Books 2012
The best book I read in 2012 was the first one: Melville's The Confidence Man. It's hard to believe it's by the author of Moby Dick. The Confidence Man is sardonic, ambiguously (sometimes intriguingly, sometimes humorously) moralistic, picaresque, fast-paced. It has the funniest chapter titles I've ever read. I really enjoyed Moby Dick when I read it, but haven't felt much urge to return to it. I suspect The Confidence Man is a book I'll want to re-read every 5 years or so.
Other notables from the year: Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Lieber's Conjure Wife. Never Let Me Go is lit fic embiggened by science fiction tropes. Conjure Wife is a horror novel embiggened by good writing. (I wish I could talk to a woman who's read Conjure Wife. It's so sexist in its high concept-- basically the entire novel turns on the unplumbable mystery of the female mind-- that I wonder if it works for women.)
Also: I was lucky to get George Saunders's new collection early (at the price of a LibraryThing review). It comes out later this month, and is definitely worth the attention of short-story readers.
Looking over the list, it's clear that I can no longer claim to be releasing dammed-up desire for science fiction. It was the 10-year break during and after college that was the blip.
Novels:
Melville, The Confidence Man
Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Pevear/Volohonsky trans.)
Coupland, Generation X
Collins, The Hunger Games
Pohl and Kornbluth, Gladiator-at-Law
Wallis, Only Lovers Left Alive
Chandler, Playback
Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
Cain, Double Indemnity
Pohl and Kornbluth, Search the Sky
Luna, Red Storm
Leiber, Conjure Wife
Scalzi, Agent to the Stars
West, The Day of the Locust
DeLillo, Cosmopolis
Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Adams, Mostly Harmless
Wyndham, Trouble With Lichen
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Polansky, The Bradbury Report
Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Plays:
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Capek, The Makropulos Case
Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Short story collections:
Richter, Twin Study
Silverberg, ed. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol 1
Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
Atwood, Good Bones and Simple Murders
Saunders, Tenth of December
Dahl, The Great Automatic Grammatizator
Other notables from the year: Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Lieber's Conjure Wife. Never Let Me Go is lit fic embiggened by science fiction tropes. Conjure Wife is a horror novel embiggened by good writing. (I wish I could talk to a woman who's read Conjure Wife. It's so sexist in its high concept-- basically the entire novel turns on the unplumbable mystery of the female mind-- that I wonder if it works for women.)
Also: I was lucky to get George Saunders's new collection early (at the price of a LibraryThing review). It comes out later this month, and is definitely worth the attention of short-story readers.
Looking over the list, it's clear that I can no longer claim to be releasing dammed-up desire for science fiction. It was the 10-year break during and after college that was the blip.
Novels:
Melville, The Confidence Man
Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Pevear/Volohonsky trans.)
Coupland, Generation X
Collins, The Hunger Games
Pohl and Kornbluth, Gladiator-at-Law
Wallis, Only Lovers Left Alive
Chandler, Playback
Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
Cain, Double Indemnity
Pohl and Kornbluth, Search the Sky
Luna, Red Storm
Leiber, Conjure Wife
Scalzi, Agent to the Stars
West, The Day of the Locust
DeLillo, Cosmopolis
Adams, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Adams, Mostly Harmless
Wyndham, Trouble With Lichen
Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Polansky, The Bradbury Report
Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Plays:
Shakespeare, As You Like It
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Capek, The Makropulos Case
Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Short story collections:
Richter, Twin Study
Silverberg, ed. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Vol 1
Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
Atwood, Good Bones and Simple Murders
Saunders, Tenth of December
Dahl, The Great Automatic Grammatizator