Best books I read in 2012
I didn't really have time to write any book reviews this year. I'm the kind of person books grow on in time, so not having this reflecting time I think made it feel like a slightly deflating reading year. Still, I think these books deserve consideration:
8. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino: I never been a fan of unreliable narrators, until Kirino proved me wrong, with no less than four of them pulling you down the dark garden path of prostitution, blackmail, murder, and plain ole "mean girl" abuse. By the end, cleaned out by their sordidness (it definitely lives up to the title), you're left with little belief in the events as told-- only with the truth of the corrosive power of competitive society.
7. Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton: I'm sorry I ever doubted my girl Edith after I couldn't connect with her ghost stories. Devastating, hilarious, and precise-- and that's just in the title story. Also a great introduction to Wharton's tonal range, for people who think she only wrote about stiff repressed Gilded-Age aristocrats.
6. Killing A Mouse On Sunday by Emeric Pressburger: Pressburger become one of my favorite writers this year... of screenplays that is. His novel shows the same strengths: his ability to get at the cultural subconscious and all the scary messed-up shit that entails, but also the spirit of generous, mystic humanism at the end of that tunnel.
5. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett: I sat on the knife-edge this whole novel, trying to suss out whether Burnett was serving up the dryest satire or sickly wish-fulfillment. Either way, she makes it go down sweet-- brilliantly readable, I can't believe I've waited this long to read more Burnett.
4. Laura by Vera Caspary: Or Caspary proves there *is* such a thing as feminist noir. A masterpiece of unreliable narration as Caspary pulls back the mask of the cool noir archetypes to reveal the neurotic, strange, and passionate underneath-- a world of characters desperately clinging to ways to define themselves in the face of changing modern values towards gender and class.
3. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: Truly unique meditation on grief and longing. Yoshimoto kills the novella format with her ability to get at the heart of these emotions with her unsettling prose and unforced imagery. Sensual and cleansing, off-kilter in the best way.
2.The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton: That's right, so good she's on it twice. Wharton busts wide the pity-party House of Mirth with romp of Custom of the Country. If Lily is Frankenstein's monster, Undine is the sharktopus-- Wharton lets her out of her cage and you watch her wreck beautiful delightful destruction upon the world.
1. Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka: I can't deny that this series was the best thing. It took me a long time to understand what tone Tezuka was going for, to understand what kind of flawed, narcissistic, goofball anti-hero Black Jack really was in the context of Tezuka's humanism. But I kept reading, and it paid off. And then I got to appreciate how fast and loose and punchy a title it really is. Western, noir, environmental, supernatural, urban, moral: there isn't a genre that Tezuka doesn't try his hand at. It's glorious, and then there's his real-life medical degree going to use on those surgery close-ups.
Most pleasantly surprising: The Tempest by William Shakespeare - Still limps to the ending and the first act is atrocious, but those middle acts, damn, where you been hiding this talent?
Bonus: Because my list feels a little grinchy, and I haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet-- Without further commentary, the ten best short stories in The Art of the Short Story Edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn:
1. "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
2. "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
3. "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton
4. "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
5. "Babylon Revisted" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. "The Storm" by Kate Chopin
8. "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borge
9. "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
10. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
Honorable Mention for a Novella: "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka
8. Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino: I never been a fan of unreliable narrators, until Kirino proved me wrong, with no less than four of them pulling you down the dark garden path of prostitution, blackmail, murder, and plain ole "mean girl" abuse. By the end, cleaned out by their sordidness (it definitely lives up to the title), you're left with little belief in the events as told-- only with the truth of the corrosive power of competitive society.
7. Roman Fever and Other Stories by Edith Wharton: I'm sorry I ever doubted my girl Edith after I couldn't connect with her ghost stories. Devastating, hilarious, and precise-- and that's just in the title story. Also a great introduction to Wharton's tonal range, for people who think she only wrote about stiff repressed Gilded-Age aristocrats.
6. Killing A Mouse On Sunday by Emeric Pressburger: Pressburger become one of my favorite writers this year... of screenplays that is. His novel shows the same strengths: his ability to get at the cultural subconscious and all the scary messed-up shit that entails, but also the spirit of generous, mystic humanism at the end of that tunnel.
5. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett: I sat on the knife-edge this whole novel, trying to suss out whether Burnett was serving up the dryest satire or sickly wish-fulfillment. Either way, she makes it go down sweet-- brilliantly readable, I can't believe I've waited this long to read more Burnett.
4. Laura by Vera Caspary: Or Caspary proves there *is* such a thing as feminist noir. A masterpiece of unreliable narration as Caspary pulls back the mask of the cool noir archetypes to reveal the neurotic, strange, and passionate underneath-- a world of characters desperately clinging to ways to define themselves in the face of changing modern values towards gender and class.
3. Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto: Truly unique meditation on grief and longing. Yoshimoto kills the novella format with her ability to get at the heart of these emotions with her unsettling prose and unforced imagery. Sensual and cleansing, off-kilter in the best way.
2.The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton: That's right, so good she's on it twice. Wharton busts wide the pity-party House of Mirth with romp of Custom of the Country. If Lily is Frankenstein's monster, Undine is the sharktopus-- Wharton lets her out of her cage and you watch her wreck beautiful delightful destruction upon the world.
1. Black Jack by Osamu Tezuka: I can't deny that this series was the best thing. It took me a long time to understand what tone Tezuka was going for, to understand what kind of flawed, narcissistic, goofball anti-hero Black Jack really was in the context of Tezuka's humanism. But I kept reading, and it paid off. And then I got to appreciate how fast and loose and punchy a title it really is. Western, noir, environmental, supernatural, urban, moral: there isn't a genre that Tezuka doesn't try his hand at. It's glorious, and then there's his real-life medical degree going to use on those surgery close-ups.
Most pleasantly surprising: The Tempest by William Shakespeare - Still limps to the ending and the first act is atrocious, but those middle acts, damn, where you been hiding this talent?
Bonus: Because my list feels a little grinchy, and I haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet-- Without further commentary, the ten best short stories in The Art of the Short Story Edited by Dana Gioia and R.S. Gwynn:
1. "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker
2. "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
3. "Roman Fever" by Edith Wharton
4. "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
5. "Babylon Revisted" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
6. "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. "The Storm" by Kate Chopin
8. "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borge
9. "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane
10. "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield
Honorable Mention for a Novella: "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka