Random
My 2010 List of Lists
I wanted to do one of those Best of 2010 lists, but it’s too hard because I read a fuckload of books in 2010. A heaping fuckload. PhD school has me reading at least two but sometimes three books a week, plus secondary materials that amount to about four or five scholarly articles a week, not to mention my own research amounting to about two books and about a half dozen articles a month. Plus, I teach about two books a month plus secondary materials, which I always re-look at before entering the ring. That’s just for school. For fun, I probably read between two/four books a month. When I say “read” I mean from beginning to end, every single word (I don’t “skim,” I actually internally vocalize every syllable — so, I’m also a very slow reader). I certainly abandoned a good amount of books I disliked. So the other reason I couldn’t really do justice to a “Best Of” list this year is because I didn’t get to read many of the books that are appearing on other best of 2010 lists. I also didn’t read very much poetry. I got a lot of catching up to do.
Anyway, I decided to make a list of lists, which might more accurately express my reading practices over the course of 2010.
Five Works Of Canonical Literature That I Read For The First Time Slash For Classes In 2010, Which I Really Enjoyed Reading
Shelley’s Frankenstein
Thoreau’s Walden
Melville’s Moby Dick
Homer’s Odyssey
Cervantes’s Don Quixote (Tobias Smollett translation)
Three Personal Research Books I Really Enjoyed Reading
Kendall Walton – Mimesis as Make-Believe (Harvard university Press, 1993)
Jacques Derrida – The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I (University of Chicago Press, 2009)
Steven Shivaro – Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics (MIT Press 2009)
Three Comics/Graphic Novels I Really Enjoyed Reading
Hans Rickheit – The Squirrel Machine (Fantagraphics, 2009)
Stephen King, Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque – American Vampire Vol. 1 (Vertigo, 2010)
Charles Burns – Black Hole (Pantheon, 2008)
Three Books Published In 2010 That I Really Enjoyed Reading For Fun
Steven Moore – The Novel: An Alternative History (Continuum)
Bill Simmons – The Book of Basketball (ESPN)
Francois Dosse – Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari: Intersecting Lives (Columbia University Press)
Four Small Press Books From Two Small Presses Published In 2010, Which I Really Enjoyed Reading
Evan Lavender-Smith – From Old Notebooks (BlazeVOX)
Gary J. Shipley – Theoretical Animals (BlazeVOX)
Sasha Fletcher – when all our days are numbered marching bands will fill the streets and we will not hear them because we will be upstairs in the clouds (MLP)
Ben Brooks – An Island of Fifty (MLP)
Eight Books Published By Small Presses in 2010 That I Did Not Get A Chance To Read Yet That I Really Want To Read
Terese Svoboda – Pirate Talk or Mermalade (Dzanc)
Lily Hoang – The Evolutionary Revolution (Les Figues Press)
Grace Krilanovich – The Orange Eats Creeps (Two Dollar Radio)
Amelia Gray – Museum of the Weird (FC2)
Christian Hawkey – Ventrakl (Ugly Duckling Presse)
CAConrad – The Book of Frank (Wave Books)
Leslie Scalapino – Dihedrons Gazelle-Dihedrals Zoom (The Post-Apollo Press)
Tan Lin – Seven Controlled Vocabularies and Obituary 2004. The Joy of Cooking (Wesleyan University Press)
Book I Am Sad I Did Not Purchase When It Was Available, Which Was Published This Year And Then Immediately Went Out Of Print
Kate Durbin – Fashionwhore (Wrath of Dynasty)
Best Book(s) I Got For Christmas, Given To Me By My Wife
Paul West – Sheer Fiction Volumes 1-4
Books I Am Currently Reading, Here At The End Of 2010
Frank Kermode – The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford University Press, 1967)
Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosophical Investigations (New Edition from Wiley-Blackwell, 2009)
Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg – The Sandman Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes (New Edition, Vertigo, 2010)
This is a great list. I had the same dilemma as a PhD student, but I love the way you broke this down.
Cool lists. Those Paul West books are pretty much my favorite works of literary criticism ever. Some serious gateways there…
Give me that cat.
and i’ll take this puppy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_DYFmHb5mY
b2cshop.us
THIS IS A GREAT IDEA HIGGS HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVOURITES FROM THIS YEAR
Three Works Of Canonical Literature That I Read In 2010 Which I Really Enjoyed Reading
Shakespeare — “THE LOST ADVENTURES OF LEONTES AND ANTONIO AND DUKE ORTEGA”
Henry James — “A TREMENDOUS NOVEL THAT PREDATES MODERNISM BY SOME ACCOUNTS DEPENDING ON WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF MODERNISM IS”
CERVANTES — “I WAS JUST A BOY LIKE YOU WERE ONCE, ZZZZIPPPY-POO”.
