2012 Literary Excursion

Fiction took more of a backseat to poetry, this year, but I did fall into some standout reads. Completely adored new efforts from Shane Jones and Ben Marcus, solidifying them, for me, as writers who don't experiment just for the sake of it. Daniel Fights A Hurricane, while not as good as Light Boxes, had all the riveting despair and hope that Light Boxes offered in a yummy, compact volume. The Flame Alphabet was different from Ben Marcus's earlier work, but it got more empathy out of me than any novel has in a long time. I hope the mainstream success of these two signify a shift in publishing towards more original work that plays with the idea of what a novel "should" be.

In the Young Adult arena, The Hunger Games trilogy was a disappointment, though not written as badly as other teen reading out there now, while Lois Lowry's The Giver trilogy is a classic that needs no explanation for its resilience. And, after reading Giovanni's Room, I suspect I've found a new favorite writer in James Baldwin. The first ten pages sucked me in, and as much as I love books, that doesn't happen to me too often.

Didn't read too much non-fiction, but I spent a lot of time with the Mozart biography, which was insightful for someone who knew little about Mozart, but a little too accessibly written. Aside from that, none of it held my attention enough to be memorable. That's probably something I should try to rectify in the new year.

POETRY, yo. I discovered some great poets I hadn't read before, like Valzhyna Mort and Nate Slawson, and, thanks to a Modern Poetry class through Coursera, I finally opened up to classics like Bishop and Ashbery (whose collected works I plan to go through next year). Since accepting my new role as a poet (as opposed to a novelist), I'm excited to faceplant into whatever poetry I can get my hands on, and I think I've become more open-minded towards things I may not have read before. The doors are open, and the poetry is endless.

Fiction

The Angel Esmerelda – Don DeLillo

I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur – Mathias Svalina

The Flame Alphabet – Ben Marcus

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins

Cataclysm Baby – Matt Bell

Suddenly, A Knock on the Door – Etgar Keret

Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens

Naked Pictures of Famous People – Jon Stewart

Citrus County – John Brandon

The Weather Stations – Ryan Call

Short Dark Oracles – Sarah Levine

Cure All – Kim Parko

Daniel Fights A Hurrican – Shane Jones

The Giver – Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue – Lois Lowry

The Messenger – Lois Lowry

NW - Zadie Smith

A Wrinkle in Time – Madeline L’Engle

The Fifty Year Sword – Mark Danielewski

Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin

Trout Fishing In America – Richard Brautigan

In Watermelon Sugar - Richard Brautigan

Non-Fiction

The Creative Habit – Twyla Tharpe

Mozart: A Life – Maynard Solomon

Take Care Fake Bear Torque Cake – Heidi Lynn Staples

This Is Not A Pipe – Michel Foucault

Shitty Mom – Laurie Kilmartin

Just My Type – Simon Garfield

Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story – D.T. Max

This Is How You Love Her – Junot Diaz

What Light Can Do – Robert Haas

Parenting Beyond Belief – Dale McGowan

Poetry

On Subjects of Which We Know Nothing – Karen Carcia

Yo-Yo Logic – Lauren Shapiro

Panic Attack, U.S.A. – by Nate Slawson

Heavy Petting – Gregory Sherl

The Trees The Trees – Heather Christle

Beauty Was the Case That They Gave Me – Mark Leidner

The Oregon Trail Is The Oregon Trail – Gregory Sherl

I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone – Thomas Patrick Levy

Collected Body – Valzhyna Mort

The First Four Books of Poems – Louise Gluck

Love, An Index – Rebecca Lindenberg

The Last 4 Things – Kate Greenstreet

Betting on the Muse – Charles Bukowski

Mistake – Meredith Stricker

Ghost Machine – Ben Mirov

Listening For Earthquakes – Jasmine Dreame Wagner

Wolf Face – Matt Hart

The Grief Performance – Emily Kendal Frey

Carnavoria – Laurie Saurborn Young

Victory – Ben Kopel

The Mining Camps of the Mouth – George Kalamaras

The Best American Poetry 2012 – Mark Doty

Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror – John Ashbery

Collected Poems and Prose – Elizabeth Bishop (just poems)

All Black Everything – Weston Cutter

Source to Mouth – Brandon Krieg

Plainsight – Justin Runge

Horse Latitudes – Paul Muldoon

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster - Richard Brautigan

Plays

Proof – David Auburn

Shoppers – Denis Johnson

Five Modern No Plays – Yukio Mishima

Graphic Novels

Not Simple – Natsume Ono

The Walking Dead Compendium One – Robert Kirkman

Chapbooks

Halfsteps and Cloudfang – Daniela Olszewska

Small Hollering – Jamie Kazay

I Cannot Pretend To Be A Ghost Today – Sasha Fletcher

The Bible – Gregory Sherl

The Wilhelm Scream – Jeremy Behreandt

How the Days of Love and Diptheria – Robert Kloss

Treesisters – Joseph Rippi

Meat is All – Robert Borgstrom

The Tiny Jukebox – Nate Slawson

Feral – Patty Paine

a city / bottle boned – Megan Burns

Focus on Grammar – Gillian Devereux

Some Citrus Makes Me Blue – Megan Fernandes

Going Attractions – Brian Foley

Once Was A Weather – Trey Moody

The Point Or What I Cannot Recall – Tyler Flynn Dorholt

Bye Land – Tony Mancus

Least – Jon Cone

Legal Pure – Eric Amling