50 Books List for 2014

Every year I try to read at least fifty books. What gets included on this list is bit arbitrary—for example, short picture books don't count, short poetry volumes usually do; individual comic book issues don't count, but trade collections of multiple issues do. I missed posting my list for 2013, but here's the list for 2014.

Key:
Fiction
Poetry
Nonfiction
Memoir
Underline of any color= graphic novel/comic book  

1. Robin: Year One—written by Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty, illustrated by Javier Pulido and Robert Campanella
2. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince—J.K. Rowling
3.  Portraits of a Marriage—Sándor Márai, trans. by George Szirtes
4. Tell the Wolves I’m Home—Carol Rifka Brunt
5. Gunnerkrigg Court, Vol. 1: Orientation—Thomas Siddell
6. The Plain Janes—written by Cecil Castellucci, art by Jim Rugg
7. Sweeney Astray—translated by Seamus Heaney
8. Saints—Gene Luen Yang
9. Gunnerkrigg Court, Vol. 2: Research—Thomas Siddell
10. Batman & Robin, Vol. 1: Born to Kill—written by Peter J. Tomasi, illustrated by Patrick Gleason and Mick Gray
11. Nightwing: Year One—written by Chuck Dixon, illustrated by Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens
12. Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth—Warsan Shire
13. A Town Like Alice—Nevil Shute
14. In the Woods—Tana French
15. Gunnerkrigg Court, Vol. 3: Reason—Thomas Siddell
16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—J.K. Rowling
17. Nightwing: The Lost Year—written by Marv Wolfman and Marc Andreyko; art by Joe Bennett, Jack Jadson, Jamal Igle, Jon Bosco, Keith Champagne, Alex Silva, etc.
18. Zot! Book 1—Scott McCloud
19. Surprised by the Voice of God—Jack Deere
20. The Fire in All Things: Poems—Stephen Yenser
21. The Book Thief—Markus Zusak
22. Batman and Robin, Vol. 2: Pearl—written by Peter J. Tomasi; art by Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, Tomas Giorello, etc.
23. Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight—Travis Langley
24. Catching Fire—Suzanne Collins
25. Sex at Noon Taxes—Sally Van Doren
26. Nightwing, Vol. 1: A Knight in Blüdhaven—written by Chuck Dixon; art by Scott McDaniel and Karl Story
27. Batman: The Heart of Hush—written by Paul Dini, illustrated by Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs
28. Mockingjay—Suzanne Collins
29. Streets of Gotham, Vol. 1: Hush Money—written by Paul Dini, illustrated by Dustin Nguyen
30. Streets of Gotham, Vol. 2: Leviathan—written by Paul Dini; Mike Benson; and Christopher Yost, art by Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs
31. An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination—Elizabeth McCracken
32. Of Gravity and Angels—Jane Hirshfield
33. Comfort Me with Apples—Ruth Reichl
34. Batman: Streets of Gotham, Vol. 3: House of Hush—written by Paul Dini, illustrated by Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs
35. Nightwing, Vol. 1: Traps and Trapezes—written by Kyle Higgins; illustrated by Eddie Barrows, Eduardo Pansica, Geraldo Borges, JP Mayer, Paulo Siqueira, Eber Ferreira, Ruy José, etc.
36. A Tale for the Time Being—Ruth Ozeki
37.  Everything is Illuminated—Jonathan Safran Foer
38. Batman Incorporated, Vol. 1: Demon Star—written by Grant Morrison; art by Chris Burnham (p), Frazer Irving (p), Bit artists (p), Nathan Fairbairn (c), Frazar Irving (c), etc.
39. JLA/W.I.L.D.Cats—written by Grant Morrison, (art by ?)
40. Batman Incorporated—written by Grant Morrison, art by Yanick Paquette and Chris Burnham
41. Doc—Mary Doria Russell
42. Shackleton: Antarctic Odyssey—Nick Bertozzi
43. Best Shot in the West: The Adventures of Nat Love—written by Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick L. McKissack Jr., art by Randy Duburke
44. The Search—written by Eric Heuvel with Ruud van der Rol and Lies Schippers, art by Eric Heuvel, trans. by Lorraine T. Miller
45. Brown Girl Dreaming—Jacqueline Woodson
46. The Light Between Oceans—M.L. Stedman
47. Bone: Out from Boneville—Jeff Smith
48. The Search for Delicious—Natalie Babbit
49. Dogs of War—written by Sheila Keenan, art by Nathan Fox
50. March: Book One—story by John Robert Lewis and Andrew Aydin, art by Nate Powell
51. Lewis & Clark—Nick Bertozzi 

Last year I read thirty-six works of fiction, six volumes of poetry, five works of nonfiction, and three memoirs. Of those, twenty-three of the fictional works were graphic novels or comic book collections, as were three of the nonfiction texts and one of the memoirs. This means that over half (twenty-seven books) of my fifty books were comic books.

