The 2013 Book Challenge

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The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 07 Jan 2013 20:16

If no one else will do it, I will!

You all know the deal. Read books, list them here. Try to reach 50 (or whatever goal you decide for yourself). Post some reviews and thoughts on the books too if you'd like. This is a great place to find out about new books to read!

Here's my first for the year!

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg

Volume 2 of the biography. Probably not as well written as the first but overall I enjoyed it, and am working on the 3rd volume currently.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Asmus » 08 Jan 2013 07:26

You should read this one. It's amazing:
http://www.amazon.com/Success-Failure-P ... 0679737251

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 08 Jan 2013 07:53

Ooo, the short blurb I just read about it does look interesting. I just reserved it from my library!

The biography I'm reading now is refreshing in that it makes a serious effort to overturn the many myths about Picasso, however, there is almost nothing critical about Picasso's character or art. Picasso's repulsively selfish interactions with pretty much every single human being he ran into are explained away as a product of the times, and all of his art is described as a masterpiece or as practice for masterpieces. Please! I think it's totally ok to think Picasso is one of the greatest artists of all time and still think some of his pieces were garbage.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 08 Jan 2013 19:14

I'm ready to get started! I'm going to finish the last three Joseph Heller books that I wasn't able to complete in 2012, and my author for the year will be William Gibson. I also plan on reading a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick. My non-fiction books will most likely focus on psychedelics and/or drug-related topics. I'm going to make more of an effort this year to read what I really want to read, rather than trying to force myself to fulfill some silly goal (like reading all of Heller's boring dreck). However, I'm currently trying to finish Heller's "Closing Time," which is the sequel to Catch-22. Can't wait to see what everyone will read this year - good luck to all, and I hope you are able to complete your goals! My personal goal for this year will be 40 books, because I think it is doable with my current time available for reading, while still being a good challenge for me.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 08 Jan 2013 19:57

I'm in, of course. I would have started a topic but I haven't finished anything this year yet :(. My goal this year is to read more fiction, especially serious literature. I'm also increasingly interested in food and agriculture, and especially sustainability kind of issues relating to this, so I expect I'm going to read quite a lot on that topic. I have hundreds of books that I haven't read too, so I'll keep trying to get through those.

A William Gibson theme sounds interesting David, I've read a few books - Count Zero, Neuromancer, and Virtual Light I think. I might read some more this year too. Cyberpunk is a cool genre. We'll see.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 09 Jan 2013 08:54

Jeremy: So far I have only read Gibson's "Neuromancer," which was suggested as an out-of-course book by my university Science Fiction Literature professor. Really looking forward to diving into his works - in addition to being a fascinating writer, he is one of the best people to follow on Twitter as he retweets really interesting and timely things from other people. (His Twitter handle is @GreatDismal if anyone is interested.) If you're looking for sustainability/agriculture books, I highly recommend you check out "Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture" by Toby Hemenway. It focuses on permaculture technique, and is the most captivating garden/nature/planning/etc. books I have ever read. At least read a bit about it on Amazon.com or something and see if it piques your interest.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by DTank126 » 10 Jan 2013 01:30

I look forward to reading your reviews on those Heller books! I'm torn as to whether I want to read any more of his stuff.

Idk if this belongs here or in 2012 since I started in December and finished it about a week ago but...

1. Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by bigdirtyfoot » 11 Jan 2013 15:24

DTank126: I addressed the Heller dilemma in my last post at the end of the 2012 50 Book Challenge thread. Catch-22 was awesome, and I enjoyed Something Happened and a bit of God Knows, and Closing Time was alright, but I just wouldn't recommend reading any of the others. I'm still going to finish out and read his last two - Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man and Catch as Catch Can, but only because I wanted to read all of his works. You may enjoy God Knows or Closing Time, but probably don't need to look further than that.

