"Selling 100,000 records means you get a gold disc, those trophies so beloved of the ageing rock star with acres of Cotswolds wall space to fill. The discs themselves were huge, framed artefacts - a piece of twelve-inch vinyl sprayed either gold or silver according to how many you'd sold - but here's the hilarious bit: it wouldn't necessarily be your own actual record that had been sprayed gold - just any old piece of vinyl. You would know, for instance, that your album had five tracks on side one, but there it was, a piece of 'gold' vinyl, with seven clearly separated sets of grooves on that side. You might have earned the prize for selling an admirable number of copies of a fairly quirky, uncommercial British pop record, but there on your wall you might well have a framed and gilded copy of The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden."

- Tracey Thorn, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star

Singularity & Co.

I read 40 books in 2012. My 10 favorites (in alpha order by title):

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller
The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud
Foxy: My Life in Three Acts - Pam Grier, Andrea Cagan
Little Star - John Ajvide Lindqvist
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (trans. Lydia Davis)
1984 - George Orwell
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory - Ben Macintyre
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
The Terror - Dan Simmons
Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green, David Levithan


Here is the full list, in the order in which I read them:

1) Scorpia Rising - Anthony Horowitz. Adieu, Alex Rider.

2) Maximum Security - Robert Muchamore. No comment on the rest of the CHERUB series that I read over the year, other than to say that they're not very good, and by book 6 or 7 I just wanted to get them over with.

3) Forever - Pete Hammill. Good premise squandered on fairly conventional/boring story. And all that "he ran his fingers through her thick, wiry, African hair" business gets way old, way fast.

4) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (trans. Lydia Davis). Birthday present from Matty. I had some doubts because I remember reading this in school and thinking it was really boring. I don't know if it's the new translation or just my getting older, probably both, but I loved it this time around. Breezily deadpan and really smart-assedly ironic that had me laughing out loud at points.

5) Player One - Douglas Coupland. I still feel the need to read every Douglas Coupland novel that comes out, even though I can't remember the last time I thought one was actually any good (possibly All Families are Psychotic). At least I don't rush out anymore. I wait until they come in at the library. And they are never worth the wait (anymore). Once as a gag I wrote a "Douglas Coupland random story generator" that I think worked pretty well. I should look for it sometime.

6) Foxy: My Life in Three Acts - Pam Grier, Andrea Cagan. Man, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an ass.

7) Ghost Trackers - Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Tim Waggoner. I bought this for Shannon for xmas, and borrowed it back from her to read it. When I started it, I thought I could rip through it in a weekend. Instead it may have taken me over a month. It's not very good.

8) The Terror - Dan Simmons. Xmas present from Rene. A bit long at points, but overall a really exciting and scary history-based supernatural horror novel.

9) Ready Player One - Ernest Cline. Fun, quick read, but I'm not really feeling the love that I've seen online for this.

10) Fair Coin - E.C. Myers. Decent YA sci-fi in the sci-fi-for-people-who-don't-like-sci-fi vein.

11) The Nick Adams Stories - Ernest Hemingway. Picked this up at a book store by Yale when I went up to CT for Johnny & Harlem's wedding last fall. It's taken me this long to get to it.

12) 1984 - George Orwell. Another xmas present from Rene. Haven't read it since high school. Great book. What more is there to say?

13) Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory - Ben Macintyre. Heard about this from a "Stuff You Missed in History Class" podcast. History was never my favorite subject in school and out, but I loved this book. Great "heist" story with lots of sexy WWII cloak and dagger stuff. Now I'm thinking that maybe I like history, a little bit.

14) The Killing - Robert Muchamore.

15) Divine Madness - Robert Muchamore.

16) Harlan's Race - Patricia Nell Warren. Didn't like it as much as The Front Runner. While that book felt like a good melodrama well-placed in an era of history, this one just felt like an era laid over a story, if that makes any sense.

17) Red Shirts - John Scalzi. See Ready Player One.

18) Man vs. Beast - Robert Muchamore.

19) The Emperor's Children - Claire Messud. Matty lent it to me because he thought I would like it. He was right! Sorry it took so long to get it back to you...

20) All You Need is Kill - Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I guess they made a movie of this, starring Tom Cruise? Weird.

21) Absolute Brightness - James Lecesne. Ehh...

22) The Fall - Robert Muchamore.

23) Mad Dogs - Robert Muchamore.

24) The New England Grimpendium - J.W. Ocker. Ocker has a great "voice", and I love his selections in this book (and his blog), but I have a few complaints about the book itself. For one thing, he really should have included a lot more photographs (not to mention COLOR photographs) of a lot of the interesting things he talks about. He actually says at points that the reader should go to his blog to see more pictures, and as a reader of said blog I've noticed that in many cases the blog entries are actually more detailed and informative than the book. So in these senses it felt like the book was an advertisement for the blog, instead of the other way around. I guess that's just how publishing works nowadays. I don't think I like it.

25) Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness - Scott Jurek, Steve Friedman. Recommended by Chris H. A book that I wish I liked a lot more than I did, and let's just leave it there.

