Another Year of Great Reading

Though I’ve never broken the top 10 in the reading contest, I always like to think I’d score near the top of the heap for variety. Every reader has genres that he or she favors and steers away from. Perhaps some of my fellow contestants read a lot of graphic novels; others favor mysteries, thrillers, and police procedurals. Still others gravitate toward history and biography, science, or Westerns.

Year after year, every year, I read at least a little of nearly type. And not because the three different book discussion groups to which I belong force me to. If anything, my personal taste is more catholic than all three book groups put together.

In 2013 read portions of various mystery series (Ed McBain, Nicolas Freeling, Ian Rankin, A.C. Baantjer, Bartholomew Gill, John Brady), sampled a little graphic fiction (Green Lantern Chronicles, Daredevil: Vision Quest), dipped into recent science fiction (William Gibson’s Spook Country and David Brin’s Existence; both okay, nothing spectacular), and zipped through the Hunger Games trilogy (actually quite enjoyable, but I skipped the movies).

I read pop culture history and bios (several Jack Nicholson biographies, Tanya Lee Stone’s The Good, The Bad, and the Barbie, Peter Carlin’s Bruce; and Mickey Dolenz’s memoir I’m a Believer and Andrew Sandoval’s day-by-day account of The Monkees because, after all, I had tickets to see the three surviving band members at the Schnitz in August).

I shook my head over World War II history (Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, Michael Jones’s Leningrad: state of siege), and appreciated Linda Tamura’s Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: coming home to Hood River, which talks about several of my late uncles, especially Taro and Min Asai. True-crime accounts made me shudder (The Anatomy Murders, Lisa Rosner’s book about proto serial killers Burke and Hare; Lost Girls: an unsolved American mystery by Robert Kolker; and Elizabeth Smart’s memoir). I also read some recent history, such as The Deserter’s Tale: the story of an ordinary soldier who walked away from the war in Iraq, by Joshua Key; and Jeremy Scahill’s dismaying Dirty Wars: the world is a battlefield, which seems to confirm that in certain ways, the president I voted for twice is worse than George W. Bush.

David Byrne’s How Music Works was thought-provoking and inspiring. Other nonfiction books (Judith Flanders’s The Invention of Murder: how the Victorians reveled in death and detection and created modern crime; Simon Garfield’s Just My Type: a book about fonts) had nifty topics, but fell somewhat short of expectations. I didn’t expect a lot from What’s a Dog For?: the surprising history, science, philosophy, and politics of man’s best friend, by John Homans, but found it pleasantly rewarding.

Last year I discovered Larry McMurtry, through the “back door” of his memoir of book selling, Books: a memoir. Then I delighted in The Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove, and Comanche Moon, none of which I’d ever read. McMurtry is very good company: gently wise, often sad or elegiac, with occasional horrific incidents that somehow don’t sting for long.

I verified that one of the darlings of book groups a few years back, Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, was indeed worth the visit. Other modern fiction, such as Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending and Nobel winner Alice Munro’s The Love of a Good Woman, evoked admiration and respect but not so much delight, let alone love. Several classics also made the list: Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, both welcome rereads.

Put a gun to my head and ask me what were the most enjoyable reads of 2013, I’d say Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, a gorgeous, romantic novel about filmmaking and storytelling, love and betrayal, the Donner Party and Richard Burton, the north coast of Italy and the Pacific Northwest. I made one of the weirdest comparisons ever to one of my book groups: like the heavy metal band Black Sabbath, who would stuff a single composition with three or more different great guitar riffs that a lesser band would separate into individual cuts, Walter wasn’t afraid to “waste” a broad array of stories and tales inside a single pair of covers.

Carole and I also fell in love with Craig Johnson’s Sheriff Longmire mystery series, about a rural Wyoming law enforcement officer. Great landscape, terrific characters, and often hilarious dialogue. We read the first book, The Cold Dish, separately; and the next three, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, and Another Man’s Moccasins, aloud to each other over dinners. The first season of the A&E series “Longmire,” is a fairly enjoyable video adaptation, too.

I think the most memorable nonfiction I read last year, though flawed, was Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other, and Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves: the real American war in Vietnam. Turkle spends a lot of time on robots, artificial intelligence, and computer simulations, but her discussion of how smartphone technology is changing human behavior and psychology is sobering, and I see the possible evidence for it every single day, on the street and in the Portland stores, offices, and theater stages and film sets where I operate.

After interviewing U.S. military veterans and surviving Vietnamese nationals, and reviewing secret Pentagon documents, Turse shows how Vietnam wasn’t just one My Lai, but hundreds, year after year, at a cost of thousands of Vietnamese civilians’ lives and American service people’s sanity. One cannot but suspect the same must be true of more recent wars as well.

