Updated: January 2, 2021
Continuing, for some reason, to chronicle every book and short story I’ve read since The Lord of the Rings in the spring of 2017.
Part 1 (2017) | Part 2 (2018) | Part 3 (2019) | “Selected readings from the Old Lady Book Club”
Critical remarks are avoided…
Rereads coopt the register mark…
“Library Book Club” selections are noted in red to represent the spectre of death.
“CSGNFBØQEBCBBL” selections are noted in blue to represent the suffocation that is professional networking.
Gabrielle Zevin
The Storied Life of AJ Fikry (2014) 😐
Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol (1843)
Jac Jemc
The Grip of It (2017)
George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)
Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
“Miracle Polish” (2011)
“Phantoms” (2010)
“Sons and Mothers” (2012)
Aldous Huxley
Brave New World (1932) Ⓡ
Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
“Mermaid Fever” (2009)
“The Wife and the Thief” (2015)
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) 👍
Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
“A Report on Our Recent Troubles” (2007)
“Coming Soon” (2013)
“Rapunzel” (2011)
“Elsewhere” (2015)
Scott Conroy
Vote First or Die: The New Hampshire Primary—America’s Discerning, Magnificent and Absurd Road to the White House (2017)
Steven Millhauser
From Voices in the Night (2015)
“Thirteen Wives” (2013)
“Arcadia” (2013)
“The Pleasures and Sufferings of Young Gautama” (2015)
“The Place” (2015)
“Home Run” (2013)
“American Tall Tale” (2012)
“A Voice in the Night” (2012)
Margaret Atwood
The Testaments (2019) 😐
Yes, 2020 in the workplace kicked off with The Handmaid’s Tale and its inferior sequel. Just give Aunt Lydia the whole second narrative—then you won’t have to worry about readers anticipating “big reveals” a couple hundred pages in advance. And the mansplaining symposium postscripts? And the mansplaining symposium postscripts! Minus one star.
Philip K. Dick
“Fair Game” (1959)
“The Eyes Have It” (1953)
“The Father-Thing” (1954)
“Null-O” (1958)
“To Serve the Master” (1956)
“Pay for the Printer” (1956)
“War Veteran” (1955)
“The Chromium Fence” (1955)
Diane Cook
From Man v. Nature (2014)
“Moving On” (2014)
“Bounty,” a.k.a. “The Way the End of Days Should Be” (2014)
“Somebody’s Baby” (2013)
“Girl on Girl” (2014)
“Man v. Nature” (2014)
Agatha Christie
Ten Little N______, a.k.a. And Then There Were None (1939/1940 revision)
Diane Cook
From Man v. Nature (2014)
“Marrying Up” (2013)
“It’s Coming” (2014)
“Meteorologist Dave Santana” (2014)
“Flotsam” (2013)
“A Wanted Man” (2014)
“The Mast Year” (2014)
“The Not-Needed Forest” (2013)
Simon Winchester
The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words, a.k.a. The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1998) Ⓙ 👍
Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
“Nothing Before Something,” a.k.a. “Guts” (2017)
“In Our Circle” (2016)
“Glow Hunter” (2019)
“The Animal Part” (2012)
Don DeLillo
White Noise (1985)
Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
“Foxes” (2019)
“The Soft No” (2017)
“We Don’t Come Natural to It” (2017)
“The Light Will Pour In” (2017)
“Into the Fold” (2010)
“Fellowship,” a.k.a. “Black Light” (2016)
Ellen Lupton
Thinking With Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors and Students (2004)
Kimberly King Parsons
From Black Light (2019)
“Fiddlebacks” (2016)
“Starlite” (2019)
Tana French
In the Woods (2007) 👍
Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II (2004) 👍 Stephen King
The Outsider (2018)
John Updike
Rabbit, Run (1960)
Karen Russell
From Vampires in the Lemon Grove (2013)
“Vampires in the Lemon Grove” (2006)
“Reeling for the Empire” (2012)
“The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979″ (2009)
“The Hox River Window,” a.k.a. “Proving Up” (2011)
“The Barn at the End of Our Term” (2007)
“Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating” (2010)
Aaron James Draplin
Pretty Much Everything (2016)
Karen Russell
From Vampires in the Lemon Grove (2013)
“The New Veterans” (2013)
“The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis” (2010)
Greg Egan
From Axiomatic (1995)
“The Infinite Assassin” (1991)
“The Hundred Light-Year Diary” (1992)
“Eugene” (1990)
“The Caress” (1990)
“Blood Sisters” (1991)
“Axiomatic” (1990)
Stanley Booth
Dance With the Devil: The Rolling Stones and Their Times, a.k.a. The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones (1984/2000 revision)
“Afterword to The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones: One Half of Forever” (2000)
Charles Williams
Dead Calm (1963)
George Saunders
From Pastoralia (2000)
“Pastoralia” (2000)
Greg Egan
From Axiomatic (1995)
“The Safe-Deposit Box” (1990)
“Seeing” (1995)
“A Kidnapping” (1995)
“Learning to Be Me” (1990)
“The Moat” (1991)
“The Walk” (1992)
“The Cutie” (1989)
“Into Darkness” (1992)
“Appropriate Love” (1991)
“The Moral Virologist” (1990)
“Closer” (1992)
“Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies” (1992)
George Saunders
From Pastoralia (2000)
“Winky” (1997)
“Sea Oak” (1998)
“The End of FIRPO in the World” (1998)
