Well, it’s almost embarrassing that this is coming in the middle of January, but not quite as embarrassing as some of the other shit I’ve been meaning to do but haven’t gotten around to yet in the new year. I’ve been busy, though, so we’ll call that something like an excuse. Anyway, the list first (and yes, those are affiliate links, and no, I unsurprisingly haven’t made any money off this shit yet):

  1. Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg*

  2. Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck

  3. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

  4. Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

  5. The American Woman in the Chinese Hat by Carole Maso*

  6. What is Anarchism? ed. Donald Rooum

  7. The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway

  8. The She-Devil in the Mirror by Horacio Castellanos Moya*

  9. Tête-à-tête by Hazel Rowley

  10. Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

  11. The All-Road Bike Revolution by Jan Heine

  12. Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

  13. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowery

  14. The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

  15. The First Tour de France by Peter Cossins

  16. The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie

  17. Things: A Story of the Sixties and A Man Asleep by Georges Perec*

  18. 10:04 by Ben Lerner

  19. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier)

  20. Jealousy and In the Labyrinth by Alain Robbe-Grillet*

  21. I Thought There Would Be More Wolves by (my very cool friend) Sara Ryan*

  22. Synthesizing Gravity by Kay Ryan*

  23. MAUS I and II by Art Spiegelman

  24. AVA by Carole Maso*

  25. Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute*

  26. Persuasion by Jane Austin*

  27. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

  28. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib*

  29. Continental philosophy since 1750 by Robert C Solomon

  30. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin

  31. Exteriors by Annie Ernaux

  32. Assembly by Natasha Brown

  33. Missing Person (French: Rue des Boutiques Obscures) by Patrick Modiano*

  34. For a New Novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet*

  35. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

  36. The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand

  37. The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr by E. T. A. Hoffmann, trans. Anthea Bell*

  38. The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson*

  39. Break Every Rule by Carole Maso*

The list counts to 39 but in reality it was 41 because two of those volumes were doubles (the Perec and one of the Robbe-Grillets). It’s less than last year but I feel fine with that; The Second Sex, for example, was real fuckin' long.

I didn’t do any numbers — public or otherwise — on last year’s reading but from a quick look through it seems like I read maybe a little more nonfiction (and definitely more "fun" nonfiction, i.e., bike books), and I read (maybe) somewhat deeply, or continued to read authors I’ve read a fair amount before (e.g., Maso, Perec, Robbe-Grillet, Austin, etc.). I even did some rereading, which is pretty unusual for me in a non-comfort-book kind of way. Somebody told me recently (Lisa? Alia? Chelsey?) that one should maybe reread a book for every new book read. I’m not quite on that level yet so far this year, but I have, funny enough, already done some rereading (here’s lookin' at you, Beowulf.) It also looks like I read a fair bit in translation (due to my minor obsession with the French, I guess); I’d like to keep doing that, too.

Anyway. Maybe nobody’s interested in this aside from me, but that’s fine. I’ve put a little * next to my favorites from the year, how about that?