I shouldn't be surprised, especially given my recent project. 

I could tell I wasn't reading many (text-based) novels (something I'd like change this year), but I was bewildered to see so few nonfiction books on the list. I'd felt like I'd read more nonfiction last year. Then I realized. . .I read a lot of nonfiction last year, but mainly things that I can't count on this list: articles and blog posts, books I haven't finished yet, books I read huge sections of (for research), but not in their entirety (or in order). For example, Shelley Taylor's The Tending Instinct was one of the most interesting books I read last year, but I only completed about 80% of it.

Favorites:

My favorite novel of 2014 was, no contest, Mary Doria Russell's Doc—sharp and tender, full of pithy descriptions and heartbreaking characters.

My favorite nonfiction book was Surprised by the Voice of God by Jack Deere, in part because it was exactly the book I needed to read at the time. I had read parts (if not all) of it before, but what struck me this time through was the graceful humility with which it was written.

My favorite poetry read was a tie between Of Gravity and Angels (I always end up loving Jane Hirshfield's work) and The Fire in All Things, which made me promise myself I'd read it again in a few years and see if I understood different elements.

My favorite memoir was March: Book One, which surprised me because I hadn't expected so much artistry from a book so closely connected to a politician. But the story is well-told and captures John Lewis' personal journey and hallmarks of the Civil Rights movement in a way feels simultaneously broad and intimate. It left me eager for the next installment.

My favorite "capes" comic collection was Batman & Robin, Vol. 1: Born to Kill. This was the first Batman and Robin of the New52 reboot; a change I wasn't looking forward to. (I had been upset when the New52 broke up the duo of Dick Grayson's Batman and Damian Wayne's Robin for the "return" of Bruce Wayne.) But now I want all my superhero comics to be as thoughtful as this volume. The tension between father and son is so believable that it keeps the story grounded in psychological realism, even as the crime-fighting enters the typically bizarre world of Batman villains. Tomasi was wise enough to focus on the characters first and the heroics second. And Gleason's artwork is full of atmospheric shadows and heart-rending visual parallels.

My favorite non-capes comic collection was Gunnerkrigg Court, Vol. 2: Research because that was the volume where I realized I was absolutely addicted to the strange scientifically-magical/magically-robotic boarding school Thomas Siddell had created. Siddell had also grown into his art style by this volume. I have not caught up to the online comic yet, so I can't recommend it in its entirety (and if the inclusion of same-sex relationships ruins stories for you, this will not be your favorite read). I think of Gunnerkrigg Court as "Harry Potter with female protagonists and adorable robots." If that sounds awesome to you, check it out.

In an upcoming post, I'll write a bit about my reading goals for this year. But I want to know: What were your favorite books for 2014? And do you have any reading goals for 2015? 

A Promising Re-start?

I promised myself that I would start blogging again in February and update at least once a week for the rest of the year. And here it is the last day of the first week in February. . . .

If I don't post something before midnight, my New Year's resolutions will all turn into pumpkins, so here's a quick review of my last year's writing credits, sort of the clip-show episode of blogposts (except I've been so lazy about blogging in the last year that all this information is actually new).

I obviously haven't been writing here, but looking back, I did write and submit a fair bit in 2014.

I've had some poetry published.

 Poetry Quarterly (the most prosaic name for a poetry publication the editor could think of), Summer 2014.

The most recent Poet's Market, a publication I actually use a fair bit, so I was excited to have an example poem published here.

I wrote an essay titled "Mother Alfred: The Influence of Dick Grayson's 'Other Parent'" for an upcoming publication on Dick Grayson (McFarland, July 2015), which I'm absolutely tickled about.

(Possibly the dorkiest thing I've ever done.)

(And that's including this. Me as Gandalf the White for the opening of The Return of the King. Not even embarrassed.)

There are a couple other small publishing credits coming up, which I will mention here when they come out (or when I'm running out of actual blogging material). 

