Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 in Books.

This year I read about 145 books— very close to last year's 140. The best book of the year was I.J. Kay's _Mountains of the Moon_. I carried that one around the house for an hour after I finished it. Could not put it down. Special merit in the list is marked with an asterisk.

Achebe, Chinua -  Things Fall Apart

Aciman, André -  Harvard Square

Amis, Kingsley -  Lucky Jim

Amis, Martin -  The Information

Amis, Martin -  Yellow Dog

Anshaw, Carol -  Carry the One

Arvio, Sarah -  Night Thoughts:  70 Dream Poems

Atkinson, Kate -  Life After Life

Atwood, Margaret -  The Handmaid’s Tale

Auster, Paul -  The New York Trilogy

Barth, John -  *The Sot-Weed Factor

Bellow, Saul -  Ravelstein

Berg, Elizabeth -  Dream When You’re Feeling Blue

Berg, Elizabeth -  The Last Time I Saw You

Bolaño, Robert -  Woes of the True Policeman

Brunt, Carol Rifka -  *Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Burroughs, William S. -  Nova Express

Cather, Willa -  *O Pioneers!

Catton, Eleanor -  The Luminaries

Chbosky, Stephen -  The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Cozzens, James Gould -  By Love Possessed

Currie Jr., Ron -  Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

DeLillo, Don -  Point Omega

Díaz, Juno -  This is How You Lose Her

Dick, Philip K. -  The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Dickens, Charles -  Great Expectations

Didion, Joan -  The White Album

Dos Passos, John -  1919

Dos Passos, John -  The 42nd Parallel

Dos Passos, John -  *The Big Money

Dos Passos, John -  Midcentury

Dos Passos, John -  Three Soldiers

Dreiser, Theodore -  An American Tragedy

Duffy, Bruce -  Disaster Was My God:  A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud

Eco, Umberto -  On Literature

Egan, Jennifer -  A Visit From the Goon Squad

Englander, Nathan -  What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

Fitzgerald, F. Scott -  This Side of Paradise

Ford, Richard -  Canada

Ford, Richard - Independence Day

Ford, Richard - The Lay of the Land

Ford, Richard - Rock Springs

Ford, Richard -  *The Sportswriter

Forster, E.M. -  Howard’s End

Fowles, John -  The Magus

Fuentes, Carlos -  The Death of Artemio Cruz

Gaddis, William -  *JR

Gaiman, Neil -  The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Gogol, Nikolai -  Dead Souls

Grafton, Sue -  A is for Alibi

Green, John -  The Fault in Our Stars

Greene, Graham - *The Quiet American

Heller, Peter -  *The Dog Stars

Homes, A.M. -  May We Be Forgiven

Isherwood, Christopher -  The World in the Evening

Jeffers, Robinson -  Selected Poems

Jin, Ha -  Waiting

Joyce, James -  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, Franz -  The Trial

Kay, I.J. - *Mountains of the Moon

Kingsolver, Barbara -  Flight Behavior

Kundera, Milan -  The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Kushner, Rachel -  The Flamethrowers

Kushner, Rachel -  Telex from Cuba

Le Clézio, J.M.G. -  The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts

Lessing, Doris -  Stories

Luikart, Marcy -  River Braids:  A Novel

Manchester, William R. -  *The Death of a President:  November 1963

Mankell, Henning -  Before the Frost

Mann, Thomas -  The Magic Mountain

Maupin, Armistead -  Tales of the City

McCarthy, Cormac -  *Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

McCarthy, Cormac -  Child of God

McCarthy, Cormac -  *No Country for Old Men

McClanahan, Scott -  Crapalachia:  A Biography of a Place

McEwan, Ian -  Atonement

McGuane, Thomas -  The Bushwhacked Piano

McGuane, Thomas -  The Cadence of Grass

McGuane, Thomas -  Driving on the Rim

McGuane, Thomas -  Keep the Change

McGuane, Thomas -  The Longest Silence:  A Life in Fishing

McGuane, Thomas -  *Ninety-two in the Shade

McGuane, Thomas -  *Nobody’s Angel

McGuane, Thomas -  Panama

McGuane, Thomas -  To Skin a Cat

McGuane, Thomas -  Some Horses:  Essays

McGuane, Thomas -  The Sporting Club

McInerney, Jay -  Story of My Life

Meloy, Maile -  Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It

Meloy, Maile -  Liars and Saints

Menand, Louis -  The Metaphysical Club

Merwin, W.S. -  *Migration:  New Selected Poems

Miéville, China -  Looking for Jake

Miéville, China -  Railsea

Miller, Henry -  Tropic of Cancer

Mitchell, David -  Cloud Atlas

Oates, Joyce Carol -  We Were the Mulvaneys

Pamuk, Orhan -  The Silent House

Plummer, Toni Plummer -  The Bolero of Andi Rowe:  Stories

Potok, Chaim -  The Chosen

Potter, Russell A. -  Pyg:  The Memoirs of Toby, the Learned Pig

Pynchon, Thomas -  Gravity’s Rainbow

Riggs, Ransom -  Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Roy, Arundhati -  The God of Small Things

Rushdie, Salman -  Joseph Anton:  A Memoir

Rushdie, Salman -  *Midnight’s Children

Russo, Richard -  Empire Falls

Sacks, Oliver -  Hallucinations

Sáenz, Benjamin Alire -  Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club

Salter, James -  The Hunters

Salter, James -  *A Sport and a Pastime

Sandford, John -  Rules of Prey (Lucas Davenport, #1)

Saramago, José -  *The Stone Raft

Saunders, George -  CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

Saunders, George -  Tenth of December

Schulz, Monte -  *Naughty

Sedaris, David -  Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls

Sexton, Linda Gray -  Half in Love:  Surviving the Legacy of Suicide

Shriver, Lionel -  Big Brother

Sinclair, Upton -  The Jungle

Sloan, Robin -  Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Sterne, Laurence -  *The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Tartt, Donna -  The Goldfinch

Tartt, Donna -  The Secret History

Tervalon, Jervey -  Serving Monster

Thompson, Jean -  The Year We Left Home

Thoreau, Henry David -  *Walden

Tolstoy, Leo -  Anna Karenina

Torrey, Beef -  Conversations with Thomas McGuane

Tyszka, Alberto Barrera -  The Sickness

Updike, John -  Rabbit, Run

Voltaire -  Candide

Walls, Jeanette -  The Silver Star

West, Nathaniel -  Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust

Winter, Isobelle -  Weather

Winter, Robin -  Future Past

Winter, Robin -  Night Must Wait

Winterson, Jeanette -  Lighthousekeeping

Wolitzer, Meg -  The Interestings

Yan, Mo -  The Republic of Wine