SINCE EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT
Wow lists!
BOOKS I READ IN 2005
1. Hunger by Knut Hamsun
This book describes the adventures of a crazy homeless writer in Norway. Guaranteed to crush your will to live.
2. Oblivion by David Foster Wallace.
It’s by David Foster Wallace!
3. Pastoralia+Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders
Saunders has a very distinct style, with little variation across these two collections of stories. Fortunately Saunders is totally effin hilarious.
4. Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen
I’m gay for Leonard Cohen!
5. The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia
This book rocked my world, it is inventive and perfectly constructed. Maybe the only book I read last year actually published in 2005!
6. Siddhartha+Demian by Herman Hesse
Hey hey hey
I have nothing to say!
7. Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeier
I just read this last weekend. Another downer book. This is an intensely sombre graphic novel about a kid whose mother dies of cancer and whose father goes insane. After that, it gets really depressing. Fun fact: Hornschemeier is the only cartoonist of his generation to take a degree in philosophy. Coincidence?
8. Vox+Fermata by Nicholson Baker
Porny! Vox is a novella transcript of a phone sex chat session. Fermata is about a guy who is able to stop the flow of time for everyone except himself, and he uses this power to thoroughly admire boobs. Summaried like that, they sound just like any of a billion other cheesy jerk stories that nobody cares about anymore since we all have broadband. Vox and Fermata are different. These books subvert the genre conventions *unh* of erotica to shed light on the complex network of internalized irony *buh*… of modern… *spooge*
BOOKS I STARTED BUT DID NOT FINISH
1. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann is kicking my ass. It is unquestionably the finest book I didn’t read this year. It’s the kind of book that is so epic and perfect that it’s a little bit scary. Also, it’s huge.
2. Atonement by Ian McEwan
It’s good, I guess. Atonement seems like a pretty straight-up Austinean study in social anxiety, and if that’s your bag then no problem. I stopped reading right before the crucial plot moment where the lovestruck young gentleman accidentally delivers to his secret admiree an early draft, (containing various lusty and ribald sentiments), of a letter of chaste romantic intent he has written. Perhaps someday I will find out how it all plays out, but I lost interest in discharging the mechanism that McEwan had so craftily arranged. It seems like a good place to leave off; I felt like I got the gist.
3. The Tesseract by Alex Garland
I really liked his first book, The Beach, but this one failed to make me care.