2013 Reading List

I have divided these by author for most of the ones I chose myself. The other small categories have explanatory subheads. And I’ve left off another thousand pages or so of play scripts I studied for auditions or performed in staged readings, and stories and excerpts I read aloud for my “Story Time for Grownups” performances at Grendel’s Coffee House:

Baantjer, A.C. – DeKok and the Dead Harlequin  (218p)

Baantjer, A.C. – DeKok and the Sorrowing Tomcat  (240p)

Baantjer, A.C. – DeKok and the Disillusioned Corpse  (245p)

Baantjer, A.C. – DeKok and the Careful Killer  (245p)

Borge, Victor and Robert Sherman – My Favorite Intermissions  (187p)

Brady, John – The Good Life  (356p)

Brady, John – A Carra King  (362p)

Brin, David – Existence  (557p)

Broome, John – The Green Lantern Chronicles, vol. 1 (1959-1960;  158p) 

Burton, Betsy – The King’s English: adventures of an independent bookseller  (272p)

Byrne, David – How Music Works  (335p)

Calero, Dennis – Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, the Authorized Adaptation  (151p)

Carlin, Peter Ames – Bruce  (470p)

Collins, Suzanne – The Hunger Games  (374p)

Collins, Suzanne – Catching Fire  (391p)

Collins, Suzanne – Mockingjay  (400p)

Cotterill, Colin – Anarchy and Old Dogs  (272p)

Dolenz, Micky w/Mark Bego – I’m a Believer: my life of monkees, music, and madness  (193p)

Diamandis, Peter H. and Steven Kotler – Abundance: the future is better than you think  (304p)

Ehrlich, Gretel – Facing the Wave: a journey in the wake of the tsunami  (218p)

Eisler, Barry – Rain Fall  (365p)

Flanders, Judith – The Invention of Murder: how the Victorians reveled in death and detection and created modern crime  (466p)

Freeling, Nicolas – A Dressing of Diamonds  (234p)

Freeling, Nicolas – A Long Silence  (250p)

Freeling, Nicolas – The Widow  (250p)

Freeling, Nicolas – What Are the Bugles Blowing For?  (216p)

Freeling, Nicolas – Sand Castles  (209p)

Freeling, Nicolas – Lake Isle  (236p)

Freeling, Nicolas – One Damn Thing After Another  (238p)

Freeling, Nicolas – The Night Lords  (251p)

Freeling, Nicolas – Castang’s City  (245p)

“Galbraith, Robert” (J.K. Rowling) – The Cuckoo’s Calling  (455p)

Garfield, Simon – Just My Type: a book about fonts  (341p)

Geissman, Grant – Feldstein: the MAD art and Fantastic art of Al Felstein!  (412p)

George, Elizabeth – Just One Evil Act  (719p)

Gibson, William – Spook Country  (371p)

Gill, Bartholomew – McGarr on the Cliffs of Moher  (246p)

Gill, Bartholomew – The Death of an Irish Tradition  (335p)

Gill, Bartholomew – McGarr and the P.M. of Belgrave Square  (240p)

Hillenbrand, Laura – Unbroken: a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption  (398p)

Highsmith, Patricia – Little Tales of Misogyny  (119p)

Homans, John – What’s a Dog For?: the surprising history, science, philosophy, and politics of man’s best friend  (241p)

Ishiguro, Kazuo – Nocturnes  (221p)

Ishiguro, Kazuo – The Unconsoled  (535p)

Johnson, Craig – The Cold Dish  (354p)

Jones, Michael – Leningrad: state of siege  (296p)

Key, Joshua – The Deserter’s Tale: the story of an ordinary soldier who walked away from the war in Iraq  (231p)

Klosterman, Chuck – I Wear the Black Hat: grappling with villains (real and imagined)  (199p)

Kolker, Robert – Lost Girls: an unsolved American mystery  (399p)

Leon, Donna – About Face  (278p)

Lepore, Jill – The Whites of Their Eyes: the Tea Party’s Revolution and the battle over American history  (165p)

Mack, David – Daredevil: Vision Quest  (115p)

Malaparte, Curzio – Kaputt  (437p)

Mamet, David – Writing in Restaurants  (160p)

Mamet, David – 3 Uses of the Knife: on the nature and purpose of drama  (80p)

Mamet, David – True and False: heresy and common sense for the actor  (127p)

McBain, Ed – Give the Boys a Great Big Hand  (190p)

McBain, Ed – The Heckler  (254p)

McBain, Ed – See Them Die  (188p)

McBain, Ed – Lady, Lady, I Did It!  (180p)

McBain, Ed – The Empty Hours: cases of the 87th Precinct  (contains “The Empty Hours,” “J,” and “Storm”; 240p)

McDougal, Dennis – Five Easy Decades: how Jack Nicholson became the biggest movie star in modern times  (446p)

McMurtry, Larry – The Last Picture Show  (280p)

McMurtry, Larry – Books: a memoir  (259p)

McMurtry, Larry – Lonesome Dove  (857p)

McMurtry, Larry – Custer  (173p)

McMurtry, Larry – Comanche Moon  (716p)