The Egg and I Road and a Giant Metal Fish, or Spring Comes to the Olympic Peninsula

So it's April and I haven't even posted my Fifty Books List from 2012 yet.... It seems like I can only manage one of two things: I can have a life or I can have a blog about my life.

But one of the books I read last year was The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald, which was alternatively interesting, funny, depressing, and startlingly racist.

I knew Betty MacDonald for her Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, which I loved as a child. But she was probably even better known for her memoir about struggling to run a chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in the late 1920s. The Egg and I became wildly popular, spawned several copycat titles, and many films (most of them about Ma and Pa Kettle, sort of precursors to the Beverly Hillbillies).

I have trouble deciding how much I actually like the book, but the setting of the book is close to where I live now. There's an egocentric delight in reading good descriptions of local scenery.

After church on Easter, we took a drive.

And here's a view from Egg and I Road. (We weren't sure where exactly the farm had been located, but here's a farm that makes me think of Betty MacDonald's house huddled at the feet of the mountains.)

Then we turned onto Egg and I Ridge Road.

And then we were done being vaguely literary and we went here:

Do you know what's inside the giant metal fish? If you guessed "most of creation," you'd be correct.

That's what I call making efficient use of your giant salmon.

The Dickens Google Doodle

(Image from http://ibnlive.in.com/news/google-doodles-charles-dickens-200th-birthday/227825-11.html.)

I spent far too much time yesterday trying to figure out what each scene in the Google doodle represented. Other bloggers’ interpretations left me spluttering (“That’s not Miss Havisham!”). So these are my guesses:

The first G is probably A Tale of Two Cities with Sydney Carton in Paris (and Lucie in the lower right hand corner?). The first O is the title character from Little Dorrit. The second O is A Christmas Carol with Scrooge appearing below the O searching the gloom of his rooms and Tiny Tim resting on top of the O with his crutch. I submit that the scene above the two Os is also from A Christmas Carol, probably including Scrooge (though it could be Jacob Marley pulled out of chronology) chatting with the Ghost of Christmas Present (note the leaves in his hair and the red/green scheme). The second G gives me pause… Pip and Estella from Great Expectations? Or David and Agnes (or Dora) from David Copperfield? The L is sturdier ground: the Artful Dodger and Oliver from Oliver Twist. I’m not certain, but I suspect the E shows the grandfather and Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop.

What do you think?                           

MLA Conference in Seattle and Some News

Okay, first things second. I will have two poems in an upcoming edition of The Sow's Ear Poetry Review (when I find out which issue, I'll let you know). I'm so excited, you'd think I was up for a Nobel.

*****

Earlier this month, the Modern Language Association held its annual conference in Seattle. Several sessions were open to the public. So I went up on Thursday night and spent Friday at the conference. (Many thanks to the Seattle Brengans for room, board, and good times.)

Here are some photos from the Kingston ferry dock.

After being happily landlocked for so many years, I'm amazed that I live near all this water.

I didn't get much sleep the night before the conference, and I discovered that when I'm tired I can't understand directions. I lived at the help desk. Here's a photo of part of the lobby area with one of the conference workers helping an attendee who isn't me, for once.

Being in such an academic environment was both invigorating and bemusing. Before one session, I heard a woman behind me mutter something about "the politics of periodism." I couldn't decide if I was more tickled by the fact that there are people who can say things like "the politics of periodism" and Foucauldian without blinking—or by the fact that I knew what she was talking about.

Some of the sessions were academics presenting papers on minutiae that I suspect you can only appreciate if you're already studying those particular subspecies of English literature. I felt relief that I wasn't a doctoral student (and gratitude that other people are willing to be doctoral students and let me pick their brains).

I stumbled into my favorite session of the day by accident. (I had intended to go to a session on Harold Pinter, only to realize that session was on Saturday. Did I mention that I can't read directions when I'm tired?) Author Richard Van Camp's session was so good, I worked up enough courage to ask to have my photo taken with him.

Speaking of awesome writers... here's the Chinese poet Xi Chuan answering an audience question.

The man next to him is his official (written) translator, Lucas Klein. A poem would be read in Chinese, and over half the audience would laugh or nod. Then those of us who spoke only English would eagerly wait for the translation so we could find out what everyone else was reacting to.

I left the conference feeling revitalized and with an even bigger to-read list. (Special thanks to Scott who talked to me during lunch and gave me some great suggestions.)

2012 Reading Challenge (part 2)

Okay, now I can post my 2011 Fifty Books Challenge list!

