Ten good books I read this year:
I Remember
by Joe Brainard
“I remember Saturday night baths and Sunday morning comics.”
The Anthologist
by Nicholson Baker
“I ask a simple question. I ask myself: What was the very best moment of your day…this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about.”
Just Kids
by Patti Smith
“an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand. ‘Oh, take their picture,’ said the woman to her bemused husband, ‘I think they’re artists.’ ‘Oh, go on,’ he shrugged. ‘They’re just kids.’”
Lit
by Mary Karr
“I get so lonely sometimes, I could put a box on my head and mail myself to a stranger.”
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
by David Shields
“Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity and by delight, we all quote. It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.” (Emerson)
Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
“There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees.
Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull.”
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”
And The Pursuit of Happiness
by Maira Kalman
“Everything is invented. Language. Childhood. Careers. Relationships. Religion. Philosophy. The Future. They are not there for the plucking. They don’t exist in some natural state. They must be invented by people. And that, of course, is a great thing. Don’t mope in your room. Go invent something. That is the American message.”
Picture This
by Lynda Barry
“Why do we stop drawing?”
Master of Reality
by John Darnielle
“When you listen to early Black Sabbath, you know the main difference between them & you is that somebody bought them guitars and microphones. They’re not smarter than you; they’re not deeper than you; they’re a fuck of a lot richer than you, but other than that, it’s like listening to the inside of your own mind. So when they write songs, they sing about wizards. And witches. And robots.”
10 more good books I read:
- Lynd Ward, Six Novels in Woodcuts
- Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft
- Kay Ryan, The Best of It
- R.O. Blechman, Dear James: Letters to a Young Illustrator
- Michael Kupperman, Tales Designed to Thrizzle (Vol. 1)
- Kitty Burns Florey, Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog
- Lewis Hyde, Common as Air
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
- Kate Bingaman-Burt, Obsessive Consumption
- Andrei Codrescu, The Posthuman Dada Guide
What was your favorite thing you read this year?