McMurtry, Larry – Duane’s Depressed  (574p, large print)

Miéville, China – Embassytown  (345p)

Monk, Katherine – Joni: the creative odyssey of Joni Mitchell  (261p)

Murakami, Haruki – After the Quake  (147p)

Murakami, Haruki – Sputnik Sweetheart  (210p)

Nesbø, Jo – The Redeemer  (562p)

Nesbø, Jo – The Bat  (374p)

Patchett, Ann – Bel Canto  (322p)

Percy, Walker – The Moviegoer  (242p)

Rankin, Ian – Knots and Crosses  (251p)

Rankin, Ian – Hide and Seek  (272p)

Rankin, Ian – Tooth and Nail  (287p)

Rankin, Ian – Strip Jack  (269p)

Rankin, Ian – The Black Book  (340p)

Rankin, Ian – Mortal Causes  (310p)

Rankin, Ian – Let It Bleed  (287p)

Raucher, Herman – Summer of ’42  (244p)

Rosner, Lisa – The Anatomy Murders: being the true and spectacular history of Edinburgh’s notorious Burke and Hare and the man of science who abetted them in the commission of their most heinous crimes  (269p)

Roth, Philip – Sabbath’s Theater  (451p)

Rowling, J.K. – The Casual Vacancy  (503p)

Sandoval, Andrew – The Monkees: the day-by-day story of the ’60s TV pop sensation  (280p)

Scahill, Jeremy – Dirty Wars: the world is a battlefield  (529p)

Schwalbe, Will – The End of Your Life Book Club  (329p)

Sellers, Robert – Hollywood Hellraisers: the wild lives and fast times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson  (313p)

Smart, Elizabeth – My Story  (308p)

Stephenson, Neal – The Big U  (308p)

Stone, Tanya Lee – The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: a doll’s history and her impact on us (unauthorized)  (110p)

Tamura, Linda – Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: coming home to Hood River  (272p)

Turse, Nick – Kill Anything That Moves: the real American war in Vietnam  (355p)

Vonnegut, Kurt – God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian  (92p)

Waid, Mark – Daredevil by Mark Waid, Vol. 4  (128p)

Walters, Guy – Hunting Evil: the Nazi war criminals who escaped and the quest to bring them to justice  (412p)

Wartzman, Rick – Obscene in the Extreme: the burning and banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath  (232p)

Wood, Ira – You’re Married TO HER?  (205p)

Wright, Lawrence – Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the prison of belief  (372p)

Zauzmer, Julie – Conning Harvard: Adam Wheeler, the con artist who faked his way into the Ivy League  (196p)

Book discussion group

Lears, Jackson – Rebirth of a Nation: the making of modern America, 1877-1920  (359p)

Faulkner, William – As I Lay Dying  (261p)

Fountain, Ben – Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk  (307p)

Albee, Edward – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  (257p)

Pinter, Harold – Betrayal  (117p)

Boyle, T.C. – The Women  (451p)

Nesbø, Jo – The Snowman  (384p)

Skloot, Rebecca – The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks  (337p)

Hardy, Thomas – Jude the Obscure  (497p)

McCarthy, Cormac – The Road  (287p)

Second book discussion group

Turkle, Sherry – Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other  (357p)

Kowal, Mary Robinette – Shades of Milk and Honey  (304p)

Otsuka, Julie – When the Emperor Was Divine  (144p)

Paton, Alan – Cry, the Beloved Country  (312p)

Fadiman, Anne – The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down  (288p)

Sotomayor, Sonia – My Beloved World  (308p)

Kingsolver, Barbara – Flight Behavior  (436p)

Potok, Chaim – The Chosen  (284p)

Zafón, Carlos Ruiz – The Shadow of the Wind  (487p)

Third book discussion group

Walter, Jess – The Zero  (326p)

DeLillo, Don – Point Omega  (117p)

Otsuka, Julie – The Buddha in the Attic  (129p)

Byatt, A.S. – Sugar and Other Stories  (248p)

Edugyan, Esi – Half Blood Blues  (343p)

Eugenides, Jeffrey – The Marriage Plot  (406p)

Walter, Jess – Beautiful Ruins  (348p)

Barnes, Julian – The Sense of an Ending  (163p)

Munro, Alice – The Love of a Good Woman  (340p)

Patchett, Ann – State of Wonder  (353p)

Read for Free-Lance Work

Price, E. Hoffman [writing as Martin McCall] – The White Savage: the complete tales of Matalaa  (357p)

Truett Long, Edwin – Dr. Thaddeus C. Harker: The Complete Tales  (354p)

Books read aloud

Alexie, Sherman – Ten Little Indians  (243p)

Johnson, Craig – Death Without Company  (275p)

Johnson, Craig – Kindness Goes Unpunished  (288p)

Newhart, Bob – I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This! and other things that strike me as funny  (239p)

Johnson, Craig – Another Man’s Moccasins  (290p)

Total books = 138

Total pages = 42,122