Fiction  

YA/Juvenile   
Nonfiction  
Memoir
Collections (short stories, essays, etc.)  
Drama  
Poetry 

1.       The Woman Who Walked into Doors—Roddy Doyle
2.       The Handmaid’s Tale—Margaret Attwood
3.       Sense and Sensibility—Jane Austen
4.       Lolita—Vladimir Nabokov
5.       Reading Lolita in Tehran—Azar Nafisi
6.       Human Chain: Poems—Seamus Heaney
7.       Frankenstein—Mary Shelley
8.       Essex County (Vol. 1-3)—Jeff Lamire
9.       Alice in Wonderland—Lewis Carroll
10.   Through the Looking Glass—Lewis Carroll
11.   The Haunted Bookshop—Christopher Morley
12.   The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—L. Frank Baum
13.   V for Vendetta (graphic novel)—Alan Moore
14.   Mushishi (Vol. 2)—Yuki Urushibara
15.   A Circle of Quiet—Madeleine L’engle
16.   Saving CeeCee Honeycutt (audiobook)—Beth Hoffman
17.   Alexander Calder and His Magical Mobiles—Jean Lipman, with Margaret Aspinwall
18.   The Road—Cormac McCarthy
19.   Ender’s Game—Orson Scott Card
20.   The Bird Woman—Kerry Hardie
21.   Superman: The Complete History: The Life and Times of the Man of Steel—Les Daniels
22.   The Science of Superheroes—Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg
23.   The Táin—trans. by Ciaran Carson
24.   A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (graphic novel)—Will Eisner
25.   Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty—Stan Lee
26.   Road to Perdition (graphic novel)—Max Allen Collins
27.   The Tiger Rising—Kate DiCamillo
28.   An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England—Brock Clarke
29.   Surfacing—Judy Gill Milford
30.   The Graveyard Book—Neil Gaiman
31.   Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table—Edited by Amanda Hesser
32.   Sidekicks—Jack D. Ferraiolo
33.   Life of Pi—Yann Martel
34.   The Influencing Machine (graphic novel)—Brooke Gladstone
35.   Stories for the Christian Year—The Chrysostom Society
36.   West with the Night—Beryl Markham
37.   How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One—Stanley Fish
38.   The Help—Kathryn Stockett
39.   Sonnets from the Portuguese—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
40.   Field Work: Poems—Seamus Heaney
41.   The Awakening—Kate Chopin
42.   The Waste Land—T.S. Eliot
43.   Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel—Jeannette Walls
44.   Alice Adams—Booth Tarkington
45.   Lady Windermere’s Fan—Oscar Wilde
46.   The Subversive Copy Editor: Advice from Chicago (or, How to Negotiate Good Relationships with Your Writers, Your Colleagues, and Yourself)—Carol Fisher Saller
47.   Enchanted Irish Tales—Patricia Lynch
48.   A Woman of No Importance—Oscar Wilde
49.   To the North—Elizabeth Bowen
50.   Peter and Wendy—J. M. Barrie

So the total:

23 Fiction (give or take Half Broke Horses)

8  YA/Children's Lit.

7 Nonfiction (though it feels funny to include books about superheroes in this category)

4 Poetry 

3 Collections

2 Plays

2 Memoir/Autobiography

Again, six of these were graphic novels (or collections of graphic novelettes). Seven were on that literature list I like.

Other, shorter things I read included:

Cathleen Ni Houlihan—W.B. Yeats

Deirdre—W.B. Yeats

John Law: Detective—Will Eisner (and several Spirit comics)

This post is already awfully long, so if you're curious about what I thought about a particular book, ask me in the comments. (Hopefully, I'll do a better job discussing the books as I read them this year.)


After reviewing my 2010, 2009, and 2008 lists, I've made some reading resolutions for 2012. I'd like to try to read:

• At least two Pulitzer fiction winners each year
• At least one Nobel prize winning author I haven't read yet each year
• And six poetry volumes (this year, and then I'll reevaluate)

My fiction to nonfiction ratio tends to bounce around depending on what I'm researching, so I'll just let that change naturally over the course of the year. Two plays a year seems to be my average whatever resolutions I make. But now that I live closer to Seattle, maybe I'll see more plays. 

Some bloggers I follow read 100+ books a year, which both awes and horrifies me. I think I'm happy sticking to fifty. I also have non-reading resolutions to keep.

What are your resolutions/goals this year? (Reading or otherwise.)

