Book and Movie List for 2013
Here are my lists for the books that I've read (or listened to) and the movies that I've seen (I only count if it's the first time) in the year 2013.
Books
* = Audiobook
January
01. The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani:
Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing.
02. The Walking Dead, Book 2 by Robert Kirkman
03. A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin:
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one."
04. The Walking Dead, Book 3 by Robert Kirkman
February
05. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch:
When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.
06. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt:
I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.
---
But what if you ended up in the wrong kind of love? What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? The kind you'd have to crush down so deep inside yourself that it almost turned your heart into a black hole? The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how far you pushed it, no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did? Instead, it seemed to inflate, to grow gigantic as time went by, filling every little spare space you had until it was you. You were it. Until everything you ever saw or thought led you back to one person. The person you weren't supposed to love that way.
07. Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake:
I've seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer.
March
08. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes:
You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.
---
Some mistakes...Just have greater consequences than others. But you don't have to let the result of one mistake be the thing that defines you.
09. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta:
I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love
April
10. How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran:
But on the plus side, I am not alone because - as with a million lonely girls and boys before - books, TV, and music are looking after me now...All art is someone trying to tell you something, I realize. There're thousands of people who want to talk to me, so long as I open their book or turn on their show...Books seem to be the most potent source: each is the sum total of a life that can be inhaled in a single day.
11. The Walking Dead, Book 4 by Robert Kirkman
12. Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
13. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver:
Yet Irina had once tucked away, she wasn't sure when or why, that happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you are not aware at the time. To inhabit your own contentment is to be wholly present, with no orbiting satellite to take clinical readings of the state of the planet. Conventionally, you grow conscious of happiness at the very point that it begins to elude you. When not misused to talk yourself into something - when not a lie - the h-word is a classification applied in retrospect. It is a bracketing assessment, a label only decisively pasted onto an era once it is over.
14. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
May
15. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much love or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.
---
I stopped and asked him if he was all right, and he said he was tired of remembering everything he wanted to forget and forgetting everything he wanted to remember. Those were his exact words: "remembering everything he wanted to forget and forgetting everything he wanted to remember."
June
16. *An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
July
17. *Where We Belong by Emily Giffin
18. *The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
August
19. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
20. *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
21. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.
September
22. *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
23. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
24. *Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie
25. *Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
October
26. *Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
27. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
28. *The Whole World Over by Julia Glass
29. Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld
November
30. *A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
31. More Than This by Patrick Ness
32. The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
December
33. *Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
34. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey
35. *The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Movies
January
01. Boogie Nights
02. Melancholia
03. Silver Linings Playbook
04. Martha Marcy May Marlene
05. La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In)
06. The Impossible
07. Shame
February
08. The Five-Year Engagement
09. Argo
March
10. My Week with Marilyn
11. Lola Versus
12. Rabbit-Proof Fence
13. Memoirs of a Geisha
14. Oz the Great and Powerful
April
15. Ruby Sparks
16. Remember Sunday
17. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
18. Liberal Arts
May
19. Star Trek Into Darkness
20. Beasts of the Southern Wild
21. The Great Gatsby
22. Men in Black 3
June
23. Safety Not Guaranteed
24. Jeff, Who Lives at Home
25. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
26. This Is the End
27. Like Crazy
28. The Cabin in the Woods
29. Young Adult
30. Casa de mi Padre
31. Pitch Perfect
July
32. Celeste & Jesse Forever
33. Premium Rush
34. Blue Velvet
35. Lockout
36. Wendy and Lucy
August
37. World War Z
38. 2 Days in New York
39. The Avengers
September
40. Brave
October
41. Gravity
November
42. This Is 40
43. Control
44. 12 Years a Slave
45. Warm Bodies
46. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
47. Wreck-It Ralph
December
48. Beautiful Creatures
49. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
50. The Heat
51. Stoker
52. Before Midnight
53. Boy
54. Seven Psychopaths
55. The World's End
56. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
57. Anna Karenina
58. The Master
59. The Place Beyond the Pines
AND
Concerts/Shows
January
1. Born Ruffians with Night Moves, Future Monarchs, & DJ Step - Lincoln Hall, Chicago
June
2. Russell Brand - Chicago Theatre, Chicago
3. Dylan Moran - Park West, Chicago
July
4. BAATHHAUS and Born Ruffians - West Fest, Chicago
August
5. Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival (Jeff Ross, Kristen Schaal, Al Madrigal, Hannibal Buress, Demetri Martin, Flight of the Conchords, and Dave Chappelle) - First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, Tinley Park
2012 List
Books
* = Audiobook
January
01. The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani:
Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing.
