I have had the pleasure of reading some pretty amazing books this year.  There were lots of Pulitzer winners (5) and a bunch of Sci-Fi/Fantasy, which really surprised me when I looked over the list (10).

For some of my new followers, I have linked my little reviews below if you are interested.  There were 2 books that stood out amongst all the others to me as being the absolute best, but really, the list of best books could have been much longer than just two.  At the bottom, I have listed the 5 books I really did not like at all.

The Best of an amazing bunch of books I got to read this year:

Ulysses - James Joyce

For anyone following this little tumblr, you will know that I read Ulysses earlier this year and have been somewhat obsessed with Joyce ever since.  He worked some serious voodoo on me throughout this book.  I was a bit wary, having recently finished Portrait (see below) which I found really tough to get through.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon

This book has made me want to pick up everything by Chabon and read it all at once.  I have read some amazing books this year and save for Ulysses, this is the one that continues to stick with me more than any other.  Chabon is amazing.

The Rest:

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut gave himself an A+ on this one.  Humble man + this grade = must read.

The War Against Cliché – Martin Amis

30+ years of excellent love/hate literary criticism.

Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

It makes me sick to think he wrote this on a college campus.

Nine Stories – J.D. Salinger

Re-captured the essence of Catcher in the Rye for me.  And who says men can’t write great women characters?

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Recently finished.  It took me a number of tries over the years before getting all the way through it.  Glad I stuck with it this time.  Funny and terribly sad.

Drown - Junot Diaz

The next time I walked by a bookstore after finishing Oscar Wao, I picked this up.  Amazing writer.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz

See above.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

My first Murakami experience was this monster.  Mystical and convoluted but always entertaining.  Wish I could read the original Japanese.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy

“Pulitzer Winner” and “Page-turner” aren’t always words that go together.  They do here.  Just about everyone I know who has read it finishes it at some ungodly hour in the middle of the night.

A Good Man is Hard to Find – Flannery O’Connor

I read a whole bunch of top-notch short story collections this year and I enjoyed this one more than any other.  More than Lahiri, Fitzgerald, Diaz, Chekhov or even Salinger.

The Bear - William Faulkner

The first 50 pages of this book might be the best pure storytelling I have ever read.

About Love & Other Stories – Anton Chekhov

Pecked away at this all year.

The Lazarus Project – Alexsander Hemon

This book has grown on me ever since I put it down.  Can’t wait to catch up on everything else Hemon has put out there.

Flappers and Philosophers – F. Scott Fitzgerald

A wonderful book of early short stories, from the time before Fitzgerald’s well-known troubles.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien

I haven’t ever read these.  I know, I know.

The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

Hadn’t re-read this since I was 8.  It was about time.

Rabbit, Run – John Updike

This book is growing on me and although my dislike for Rabbit Angstrom is strong, I am feeling the need to dig into the sequels growing inside me.

Switch Bitch – Roald Dahl

Just a great storyteller…for any age.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man – James Weldon Johnson

A great insight into the ambiguity of race and class in early 20th Century America.

The Sound of Waves – Yukio Mishima

A wonderful, quaint love story.

Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy

Harsh.

Summerland – Michael Chabon

A wonderful YA book about childhood, loss, adventure, and above all, baseball.

If on a winters night a traveler – Italo Calvino

Calvino is working on some level that I am not even close to.  This is a book about loving books.  It took me a while to pick up what he was putting down, but it was well worth the effort in the end.

Slapstick – Kurt Vonnegut

I liked it more than Vonnegut did himself (he gave himself a D).  Standard KV employment of techniques - strange characters everywhere, surreal situations, and catastrophic results.

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

A heart-breaking and beautifully written collection of short stories.  One of a few Pulitzer winners I was able to read this year.

Happy Birthday, Wanda June – Kurt Vonnegut

Essentially KV vs. Hemingway - who wins and why?  Based on The Odyssey.

Poor Folk – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Did I say Lahiri’s book was heartbreaking?  Well heartbreak is standard as cereal in this one.

Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin

A truly powerful book.  This little fellow had a loud voice.  A great story about the hypocrisy and racism through the eyes of a young African-American man.  A good, hard slap in the face of the Christian Church as well.