1. Closing Time: The Sequel to Catch-22, Joseph Heller, 464 pg.

I liked this one a bit more than most of Heller's other's works, excluding Catch-22 of course, which is a wacky fun ride and by far his best effort. Closing Time is actually the sequel to Catch-22, and we get to see the characters in their old age, 50 years after World War II. While they were in their 20s, fighting in the war, they were afraid of being killed by the enemy. In their 70s, they are still afraid, because they believe cancer or another illness will result in instant death. I found it really hard to keep track of the characters and what was happening to them because Heller switches up the narrator fairly often and it remains unidentified for several pages into each chapter. After a while all of their lives started to blend together and I felt bored and unsatisfied by their character development. But like I said - this one is a still better than most of Heller's other books. It took me a long time to get through because I never got hooked by anything - plot, characters, language, or writing style.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 13 Jan 2013 12:59

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg
2. A Life of Picasso: 1917-1932 by John Richardson 592pg

Still pretty solid. Best part of this multi volume biography is the large number of thumbnails that go with the text giving you a very good idea of the progression of Picasso's art. I'm frustrated though because the next volume hasn't been published. This happened before with a multi volume Churchill biography I I started in 2011 but had to stop when I finished the second book, was getting geared up for the 3rd which was WW2 and after when I realized it hadn't been published yet. I think I'm going to only read multi volume works if all the volumes are published from now on...

My reading goal for 2013 is to read everything all the time. The more I read the more I realize there is so much I haven't read! I have a fairly easy schedule this school semester so I should be able to start off strong.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 14 Jan 2013 01:40

1. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time by David Sloan Wilson 390pp.

A very mixed book. On one hand it had some very interesting ideas and research, but it was also full of boring anecdotes and simplified ideas of fields well out of the authors field of study (especially the criticisms of neo-classical economics, which while partly true, were made to suggest that the whole field is completely wrong, when really all he demonstrated is the same thing you'll find in the introduction to any introductory economics textbook - that economic theory isn't perfect). The book just covers too much, talks too much about the personal lives of the scientists involved and the interesting content could have been whittled down to about 2 chapters.

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Pasquar » 14 Jan 2013 08:55

Gonna try to keep up to date with this this year, and significantly increase my list :P

1) The Rich and the Rest of Us: A poverty manifesto by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West 203 pg.

This was a really good and very up-to-date book, published early 2012, about poverty in America. Poverty has long since left the public sphere, as any one who followed the 2012 election or any previous elections, it's all about the middle class, no one dares talk about the poor. West and Smiley (used to) have a talk show on PRI discussing endemic poverty in the United States, which despite having the greatest quality of life has some of the worlds worst income inequality. They explore this in the present day in the wake of the Great Recession, which put millions more in poverty, dubbed the "new poor"(those who were recently the sought-after middle class), by recounting a national tour they went on visiting places across the country effected by this. It is a great collaboration of personal stories, statistics, and history which is very easy follow.

It makes the case that poverty is a national crisis that needs to be stopped, and quickly. The reason why is that with the new influx of "new poor", a lot of people who had just recently thought so little of the poor and explained their condition with lack of personal initiative, are now poor themselves. I thought this was interesting, because this influx of "new poor" blurred the racial lines of poverty a bit, so it sort of sounded to me like "well shit, it's happening to white people now, so it must actually be a problem!"

The book outlines myths about the poor and ways to fight against poverty. They're all pretty abstract and are long term, systemic changes that need to be made, but they are all concretely linked to endemic poverty.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 15 Jan 2013 17:17

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg
2. A Life of Picasso: 1917-1932 by John Richardson 592pg
3. Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 263pg

Sebald writes these weird semi-autobiographical books about a man (him, pretty much) walking around places and thinking and then doing in depth research into the things he thinks, and then relating what he thinks about that, and then he walks somewhere else. And he's always trying to get away from some tough period of his life and then doesn't explain further. The main themes are memory and decay and kind of in the background of everything, Germany post-WW2. I read The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn by him at the end of 2012 and now Vertigo. He has quickly become one of my favorite authors.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 16 Jan 2013 15:20

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg
2. A Life of Picasso: 1917-1932 by John Richardson 592pg
3. Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 263pg
4. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 116pg

This book got so much praise. I don't know that it deserves it. It's clearly a very carefully written book, but it just isn't very interesting. I believe it was one of the three finalists for the Pulitzer, and while I'm angry they didn't award a Pulitzer for fiction, I'm relieved this didn't win out over The Pale King (which is far superior in every way even though it's completely unfinished). The book is called a novella, but it's hardly even that. Each page is not only small, but very little % of the page is even covered by text and each line is given plenty of space. I didn't time myself, but this could probably be read in an hour of focused reading.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Zac Miley » 19 Jan 2013 22:55

1. A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, John Perry
2. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse

I thought Steppenwolf was just OK, the other was just silly.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 20 Jan 2013 10:12

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg
2. A Life of Picasso: 1917-1932 by John Richardson 592pg
3. Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 263pg
4. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 116pg
5. Pastoralia by George Saunders 188pg

I have read a few of his stories in the New Yorker and after reading a bit of them, I always think I won't enjoy it, but he's always pulled it off in the end. I did not, however, particularly enjoy these stories, although I liked them enough to give other George Saunders books a try.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Outsider » 20 Jan 2013 16:46

Hi -- long time listener, first time caller...

