Reading
Books: on balance, I'm for them. These are most of the ones I've read since 2007 or so. The star ratings correspond more closely to "how worth my time this felt" than "how good this is."
Promethea, Vol. 1
Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray
Wallington's World: A Puritan Artisan in Seventeenth-Century London
Paul S. Seaver
Patriarchalism in Pol Thought
Gordon J. Schochet
British Autobiography In The Seventeenth Century
Paul Delany
The Abstract: Tales of Wickedness and Sorrow
Goodloe Byron
This book is interesting at a number of levels. First, it is published and distributed for free by its author, ref:
http://www.brownpaperpublishing.com/Abstract/Abstract.html
But the book itself is strange in that it is so immersive, despite the fact that we have almost no access to what is happening outside the narrator's head. It sits somewhere between [b:Fear and Loathing|7745|Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream|Hunter S. Thompson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165639648s/7745.jpg|1309111] in Las Vegas, Slaughterhouse Five, and, oh, let's say.. Portrait of the Artist.
Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses of Social Pathology in Early Modern England
Jonathan Gil Harris
Made me think about:
- Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
Body Narratives: Writing the Nation and Fashioning the Subject in Early Modern England
Susanne Scholz
Publics and Counterpublics
Michael Warner
Made me think about:
- Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive
Lee Edelman, Michele Ainabarale
Made me think about:
- Lady Chatterley's Lover & A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives
J. Jack Halberstam
Ali and Nino
Kurban Said
I've finally (belatedly) finished Jason's pick for book club.
Ali and Nino is poetic, un-apologetically exotic, and (subsidiary only to those other two qualities) thought provoking in its refusal to conform to modern tropes on the relationship between East and West.
Extremely good, and worth anyone's time.
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Judith Butler
Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
José Esteban Muñoz
Post Office
Charles Bukowski
The Incredible Hulk: Planet Hulk
Greg Pak, Aaron Lopresti, Carlo Pagulayan, Juan Santacruz, Gary Frank, Takeshi Miyazawa
Novo, Vol. 1: The Birth of Novo (Novo #1)
Michael S. Bracco
Up, Up, and Oy Vey! How Jewish History, Culture, and Values Shaped the Comic Book Superhero
Simcha Weinstein
Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England
David Cressy
Swamp Thing, Vol. 1: Saga of the Swamp Thing
Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben, Rick Veitch, Ramsey Campbell
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Steven Marcus
Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil
Mike Mignola
Fables, Vol. 2: Animal Farm
Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, James Jean
The Ultimates, Volume 1: Super-Human
Mark Millar, Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie
The Incredible Hulk: Prelude To Planet Hulk
Daniel Way, Juan Santacruz, Keu Cha
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction
Michel Foucault, Robert Hurley
Slow Food: The Case for Taste (Arts and Traditions of the Table)
Carlo Petrini, William McCuaig, Alice Waters
This book is worthwhile as an overview of Slow Food and what it's philosophical and practical ramifications have been in Italy and around the world. Unfortunately, at times it strays beyond the bounds of its argumentative essay format into the domain of marketing material; it becomes difficult in certain sections to know how much to trust the claims being made.
I would recommend this (after all) modestly sized, innocuous little book to anyone trying to understand what Slow Food is all about - or to develop their ideas on how the current local food movement might be expanded for the world stage.
Made me think about:
- Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture
Preludes & Nocturnes (The Sandman, #1)
Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Karen Berger
Made me think about:
- The Crow
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson, Guy Abadia
Watchmen
Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Higgins
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Michael Chabon
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (In Search of Lost Time, #2)
Marcel Proust, James Grieve, Christopher Prendergast
Made me think about:
- Lady Chatterley's Lover & A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover
I Spit on Your Graves (Vernon Sullivan, #1)
Boris Vian, Vernon Sullivan
Made me think about:
- The Crow
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley
The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
Charles Papazian
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen
The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft, S.T. Joshi
Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
Marcel Proust, Lydia Davis
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Max Brooks
The Maxx, Vol. 1
Sam Kieth, William Messner-Loebs, Dave Feiss
Madman Volume 3
Mike Allred, Laura Allred
Universe X, Vol. 1 (Earth X 2)
Jim Krueger, Alex Ross
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Mark Twain
Superman: Red Son
Mark Millar, Kilian Plunkett, Andrew C. Robinson, Walden Wong, Dave Johnson, Paul Mounts, Ken Lopez
Hellboy, Vol. 1: Seed of Destruction
Mike Mignola, John Byrne
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 8: Kimono Dragons (Y: The Last Man, #8)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka, José Marzán Jr.
Real Food: What to Eat and Why
Nina Planck
Sin City, Vol. 2: A Dame to Kill For (Sin City, #2)
Frank Miller
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7: Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man, #7)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka, José Marzán Jr.
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5: Ring of Truth (Y: The Last Man, #5)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzán Jr.
What Is the What
Dave Eggers
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 6: Girl on Girl (Y: The Last Man, #6)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Sudžuka, José Marzán Jr.
How to Be Idle
Tom Hodgkinson
Made me think about:
- How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Second Foundation (Foundation #3)
Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2)
Isaac Asimov
Foundation (Foundation, #1)
Isaac Asimov
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 4: Safeword (Y: The Last Man, #4)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, Goran Parlov, José Marzán Jr.
Concrete, Volume 3: Fragile Creature
Paul Chadwick
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov, Paul Foote
Made me think about:
- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
- Death and the Penguin
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov, Craig Raine
Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis, David Lodge
The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000
Martin Amis, James Diedrick
Two Early Tudor Lives: The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey by George Cavendish, The Life of Sir Thomas More by William Roper
George Cavendish, William Roper, David P. Harding, Davis P. Harding, Richard S. Sylvester
The Aesthetics of Comics
David Carrier
Interesting and well researched, but limited in that it wants to make comic strips representative of the entire art form, among other strangely delimiting moves.
