What did you read in 2022?

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do wish that Mother of Invention was subtler and less overtly agendaed. might have got the message across better.I meant to read some of the source books from the bibliography to see if they were better argued.

Stevolende, Monday, 2 January 2023 19:57 (one year ago) link

As usual this year I failed to develop any disciplined reading patterns and spent too much time dissociating on the internet. But I did manage to read:

Osman, The Man Who Died Twice
Riley, Cold Water
Franzen, Crossroads
Stafford, Counselling Skills in Action
Baddiel, Jews Don’t Count
Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
Pratchett, Reaper Man
Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Higgins, Kennedy for the Defense
McIntyre, The Entropy Effect
Riley, My Phantoms
Amis, The Green Man
Fitzgerald, Men’s of Escape
Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
Le Guin, Tehanu
Block, 8 Million Ways To Die
Atkinson, Case Histories
Atkinson, One Good Turn
Tolkien, Fellowship of yadda yadda
Christie, After the Funeral
Harris, A Season in Exile
Rosen, How to make children laugh
Hammett, The Thin Man (unfinished due to boredom)
Rimmer, Like Punk Never Happened
Raskin, The Westing Game

Unsentimental best: My Phantoms
Sentimental best: Tehanu
Had a chapter that caused me to cry more than any other book I’ve read: Case Histories

Chuck_Tatum, Tuesday, 3 January 2023 00:31 (one year ago) link

nonfiction:
Slavoj Zizek - Living in the End Times
Jerome Carcopino - Daily Life in Ancient Rome
Anne Hyde - Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West
Terry Teachout - Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong
Simon Winder - Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History
J. Storrs Hall - Where Is My Flying Car?
Arthur Schopenhauer - The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

fiction:
Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Ursula Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
James M. Cain - The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain - Double Indemnity
Joshua Cohen - The Netanyahus
Karl Ove Knausgaard - My Struggle: Volume 4
Elif Batuman - The Idiot
Patrick Modiano - Paris Nocturne
John Darnielle - Universal Harvester
Rainer Maria Rilke - The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
John Wyndham - The Outward Urge
Valeria Luiselli - Lost Children Archive
Leonardo Sciascia - To Each His Own
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms
Sam Selvon - The Housing Lark
Patricia Highsmith - The Blunderer
Machado de Assis - The Alienist and Other Stories of 19th Century Brazil

poetry:
Jimmy Santiago Baca - Martin & Meditations on the South Valley
Philip Levine - The Simple Truth
Robinson Jeffers - Tamar
Dante - Inferno (trans. Robert Pinsky)

o. nate, Thursday, 5 January 2023 03:51 (one year ago) link

Machado de Assis - The Alienist and Other Stories of 19th Century Brazil

What's your take on this?

dow, Thursday, 5 January 2023 04:18 (one year ago) link

I liked it. I would like to read more by him. I added his novel "The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas" to my wish list after finishing this one. The longest story "The Alienist" may have been one of the weaker ones, IMO. Or at least it seems to be the one that feels the most dated. It's a satire of the scientific pretensions of psychiatry in its early days, which from a contemporary perspective seems a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. It was probably more stinging at the time. The other shorter pieces were interesting, well-observed tales of society and psychology with a gentle satirical edge.

o. nate, Thursday, 5 January 2023 14:26 (one year ago) link

My resolution to not buy any more books lasted about 3 days. Just 'popped into' my local Oxfam book store and left with a bag-full: a couple of Antonia Whites, Antony Sher's Year of the King, Beryl Gilroy's Black Teacher, Marshall Berman's All That's Solid, Rose Macaulay's World is my Wilderness and, uh, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Saturday, 7 January 2023 17:18 (one year ago) link

Going into Oxfam after new year's is probably the last thing I'd do if I wanted to stop buying books.

xyzzzz__, Saturday, 7 January 2023 20:38 (one year ago) link

Resistance is futile.

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Saturday, 7 January 2023 21:05 (one year ago) link

yeah was running through my head to slow down buying books.But somehow wound up making the usual rounds. Did get some interesting stuff though

Stevolende, Saturday, 7 January 2023 21:13 (one year ago) link

The Humble Bundle deals are death for me.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Saturday, 7 January 2023 21:14 (one year ago) link

Marshall Berman's All That's Solid
an all-time favorite---I did a decent take on a prev WAYR? so won't push my luck. First ed. was published in early Reagan Admin, which second ed. happily saw past ass end of, third I forget when, but the Prof. lived on into Obama years and died of heart attack while lunching at his fave NYC Jewish deli, not grading papers. The book has that kind of good timing as well.

dow, Sunday, 8 January 2023 00:13 (one year ago) link

I've never read it. Even when I was doing my lit degree I managed to avoid it, somehow. Glad to finally have it.

Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Sunday, 8 January 2023 11:11 (one year ago) link

Amazing book.

Farewell to Evening in Paradise (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 8 January 2023 16:08 (one year ago) link


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