Tuesday, December 31, 2019

2019 Reading List


“I’m tired of people saying they don’t have time to read. I don’t have time for anything else.”
                                     — George Whitman, Shakespeare and Company

January
1. Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens
2. Voodoo River, Robert Crais
3. Yossel, April 19, 1943, Joe Hubert
4. Lie In The Dark, Dan Fesperman
5. A Canticle For Leibowitz,* Walter M. Miller, Jr.
6. Flash, The Making of Weegee The Famous, Christopher Bonanos
7. Neptune’s Brood, Charles Stross
8. Perish Twice, Robert B. Parker
9. The League of Regrettable Sidekicks, Jon Morris
10. Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
11. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,* Elizabeth Taylor

February
12. The Golden Tresses of the Dead, Alan Bradley
13. The Problem of Susan and Other Stories, Neil Gaiman &
P. Craig Russell
14. The Rhesus Chart, Charles Stross
15. Frankenstein,* Mary Shelley
16. Shrink Rap, Robert B. Parker
17. Wish You Were Here, Graham Swift
18. The Big Fella, Jane Leavy
19. School Days, Robert B. Parker
20. The Boats of the Glen Carrig,* William Hope Hodgson
21. The Professional, Robert B. Parker
22. Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson
23. Flannery O’Connor, The Cartoons, ed. Kelly Gerald
24. Comics & Sequential Art, Will Eisner
25. Sharpe’s Escape, Bernard Cornwell
26. Thirteen Ways Of Looking,* Colum McCann
27. Late In The Day, Tessa Hadley

March
28. Still Life,* Louise Penny
29. Golden State, Ben H. Winters
30. Slowhand, The Life and Music of Eric Clapton, Philip Norman
31. The Border, Don Winslow
32. Careless Love, Peter Robinson
33. Dreyer’s English, Benjamin Dreyer
34. The Best Cook In The World, Rick Bragg
35. The War of the Worlds*, H.G. Wells.
36. Red Dragon, Thomas Harris

April
37. The Dragon Factory, Jonathan Maberry
38. K, A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches, Tyler Kepner
39. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
40. Wolf Pack, C.J. Box
41. Run Away, Harlan Coben
42. A Good Man Is Hard To Find,  Flannery O’Connor
43. The Hand Maid’s Tale, art and adaptation by Renée
Nault, based on the novel by Margaret Atwood
44. The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb, Robert Crumb
45. Odds & Ends, Robert Crumb
46. The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen, Hope Nicholson
47. Prairie Fires, The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder
Caroline Fraser
48. Reinventing Comics, Scott McCloud

May
49. The Fellowship of the Ring*, J.R.R. Tolkien
50. The Two Towers*, J.R.R. Tolkien
51. The Return of the King*, J.R.R. Tolkien
52. Goodbye Without Leaving*, Laurie Colwin
53. Letters to a Friend, Diana Athill
54. Raising The Stones, Sheri S. Tepper
55. Sideshow*, Sheri S. Tepper
56. The Goat Getters, Eddie Campbell
57. Nickel Mountain*, John Gardner

June
58. Lady In The Lake, Laura Lippmann
59. Miracle Creek, Angie Kim
60. Creationists, E.L. Doctorow
61. Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin
62. Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
63. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
64. The Marvel Art of Skottie Young, Jess Harrold
65. The Overstory, Richard Powers
66. Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Neal Stephenson

July
67. Conviction, Denise Mina
68. We Were Killers Once, Becky Masterman
69. Big Sky, Kate Atkinson
70. Hergé, Son of Tintin, Benoît Peeters
71. Use of Weapons, Iain M. Banks
72. Less, Andrew Sean Greer
73. The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
74. Exhalation, Ted Chiang
75. They Call Us Enemy, George Takei.
76. Will Eisner, Champion of the Graphic Novel, Paul Levitz
77. Madame Fourcade’s Secret War, Lynne Olson
78. Tintin, The Art of Hergé, Michel Daubert
79. Chris Ware, Daniel Raeburn

