. It's part memoir, part history lesson and part inspired sports bar argument. If you have even the vaguest interest in the NBA you'll learn a heck of a lot reading this.

What happens when a British graphic artist falls in love with baseball? If you're lucky, get Craig Robinson's Flip Flop Fly Ball, which is full of infographics about baseball. Did you know that the Jake is the seventh highest MLB ballpark by altitude?

Would you prefer some memoirs? Roger Ebert's Life Itself is a vivid self-portrait of a man who really enjoyed life; sometimes to excess. If you enjoyed his blog you'll certainly enjoy this. Mike Doughty's The Book of Drugs shows another side of excess. As the title promises, we see a very vivid description of how much the drugs messed him up. At one point he says that "When even your dealer won't sell you heroin anymore because he doesn't want you to OD, you may have a problem." There's also an awful lot about all the things that took down Soul Coughing, with nice vignettes about his friend Jeff Buckley and the inevitable stories about the music biz. I recommend it even if you aren't familiar with his music.

On the non-fiction front, Erik Rutkow's American Canopy is a comprehensive history of forestry in America. Learn how the lumber needs of the British Navy drove colonization, the rise of newspapers and the accompanying paper mills in the U.S., scientific forestry and the burgeoning environmental movement and a lot more. This book is very informative, but is occasionally a bit dry. Suitable for history buffs of all ages.

If you're like me, you spent a rather large portion of the 1990s playing games from id Software. John Romero and John Carmack made a fortune on shareware via Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, and of course Doom. Masters of Doom is a complete history of id, from the early days to the final dissolution. It is essential for anyone who is interested in computer gaming history.

I also read Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday. The concept, that we can learn a lot from looking at the ways different traditional societies did things, is good. The execution is horrible. This book was about 100 pages too long. For every good chapter, such as the one about differences in child-rearing between groups, there was a terrible one like the one about the evolutionary causes of diseases. It was especially frustrating because even the bad chapters had good concepts, they were just done so poorly as to ruin it. Le sigh.

Another disappointing book was Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue. It wasn't a bad book, just not nearly as good as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay or The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

I read Suttree by Cormack McCarthy because Ebert named dropped it in his memoir. Suttree is an educated man from an upper class upbringing who abandons his family and lives in Knoxville in 1950 as a itinerant fisherman and borderline bum. The writing paints a vivid picture of the world Suttree lives in, even, or perhaps especially, when it's an ugly place. I found the book enjoyable, albeit occasionally bleak and depressing. Then I learned that most critics thought it was a comedic novel, which completely confused me. YMMV.

Scratch Beginnings was written as a rebuttal to Nickel and Dimed. The latter book argued that hard work is very rarely enough for success. In Scratch Beginnings, author Adam Shepherd, just out of college, attempts to build up his life without using his education, contacts or any resources beyond $25 and some clothes. He is quite successful, moving from a homeless shelter to a furnished apartment while buying a pickup truck and having savings in the bank. Of course, he completely discounts the value of a middle class upbringing or being a healthy young white man, but that doesn't make the book less interesting. It comes off as a bit of "poverty tourist" crossed with Horatio Algiers and a very strong pro-American Dream stance.

I also my biannual efforts to catch up with Stephen King. The The Wind Through the Keyhole takes place in the Dark Tower universe and is thoroughly enjoyable. Full Dark, No Stars is another collection of novellas. 1922 creeped me the fuck out; Fair Extension is short and as utterly disturbing a tale of revenge as anything I've ever read.

And lastly, I read the last Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Ever After. She ended up with the guy I would have voted for (who also happened to make the most sense), but this final effort did nothing to arrest the general downward trend of the quality of the series.

If you want to know about anything else on my list, drop me a comment. And I'm always happy to have suggestions!