Westcott's 2013 challenge

I barely squeaked out 50 last year, but a large chunk of those were graphic novels. I'm sure I'll do a few of those this year, but I'm not sure there will be so many and so it's unlikely I'll make it all the way to 50. I do like to keep track, though, so I'll give it a shot.

1. Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner.

It doesn't matter if you'll reach your target or not. Most important is: ENJOY your reading. Happy reading :-)

2. Persepolis 2 by Margane Satrapi - I didn't like it as much as the first part, but it's still pretty great.

3. Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - A favorite of mine from childhood that was great to share with my children

4. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev - In spite of having read a decent chunk of Doestoevski's work, I haven't read much else in terms of Russian lit. Since this one was short and well known, I figured it was a good idea to check it out. I liked it. Barazov was a well-developed character, and it looked at a lot of social/political ideas without making you feel like you were reading a treatise, just seeing real characters live out and respond to the big ideas and changes in the society.

5. Alice Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Fun, but not quite as great as I'd hoped and a lot of the punning and cleverness was a little over the girls' heads. Takes a long time dealing with her getting bigger and smaller over and over again.

6. The Anatomy Lesson By Philip Roth. Not as good as Zuckerman Unbound. Still shows Zuckerman struggling with his literary reputation and the personal fallout of his writings, but the character wallows in the same kind of ugliness that he is torn about in his books. Some very interesting sections, but just didn't connect as much with me.

7. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. One with the kids. I had never read it before. The language was more difficult than I'd hoped, so the kids got a little lost sometimes, but they loved the story.

8. The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. In some ways I wish this had a different title. I liked this book, but I was always wanting to get back to Oscar. The book, though, spends a lot of time on the rest of his family. I thought this was all setting the scene for Oscar, but it was really the family's story (and the Dominican Republic's), something that was driven home by the very end and reinforced when I thought back to the very beginning. Oscar's specific nerdiness made me compare it too much to Fortress of Solitude, but they are very different.

9. Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman. Neither of these was as good as I'd hoped. Crisis is so sprawling and the story is so ridiculous. It is fascinating as an attempt to clean up the universe and a little overwhelming as an introduction to DC characters. Some cool moments, and seems important historically, but not the greatest piece of literature.
10. Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison. Dave McKean's art is unusual, but it's so abstract and so ugly that I had a hard time getting into this. Unlike Crisis, this one really felt like it was aiming for art and I don't think it got there for me. Didn't live up to Dark Knight Returns or Year One.

11. How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid. This was an early reviewer, and I got sucked into it and thoroughly enjoyed it, both on the level of character and in the sense of looking at a culture.

12. a visit from the goon squad by Jennifer Egan. This was great. Interconnected vignettes follow a music scene, a handful of families and a record label through three generations and look at growing up ( among other themes).

13. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. A reread in prep for teaching it. Ok, but cripplingly depressing.

Hi! Just found your thread. Very interesting reading list. Regarding The Anatomy Lesson, I was curious whether you read The Ghost Writer before Zuckerman Unbound. Also, are you planning on moving on to The Counterlife? That book is a trip and a half! (As you can probably tell, I am a huge Roth fan.) Cheers!

Yes, I read Ghost Writer first; I have the Zuckerman Bound collected edition, so I've made my way through the first three, but haven't done the Prague Orgy yet. I liked Ghost Writer better than Anatomy Lesson, but not as much as ZU. I don't have Counterlife, but I've still got Human Stain and American Pastoral sitting on my shelf, so if I feel like tackling any more Roth in the near future, it'll probably be one of those.

I recommend reading The Counter Life relatively soon after you read the Zuckerman Bound collection, because there's quite bit of carryover, story wise. In other words, it would be good to have the Zuckerman Bound stories fresh in your mind. But it's not a major deal. Human Stain and American Pastoral are both great. They both feature Zuckerman, but more as the storyteller than as the protagonist. However you do it, enjoy!

14. Charlotte's Web by E.B. White - Read with the girls. I like E.B. White and this is the best story of his. There are great moments in Trumpet of Swan and Stuart Little, but this is the one that hangs together as one story rather than as an episodic tale. It also has that great/terrible ending.

15. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - A good creepy story. Also a look into family love and tension, community, and the capacity of human cruelty, kindness, and duty. Looked like it was going to get cripplingly depressing, but the end saves it without becoming pat and undermining the real ugliness that we've seen.

16. Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut. I like Vonnegut and this is pretty standard Vonnegut, so that was good for me.
17. Building Stories By Chris Ware. Not as good as I'd hoped, but pretty impressive on several levels. Ware has some major talent, but he can be so miserable. I liked this much better than Jimmy Corrigan, which I couldn't bring myself to finish.

18. Blankets by Craig Thompson. A touching story and a hard read for someone who is still an Evangelical Christian, but definitely worth reading.

19. Marvels by Kurt Busiek. I liked the first part better than some later parts, but the idea here is great and I've found that Busiek is a favorite and the art is so distinctive. Instead of trying to put superheroes in the real world, it tries to look at the real people in a superhero world. Also a great intro to a lot of the Marvel universe, which I was largely unfamiliar with.

20. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson - The Realist era is not generally my favorite, but I do like 1920's Modernism and I kept hearing that Anderson was a big influence on a lot of great writers of the 20s, so I figured this was worth a shot. I don't know if I would like a long-form novel, but as interconnected short stories, they were powerful both individually and cumulatively. Some are better than others, but none of them overstayed their welcome.

21. Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb. This was a fun read. It looked at different parts of Superman's life in Smallville and Metropolis from different perspectives. A nice story.

22. The Prague Orgy by Philip Roth. I wish I had written this write up earlier, because, honestly, I don't remember much of this story, but I guess that says something. I mostly just wanted to finish the book.

23. Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar. This one is worth it just to look into the high concept idea of a communist Superman. It does some good things with it.

24. Astro City: Life in the Big City by Kurt Busiek. In some ways, it's kind of an extension of Marvels, but in its own universe instead of the pre-established Marvel one.

25. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. So much fun to revisit this with my oldest.

26. Generosity by Richard Powers. I like Powers's style of incorporating big scientific ideas and he gets at some cool things with genetics and happiness. I'm not sure that the metafictional quirks really came together, but worth reading.

27. Superman: Secret Identity by Kurt Busiek. I got into this one, cementing my interest in Busiek. He made Clark Kent a really interesting character for once, even if it's not the same Clark that everyone knows.

28. No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford. A more focused look at one incident on the front and the social and military aftermath it creates. A look into a world that is so foreign to me on so many levels.

29. My Lunches with Orson: Conversations between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles by Peter Biskind. Welles is a fascinating guy and this is a great look into him in these semi-private moments.

30. Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace. I like Wallace as an essay writer. Some of the more academic stuff is tough and I've never read Wittgenstein's Mistress, so it was hard to decide how much to really read the pieces on that, but overall a good read.

31. The Replacements' Let It Be by Colin Meloy. From the 33 1/3 series. Strange little story of Colin Meloy's childhood. I love the Replacements. They are my favorite band. Even though he doesn't actually go into much detail about the album itself, he gets into what it meant to him and why, which is so much of what loving the Replacements is. I don't even really like the Decemberists, but I enjoyed this.

32. The Plot by Will Eisner. I loved learning the history of this strange, evil document, but I have to say that Eisner's actual writing is a little clunky. He has characters deliver chunks of exposition and oversimplified opinions that just don't sound like actual speech. He's not usually one for subtlety necessarily, but I thought the personal touch to Contract with God helped carry that and that was missing here.

33. Astro City: Family Album by Kurt Busiek. I liked this better than the first volume. I liked to have some continuing stories to really give them time to develop and he's already given context for the world, which is rich and interesting one.

35. Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace. This has some amazingly interesting ideas that made my head hurt at times and got me talking about them enough that I probably annoyed my wife and friends. At times, the math-intensity was hard to take. I got through Calc BC, but that was 10+ years ago, so I got pretty lost at times. It also seemed strange when he decided to get specific about the math and when he kept it vague or didn't give examples. There were times when I'd go through 5-10 pages of frustration and think about giving up, but then he'd start to get to what the math meant and why it mattered and I'd be hooked back in.

36. Identity Crisis by Brad Meltzer. I wasn't sure about how I'd feel about this one, but I was sucked in, even though I hadn't even heard of some of the central characters. I wasn't sure how I felt about the resolution of the central mystery, but I loved the way that it ended at the very end and the questions that it raised about heroism, etc.

37. The Eternals by Neil Gaiman. I loved Sandman. This wasn't terrible, but was a bit of a disappointment. The plot itself never really grabbed me and managed to be both underdeveloped and confusingly complicated.

38. Astro City: Confession by Kurt Busiek. Another trip into Astro City. This might be the best superhero comic (not artsy graphic novel) I've ever read. The other contender is Hawkeye.

39. Astro City: The Tarnished Angel by Kurt Busiek. More Astro City, this time with a noir tinge.

40. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. This really got me to see not just what comics can do, but what they are always doing and what's going on within and between the frames. A great way to introduce these ideas with the actual visual vocabulary that it's explaining.

41. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. A great entry level philosophy text. If I were ever to teach philosophy, this is what I'd use to introduce the big ideas, big movements, and big thinkers. At first, the story seemed like just a frame for the lectures, but it does get more interesting as you go.

42. Aimless Love by Billy Collins. I like Billy Collins and this is a big collection of Billy Collins poems, so I liked it.

43. Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow - Kind of a hodgepodge, but none of the ideas ever really came together for me, so I was disappointed. Not terrible, but I'm glad it was a a free early reviewer.

44. Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. This one is a little more bitter and political than I think of is best from him.

45. Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain. This one is similar to Tom Sawyer Abroad, but doesn't have as much of the satire. It's a bit ridiculous in terms of plot and coincidence, but I think that's a little bit of the point.

46. Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis. Not as good as the first one in the series, but still has some great fantasy stuff.

47. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. Great story about a time in history I was never familiar with, but it is really not about the history so much as it is about the Whiskey Priest's struggle. Powerful and challenging.

48. Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas - Starts strong and the best poems are astonishing, but they start to run together and too many of them were a little incomprehensible to me.

49. McSweeney's 40 - The fiction was pretty hit and miss here, but the writings about the Egyptian revolution were great.

50. Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White - Not quite as good as Charlotte's Web, but I think it hangs together better than Stuart Little and I love White's style.

51-60. Y: The Last Man Vol 1-10. This had its ups and downs, but all in all it was pretty great.

61. A Year with C.S. Lewis

62. Why Are You So Sad by Jason Porter. An Early Review book.
Last book of the year.

2013 Breakdown
Total - 62
Short Story Collections - 3 (including McSweeney's)
Prose Novels & Novellas - 23
Nonfiction - 6
Poetry - 2
Plays - 1
Graphic Novels and Comics (fiction and nonfiction) - 27