My Year in Books: 2013

This won't be a Top 10 list since I think I only read one book published in 2013: Year Zero: A History of 1945 by Ian Buruma. But I like looking back and remembering what was really great reading and identifying trends, even though many of them were deliberate. For example, I finished reading all the major Graham Green books this year: The Confidential Agent, A Sort of Life, and Ways of Escape. I haven't finished his collected essay or plays yet, but may have to move onto biographies.

I have a great interest in film and am teaching a course on Japanese cinema, thus I read several books related to film: The Sweet Smell of Success BFI, The Seed and the Sower (inspiration for Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), Night of the Iguana (obviously source material for the film), Detour BFI, Cache BFI, Night and the City BFI, City of Sadness BFI, Noriko's Smiling (about Ozu's Late Spring), Reframing Japanese Cinema, Currents in Japanese Cinema, Reading A Japanese Film, The Samurai Film, and The Yakuza Movie Book.

I have lived in Japan for many years, so there were books read that related to Japan, Japanese society, culture, history, and literature as well: Five Rings Miyamoto Musashi as translated by my friend David Groff, Schocking Crimes of Postwar Japan, People Who Eat Darkness Richard Llyod Parry, Tokyo: A Cultural History, A Strange Tale from East of the River and Other Stories Kafu Nagai, Tokyo Megacity, Ozu, and The Japan Journals 1947-2004 Donald Richie, Confessions of a Mask Yukio Mishima, The Sound of the Mountain Yasunari Kawabata, Okinawa Robert Leckie, and Mark Meli's Craft Beer in Japan.

I am also a fan of crime/noir fiction and nonfiction so that means books from writers like Charles Willeford (Sideswipe, The Way We Die Now, The Woman Chaser, and Shark Infested Custard) and Elmore Leonard (LaBrava and Road Dogs). Some other books from this genre that haven't been menitoned yet are Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Underground, White Jazz from James Ellroy, and Richard Price's Lush Life.

There are quite a few contemporary writers that I like and am trying to catch (or keep) up with like: Bret Eason Ellis (Imperial Bedrooms), David Foster Wallace (Oblivion: Stories), Mario Vargas Llosa (Who Killed Palomino Malero), Dave Eggers (A Hologram for a King), Jess Walters (We Live In Water), Sherman Alexie (War Dances), Paul Theroux (Dark Star Express & The Lower River), Junot Diaz (This Is How You Lose Her), Joan Didion (A Book of Common Prayer, Run River, & Democracy), Muriel Spark (The Driver's Seat), Nick Hornby (More Baths, Less Talking).

Sometimes my reading is directed or inspired by travel. Earlier this year I visited Cambodia (Pol Pot Philip Short and Phnom Penh Noir edited by Christopher Moore) via Bangkok (Bangkok Found Alex Kerr). I decided to read Juan Cortazar's Hopscotch for my trip to Argentina. I read Okinawa by Leckie while traveling there.

I also like to make time for classic writers and books: Charles Bukowski (Women), James Dickey (Deliverance), James Jones (From Here To Eternity), Kingsley Amis (The Old Devils), Charles Portis (Escape Velocity), The Sword of Honor Trilogy (Men At Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, Unconditional Surrender) from Evelyn Waugh, Mikhail Bugalov (The Master and the Margarita).

Music is another great interest, so I read Patti Smith's biography Just Kids, the oral history of punk rock-Please Kill Me, and Carl Wilson's philosophic book Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey To The End of Taste.

I suppose there were a few books that are somewhat hard to categorize as well: The Walking Dead Compendium I, A Life Full of Holes (translated by Paul Bowles-I'm a  big fan of his writing), and Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq by John W. Dower.

Comments

[Edward]

Whilst I have been busy with my masters course this year I am still humbled by the ratio of the books I have read to those you have read.

[Edward]

Last year that is.

[MC]

Yeah, I've only read 12 so far this year, but several were 400 plus pages.