My 5 Favorite Books of 2017

Brilliant insights as always, and I cannot tell you how excited I am to get a taste of that coffee. I finally read Woman in the Dunes last year, and subsequently saw the film and I adored both. I don't know what it is, but there is something alluring in the desert dunes. My favorite Ballard is probably Vermillion Sands, so really recommend that one if you haven't picked it up already. Can be read in a day or two, and each story is more memorable and unique than the last. Again, I have to continue to stress Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name. I have now read it four times in four months, and it is quickly dethroning Blood Meridian as my (possibly) all time favorite.

The way you talk about Absalom, Absalom! is how I feel about my current read, Alan Moore's Jerusalem. I bought the book the day it came out and it intimidated me from the shelf until I finally started reading it right after Christmas. It's a monster of a book, it's dense and slow but it is so rewarding.

Man, I have to get on Mishima. A close friend has been trying to get me to read it for years. I'll have to give the Rulfo another pass as well, I think I also read it too quickly the first time. My top 5: Operation Shylock (Philip Roth), A Posthumous Confession (Marcellus Emants), Concrete (Thomas Bernhard), Memoirs of Hadrian (Marguerite Yourcenar), The Book of Disquiet (Fernando Pessoa).