“The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon.”
Umberto Eco--
January
1. The Martian, Andy Weir
2. Steve Canyon, 1949-1950, Milton Caniff
3. Tomorrow’s Kin, Nancy Kress
4. The Marvel Legacy of Jack Kirby, ed. Brian Overton
5. A Big Storm Knocked It Over^, Laurie Colwin
6. Music: A Fold-Out Graphic History, Nicolas O’Neill,
Susan Hayes & Ruby Taylor
7. Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan
8. Sabrina, Nick Drnaso
9. The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick
10. Brune Hogarth’s Lord of the Jungle, Brune Hogarth
11. Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object^, Laurie Colwin
12. Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin
13. The Unfinished Presidency, Jimmy Carter’s Journey
Beyond the White House, Douglas Brinkley
14. Crazy Blood, T. Jefferson Parker
February
15. Dead Lies Dreaming, Charles Stross
16. The Last Good Guy, T. Jefferson Parker
17. Skim Deep, Max Allan Collins
18. The Lone Pilgrim^, Laurie Colwin
19. Then She Vanished, T. Jefferson Parker.
20. The Dream Is Real, My Life on the Airwaves,
Bob Davis & Jeff Bollig
21. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Will Eisner,
Robert Greenberger
22. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Neil Gaiman,
Steven P. Olson
23. Family Happiness, Laurie Colwin
24. Godric^, Frederick Buechner
25. The Winter of Frankie Machine, Don Winslow
26. Three Hearts and Three Lions, Paul Anderson
27. Changing Planes, Ursula K. LeGuin
28. Satori, Don Winslow
March
29. Another Marvelous Thing, Laurie Colwin
30. How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan
31. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay^,
Michael Chabon
32. Brendan^, Frederick Buechner
33. My Ántonia^, Willa Cather
34. Echo House^, Ward Just
35. A Marvelous Life, The Amazing Story of Stan Lee,
Danny Fingeroth
36. The Ice Harvest, Scott Phillips
37. Not Dark Yet, Peter Robinson
38. Way Down on the High Lonely, Don Winslow
39. True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee,
Abraham Riesman
April
40. The Many-Colored Land^, Julian May
41. The Finisher, Peter Lovesey
42. Wild Minds, The Artists and Rivalries that Inspired
the Golden Age of Animation, Reid Mitenbuler
43. Gahan Wilson’s America, Gahan Wilson
44. The Golden Torc^, Julian May
45. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Colleen Doran,
Aaron Rosenberg
46. California Fire and Life, Don Winslow
47. The Non-Born King^, Julian May
48. Dark Sky, C.J. Box
May
49. Invisible Men, The Trailblazing Black Artists of
Comic Books, Ken Quattro
50. The Adversary, Julian May
51. Smoke, Joe Ide
52. The Night Always Comes, Willy Vlautin
53. Machers and Rockers, Rich Cohen
54. Win, Harlan Coben
55. The Big Bang, Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins
56. The Library of Graphic Novelists: Joe Sacco,
Monica Marshall
57. The Dead Hour, Denise Mina
June
58. Intervention^, Julian May
59. I Feel So Good, The Life and Times of Big Bill Broonzy,
Bob Riesman
60. Jack the Bodiless^, Julian May
61. The Secret to Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel
62. Diamond Mask^, Julian May
63. Magnificat^, Julian May
64. The House In France, Gully Wells
July
65. How Lucky, Will Leitch
66. Big Hair and Plastic Grass, Dan Epstein
67. Theories of Everything, Roz Chast
68. The Sweetness of Water, Nathan Harris
69. The Heathens, Ace Atkins
70. The Cover Wife, Dan Fesperman
August
71. Dream Girl, Laura Lippman
72. I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya, My American Blues Story, Bobby Rush
73. Blood Grove, Walter Mosley
74. The Night Gate, Peter May
75. The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Richard Flanagan
76. Blacktop Wasteland, S.A. Cosby
77. The Lamplighters, Emma Stonex
78. Monsters, Barry Windsor Smith
79. Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby
September
80. Heavy Weather^, Bruce Sterling
81. In The Spirit of Crazy Horse, Peter Matthiessen
82. A Slow Fire Burning, Paula Hawkins
83. Matrix, Lauren Groff
84. Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead
85. Black Smoke, African Americans and the United States of
Barbecue, Adrian Miller
86. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
October
87. When Ghosts Come Home, Wiley Cash
88. The Speckled Beauty, A Dog and His People, Rick Bragg
89. Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
90. The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles
91. Poet Warrior, Joy Harjo
92. Daughter of the Morning Star, Craig Johnson
93. Run, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, L. Fury & Nate Powell.
94. Bewilderment, Richard Powers
95. Oh William!, Elizabeth Strout
96. Silverview, John Le Carré
97. All of the Marvels, Douglas Wolk
November
98. Billy Summers, Stephen King
99. Guarded By Dragons, Rick Gekoski
100. Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen
101. Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
102. On Animals, Susan Orlean
103. The Dark Hours, Michael Connelly.
104. Better Off Dead, Lee & Andrew Child
December
105. The Judge’s List, John Grisham
106. The Magician, Colm Tóibín
107. Hell of a Book, Jason Mott.
108. The Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny
109. The Sentence, Louise Erdrich
110. Rizzio, Denise Mina
111. The Marvel Art of Joe Quesada, Joe Quesada
112. Savages, Don Winslow.
^ Re-read
“To be truthful, I always wanted to write about a dog with a story to tell. I think a lot of writers do, the ones who have a soul; the rest are cat people, I suppose.”
Rick Bragg
The Speckled Beauty
A Dog and His People
“(Sunday) Strips . . . show the Metropolis Marvel in a predicament familiar to longtime Superman readers: super-obesity. (DC editor Mort) Weisinger, bald and overweight, was famously self-loathing about his appearance. It’s no coincidence that, under his long tenure, the Superman characters presumed that the absolute worst, most repulsive fates any of them could suffer were getting fat or losing their hair. It was, in all seriousness, a bizarre recurring theme in Weisinger’s books.”
Mark Waid, in an introduction of The Atomic Age Superman
(featuring 13 Super Sunday Adventures, 1956 to 1959.
“To lend each other a hand when we’re falling . . . Perhaps that’s the only work that matters in the end.”
Brendan by Frederik Buechner
“You can’t get over things you do to other people as easily as you can get over things they do to you”
Louise Erdrich
The Sentence
