This is the total list of everything that I read in full for the year of 2012. I feel like it is important for me to say that–I read outside of this list, sometimes extensively, but what makes the list are things that I read all the way through, front cover to back cover.
The links that pepper the list are links to books that I enjoyed a lot, or books that lit up in my mind as I was copying the list, or books that have altered me permanently as a person. Somewhere in there.
So, before the list, some numbers:
125 total books (the list below is short because I collapsed some multivolume things into single lines)
15 of those books were written by women, which is 12.9%, which is absolutely shameful. That said, I actually increased over last year, which was 3.8%. That is still a terrible ratio, and I am going to try to push it even further next year. That said, about halfway through the year I instituted a leisure reading policy based around getting rid of books in my home–I have (literally) thousands that I have accrued over the years, and I have decided I don’t want to move that many. I started reading a lot of things that I had picked up in thrift stores, book sales, or whatever so that I could get rid of them. That’s why the latter half of this list is so damn weird (and also why I haven’t finished a book in two weeks [I am reading the longest Hemingway bio]).
In any case, here is the list:
- John Dies At The End – Wong
- Unit Operations – Bogost
- Milk and Cheese Omnibus – Dorkin
- Rant – Palahniuk
- Extra Lives – Bissell
- The Monsters of Templeton – Groff
- The Soul at Work – “Bifo” Berardi
- Doom Patrol vols. 1-6 – Morrison
- Spheres vol.1 Bubbles – Sloterdijk
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Atwood
- Sophie’s Choice – Styron
- Do Anything – Ellis
- Looking for Jake – Mieville
- Sexual Politics – Millett
- Essex County – Lemire
- Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen – Shulman
- 11/23/63 – King
- Quest for Lost Heroes – Gemmell
- How To Do Things With Video Games – Bogost
- The Mirror in the Well – Marcom
- Ethics of Computer Games – Sicart
- Gaming: Essays in Algorithmic Culture – Galloway
- The Female Man – Russ
- Ironic Ethics – Berardi
- Flex Mentallo – Morrison
- Rise of the Videogame Zinesters – Anthropy
- Robopocalypse – Wilson
- American Vampire vols 1-3 – Snyder
- Art Power – Groys
- Jennifer Government – Barry
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Foer
- The Princess and Curdie – MacDonald
- Sharp Teeth – Barlow
- Games of Empire – Dyer-Witheford and Peuter
- Alien Phenomenology – Bogost
- V For Vendetta – Moore and Lloyd
- Why We Love Sociopaths – Kotsko
- Absolute Planetary v.1 – Ellis and Cassiday
- After the Future – “Bifo” Berardi
- My Friend Dahmer – Backderf
- The Half Made World – Gilman
- The Truth: Red, White, and Black – Morales
- The Wind Through the Keyhole – King
- Vibrant Matter – Bennett
- Virgin – Blank
- The Marvelous Hairy Girls – Hanks
- Are You My Mother? – Bechdel
- Gameplay Mode – Crogan
- The Einstein Intersection – Delaney
- “You’ll Die in Singapore!” – McCormac
- Not In Kansas Anymore – Wicker
- All-Star Batman and Robin – Miller
- Wonder Woman v.1 – Azzarello
- The Dark Knight Strikes Again – Miller
- Absolute Planetary v.2 – Ellis
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1-3 – Moore
- Absolute Sandman v.1 – Gaiman
- Zelda – Milford
- Comic Book History of Comics – Van Lente
- The Supergirls – Madrid
- Absolute Sandman v.2 – Gaiman
- Introduction to Antiphilosophy – Groys
- A Thousand Plateaus – Deleuze and Guattari
- Absolute Sandman v.3 – Gaiman
- Blindness – Saramango
- Dark Reign: Fantastic Four – Hickman
- Fantastic Four v.1 – Hickman
- Absolute Sandman v.4 – Gaiman
- Post-Cinematic Affect – Shaviro
- Absolute New Frontier – Cook
- The Artificial Silk Girl – Keun
- Chaos, Territory, Art – Grosz
- Black Kiss – Chaykin
- Collected Writings – Laure
- Cloud Atlas – Mitchell
- Orc Stain v.1 – Stokoe
- Wild Children – Kot
- Seeing Through Race – Mitchell
- Prophet: Remission – Graham
- Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller – Lambert
- Protocol – Galloway
- JLA: Earth-2 – Morrison
- Batman: Year 1oo – Pope
- This is Not a Pipe – Foucault
- Hey Wait… – Jason
- Doom Patrols – Shaviro
- The Serpent and the Rainbow – Davis
- Camera Lucida – Barthes
- American Elf v.4 – Kochalka
- Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy – Harman
- The Beach – Garland
- Ugly Man – Cooper
- Pistolwhip – Kindt
- The Underwater Welder – Lemire
- Poetics of Relation – Glissant
- Stranger From Abroad – Maier-Katton
- Digestate
- Coward – Brubaker
- Lawless – Brubaker
- The Dead and the Dying – Brubaker
- Black Hole – Burns
- Slime Dynamics – Woodard
- Complete Bone – Smith
- Comics vs. Art – Beaty
- The Book of Mr. Natural – R. Crumb
- Maus I – Spiegelman
- Batman: Death and the Maidens – Rucka
- Maus II – Spiegelman
- Vampyroteuthis Infernalis – Flusser
- Too Cool To Be Forgotten – Robinson
- West Coast Blues – Manchette/Tardi
- The Uprising – “Bifo” Berardi
- Killing is Harmless – Keogh
- The Making of Indebted Man – Lazzarato
- Osborn: Evil Incarcerated – DeConnick
- Violent Cases – Gaiman
You forgot Invisible Man, motherfucker.
What did you make of Jennifer Government? That was one one of my favourite books when in my early teens, but I haven’t read it since.
It was so-so. I think it is a beautiful idea that falls apart in execution; also, there’s a big space of missed time in the last part of the book and it feels like a dropped reel.
I’m kind of afraid to revisit it. It was a formative book for me, and I still love the idea, but even in my memory it already somehow feels like that.
Also, really want to read Spheres, but keep putting it off. How was it?
It was really great, but also really long. I wrote a post about it that you could search the blog and find–I would do it, but I am on my phone right now!