02. The Walking Dead, Book 2 by Robert Kirkman
03. A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin:
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies," said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one."
04. The Walking Dead, Book 3 by Robert Kirkman
February
05. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch:
When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.
06. Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt:
I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.
---
But what if you ended up in the wrong kind of love? What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? The kind you'd have to crush down so deep inside yourself that it almost turned your heart into a black hole? The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how far you pushed it, no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did? Instead, it seemed to inflate, to grow gigantic as time went by, filling every little spare space you had until it was you. You were it. Until everything you ever saw or thought led you back to one person. The person you weren't supposed to love that way.
07. Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake:
I've seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer.
March
08. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes:
You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.
---
Some mistakes...Just have greater consequences than others. But you don't have to let the result of one mistake be the thing that defines you.
09. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta:
I remember love. It's what I have to keep on reminding myself. It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love
April
10. How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran:
But on the plus side, I am not alone because - as with a million lonely girls and boys before - books, TV, and music are looking after me now...All art is someone trying to tell you something, I realize. There're thousands of people who want to talk to me, so long as I open their book or turn on their show...Books seem to be the most potent source: each is the sum total of a life that can be inhaled in a single day.
11. The Walking Dead, Book 4 by Robert Kirkman
12. Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson
13. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver:
Yet Irina had once tucked away, she wasn't sure when or why, that happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you are not aware at the time. To inhabit your own contentment is to be wholly present, with no orbiting satellite to take clinical readings of the state of the planet. Conventionally, you grow conscious of happiness at the very point that it begins to elude you. When not misused to talk yourself into something - when not a lie - the h-word is a classification applied in retrospect. It is a bracketing assessment, a label only decisively pasted onto an era once it is over.
14. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
May
15. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much love or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.
---
I stopped and asked him if he was all right, and he said he was tired of remembering everything he wanted to forget and forgetting everything he wanted to remember. Those were his exact words: "remembering everything he wanted to forget and forgetting everything he wanted to remember."
June
16. *An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
July
17. *Where We Belong by Emily Giffin
18. *The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta
August
19. Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
20. *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
21. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.
September
22. *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
23. The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith
24. *Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie
25. *Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
October
26. *Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
27. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
28. *The Whole World Over by Julia Glass
29. Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld
November
30. *A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
31. More Than This by Patrick Ness
32. The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
December
33. *Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
34. The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey
35. *The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Movies
January
01. Boogie Nights
02. Melancholia
03. Silver Linings Playbook
04. Martha Marcy May Marlene
05. La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In)
06. The Impossible
07. Shame
February
08. The Five-Year Engagement
09. Argo
March
10. My Week with Marilyn
11. Lola Versus
12. Rabbit-Proof Fence
13. Memoirs of a Geisha
14. Oz the Great and Powerful
April
15. Ruby Sparks
16. Remember Sunday
17. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
18. Liberal Arts
May
19. Star Trek Into Darkness
20. Beasts of the Southern Wild
21. The Great Gatsby
22. Men in Black 3
June
23. Safety Not Guaranteed
24. Jeff, Who Lives at Home
25. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
26. This Is the End
27. Like Crazy
28. The Cabin in the Woods
29. Young Adult
30. Casa de mi Padre
31. Pitch Perfect
July
32. Celeste & Jesse Forever
33. Premium Rush
34. Blue Velvet
35. Lockout
36. Wendy and Lucy
August
37. World War Z
38. 2 Days in New York
39. The Avengers
September
40. Brave
October
41. Gravity
November
42. This Is 40
43. Control
44. 12 Years a Slave
45. Warm Bodies
46. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
47. Wreck-It Ralph
December
48. Beautiful Creatures
49. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
50. The Heat
51. Stoker
52. Before Midnight
53. Boy
54. Seven Psychopaths
55. The World's End
56. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
57. Anna Karenina
58. The Master
59. The Place Beyond the Pines
AND
Concerts/Shows
January
1. Born Ruffians with Night Moves, Future Monarchs, & DJ Step - Lincoln Hall, Chicago
June
2. Russell Brand - Chicago Theatre, Chicago
3. Dylan Moran - Park West, Chicago
July
4. BAATHHAUS and Born Ruffians - West Fest, Chicago
August
5. Oddball Comedy & Curiosity Festival (Jeff Ross, Kristen Schaal, Al Madrigal, Hannibal Buress, Demetri Martin, Flight of the Conchords, and Dave Chappelle) - First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre, Tinley Park
2012 List