My 5 favorite books I read in 2021 (Patron Only Early Access / Ad-Free)
What a year.
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Top 6 A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro Ordesa, Manuel Vilas The Stars at Noon, Denis Johnson The Forgiven, Lawrence Osborne Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard In Paradise, Peter Mathiessen
1. Sombrero Fallout - Richard Brautigan 2. Hurricane season - Fernada Melchor 3. A Coney Island of the Mind - Lawrence Ferlinghetti 4. Unwitting Street - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky 5. The Devil all the Time - Donald Ray Pollock Honorable mentions - Haunted - Chuck Palahniuk - A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess - Ham on Rye - Charles Bukowski - The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson - Trout Fishing in America - Richard Brautigan - Cathedral - Raymond Carver
My Neighbors actually invited me over for Christmas dinner and I seemed to have lived through it.
That is fantastic and refreshing to hear, I hope it was a great time.
5. Zuckerman Unbound by Philip Roth 4. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor 3. The Will To Power by Friedrich Nietzsche 2. Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowery 1. The Peregrine by J.A. Baker Honorable Mention: The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard
Mine was three differnt short story collections by Tjechov (best stories being the steppe and Fear), Huckleberry Finn (i know, but it really just is that good...),Nils Holgersson by Lagerlöf, Portrait of the artist as a young man and Days With Borges by Alberto Manguel. Didnt read a whole lot of books this year.. About 20 books that i also re-read.
5. White Noise by Don DeLillo 4. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck 3. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 2. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country by William Gass 1. Dissipatio H.G. The Vanishing by Guido Morselli If I was doing a top ten these 5 more would fill out the list - The Body Artist and Point Omega by Don DeLillo Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carre The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Dino by Nick Tosches A Select Party by Nathaniel Hawthorne Hallucinations From Hell by Gregg Turner Sloth by Don Jolly Stone Male by Joe Carducci (forever in fragments) lots remain unfinished... Brave New World, Confessions of a Mask, To The Lighthouse...
My 5: Against the Day, Peace, Mason & Dixon, The Recognitions, Moby Dick.
Two notes on Crash: I love a book that uses the word “Pubis” more than twenty times. I also had a lot of fun showing the book to my partner and telling them to read a random line because it was so wild which also happened like twenty times. I think my favorite from last year was Absalom, Absalom! but Crash was pretty close to the top as well
My favorites (in no particular order): Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo; My Struggle 1 (I believe in English it's "A death in the family"), Karl Ove Knausgard; Fathers and Sons, Turgenev; The Picture of Dorian Gray (Uncensored Harvard Edition), Oscar Wilde; The Father Goriot, Balzac (all of them in Portuguese, my native language).
Hell yeah. My favorites of 2021 were (in no particular order): Doghouse Roses by Steve Earle All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy Man in the High Castle by PKD Sun & Steel by Yukio Mishima (reread) The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by PKD. Really enjoyed jumping into PKD for the first time. Fucking weird. Cheers.
In no order: As I Lay Dying by Faulkner Schachnovelle by Zweig (Translated as Chess Story) New Finnish Grammar by Marani Independent People by Laxness Kamouraska by Hebert (I finished The Erasers by Robbe-Grillet in 2022, but that would certainly be in my top 5) Honorable mentions: La Guerre, Yes Sir! by Carrier Transparent Things by Nabokov Dissipatio H.G. by Morselli Re-reads: Sult by Hamsun (Hunger, re-read in Norwegian) Blynatten by Jahnn (Die Nacht aus Blei, re-read in Norwegian. The Night of Lead in English.) Next Episode by Aquin
Thank you for the video Cliff. My favourite reads of 2021 were: 1. Under the skin by Michel Faber 2. Perfume by Patrick Suskind 3. Perfect Tense by Michael Bracewell 4. They came like swallows by William Maxwell Jr 5. A month in the country by J L Carr Honourable mentions: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles The Quiet American by Graham Greene In a lonely place by Dorothy B Hughes Russian Roulette: the life and times of Graham Greene by Richard Greene (no relation) Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata The North Water by Ian McGuire The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
Not sure why I decide to watch stuff like this when I'm trying to buy fewer books. Oh well. My top 5 for 2021 (not including re-reads): 5. Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck 4. Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 3. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 2. The Other Name: Septology VII by Jon Fosse (not published in English yet, I think) 1. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo - by a pretty wide margin Honorable mentions: Later by Stephen King Nothing to See Here - Kevin Wilson
Top five for me, - Death to the BS artists of South Texas, was actually a late Xmas present and damn, so good. Train Dreams, I finished this the same weekend the review came out and man, boy did that story pivot after the fire. Ask the Dust, by John Fante - Bukowski without the bravado, or maybe more bravado and just less balls. hilarious with Grit. Disgrace by Coetzee, which i still dont know how to feel about. it flew by with smooth writing and great concepts till THAT scene, which was so brusing i almost didnt finish the book. The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break gets No1. Its amazing, and I am waiting for cliff to review it. a meditation on being outcast in society. Great book. plus the Author replies if you send him drunk and rambling emails at 2am, which is always a plus