26) The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker. I did not like this book.

27) You & I - Leonard Nimoy. Happened across this at Singularity & Co. I had never seen it before. After reading it, I've decided that it is THE SECOND MOST 70s book EVER. The first being, of course, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Still debating on what's third (possibly Chariots of the Gods?)

28) Frozen Heat - Richard Castle. Sue me - I have a lot of fun with the Nikki Heat books, and dread a time when there will not be a new one waiting to be read every Fall.

29) The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling. Trash, but entertaining.

30) The Dog Stars - Peter Heller. A bit long at points, and the ending is a little racist if you think about it too much (which, of course, yeah), but I really did enjoy this book.

31) Little Star - John Ajvide Lindqvist. Carrie + Mean Girls + Pop Idol + Heavenly Creatures + internet trolling + Bright Eyes + the case FOR child abuse. It is ugly and gross but also beautiful and I think I love it.

32) The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore.

33) Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green, David Levithan. Cute.

34) Love is the Higher Law - David Levithan. I like David Levithan.

35) The General - Robert Muchamore.

36) Brigands M.C. - Robert Muchamore.

37) Ghost Town - Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Tim Waggoner. Fair play - Shan got me this for my birthday. Again, it's a book that I thought I could have done in a weekend but instead winds up taking me a few weeks. Better than Ghost Trackers, I thought, but still plenty of cringe-worthy, eye-rolling moments to be had.

38) Shadow Wave - Robert Muchamore. And I'm done with the CHERUB series! No plans to seek out the Henderson's Boys series or the CHERUB II stuff, unless a significant number of people whose opinions I trust tell me that I'd like them better than the first series. Would like to keep my 2013 CHERUB-free, however.

39) The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky. Weeks after seeing the movie (which I loved), one morning I woke up and just decided that I needed to own this book. Reading the entire thing out loud (don't ask) took a bit longer than just reading it straight through, but it was still done fairly quickly, and I loved it.

40) Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Steven Spielberg. Another Singularity & Co. pick-up. I have not seen the movie all the way through since the 80s. Watching the movie, you kind of forget how much of an asshole Neary is to his family (at least I did - probably because I was so young and just didn't care). I put the movie on my Netflix because I want to see if the effects hold up. Also I guess there was some new "edition" that came out a few years ago?

So, that's it. 40 books finished in 2012, plus a couple more that I started and put down that I may eventually finish, maybe even this year...

Singularity & Co., DUMBO.






Success! I come home with not-in-bad-condition copies of Hal Clement's Needle and Leonard Nimoy's You & I, a book which really does need to be seen to be believed, as any attempts to describe it are traditionally met with accusations of lying.

Joe's birthday / Pat Parker/Vito Russo Library.

"If you ever got lost, and I had to find you, where would you be? Where should I go to find you?"

- Charles Yu
How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

You might recall from this post from March that I was talking about how big my to-read pile was getting. Well, you'll be happy to know that while that pile has not exactly gone down - at all (I can't seem to stop adding to it, and I don't apologize for that) - I have read what is quite possibly a personal record-breaking number of books this year (I don't believe I've ever kept track for an entire year before, but this year's number really does feel especially high).

Books finished in 2010:

1. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You - Peter Cameron. Read most of this over Christmas at the parents' house, finished in the first day or two of the year.

2. The Recruit - Robert Muchamore. I liked it significantly more than the Alex Rider books. Felt more "real", if that makes any sense. Must remember to seek out the rest of the series.

3. Crocodile Tears - Anthony Horowitz. Speaking of Alex Rider. This one was a lot better than the last two or three, though.

4. American Nerd - Benjamin Nugent

5. Tunnels - Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams. Took forever to read. Didn't like it. Will not be seeking out the rest of the series.

6. A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood

7. Operation Red Jericho - Joshua Mowll. Lots of fun. Love all the charts and diagrams. I have book two on my shelf, waiting to be read.

8. Once a Runner - John L. Parker

9. Rocket Boys - Homer H. Hickam, Jr.

10. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris. Weirdly, it was familiar enough that I was sure I'd already read it, yet unfamiliar enough that I knew I hadn't. Strange.

11. A Firing Offense - George P. Pelacanos. I basically only read this one because I wanted to read the sequel, Nick's Trip, which was the movie that Theresa Duncan had wanted to make starring Beck, but when Beck backed out of the project she went into this whole big depressive anti-Scientology spiral and eventually killed herself. The book was alright, not really in my wheelhouse.

12. Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer. A lot of fun, but I probably won't be seeking out the rest of the series.

13. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami

14. Derby Girl - Shauna Cross. Movie was better.

15. The Game of Their Lives - Geoffrey Douglas

16. When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris

17. Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank

18. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. Really dug it. A lot different than the movie.

19. Knives at Dawn - Andrew Friedman

20. Little Brother - Cory Doctorow

21. Nick's Trip - George Pelicanos. I didn't really care for it, actually. I liked A Firing Offense better, I think.

22. Dancer From the Dance - Alan Holleran. Loved it. Didn't think I would. It was just that the characters in here had so little to do with me, or with anyone I knew, yet Holleran's command of language is so perfect. Really looking forward to reading the rest of his books (I already read Grief a while back, loved it).