Four Personal Research Books I Really Enjoyed Reading
Edidindio Munchichado — “HAVING TOO MANY SYLLABLES IN YOUR NAME CAN MAKE YOUR LIFE EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT” (Harboar’s Press, 1993)
Jacques Derrida — “THERE IS SOMETHING INCREDIBLY UNCERTAIN ABOUT EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE GROUND I WALK ON” (U of Chicago Press, 1991)
S Shivaro — “NO COMFORT CAN BE FOUND IN THE COLD BODY OF THE MANY TEXTS I LIVE IN” (Cordblud University, 2006)
Susan Instabilly — “IN THE MORNING I CAN HEAR THE BIRDS CHIRPING AND I WOULD LIKE TO CLIMB INTO THEIR MOUTHS: AND OTHER POST-STRUCTURALIST MEDITATIONS” (Connecticut Extra-State 1987)
Two Comics/Graphic Novels I Really Enjoyed Reading
Hérge — “TINTIN FINALLY GOES TO SCHOOL”
Daniel Clowes — “Wilson”
Thanks, Valerie. Switching from the creative writing field to the literature field has necessitated quite an adjustment for me. But it’s well worth it.
Thanks, Tim. Oh, man, Paul West is un-fucking-believable. I intend to do a post on him in the new year. What a wordsmith, that guy. And what a power couple — him being married to Diane Ackerman, who I also think is amazing. You are right, many gateways, many gateways.
Hahaha! Thanks for this, ZZZZIPPP. Made me smile.
[ha ha]
THE SHEER MIND-POWER OF THAT DARN PHOTON
(i don’t lower-case understand the tintin-author accent mark)
Hey, you do that too? I mean move your mental lips when you read. I thought it was just me. But it only started in my mid-20s — in my teens I could down books (admittedly mostly cheesy sci-fi novels) like water. I always attributed the shift to an interregnum of brain-changing psychophysiological exploration.
yes, loved the instability
oops read *instability* for *instabilly*
:/
and yet…
I have never read anything about wA.N. Whitehead and literature/art. Besides that John Gardner was enthralled by him and so that seeps through… I didn’t realize anyone wrote about him at all at this point. Shameful. Much more to offer than… the french guys…
Hey Chris, give Shaviro’s “Post Cinematic Affect” a read if you get the chance. He follows his examples pretty literally, but I think it gives a good context for grounding much of the Deleuze.
Do you ever read his blog?
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/
madeshopping.net
Hey Kyle,
I’ve not read much of his fiction, but it all seems interesting: he’s a project guy, like he’s got one book about native Americans, one book about Nazis, one book about Jack the Ripper, etc.
It’s his nonfiction that captivates me. This Sheer Fiction collection that Caitlin got me is so, so good. The guy is privy to so many writers I’ve never heard of that turn out to be really fascinating. Plus, he’s all about words/sentences. He’s got this essay in the first volume of Sheer Fiction called “In Defense of Purple Prose.”
For some reason I think Coetzee mentions him derogatorily in one of his books (Disgrace, maybe?), but I could be mistaken.
madeshopping.com
Great list. Krilanovich’s The Orange Eats The Creeps is one of the best, most brutally awe inspiring pieces of fiction I’ve read in a long, long time.
Why haven’t the administrators of this site made you a contributor yet?
Chris, Where should I start, with Paul West?
And he’s a character in one of Coetzee’s books, too, isn’t he?
Hey Chris, give Shaviro’s “Post Cinematic Affect” a read if you get the chance. He follows his examples pretty literally, but I think it gives a good context for grounding much of the Deleuze.
Do you ever read his blog?
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/
How can a broke fella get hold of those small press titles?
the above reply was supposed to be a reply to my further-above reply to zipppppy
How can a broke fella get hold of those small press titles?
when i read this comment in the sidebar i thought for a heart-fluttering second ‘is Whatisinevidence replying to mimi?!’ but alas it was to zippy
to whom (zzzzzzippy, that is), by All Accounts, That Great Honor should, if to Anyone, be bestowed
zzippppppy is a Photon of the Highest Order
Hey Kyle,
I’ve not read much of his fiction, but it all seems interesting: he’s a project guy, like he’s got one book about native Americans, one book about Nazis, one book about Jack the Ripper, etc.
It’s his nonfiction that captivates me. This Sheer Fiction collection that Caitlin got me is so, so good. The guy is privy to so many writers I’ve never heard of that turn out to be really fascinating. Plus, he’s all about words/sentences. He’s got this essay in the first volume of Sheer Fiction called “In Defense of Purple Prose.”
For some reason I think Coetzee mentions him derogatorily in one of his books (Disgrace, maybe?), but I could be mistaken.
hi, Edmond,
Yes, yes, I do. I say each word in my head. My wife, on the other hand, swoops across the page and takes an entire line into her head at once as though she’s looking at a painting. I can’t read like her.
Reading practices fascinate me. It’s crazy to me that we teach writing, but not reading in college. Matter of fact, no one ever really talks about reading, about how they read, how they process, etc. I think that’s a conversation that needs to be front and center.
Many people I know claim to have “read” such and such book, but really what they mean is that they skimmed it, scanned it, glossed it.
I highly recommend the Shaviro book. But there are other people who are currently writing about Whitehead and literature…for the life of me I’m blanking on titles or authors…will think and try to get back to you…
Gotta say, the connections between Whitehead and Deleuze are fascinating.
