I worked too much this year. Maybe that’s an excuse for a larger and nastier ambivalence though—it usually is. But for whatever reason, there were a lot of big books this year I couldn’t bring myself to read. They seemed like they would require too much of me in future conversations, and it’s so much easier to say “I haven’t read that yet” knowing that “yet” is disingenuous. The few things I read and loved, the books I easily could talk […]
A Year of Favorites: Sean H. Doyle
2015 WAS A GOOD YEAR AND A GOOD YEAR AIN’T A THING TO SCOFF AT Year-end lists are always so hot/cold/sterile/bacterial and feel kind of gross in a lot of ways because it’s always clear that things get overlooked or things get omitted or things get hyped and everyone is either mad happy or mad bummed after reading them. This is not a list as much as it is a shout in the liner notes of a record that I […]
A Year of Favorites: Mairead Case
Because I also make what I consume—and I mean this in the nourishing way not the money one, though I do tithe wages and I always spend money in bookstores, and on friends’ art—my year-end list is a personal thing. It’s almost a medical record. I read, and then I write.
A Year of Favorites: Mark Doten
For me, 2014 was a year for the riff-based and voice-based, for works that freeze time or otherwise kill that sort-of-ticking narrative clock, bypassing scene- and character-building modes of realism to immerse themselves in the turnings of the brain and the spinning-out of ideas. Within that broad grouping, here are two books and a podcast episode that I especially liked.
A Year of Favorites: Lisa Lucas
For me, the end of the year is always a fraught dash to try to get to all of the things that I meant to love (in a timely manner) over the past 12 months. As such, making a list of favorites, or rounding up my year in the aggressive consumption of culture, is always a bittersweet task–so many good intentions paving the road to a list of things that aren’t really reflective of all of the things I might […]
A Year of Favorites: Molly Templeton
The nice thing about the word “favorite” is that I don’t have to tart up my picks with the word “best”; I don’t have to pretend that I want to argue about what makes something the best, and who gets to decide that, or have the ghosts of all the other people with their best-ie opinions hovering over my shoulder, wondering why I didn’t include X or Y or why I am so passionately tired of hearing about Boyhood and […]
A Year of Favorites: Mairead Case
“I wrote this book in a circular home on a hill, overlooking the city, which roams while we are sleeping; I wrote it in a café with my friends; I wrote it as I looked for hidden streets, while sitting in desolate and lush spaces. I wanted to say language leaves a trace, also my saying I have walked. And, this is important, because, though these marks do not render precisely the picture of our crisis, they do show where […]
A Year of Favorites: Dmitry Samarov
I’ve railed against lists for years and years. Ranking art is is troubling for many reasons and all we’re usually left with after is inflated egos and hurt feelings. Comparing things people make is often pointless because nobody starts out with the same intent or arrives at anything resembling a similar result. That said, sharing the things one has enjoyed in the hope that others might also enjoy it can be worthwhile. Here are a few of mine. Some of […]