August
80. The Pioneers, David McCullough
81. Sub 4:00, Alan Webb and the Quest for the Fastest Mile, Chris Lear
82. Clyde Fans, Seth
83. Jinx, Brian Michael Bendis
84. Beyond the Phog, Jason King & Jesse Newell
85. Chances Are . . ., Richard Russo
86. Becoming Superman, J. Michael Straczynski
87. Tales of the Batman, ed. Martin H. Greenberg
88. The Bitterroots, C.J. Box
89. MetaMaus, Art Spiegelman with Hillary Chute
90. A Dangerous Man, Robert Crais

September
91. Magic Words, The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore, Lance Parkin
92. The Shameless, Ace Atkins
93. Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes
94. The Nick Adams Stories, Ernest Hemingway
95. Normal People, Sally Rooney
96. John Brown to Bob Dole, Movers and Shakers in Kansas
History, ed. Virgil W. Dean
97. A Better Man, Louise Penny
98. Confessions of a Bookseller, Shaun Bythell
99. The Institute, Stephen King

October
100. Inland, Téa Obreht
101. The Dutch House, Ann Patchett
102. Blindsight, Peter Watts
103. Deep River, Karl Marlantes
104. Rum Punch*, Elmore Leonard
105. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, David Treuer
106. Olive, Again, Elizabeth Strout
107. Highway to Hell, Joe Bonomo

November
108. Music From Big Pink, John Niven
109. Land of Wolves, Craig Johnson
110. M Is For Magic, Neil Gaiman
111. The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, Neil Gaiman &
Yoshitaka Amano
112. Sword of Kings, Bernard Cornwell
113. Light Blue Reign, Art Chansky
114. The Topeka School, Ben Lerner
115. Flashbacks, 25 Years of Doonesbury, G.B. Trudeau
116. Petroglyphs of the Kansas Smoky Hills, Rex C. Buchanan, 
Burke W. Griggs & Joshua L. Svaty
117. Blue Moon, Lee Child
118. The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern
119. Agent Running in the Field, John le Carré
120. The Night Fire, Michael Connelly
121. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood

December
122. Westwind, Ian Rankin
123. Hot Tickets, Crimes, Championships and Big Time Sports at
the University of Kansas, H. George Frederickson
124. The Night Manager, Louise Erdrich
125. Jayhawker, On History, Home, and Basketball, Andrew
Malan Milward
126. Under Occupation, Alan Furst
127. Killing Quarry, Max Allan Collins
128. Games of Deception, Andrew Maraniss
129. The Devil In Paradise, James L. Haley
130. Charlie Martz and Other Stories, Elmore Leonard
131. Ross Poldark, Winston Graham
132. Half Broke Horses*, Jeannette Walls
133. Heartland, Sarah Smarsh

* Re-read

“But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.”
                               A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. (p. 238)


“The bare idea of this is no doubt horribly repulsive to us, but at the same time I think we should remember how repulsive our carnivorous habits would seem to an intelligent rabbit.”
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells. (p. 139)


“And I add this part here, to hint to whoever should read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction.”
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (p. 96)


“Sheller,” Fredrickson shouted to the senior squid, who was already crawling through the blackness. “I need some goddamned IV fluid and something to cut off these arteries.” Sheller appeared with a bottle and  IV tubes as well as his kit. While Fredrickson was doing what he could to stanch the bleeding, Sheller jabbed a catheter into Jackson’s arm and held the glass of fluid as high in the air as he could. Jackson calmed down, his terror and panic diminishing as the two corpsmen got his faltering system working again. Mellas glanced down Jackson’s body. Fredrickson was working on pulp below Jackson’s knees. There were no feet.

“You’re going to be all right, Jackson.” Mellas kept repeating. “You’re going to be all right.” Jackson moaned and passed out.

Mellas didn’t pray, but his mind once again soared above the landing zone, seeing all of I Corps below him, and went looking for something better than God — a good chopper pilot.
Matterhorn, Karl Marlantes


“Books are always better when read than explained.”
The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern

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