This year I read twenty books that earned my coveted 5-star rating. Here, in no particular order, are the ten I feel were the best of those twenty. 1. In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and The Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language: Arika Okrent [review] 2. Neither Wolf Nor Dog: [...]
In no specific order: In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami: Kenji is a young guide who takes tourists through Tokyo’s seedy underground. It’s an illegal job that brings him into contact with the seemingly plastic-faced and socially awkward Frank, whom Kenji suspects is a murderer. This book is absolutely chilling. In my favorite scene, blood spills from a slit [...]
Just five of the many things I loved about The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, which was amazing: 1. The novel opens with the most graphic car accident scene that I have ever read in my life. I continued to giddily dry-heave through the part where the unnamed narrator describes being burned alive, and straight into the skin harvests and debridements. [...]
Andrew Davidson’s The Gargoyle is one of those books that has something for most every reader. This also makes it difficult to write about because there is so much that can be said regarding its content and meaning. The stripped down plotline features an unnamed narrator who is a drug user and a pornographer. The narrator was in a car [...]
1. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken:This was the best book I read all year. No hemming, no hawing, no second guessing — the best. McCracken’s memoir about giving birth to a stillborn child and all that follows is heartbreaking, darkly funny, and something everyone on the planet should read. Bold claims, I know. [...]
Andrew Davidson’s debut novel The Gargoyle, is the kind of book that gives me nextbookaphobia. This is a condition marked by great fear of starting a new book because there is no way that it can possibly live up to the last book you read, because that last book was really fucking good. I’ve experienced this condition exactly twice this [...]
Holy cannoli! The Guardian has new short story by Lorrie Moore called “Foes” that you can read right online. [via] MNSpeak’s bookclub has chosen Charles Schulz books for their December discussion. Personally, I recommend David Michaelis’ biography Schulz and Peanuts (which is out in paperback now). It spends a lot of time on Schulz’s life here in Minnesota and how [...]
