#239

Very well. Why shouldn't I? Be it from autism or some twisted vanity (in myself, I often have trouble with this distinction, as do external perceivers. Indeed, know that I often seem to be an asshole without having any concept of why what I am saying is ridiculous--I'm just saying what I'm thinking--and at the root of it all is a fundamental arrogance, which I believe I may have been born with) I shall attempt to list every book I have read while the blog was on hiatus. Two particular books have taken up a disproportionate amount of that time, but this will still take some time and effort.

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Ain't got the critical give a fuck to write them all down, regrettably, but, as some may recall, I was reading a bunch of Stephen King, and I read a bunch more. However, not going to go into the archives to find out exactly what I posted and didn't post. Stephen King has published sixty-two novels, and in 2019 I read about forty-six of them, all exempting the Dark Tower series and a few other odd ones out I didn't find or get around to rereading, like Dolores Claiborne and some Bachman book or another. Thinner. I didn't reread Thinner. And so on. He has published eleven collections of short fiction, and in 2019 I read ten of them, including his newest, If It Bleeds, exempting only Full Dark, No Stars, which I last read in 2011 or so while visiting my father and brother while they were living in Dubai. It was a library book, and not supposed to leave the country. Back in 2011, I gave a fuck about very little. That trip marks the one and only time me and my dad got loaded at a bar. More exactly, a pub, frequented by the many British expats doing business in that place at that time. I smoked Dunhills while staying in that miserable hellhole of a city.

Anyhow. Sorry in advance for formatting laziness, and mistakes wherever they should occur. Except for the first and last, they are in no order of any particularity or intent whatever. The books of 2020 (a couple are from this year but only like two):

The Body Has a Head, by Gustav Eckstein (this book so constantly blew my fucking mind that I had to take a lot of breaks, and it therefore took a lot of time. Also, coronavirus considerations, questions of love and friendship, and work were very hectic and time-consuming throughout the period.)

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole

The Animorphs Series, by K.A. Applegate, et al. (reread)

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie

The Once and Future King, by T.H. White (reread)

Bleach, by Tite Kubo (reread)

Templar, AZ (books I-IV), by Iron Spike (reread, first time in print form)

The Harrowing of Hell, by Evan Dahm

The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, The Red Pony, Tortilla Flat, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, The Moon is Down, Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck (reread) (reread most of The Pearl, but did not reread the end for some reason. It was excellent, perfect, right up to moment I stopped. Just had to move on to the next thing. This happens sometimes, very rarely)

Heroes of the Frontier, Your Fathers, Who Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, What Is The What?, by Dave Eggers (WITW unfinished near the end)

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness, by Kenzaburo Oe, transl. by John Nathan

If Cats Disappeared From The World, by Kawamura Genki, transl. by Eric Selland

The Neon Wilderness, by Nelson Algren

Watership Down, by Richard Adams

Fifty Short Stories, by Anton Chekhov, transl. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Selected Short Stories, by Rabindranath Tagore, transl. by William Radice

Halo: The Forerunner Trilogy, by Greg Bear

Halo: The Kilo-Five Trilogy, by Karen Traviss (reread)

Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: First Strike, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, by Eric Nylund (reread)

Halo: Contact Harvest, by Joseph Staten (reread)

Halo: The Cole Protocol, by Tobias S. Buckell (reread)

Halo: The Flood, by William C. Dietz

Halo: Evolutions, by various authors (reread)

A Song of Ice and Fire, Books 1-5, Fire & Blood, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Tuf Voyaging, by George R.R. Martin (reread)

The World of Ice & Fire, by George R.R. Martin, Elio M. García Jr., and Linda Antonsson (reread)

Lord Brocktree, Martin the Warrior, Mossflower, The Legend of Luke, Outcast of Redwall, Mariel of Redwall, The Bellmaker, Salamandastron, Pearls of Lutra, The Long Patrol, Marlfox, Taggerung, Triss, Rakkety Tamm, Eulalia!, The Sable Quean, by Brian Jacques (reread)

The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat, It's a Magical World, Attack of the Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, by Bill Watterson (reread)

Play Ball, Snoopy!, Peanuts Treasury, It's a Dog's Life, Snoopy, by Charles M. Schultz (reread)

Positively Pogo, by Walt Kelly

Shutter vol. 1: Wanderlost, by Keatinge, Del Duca, Greni, Brisson

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers vol. 1, by Higgins, Prasetya, Orlando, Howell

Multiple Warheads, by Brandon Graham

The People Look Like Flowers At Last, by Charles Bukowski (reread)

Hate That Cat, by Sophie Creech

The Song of Roland, transl. by Frederick Bliss Luquiens

The Waste Land & Other Poems, by T.S. Eliot

Beyond Self: 108 Korean Zen Poems, by Ko Un, transl. by Young-Moo Kim and Brother Anthony, introduced by Thich Nhat Hanh and Allen Ginsberg

One Hundred Poems from the Japanese, edited and transl. by Kenneth Rexroth

The Postmodern Taxidermist From Outer Space and Other Love Stories, by Matt Ernst (reread)

Silence in the Snowy Fields, by Robert Bly

And I'm Not Jenny, by Tara Rebele

Dissecting Hate, by Sam Majchrowski (my husband wrote this book)

The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, edited and transl. by Stephen Mitchell, bilingual edition, introduced by Robert Hass (left at about halfway through, bookmark in for a return)

The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton

The View From Saturday, by E.L. Konigsburg

The Nakano Thrift Shop, by Kawakami Hiromi, transl. by Allison Markin Powell

Kissers, by James Kochalka

One Punch Man vol. 14, vol. 15, by One and Murata Yusuke

You and a Bike and a Road, by Eleanor Davis

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, by Hanif Abdurraqib

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Killing Commendatore, by Murakami Hiruki

The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis

Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, by Cynthia Barnett

The Lie and How We Told It, by Tommi Parrish

Crawlspace, by Jesse Jacobs

Harry Potter 1-7, by J.K. Rowling (reread)

Silverwing, Sunwing, Firewing, by Kenneth Oppel (reread)

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis (reread)

The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (reread for me, read aloud to my husband for the first time at bedtimes)

1984, Animal Farm, by George Orwell (reread)

Winnie the Pooh, by A.A. Milne and Ernest J. Shepard (reread)

The Fall of Gondolin, by J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien

and finally, the books currently in process:

Palladium, by Alice Fulton

The Republic of Poetry, by Martín Espada

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, transl. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

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Doubtlessly I have missed a few here or there. It was a long gap. But here we are, all caught up. I'll let you know once I'm done with War and Peace, which I have been chipping away at since shortly after the new year. I'm really rolling along with it now; one hundred pages past the halfway mark, so only about five hundred to go. One thing slowing me down is I don't like to carry such a big book around with me all the time. Another thing is that this book is literally two miles long.

It is extremely good.

--JL