The Best Novels I Read in 2012

Top Ten Novels Read in 2012

1.       Lionel Shriver. The Post-Birthday World .  2007. 528 pp.

I was intrigued by the storytelling. Shriver is da bomb.

2.       Lionel Shriver. We Need to Talk About Kevin. 2003. 400 pp.

About a high school shooting, it is a dark indictment of American mores.

3.       William Trevor. Felicia's Journey. 1994. 240 pp.

Stepping into this novel is like stepping on a hot plate with set to slow burn fuck up.

4.       Don Delillo. White Noise.  310 pp. 1985

Written over twenty years ago, this novel may be too ironic to still matter.

5.       Lionel Shriver. A Perfectly Good Family: A Novel  305 pp.

Southern family, a house, sibling rivalries – and the death of parents!

6.       Norton Juster. The Phantom Tollbooth. 1961. 272 pp.

Very clever novel about how to overcome boredom and to think for oneself.

7.       Terry Pratchett. Hogfather (Discworld, #20) 1996. 448 pp.

Ho Ho Ho. Death cracks me up. An alternative Christmas story for sure.

8.       Lindqvist, John Ajvide. Let the Right One In. 2005. 513 pp.

Child murderer(s), bullying, girl vampire, pedophilia and Sweden. Chilling.

9.       Joyce Carol Oates. Zombie 1995. 181 pp.

The ending is fucked up. Pair it up with Shriver’s Kevin and Trevor’s Felicia.

10.   Ransom Riggs. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)  2011. 352 pp.

It’ll make for good CGI film-making and the time travel makes sense. Sorta.

Honorable Mentions

George R.R. Martin. A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) 1996. 693 pp.

   The names are fun. And maps! Surprisingly easy to follow.

Neil Gaiman. American Gods . 2001. 632 pp.

   Gaiman wants us to like his villains. I don’t mind.

Lonely Christopher. The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse 2011 190 pp.

   I was not stunned by this mess.

Charlaine Harris. All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #7)  2006. 323 pp.

   Don’t hate me but Allan Ball does a better job.

Neil Gaiman.Neverwhere 1996. 370 pp.

   Great concept: a world under London. Feels like Pullman. It isn’t.

Phillip K. Dick. The Simulacra. 1964. 214 pp.

   Sorry. I was not liking this paranoid regurgitation. Not Dick’s best.

Phillip K. Dick. Paycheck and Other Classic Stories 1952. 432 pp.

The one about the robots and the dude who builds a replica of his hometown are the best of the stories.

Shriver, Lionel. The Female of the Species 1987. 416 pp.

   I’d rather a story about the Masai then Gray and her failed trysts.

Rick Riordan. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1) 2005. 337 pp.

   The book is lackluster and I’d suggested Homer instead.

Daisuki Igarashi Children of the Sea, Volume 1 (Children of the Sea, #1)  Unknown date. 320 pp.

Too bad I read this book from left to right first! Duh. Read it from right to left.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay

Great set of books: I loved the description of food. I hear there is a Hunger Games cookbook.

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From the Womb to the Tomb

Joseph Campbell, Hero With a  Thousand Faces (1949), page 8

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Poem: Thrasymachus Blushing

thrasymachus blushing
blushing belies betrayal
betrayal of the body 
the body belied

so says socrates
not blushing
but catching thrasymachus in a blush

a crucial catch of the passage
says the professor
a critical juncture blushing
is

for in it
socrates 
calls thrasymachus out

for is it not true
that one cannot
forfeit an argument?
even if one knows forfeiting is the right thing to do
our body forfeits for us
turning rouge
in a crowd of philosophers
vying for truth

to get the answer wrong is an admission of failure
of not getting it

and we want to get it

so we plow on regardless
but our body -
it sees our flaw
and quickens -
blood flows more fully 
and all can see our less than comfortable
feeling of resting with a certain unjustified truth

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Greig Roselli ® 2012

Repurposing: Alice in Wonderland Book Clock

This nifty book clock clocks at fifty bucks at the Brooklyn holiday bazaar. Too bad I cannot afford it.

www.bugcicle.com 

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Quote: Kobo Abé On the Value of Work

The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.

Kobo Abé, The Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Image credit:  Greig Roselli
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Bathers Caught in Hyde Park, London

The Serpentine, Hyde Park, London metropolitan policewoman chases naughty bathers circa Pre-WWI London.

Someone on Flickr posted more about this image here.

New Yorker Cartoon: "Fear not my princess ..."

Gahan Wilson, "Fear not my princess ..." Published in the New Yorker, September 23, 2002

"Fear Not, My Princess"

     I like cartoons like the one presented in this re-post of a New Yorker cartoon. A one frame, black and white cartoon drawing. The precursor to the Instagram post — just one frame to capture what you want to say. The picture ought to grab the reader's attention, and the caption has to be both pithy and smart and tie the image to a theme. In the above cartoon drawing by Gahan Wilson, what appears to be a night with a shield walks along a beach with maiden a crown. A discarded coke can is wedged in the center, and it is evident that we are looking at a beach scene.

The Image's Gag Effect

     The gag effect comes when the reader realizes that this is a fantasy scene. On the surface, it's an ordinary beach, but it's a microcosm of that beach wherein the beachgoers have all gone home for the season, sent packing to their cars (hence the "parking" sign in the upper lefthand corner of the drawing. What's going on here? I feel a sense of nostalgia looking at this drawing, of days spent on the beach in Pensacola, Flordia as a kid, exploring the grit of sand on my toes and making sandcastles. The caption is funny because it alludes to the idea of stowing away to the beach and getting lost in the fantasy of the moment. But what we have here is a miniature of a knight and a princess, the vestige of an imagination gone away (until next Summer). And the knight tells the princess, "fear not" and comforts her that soon a child will return to build them a "castle in the sand." How sad! I remember making sandcastles only to watch them destroyed by the incoming tide.

. . . With a Dash of Whimsy 

     And here the artist had made an image of that fleeting feel of Summer moment but added a dash of whimsy to it by imagining who might be living in that castle of sand how they would feel when it was washed away.

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