1. The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit - by - Lucette Lagnado

Nearly two years ago, a "customer" of mine that I was on the telephone with was telling me why he was on a dead-line --- his wife had to leave the country on a work assignment --- she was a journalist (for the Wall Street Journal, I think) and she was being sent to Egypt to cover the protests in Tahrir Square and the abdication of Hosni Mubarak, etc. Apparently, she was fairly nervous about this, and I asked him why she couldn't just say "no" and ask her boss to send somebody else --- apparently, unfortunately for her, she had connections to Egypt (meaning she had some special qualifications to report from Egypt, so it wasn't as easy for her to say "no, let somebody else do it" --- there weren't many other suitable candidates for that particular job.) He mentioned that she had written a book all about her connections to Egypt, and told me the name -- which is the book title above. It occurred to me that it would be interesting to read a book that one of my "customers" had written, and it took a long time to get around to it, but I finally read the damn book. Well, it was interesting, and it offered some additional perspective on a few episodes of life that I also have some historical connection to, so I got some things out of reading it. On the whole, though, I kind of had to force myself to finish the book -- it bored me a little, and annoyed me a little. I believe that, based on the "acknowledgements" section of the book, this book was the first book she had written, which is to say that her story-telling prowess left a little to be desired. I also found it a little annoying that this book was primarily a biography of her father (he is, of course, the man in the white sharkskin suit). Now, apparently, she has also written another book that is a biography of her mother... WTF! How can you write a book about your dad, who has spent most of his life living with your mom, and this book is your recollections of your dad, and so it is to a large degree an Autobiography of yourself as well as a biography of your dad, in which there is quite a lot said about your mom and your mom's mom, and THEN you put out another book and say, yeah, that last book was about dad, but this next book is about mom... I mean, I've already read all about your mom because she was a big part of the story of your dad. And, having finished the book even though I didn't really like it much, now I feel kind of cheated because it's like the author is say, yeah, well, that wasn't really the whole story, if you want to know the rest of that story, you've got to read the other book... damn it, I didn't like the first book that much, but at least I felt like I'd gotten to the end of the story, but apparently not... Whatever, it wasn't that bad, but I'm not gonna read the other book. I've got other stuff to read.

Anyway, I'm happy to be participating in this little corner of Modified finally. I've got lots of books I've wanted to read for a long time, and I read a few now and then, but certainly nowhere near fifty a year, or even nowhere near as much as I'd like read just for the sake of feeling "well-read", but participating in this topic, I hope, will motivate me to read a little bit more, even if its not 50 per year.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by DTank126 » 20 Jan 2013 17:35

Nice review Jon. :lol: That's pretty cool you know the authors husband. Too bad her writing seemed stale.

Bigdirtyfoot: Hey, finally saw your review on those Heller books. I must confess, I was being a tad overdramatic when I said Something Happened was the worst book I read. I think it just made me feel the worst out of everything I read. The problem I had was that it seemed really repetitive throughout and then when something finally DID happen it was so fucking depressing. That line "I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy" just fucking pissed me off after what he did at the end. In hindsight though, the fact that Heller was able to evoke so much emotion out of me probably says something about it's quality. Anywho, I'm rambling... I think I will check out some of those ones you recommended, especially the sequel to Catch-22. The premise sounds hilarious.

1. Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

We all know the story. We've all read it. And if you haven't the other 2 movies will be out soon enough. I saw the movie recently and wanted to refresh my memory.
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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Outsider » 20 Jan 2013 21:28

Doug,
2. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

We all know the story. We've all read it. And if you haven't the other 2 movies will be out soon enough. I saw the movie recently and wanted to refresh my memory.
Funny, I had exactly the same thought -- only, I just finished it in late December, so, can't put it on my 2013 list. It had been so many years since I'd last read it that I was surprised by a few things -- #1 how charismatic the first chapter is -- it just charms you and welcomes you in, very quickly makes you glad you'd opened it up to read, and #2 how much more reference to past events were in the first chapter -- I totally didn't remember talk of Moria IN THE HOBBIT, but, well, it was right there. I had read that Tolkien did major re-editing of The Hobbit after he'd written LOTR, to make The Hobbit more compatible with LOTR -- he probably inserted much of that references, like talk of Moria, only many years after having originally written The Hobbit and a small handful of years after having published The LOTR, but none-the-less it was surprising to me.

The new movie was, over-all, pretty darn good, but, its slightly disappointing that they inserted so much extra into the movie to lengthen it, so much extra that may or may not truly be part of the story yet wasn't actually in The Hobbit itself, and yet they still managed to leave-out parts that actually were in the book -- for instance, Gandalf's meeting with Sauruman and Elrond and Galadriel in Rivendell wasn't in the text of the Hobbit but conceiveably may take place in some other book like "The Book of Lost Tales" or something, and they totally lengthened/sexed-up the encounter between the Orcs & Wargs and the Dwarves just before the Eagles rescue them, and yet they totally left-out many of the riddles that Bilbo and Gollum exchange... like, whats the matter, was Bilbo's first encounter with Gollum really too long and boring? Is that what they were thinking? I'm not completely certain, but I think that they even abbreviated Gollum's final riddle -- like, its just a few short lines in total anyway, but they just couldn't have him read the entire riddle, they cut out two or three lines of it? Its really not THAT long (okay, I might be totally wrong about that detail, but I coulda sworn that Gollum didn't read the entire riddle, just, like, 2/3 of it, and its not that long to begin with, but perhaps its really so short over-all that it was "blink and you missed it"..., like, perhaps I was so caught-up in the scenery and acting that I didn't notice all of the spoken dialog... I don't know anymore, but when I get around to seeing the movie again eventually [probably on television], I'll certainly be paying very close attention to that detail).
"The time has come to convert the unbelievers..."

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by Jeremy » 22 Jan 2013 15:32

Great to see you in the challenge Jon!!

I've been avoiding reading the Hobbit. I read LOTR very close to watching the first movie, but then found it impossible not to notice all the changes, and changes to things I really liked in the books were particularly annoying. I'm hoping I'll enjoy the Hobbit movies a lot more if I can't remember the details of the books as much. Incidentally I did some data entry last year cataloging the private collection of books from a second hand book dealer, who had literally tens of thousands of books, many worth thousands of dollars, which included a "Tolkein shelf" with many different editions of all his published works. Apparently he had first editions but they'd been taken away (because they're worth about $50,000). It was a pretty fun job, and I managed to get a couple of cool books (not Tolkein).

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Re: The 2013 Book Challenge

Post by dp » 22 Jan 2013 22:17

1. A Life of Picasso: 1907-1917 by John Richardson 500pg
2. A Life of Picasso: 1917-1932 by John Richardson 592pg
3. Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 263pg
4. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson 116pg
5. Pastoralia by George Saunders 188pg
6. Campo Santo by W.G. Sebald 221pg

I only first heard of Sebald in December of 2012 and this is now the 4th book I've read by him. Absolutely unlike anything I've read. I have a strong suspicion that I could read his books every 2-3 months and enjoy them every time. The Rings of Saturn has been my favorite so far, and I'm holding off on reading Austerlitz, his most famous book, because a friend and I are going to read it at the same time so we can discuss it. Campo Santo was published posthumously and is a collection of a variety of his writings, but unpublished stuff and stuff that was written for magazines or scholarly journals.

Sebald himself was a German who lived much of his life in England as a professor of European Literature. His "novels" (the quotes because while kept in the fiction section, "prose" is really a better word for what he writes) focus on a man very similar to Sebald who walks around, and thinks, and does intensive research about the things he thinks about, and sometimes goes to other coutnries, and runs into emigrants and immigrants and locals and chats with them, sometimes has unnerving experiences, thinks some more, etc.

Very strange and very beautiful. If you are at all interested, try out The Rings of Saturn.

EDIT: And also, it's good to see new people participating!

Asmus, "The Success and Failure of Picasso" by John Berger is my next book, I'll let you know how it goes!
Danny P.

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