When I initially thought of doing an arbitrary Best of List I thought it would be small and contained. Then I started going through my mind of what I had read during these years and the list grew quite unwieldy. I am never sure how to encapsulate a few texts as the best of anything, much less a year or a decade, had thought would put together a list of books and write interesting little blurbs on each one, the significance the text had on me, this was until I started to put the list together. And a strong suit is not cutting things off, especially a text read that caused impact. I have trimmed a bit; mostly current fiction has hit the floor (As I was both an undergrad and grad student during most of this time. My hours were consumed with reading books for class or from my own desire to pursue something further, very rarely did that include current fiction).
This then primarily had become a list of books that I have read from 2000 – 2009. The order is arbitrary. As is the criteria for picking them. Could I have cut some more? Sure—but did not want to.
Infinite Jest from David Foster Wallace
My greatest accomplishment in 2009 was reading this book. Since I have read I have not been able to escape the text or the force of David Foster Wallace. Remarkable.
Nature and American Scholar from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Desert Solitaire from Ed Abbey
Abbey was the first author of what would be called “Green Literature” that I read, he shook my world.
The Practice of the Wild from Gary Snyder
On The Beautiful and Sublime from Immanuel Kant
Daisy Miller from Henry James
Not since F. Scott Fitzgerald was there an author I wanted to bury myself in the canon of. This novella in the spring of 2000 may have been the most meaningful text that I read in the decade.
Where I’m Calling From and Short Cuts from Raymond Carver
Moby Dick, Typee, and Benito Cerino from Herman Melville
Major author class at work. My first experience with Melville and it was daunting but amazing. Have since read Moby Dick (sadly for another class not at my own prompting) but I did read Typee without it being dictated to me by a syllabus.
Melville: A Biography from Laurie Robertson-Lorant
The Tempest from Shakespeare
The Hitch Hiking Game from Milan Kundera
Lolita from Vladamir Nabakov
My first reading of this text was badly placed. I should have read prior to the class. The second, third, and fourth readings however have made up for my error in placing the text in a syllabus that was focused more on the adaptation of the text than the text itself.
Rear Window from Cornell Woolrich
Invisible Cities from Italo Calvino
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and What Is An Author? from Michel Foucault
Discipline and Punish was the text for me in Critical Theory.
Walden from Henry David Thoreau
Monumental in shaping how I conceive society/culture. Read every year since my first read in the spring of 2001. I was late to this text.
Invisible Man from Ralph Ellison
Fight Club from Chuck Palahnuik
End of Nature from Bill McKibben
The Twilight of American Culture from Morris Berman
Little Children from Tom Perrotta
Fargo and Big Lebowski screenplays by The Coen Brothers
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy from Laurence Sterne
When first read, I had to double check to see when it was written. Then I thought how did they publish a book with a completely black page? Quite the read.
Ceremony from Leslie Marmon Silko
Possession and Angels and Insects from A.S. Byatt
Passing from Nella Larsen
A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius from Dave Eggers
Absalom! Absalom! From William Faulkner
I had read As I Lay Dying a few years prior to Absalom! Absalom! and was prepared to dislike the book. Instead I was just drawn in by the structure of the text and Faulkner’s skill at an author to seduce me.
The Dead from James Joyce
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories from Sandra Cisneros
Underworld from Don DeLillo
Pale Fire from Vladimir Nabakov
Crime and Punishment from Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mumbo Jumbo from Ishmael Reed
Harry Potter Series from J.K. Rowling
New Years weekend in 2002 I sat and read the first four books, barely slept so captivated by the story unfolding.
Leaves of Grass from Walt Whitman
On Beauty and Being Just from Elaine Scarry
Before Sunrise and Before Sunset screenplays from Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy
Ill Nature from Joy Williams
Walking and Faith In a Seed from Henry David Thoreau
Love Walked In from Marisa de los Santos
The Post Birthday World from Lionel Shriver
The Corrections from Jonathan Franzen
The Thirteenth Tale from Diane Setterfield
Birth of a Nation from Aaron McGruder, Reginald Hudlin, and Kyle Baker
The Frog King from Adam Davies
I Love You, Beth Cooper from Larry Doyle
Rollicking reading ride that took me back to all those amazing ‘80’s movies I grew up on.
Lady Audley’s Secret from Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Dead Souls from Nikolai Gogol
Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse from Alexander Pushkin
Tender Is the Night from F. Scott Fitzgerald
Have only read this book twice but something about it, still working to pinpoint exactly what makes me think it is a superior text to The Great Gatsby (which I read every year).
Anna Karenina from Leo Tolstoy
Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Don’t Float from Sarah Schmelling
Romping good read.
Almost Famous screenplay from Cameron Crowe
Wings of the Dove from Henry James
Contains one of my favorite passages in literature.
Swann’s Way from Marcel Proust
Father and Sons from Ivan Turgenev
Undoing Aesthetics from Wolfgang Welsch
Challenged and helped form my arguments on Aesthetics.
Loose Canons: Notes on Culture Wars from Henry Louis Gates
The Western Canon: The Books and Schools of the Ages and Map of Misreading from Harold Bloom
Culture from Stephen Greenblatt
The Figure in the Carpet, The Beast In the Jungle, In the Cage, and The Lesson of the Master from Henry James
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto from Chuck Klosterman
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung from Lester Bangs
Corrine, Or Italy from Germaine De Stael
I could go on….
Friday, January 8, 2010
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