Black Mane
Michael V. Lariccia
Drawn & Quarterly Showcase: Book One
Chris Oliveros, Kevin Huizenga, Nicolas Robel
I was a bit tredidatious as I cracked this thing open: after my experiences with "What is the What" and the U2 discography, I was a little concerned that the content wouldn't rise to the hype. Instead, I was confronted by humble works by both Huizenga and Robel that were both disarming and sweet. Equally legible to both nerds and others.
The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 8: Featuring the Death of Fritz the Cat
Robert Crumb
Now (in contrast to Vol. 1) this is Crumb! I have an iron stomach, and even I was offended. Genre-defining art meets genre-defining egocentrism. Que brillante!
The Complete Buddy Bradley Stories from Hate Comics, Vol. 1: Buddy Does Seattle, 1990-1994
Peter Bagge, Everett True
Beautiful, crafted artwork in the tradition of R. Crumb, complimented by self-aware social satire limited only by the occasional fit of directionlessness. Good stuff!
The Complete Crumb Comics, Vol. 1: The Early Years of Bitter Struggle
Robert Crumb, Gary Groth, Robert Fiore, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Marty Pahls, Marc Arsenault, Audu Paden, Coco Shinomiya, Dale Crain
So. It turns out that when the subtitle says "The Early Years of Bitter Struggle," it isn't kidding. This is a collection of neonatal comics from when Crumb was in high school. I'm not too proud to admit that I finished the whole thing, but I'm sure my interest was predicated on disturbing heights of idolatry, rather than the actual contents of the book.
Chaotique #1
Chris Dreyer, Matt Bailey
The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene, John Updike
A Passage to India: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Betty Jay
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Howards End
E.M. Forster
Ethan Frome
Edith Wharton
The Mother's Recompense
Edith Wharton
The Best American Short Stories 2004
Lorrie Moore, Katrina Kenison
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Michel Foucault, A.M. Sheridan-Smith
Nine Stories
J.D. Salinger
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
J.D. Salinger
Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier
Cathedral
Raymond Carver
Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
Raymond Carver
The Painted Drum
Louise Erdrich
Love Medicine
Louise Erdrich
Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arnold Goldman, Richard Godden
Continental Drift
Russell Banks
Portrait in Sepia
Isabel Allende, Margaret Sayers Peden
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
John Berendt
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
Thomas L. Friedman
Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
Tom Holland
The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Mitch Albom
This is one of the worst books I have ever read.
Animal Farm
George Orwell, Boris Grabnar, Peter Škerl
The Red Tent
Anita Diamant
The Giving Tree
Shel Silverstein
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2)
J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1)
J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré
In the Lake of the Woods
Tim O'Brien
The Toughest Indian in the World
Sherman Alexie
Reservation Blues
Sherman Alexie
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Sherman Alexie
Survivor
Chuck Palahniuk
Invisible Monsters
Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf, Maureen Howard
Ignorance
Milan Kundera, Linda Asher
Identity
Milan Kundera, Linda Asher
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Milan Kundera, Aaron Asher, Serena Vitale
You Must Remember This
Joyce Carol Oates
Memories of the Ford Administration
John Updike
Rabbit Is Rich (Rabbit Angstrom, #3)
John Updike
Rabbit at Rest (Rabbit Angstrom #4)
John Updike
Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom #2)
John Updike
Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom #1)
John Updike
Hardboiled & Hard Luck
Banana Yoshimoto, Michael Emmerich
Women in Love
D.H. Lawrence
American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1)
Philip Roth
Bee Season
Myla Goldberg
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Fitzgerald
1984
George Orwell, Erich Fromm
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain, Guy Cardwell, John Seelye, Walter Trier
Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
Gregory Maguire, Douglas Smith
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini, Berliani M. Nugrahani
Indecision
Benjamin Kunkel
Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (Ishmael, #1)
Daniel Quinn
Catch-22 (Catch-22, #1)
Joseph Heller
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad, Aníbal Fernandes
Jurassic Park (Parque Jurásico, #1)
Michael Crichton
Anthem
Ayn Rand
Made me think about:
- Lady Chatterley's Lover & A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World
Tracy Kidder
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim
Speaker for the Dead (Ender’s Saga, #2)
Orson Scott Card
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck
The Lost World (Jurassic Park #2)
Michael Crichton
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Franny and Zooey
J.D. Salinger
Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
William Gibson
Velocity
Dean Koontz
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
Life of Pi
Yann Martel
The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy, Alexander Theroux
my favorite book.
Far From the Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy, Rosemarie Morgan, Shannon Russell
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Ernest Hemingway, Mete Ergin, Mustafa Bahar
A Farewell to Arms
Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway
N.P
Banana Yoshimoto, Ann Sherif
Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus
Madman Adventures Collection
Mike Allred, Philip Amara
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3: One Small Step (Y: The Last Man, #3)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzán Jr., Paul Chadwick
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles (Y: The Last Man, #2)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzán Jr.
Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, #1)
Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, José Marzán Jr., Jose Marzan, Goran Sudžuka
Sin City, Vol. 1: The Hard Goodbye (Sin City, #1)
Frank Miller
Made me think about:
- The Crow
Concrete, Volume 2: Heights
Paul Chadwick
Concrete, Volume 1: Depths
Paul Chadwick
Amphigorey Also (Amphigorey, #3)
Edward Gorey
Bone: The Complete Edition
Jeff Smith