23. The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To - D.G. Pierson

24. Michael Tolliver Lives - Armistead Maupin

25. FTW - Cory Doctorow

26. When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead

27. Driving Mr. Albert - Michael Paterniti

28. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Sillitoe

29. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson

30. Room - Emma Donoghue. Loved it. So simple and sad.

31. The Girl Who Played With Fire - Stieg Larsson

32. Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby. Having not really loved anything that Hornby has written since About a Boy, I was actually happy with this one, despite it all feeling a bit "retready".

33. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

34. Not a Star and Otherwise Pandemonium - Nick Hornby. Just two short stories (not even novellas) bundled together for some reason as one eBook from the library. Awful. Both of them. :(

35. Squirrel Meets Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary - David Sedaris. I really much prefer Sedaris' essays and memoirs over his fiction.

36. Heat Wave - Richard Castle

37. Ghost Hunt - Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson with Cameron Dokey

38. All I'm Cracked Up to Be - Jen Trynin. As "rock memoirs" go, this is pretty tame. No drinking, no drugs, no trashed hotel rooms, and even the big adulterous hookup is described as nothing more than kissing and hand-holding. That's right, hand-holding! What are you, 12? The book is interesting to me because I remember (and am a fan of) Trynin's records, as well as those of many of the other bands and people mentioned. Still, even the harshest behind-the-scenes stories come off as merely catty, or occasionally bitchy, but never at all dishy. Skip it unless you are a fan of (and have an unhealthy fascination with) the American indie music scene of the early 90s.

39. And Another Thing... - Eoin Colfer

40. Mary Ann in Autumn - Armistead Maupin. They're baaaack.... All of the Tales of the City books are entertaining reads, but can all more or less be split into one of two categories: the ones where you actually learn and care about the characters, and the ones where "a bunch of stuff happens". Michael Tolliver Lives is definitely one where you learn and care about the characters; Mary Ann in Autumn is definitely one where "a bunch of stuff happens".

41. Let the Right One In - John Lidqvist. Sooo much more messed up than either of the movies.

42. Naked Heat - Richard Castle

If you sat me down and MADE me pick my 10 favorites, I guess I'd go with (unranked):

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank
Dancer From the Dance - Andrew Holleran
FTW - Cory Doctorow
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
Let the Right One In - John Lindqvist
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Once a Runner - John L. Parker
Rocket Boys - Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Room - Emma Donoghue
A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood

In Progress:

Who Can Save Us Now? - ed. Owen King and John McNally. Been picking at this one so long I don't know why I just don't sit down one weekend and finish it.

The Gone-Away World - Nick Harkaway

The Best America Short Stories 2010 - ed. Richard Russo

Started, couldn't finish (may revisit):

Zodiac - Robert Graysmith

The Shroud of the Thwacker - Chris Eliot

I am Number Four - Pittacus Lore. They really ought to have called it...wait for it...I am Number Two. Truly awful, I gave up halfway through. I'm not saying it's the worst thing I've read in my life, but it's almost definitely the worst book I read this year.

And, this year, I read quite a few. Finished 42 of them, in fact. Not bad. In 2011, I'm trying for 52.

Books

It may just be Jungian selective attention, but it seems like everyone is talking or blogging about how this is the year they're finally going to tackle that big stack of books they've been meaning to read.

This is actually every year with me, but maybe this is the year that it really will get done. Also, at least half the pile is actually rather light reading, so I don't know what my problem is, besides being lazy and easily distracted.

To read:
Tunnels - Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams (actually started this already, read about 1/4 before putting it down. will try again.)
A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood
Operation Red Jericho - Joshua Mowll
The Shroud of the Thwacker - Chris Elliot (yes, that Chris Elliot)
The Game of Their Lives - Geoffrey Douglas (another one that I started and put down.)
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Who Can Save Us Now? - ed. Owen King and John McNally (short story collection, I've read about half of it.)
Zodiac - Robert Graysmith
Rocket Boys - Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Derby Girl - Shauna Cross

Sadly, I keep adding to the pile as I am reminded about things, or run across things in the donation pile at the volunteer gig. What to do? I feel the need for several dozen long-ass plane rides.

But, all hope is not list. Here's what I've read and finished this year so far:

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You - Peter Cameron. Ehh...
The Recruit - Robert Muchamore. The first of the CHERUB series, which I liked rather more than Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider series. Speaking of which...
Crocodile Tears - Anthony Horowitz. I actually enjoyed this one a lot more than the last two or three of the Alex Rider books, for whatever reason.

And just an hour or two away from finishing American Nerd by Benjamin Nugent. More effective as a history of "nerd culture" - how it began, where it came from, etc. - than as a useful breakdown/examination of current nerd societies. Other than what I found to be a strange fixation on racial issues (seriously, it's like a thing with this guy) I'm finding the book a good, entertaining read.