DECEMBER 2003
62. Twisty Little Passages : An Approach to Interactive Fiction by Nick Montfort
61. Blankets by Craig Thompson
60. Hamlet on the Holodeck : The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet Murray
59. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
58. The Girl In the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
57. My Life In the Nineties by Lyn Hejinian
Ten stellar new poems continuing Lyn Hejinian's My Life project. My only complaint: as the My Life project proceeds, new poems are added, but the earlier poems are also supposed to be undergoing revision—this new volume doesn't contain any new versions of earlier poems, leading me to wonder where they can be found, or if they even exist.
56. Peace Out, Dawg! Tales from Ground Zero by G.B. Trudeau
Lame title, but a solid collection of Doonesbury strips from 2001.
55. I Remember by Joe Brainard
NOVEMBER 2003
54. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
notes one | two
53. Nightwork by Christine Schutt
52. The Water's Easy Reach by Louis Jenkins
A chapbook of prose poems from a grizzled Minnesotan, featuring woods, lakes, snow, and a blurb from Robert Bly. Sounds sketchy, but these poems contain enough deft moves to hold my interest.
51. Parables and Portraits by Stephen Mitchell
These poems (mostly prose poems) reimagine characters from mythology, folktales, spiritual texts, Eastern teachings, plus a few more contemporary figures (Spinoza, Picasso, Freud). There's a kind of "California" quality to much of this, and the project of rethinking archetypal figures has been done elsewhere, but the book's sincerity and clarity recommend it.
50. The World Doesn't End by Charles Simic
notes
OCTOBER 2003
49. The Woman In Kicking Horse Reservoir by Richard Hugo
Montana poems: bars, rivers, pretty girls in small towns. Sentimental, but Hugo has a nice dense lyric worth checking out. A few poems are probably enough: the settings of these poems change, but the style and voice are consistent to the point of fossilizing into formula.
48. Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein
notes one | two
47. Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson
46. Conduit by Barrett Watten
45. Speck : A Curious Collection of Uncommon Things by Peter Buchanan-Smith
Handsome volume documenting collections of quotidian detritus and urban projects. Wonderful.
SEPTEMBER 2003
44. Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
notes
43. The Trouble With Normal by Michael Warner
notes one | two
42. Mutations by Rem Koolhaas & friends
notes one | two | three
41. Globalhead by Bruce Sterling
notes
40. The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard
39. Home Truths by David Lodge
Tidy novella about literary celebrity. Lightly provocative, breezily written—a pleasant-enough afternoon diversion.
38. Consciousness and the Novel by David Lodge
AUGUST 2003
37. The Age of Huts by Ron Silliman
36. Plasma / Paralleles / “X” by Barrett Watten
35. Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo
notes
34. Conspiracy Culture by Peter Knight
33. The Lover by Marguerite Duras
32. Space by Clark Coolidge
notes
31. Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman
30. The City In Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee
JULY 2003
29. Sacred Geometry by Miranda Lundy
28. A History of God by Karen Armstrong
An exhaustive, intensely compressed overview of 4,000 years of theological debate. A fascinating book, excellent for newcomers to the topic (like myself) although the sheer density of the volume is occasionally numbing.
JUNE 2003
27. Entropy and Art by Rudolf Arnheim
A book-length essay: part critique of information theory, and part an attempt to locate a basis for art crisicism in physics. The latter endeavor struck me as particularly wrong-headed. A few interesting points here and there but ulitmately I found this to be a frustrating read.
26. The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
25. Idoru, by William Gibson
notes one | two
MAY 2003
24. Say You Want A Revolution [The Invisibles Book 1] by Grant Morrison
Time-travel conspiracy comics. Mindbending, but the muddled "Arcadia" arc disappoints after the promising opening of the "Down and Out In Heaven or Hell" segments.
23. The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
This book argues that the inhabitants of early civilizations had no subjective consciousness but rather existed in a state of constant hallucination. Improbable, but Jaynes makes his case with panache. Brings in brain chemistry, Biblical and literary scholarship, and a compelling history of ancient religious practice, idolatry, magic, oracles, and ecstatic states. Fascinating.
22. South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
A sparse little tale of obsession. Breezy, apparently simple, yet with strange and unsettling underpinnings. Thanks to Hannah.
APRIL 2003
21. Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
Audacious, bawdy, and wrenching. Ultimately deserving of a great deal of the hype that's accrued to it.
20. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki
An excellent series of introductory lectures.
19. Wittgenstein's Mistress, by David Markson
A heartbreaking experimental novel depicting a consciousness in solitary decline. Thanks to Robin.
18. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
A sprawling SF epic that functions as a sort of index of contemporary cool (it prominently features noise music, samurai, Mafia dons, skate-punks, fast cars, railguns, etc etc). Those elements are grafted onto an exigesis on consciousness, viral systems, and ancient Sumerian myth. Some problematic subtexts but a hell of a ride.
MARCH 2003
17. The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
16. Adrift on the Nile by Naguib Mahfouz
15. Birds of America by Lorrie Moore
FEBRUARY 2003
14. The Book of Ecclesiastes (King James translation, in the stylish Grove Press 'Pocket Canons' edition)
13. Dusk, by James Salter
12. Assorted Fire Events, by David Means
11. Fifteen False Propositions About God, by Jack Spicer
10. Language, by Jack Spicer
9. The October Palace, by Jane Hirshfield
8. Lust, by Susan Minot
7. Speaking With the Angel, edited by Nick Hornby
Verdicts? The Hornby and Minot story collections have spots of brilliance but mostly work as breezy reads; at times they border on tepid. Dusk and Assorted Fire Events are the stronger collections here. The two volumes of Jack Spicer's poetry are interesting but they didn't always connect with me—I'm still not sure I have enough of a grasp on Spicer's project, but it warrants further investiagaton. The Hirshfield, on the other hand, is a devastating batch of lyrical, sensual, spiritual poems—her relative accessibility does not in any way dilute her restless intelligence or the startling clarity of her vision.
(I'll leave Ecclesiasties aside for now.)
JANUARY 2003
6. Undercurrents : The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music, edited by Rob Young (thanks Chris)
5. Emergence by Steven Johnson (2x)
4. The Duino Elegies by Ranier Maria Rilke
3. True Names by Vernor Vinge
2. Game On : The History and Culture of Videogames, edited by Lucien King (thanks Cathy)
1. The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman
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