My Life – Anton Chekhov

A great short novel searching for the essence of fulfillment.  Chekhov looks beyond what is easy to say and hard to do.  He shows us the inner and outer turmoil that pursuing such a path can take.

Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse

Casey had asked me to read this for some time.  I finally listened to him.  I should have read it a long time ago.  Great story.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick

Bounty-hunters, shagging androids, flying cars, ray-guns.  Pretty cool.

The Short Reign of Pippin the IV – John  Steinbeck

A legendary American writer taking the piss out of the french for just over 100 pages.  Pretty damn funny.  An added bonus is that there is no resorting to the use of the phrase “freedom fries”.

The Crack-Up – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Essays and articles relating to Fitzgerald’s very public downfall.  Hemingway hated it.  I found it fascinating.

To Marry Medusa – Theodore Sturgeon

Vonnegut based the character Kilgore Trout on Sturgeon.  I had to read something by him, it had been peaking my interest for too long.  Good book.

The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien

Uneducated in Irish history, still found it hilarious.

Decline & Fall – Evelyn Waugh

Completely absurd in a good way.

Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman

Highly entertaining first Gaiman experience.

The Genius & the Goddess – Aldous Huxley

I was still on a Crome Yellow hangover (see below) when I read this one.  It is no Brave New World, but it re-invigorated the Huxley love inside me

Bend Sinister – Vladimir Nabokov

Disturbing book.  OK, so it’s Nabokov.

Riders to the Sea – J.M. Synge

Like The Poor Mouth, this one is all about Irish misery, but without the humor.

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor – Gabriel García Márquez

The true story of the survival of a Columbian sailor swept over board in the Gulf of Mexico during a storm.

Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler

A tough book.  Koestler’s parody of the Stalinist Purges.

Man in the Dark – Paul Auster

Auster was doing some experimental stuff with the plot in this one.  Great writer, but he kind of left the reader high and dry about 2/3 of the way in.

How I Became a Famous Novelist – Steve Hely

Hilarious.

Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

Classic.

Red Dog, Red Dog – Patrick Lane

Interesting story.  Not sure the massive poetic descriptions matched the dour, sadistic tone of the book.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

Multi-talented guy.  Still not completely sold on this book, but Eggers skill is obvious.

The Painted Word – Tom Wolfe

Modern Art 101.

At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Correspondence – Michael Burlingame

The writings of Lincoln’s Secretary.  Sheds some interesting light on Abe’s White House.

The Confessions of Nat Turner – William Styron

A portrait of the agony and destruction caused by slavery.

The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft

Had to read the origin of the phenomenon.  It was alright.

Not My Favorites (and here’s why):

The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

Pandering and sentimental, but not in a good way.

Ham on Rye – Charles Bukowski

Predictable.  I know enough drunken, slovenly assholes in my real life.

Adventures in the Skin Trade – Dylan Thomas

I chose the wrong time to read this one.  Whatever book I read before or after Kavalier & Clay was doomed.  I will try it again in the future and give it its full due then.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce

I know.  I know.  How can you put Ulysses up top and this one down at the bottom.  There are a couple of reasons I can think of straight away.  Inside my copy of this book is a bus timetable from 2002.  I had purchased this book in Oxford as I was about to hop on a bus to Liverpool 7 years ago.  I made sure to keep the timetable as both a bookmark and a reference to the place where I bought it.  Well, that bookmark saw the first 30 pages of Portrait a number of times.  I never prepared to read this book like I did for Ulysses.  With Ulysses I was ready to take it on, however ignorant I was.  With Portrait I was not.  Which brings me to another reason…Dedalus is hard work.  He is a genius and being inside his head, even in Ulysses, is extremely demanding to the average reader like me.  But in Ulysses we are with Bloom most of the time, so that intensity I found difficult in Portrait is broken up by the little bowler capped fellow.  The things I found so endearing and accessible about Ulysses seemed to be completely absent from Portrait.

Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley

Boring, my Lord.  All the characters were vapid wastes of space.  I love Huxley but this book did me in.

Re-reads:

Coming Up for Air – George Orwell

Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Winter of Our Discontent – John Steinbeck

Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka