Chuckled at this Carl Pope, Jr. piece I saw in the Who RU2 Day exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art today. Here it is in context (Love that Pope, Jr. demanded that the museum staple gun the letterpress posters to the wall):
I also love how Pope stole this dialogue from Casablanca:
I was there with the kids, so I gotta go back and spend some more time with it…
Here are 20 good books I read in 2018, in no order other than the order in which I read them:
Tape For The Turn of the Year
A.R. Ammons
In 1963, Ammons got a roll of adding machine tape from the hardware store and decided to write poems on it every day until the tape was used up. I started the book on December 6 of last year, and followed along with each entry until January 10th.
Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Denis Johnson
Beautiful stories.
A perfect swan song.
Reinventing Bach
Paul Elie
Takes a look at Bach’s work through the recordings of his works throughout the years. I especially liked reading about Glenn Gould and Pablo Casals.
A Natural History of the Senses
Diane Ackerman
I originally thought Keep Going would have more about the senses in it, so I picked this up for research. Very dense, lush book.
Prince and The Purple Rain Sessions
Duane Tudahl
A day-by-day play-by-play of Prince in the recording studio at the height of his powers. I did a lot of skimming and skipping around, but really enjoyed it.
A Philosophy of Walking
Frederic Gros
A sausage-fest, but a good sausage-fest. (Compliment with Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust or Keri Smith’s The Wander Society or Lauren Elkin’s Flâneuse.)
You & A Bike & A Road
Eleanor Davis
A comic diary of Davis’s bike across the south. I love her work so much. If I had to pick, this might be my favorite book I read this year. (I also read How To Be Happy and her newest one, Why Art? Both very much worth reading.) She’s on fire, and I can’t wait to read what’s next.
Meet Me In The Bathroom
Lizzie Goodman
An oral history of NYC music from 2001-2011. How much you enjoy it will probably depend on your familiarity with the music — I was eighteen and a freshman in college when I saw The Strokes in Newport, KY, in 2001, so it made me pretty danged nostalgic.
Calypso
David Sedaris
I mean, what’s there to say? The dude makes me laugh out loud… and he keeps getting better and better. (I also enjoyed the visual compendium of his diaries.)
Confabulations
John Berger
Considering how much Ways of Seeing influenced me, I’m ashamed I haven’t read more Berger. This was the last book he published before he died.
Monograph
Chris Ware
A gorgeous, gigantic tome dedicated to the work of one of our great Midwestern artists.
Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances
Arne Glimcher
By far the most expensive book on this list. (I bought it for my wife years ago, but I’m not sure she ever read it.) Gorgeous printing, with life-size facsimiles of Martin’s notebook pages bound in with the regular pages.
Priestdaddy
Patricia Lockwood
I was a year late to this, but it’s as advertised: Smart, smutty, and laugh-out-loud funny.
Twentieth-Century Boy: Notebooks of the Seventies
Duncan Hannah
I loved this book, which was edited from Hannah’s actual diaries that he kept as a young man in 70s NYC. My only gripe is that the book doesn’t include images of the actual notebooks, which are wonderfully visual.
The Hildafolk Series
Luke Pearson
It’s a rare, wonderful thing when stars align and you love reading the same books as your kids. (Last year: Jon Klassen’s Hat Trilogy) Pearson’s Hilda comics are like a cross between Miyazaki and my beloved Moomins with a dash of unschooling. Magic.
Words Without Music
Philip Glass
Devoured this one, and afterwards, was surprised it took me so long to pick it up. Glass writes about so many of my favorite topics: creativity, day jobs, parenting, lineage, etc. Totally accessible, and made me want to listen to more of his music.
The Folded Clock: A Diary
Heidi Julavitz
I’m not so sure that Julavitz and I would get along together at a party, but dang, I liked her book.
Eve’s Hollywood
Eve Babitz
What I wrote about Slow Days, Fast Company in last year’s roundup works here, too, so: “I love reading and thinking about Los Angeles, and I love writing that’s smart and trashy, so I liked this a lot.”
Little
Edward Carey
A strange, gloomy work of historical fiction with wonderful Gorey-like, Gothic drawings. (I was delighted by the show at the Austin Public Library.)
They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Hanif Abdurraqib
Abdurraqib and I were born in the same year and grew up within a 45-minute drive of each other in Ohio, but our worlds were so very, very different. Columbus — a city I never felt much affinity for, despite its proximity in my youth — is one of the main characters here, and the book exposed me to a different side of it.
* * *
Here are 20 other good books I read, many of which, on another day, or in another month or year, could be in my top 20 (again, listed in the order in which I read them):
Note: I usually don’t post my favorite reads until the very end of the year, but I’m poking through this annotated Walden and Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey right now, so I think it’s safe to say I won’t finish any other books before 2019 arrives.
See the past 13 years of my reading, here.
“I take the opportunity each day offers.”
—Andy Goldsworthy
I usually feel a tremendous letdown the morning after Christmas — major “What next?” pangs — but this morning the sun came out so we walked our cranky selves down to the beach and made a bunch of driftwood sculptures. (This afternoon we might watch Rivers and Tides.)
Hope your day is full of sweet beats.
I don’t post my year-end reading list until the end of the year, but I definitely start working on it this early. (This year’s biggest problem: I’m devouring Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and if I keep up at this pace, I’ll have to bump something from the list above.)
Last year I wrote about rethinking making lists entirely, and this year in August I posted a list of favorite reads (so far) of 2018, but I’m still loathe to finish this year’s final list. Reading has become more and more of a private thing for me as the online universe has disintegrated: The page is where I go to not be judged, but to be understood (a book is a mirror, etc.). The minute you make some kind of public list you’re opening yourself up to all sorts of judgments and scrutiny about your habits.
Overall, I think the best move (as a non-critic, at least) is to go with an unranked list. Music writer Ted Gioia, for example, switched to an alphabetical ordering for his Best of 2018 list. “I am doing this because each of these albums deserves recognition and the sequential ranking tended to focus too much attention on just a few recordings.”
I also like Gioia’s explanation for why he still makes lists:
Like any music lover, I enjoy sharing my favorite music with others. But in the last few years, a different motivation has spurred me. I believe that the system of music discovery is broken in the current day. There is more music recorded than ever before, but it is almost impossible for listeners to find the best new recordings….
I have nothing so noble for a cause, but let’s face it: I’ll suck it up and make this year’s, if for no other reason than because I’m a list junkie and a completist.
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