“The Barber’s Unhappiness” (1999)
“The Falls” (1996)
Robert Penn Warren
All the King’s Men (1946)
Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) 😐
Philip K. Dick
“The Commuter” (1953)
“The Impossible Planet” (1953)
“The Hood Maker” (1955)
“Stability” (1947)
“The Little Movement” (1952)
Andy Weir
Artemis (2017)
“The Economics of Artemis” (2017)
Stephen King
The Colorado Kid (2005)
Philip K. Dick
“Jon’s World” (1954)
“Progeny” (1954)
“Of Withered Apples” (1954)
“James P. Crow” (1954)
“Souvenir” (1954)
“The Infinites” (1953)
“The Preserving Machine” (1953)
“Expendable” (a.k.a. “He Who Waits”) (1953)
“The Indefatigable Frog” (1953)
“The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford” (1954)
“The Builder” (1953)
“The Great C” (1953)
“Out in the Garden” (1953)
“Colony” (1953)
“Prize Ship” (a.k.a. “Globe From Ganymede”) (1954)
“Nanny” (1955)
Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park (1990) Ⓡ
Hilary Leichter
Temporary (2020)
James McBride
From Five-Carat Soul (2017)
“The Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set”
The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band
“Father Abe”
“The Moaning Bench”
“The Christmas Dance”
“The Fish Man Angel”
Mr. P and the Wind
Philip K. Dick
“Planet for Transients,” a.k.a. “The Itinerants” (1953)
“The Cookie Lady” (1953)
“Prominent Author” (1954)
“Small Town” (1954)
“Survey Team” (1954)
“War Game” (1959)
“Waterspider” (1964)
“Oh, to Be a Blobel!” (1964)
George Saunders
From CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (1996)
“CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” (1992)
“Isabelle” (1994)
“The Wavemaker Falters” (1993)
“The 400-Pound CEO” (1993)
“Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz” (1992)
“Downtrodden Mary’s Failed Campaign of Terror” (1992)
Bounty (1995)
“A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room” (1986)
Stephen King
From If It Bleeds (2020)
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone
The Life of Chuck
If It Bleeds
Rat
George Saunders
“Fox 8″ (2013)
“A Two-Minute Note to the Future” (2014)
Karen Russell
From St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (2006)
“Ava Wrestles the Alligator” (2006)
“Haunting Olivia” (2005)
“ZZ’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers” (2006)
“The Star-Gazer’s Log of Summer-Time Crime” (2006)
“From Children’s Reminiscences of the Westward Migration” (2005)
“Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows”(2006)
“The City of Shells,” a.k.a. “The World’s Greatest Sensational Mystery” (2006)
“Out to Sea” (2005)
“Accident Brief” (2006)
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (2006)
Tara Westover
Educated (2018) 👍
Elmore Leonard
Killshot (1989)
Barry Hannah
From Airships (1978)
“Water Liars” (1978)
“Love Too Long” (1977)
“Quadberry,” a.k.a. “Testimony of Pilot” (1974)
“Coming Close to Donna” (1977)
Karen Russell
Sleep Donation (2014)
Barry Hannah
From Airships (1978)
“Dragged Fighting From His Tomb” (1978)
“Quo Vadis, Smut?” (1978)
“Return to Return” (1975)
“Green Gets It” (1978)
“Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet” (1975)
“Our Secret Home” (1970)
“Eating Wife and Friends” (1978)
“All the Old Harkening Faces at the Rail” (1978)
“Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed” (1974)
“That’s True” (1978)
“Escape to Newark” (1978)
“Pete Resists the Man of His Old Room” (1977)
“Behold the Husband in His Perfect Agony” (1976)
“Constant Pain in Tuscaloosa” (1978)
“Deaf and Dumb” (1978)
“Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt” (1970)
Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 (1973) Ⓡ
John Steinbeck
The Pearl (1947)
Kurt Vonnegut (Jr.)
Timequake (1997)
Andy Weir
“The Chef” (2010)
“Yuri Gagarin Saves the Galaxy” (2016)
“Antihypoxiant” (2014)
“The Real Deal” (2012)
“Annie’s Day” (2011)
“The Midtown Butcher” (2014)
“Meeting Sarah” (2010)
“Access” (2010)
“Bored World” (2013)
“Twarrior” (2015)
“The Egg” (2009)
“Digitocracy” (2018)
Jeff Pearlman
Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s (2013)
Ninni Holmqvist
The Unit (2006/2009 translation) 👍
Thus ends the great Book Club Experiment, for now at least. The “Library Book Club” was, erm, put to sleep for much of 2020, just in time for March’s scheduled and then canceled discussion of my selected The Professor and the Madman. It’s just as well, since many of the Ladies’ choices didn’t appeal to me enough to read, other than The Dinner (which I read two years ago) and In the Woods. The group has rebounded over Zoom and these three titles are revived for 2020/2021, though I see limited participation in my future. As for CSGNFBØQEBCBB, it’s time to move on and the eerie, contemplative The Unit was a fine way to end. Look for a reranking of all red and blue titles come the new year—in the meantime, I will read whatever the hell I want in a deadline-free and eventually vaccinated 2021.
Albert Camus
The Stranger (1942/1989 translation)
Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) Ⓡ
George Saunders
Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (2014)
More Cream Please 