Sirk,
I think you should start a small press venture predicated on the netflix model: have people pay a monthly fee to rent small press books — you could even mimic the “watch it now” feature with e-books.
Just a thought.
Hey, Cassie!
That’s his newest release, yeah? I’m loving that publisher (Zero Books). They’re also putting out a bunch of other cool things.
I also read Shaviro’s Cinematic Body this year, which was also awesome. And I just checked out his Blanchot / Bataille book from the library. I like his style and his sensibility.
Not familiar with his blog, but I bet I would love it — thanks for pointing me toward it.
Okay…
look for Isabelle Stengers’s forthcoming book Thinking with Whitehead, which Harvard Univversity Press is putting out in May ’11.
Keith Robinson has a book out from Palgrave Macmillan (2009) called Deleuze, Whitehead, Bergson: Rhizomatic Connections.
Roland Faber has a book coming out in about two weeks from Fordham University Press, called Secrets of Becoming: Negotiating Whitehead, Deleuze, and Butler.
Faber also edited an anthology along with Henry Krips & Daniel Pettus, whihc came out last summer from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, called Event and Decision: Ontology and Politics in Badiou, Deleuze, and Whitehead.
David Ray Griffin has a cool-sounding book (I haven’t checked it out yet) called Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for Its Contemporary Relevance, put out by SUNY Press in 2008.
So, yeah, people are writing about Whitehead right now. I’m just now getting interested in his work. Very excited to read more / learn more.
Thanks, Patrick. I’ve heard only good things about Krilanovich’s book. Excited to check it out.
madeshopping.com
madeshopping.com
madeshopping.com
– googled it, wikied it, reconstructed-a-classroom-discussion-of it, heard-a-one-line-dismissal-of it. Saw it on a formidable syllabus.
Saw its spine on a romantic rival’s/target’s bookshelf.
Absorbed a reputation-inflating perspective of it from the Zeitgeist.
Zzzzzippppp is arguably the greatest commenter in the history of the internet. Certainly the greatest photon commenter.
Thanks for the mention, Chris!
Elizabeth Costello
I can’t wait to read it, Lily!
Now I have to go find Paul West now, Chris. Thanks.
The only misstep I see here is Bill Simmons. I hate that fuckin’ guy. I know…I get it…white dudes love Boston’s home teams.
I can’t wait to read it, Lily!
bro totally…
http://www.amazon.com/She-Got-Game-Personal-Odyssey/dp/0446608394/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4
18 out of 18 five star reviews don’t lie.
Hey, John,
Yeah, I hear you about Simmons. Being a longtime Lakers fan myself, it’s hard to get through his gushy Celtics lovefest mentality, and his macho “dude” persona gets tiresome, and I don’t agree with many of his assessments, but at the same time he knows a lot about the history of basketball and a lot about players unfamiliar to me, so it was fun to learn about them. I’d be very interested in hearing about other basketball books that are fun to read.
oh man chris, i got you… i think i might do a big ‘basketball books i like’ post at some point because it seems like people are down. there are some gems out there.
off the top of my head tho…
‘breaks of the game’ by david halberstram is a classic. some say it’s ‘the best’ book about basketball ever written. focuses on bill walton era trailblazers, but is about so much more.
‘playing for keeps’ by john mcphee – a profile of bill bradley’s time at princeton. it’s awesome.
bradley’s own ‘life on the run’ is pretty fantastic as well. very insightful. it was there i learned that jerry lucas is a mnemonist. at one point, on a road trip, bradley turned to lucas and said, ‘how many steps have we taken since getting off the airplane?’ and lucas, not skipping a beat, says, ‘5,403’ or whatever. so sweet.
Yes! Simmons’s “persona” is tiresome, but the dude attentively watches an insane amount of basketball, and it shows in his analyses. He’s usually dead-on in his assessment of NBA players.
I still need to read BoB. . .
This is great. Do you know of any good books on the WNBA?
bro totally…
http://www.amazon.com/She-Got-Game-Personal-Odyssey/dp/0446608394/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4
18 out of 18 five star reviews don’t lie.
Yeah I’m with you on Simmons, he’s not a natural analyst/sportswriter, and that comes across whenever he talks about anything other than the NBA (his football writing is just terrible…), but he knows so much about pro basketball and puts so much thought into it and does so in such a cool, enjoyable way that it overcomes the faults. Chris, have you ever read any of the Free Darko books? http://www.freedarko.com/history/ I haven’t yet but really like the blog, you should look into them if you haven’t.
Also, this post balls hard.
love-shopping.org
love-shopping.org
love-shopping.org
love-shopping.org
Sorry I’m late to respond, but thanks for these tips. Phil Jackson talks about Bill Bradley in one of his books…will def. check out that Mcphee. The WNBA book you recommend also looks good. Very cool. You should certainly do that post on NBA books, people would dig it, myself included.
Thanks, Kevin. I haven not read the Free Darko books, but I’ve looked at the website from time to time….I rarely read anything online NBA related except the LA Times Lakers blog. Will def. look into those FD books, though, they look cool.