2012 Reading Challenges (part 1)

Happy 2012, everyone!

I hope you all had a good Christmas. Most of our decorations are in boxes, which are hidden behind other boxes somewhere in our storage unit. So we had a sweet, simple Christmas this year.

That's a bay tree for a Christmas tree. And note the wood stacked under the fireplace. Most of that ended up in the last upstairs room that needed flooring. (And don't worry, that's a fake log in the fireplace.)

Normally, I would now post my Fifty Books Challenge list for 2011, but I realized that I had neglected to post a list for 2010. In part because I was more worried about moving and selling the house than blogging, and in part because I wasn't sure I had actually read fifty books. But by including some of the longer, more "word heavy" graphic novels I read, I just made fifty. 2011 will have to wait until the next post. Here's 2010.

Fiction  

YA/Juvenile   
Nonfiction  
Memoir
Collections (short stories, essays, etc.)  
Drama  
Poetry

1. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress—Dai Sijie (tran. by Ina Rilke)
2. Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village—written by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Bird
3. The Literary Enneagram: Characters from the Inside Out—Judith Searle
4. The Glass Castle: A Memoir—Jeannette Walls
5. 1984—George Orwell
6. Shriek: An Afterword—Jeff Vandermeer
7. The Patron Saint of Liars—Ann Patchett
8. Castle Rackrent—Maria Edgeworth
9. The Bible Cure for Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue—Don Colbert
10. Wide Sargasso Sea—Jean Rhys
11. Early Irish Myths and Sagas—trans. by Jeffrey Gantz
12. In Country—Bobby Ann Mason
13. The Names Upon the Harp: Irish Myth and Legend—written by Marie Heaney, illustrated by P.J. Lynch
14. The Color Purple—Alice Walker
15. Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat—Gwen Cooper
16. Murder in the Cathedral—T.S. Eliot
17. The Stranger—Albert Camus
18. The Messiah of Stockholm—Cynthia Ozick
19. Literary Feuds: A Century of Celebrated Quarrels—From Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe—Anthony Arthur
20. One Hundred Years of Solitude—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
21. The Quiet American—Graham Greene
22. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—J.K. Rowling (audio book)
23. A Clockwork Orange—Anthony Burgess
24. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader—Anne Fadiman
25. 99 Poems in Translation—selected by Harold Pinter, Anthony Astbury, and Geoffrey Godbert
26. Moll Flanders—Daniel Defoe
27. How Reading Changed My Life—Anna Quindlen
28. The Reader—Bernhard Schlink (trans. by Carol Brown Janeway)
29. The Complete Persepolis (graphic novel)— Marjane Satrapi
30. Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood—bell hooks
31. Longing: Stories of Racial Healing—Phyllis and Eugene Unterschuetz
32. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia—Elizabeth Gilbert
33. Watchmen (graphic novel)—written by Alan Moore, art by Dave Gibbons
34. Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform—Christina Katz
35. Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the U.S.A.—Julia Alvarez
36. Coraline (graphic novel)—written by Neil Gaiman, art by P. Craig Russell
37. What Ever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? (graphic novel)—Brian Fies
38. Wish You Well—David Baldacci
39. Mushishi (Vol. 1)—Yuki Urushibara
40. Smile (graphic novel)—Raina Telgemeier
41. Inside the Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire—Ron Elliot (as told by Wayne Dammert)
42. Their Eyes Were Watching God—Zora Neale Hurston
43. Maus (graphic novel)—Art Spiegelman
44. Sarah’s Key—Tatiana de Rosnay
45. New Covenant Bound—T. Crunk
46. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel—Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber
47. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere—ZZ Packer
48. American-Born Chinese (graphic novel)—Gene Luen Yang
49. The Art of Reading Poetry—Harold Bloom
50. Watership Down—Richard Adams

Total:
22 fiction.

11 non-fiction

7 memoir (though maybe Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? should be here too)

4 juvenile/YA (or 5, since Smile is a YA memoir)

3 collections

2 poetry collections

1 play

Out of those books 6 were graphic novels. (A medium I started exploring in 2010.) And 10 were on that literature list I like.

There were other things I read that were too short/word-light to make the list. I thought a few of these were worth mentioning:

• A Day in the Life of Ireland: Photographed by 75 of the World's Leading Photojournalists on One Day, May 17, 1991—Collins Publishers

• Mouse Guard: Fall 1152—David Peterson (graphic novel)

• The Arrival—Shaun Tan (graphic novel/picture book)