All right. I’ve just started about twenty times to do a top ten list. And I don’t know how to do it! Too many books, too many reasons why I love them or hate them. So, let’s do something sillier. Let’s do a tournament. In order of when I started reading them, let's pit books against each other and see what comes up. At very least, there should be strangeness.
I'll post five battles at a time, every couple of days. I can't get through the first round until after December 31st, to cover every book I read this year.
Or, as my friend Kilo Pascal put it:
Page-Off,
Cover-to-Cover, which novel will GROVEL?!
Which writing will come out
FIGHTING?!
Which Paperback will TAKE IT BACK?! I
It's time for the
drag-down, knuckle-biting tournament of the year!
Five Battles! One
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The Dust Cover Dust-Up 2013!
First Five Battles of Round One:
Infinite Jest vs. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Winner: Infinite Jest!
Partly it’s the immense feeling of satisfaction I got from finishing Infinite Jest. Partly it’s because Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell never really got inside my brain the way I hoped it would. But Infinite Jest wins this one. It’s amazing, occasionally boring, but audacious in a way that definitely lifts it over Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
Collected Poems of Philip Larkin vs. Born To Run
Winner: Infinite Jest!
Partly it’s the immense feeling of satisfaction I got from finishing Infinite Jest. Partly it’s because Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell never really got inside my brain the way I hoped it would. But Infinite Jest wins this one. It’s amazing, occasionally boring, but audacious in a way that definitely lifts it over Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
Collected Poems of Philip Larkin vs. Born To Run
Winner: Collected Poems
While I didn’t love the poetry, the later “cranky old man” poems lift this above the fairly straightforward nonfiction about extreme long distance running. Neither set my world on fire, but what I remember from almost a year ago had me smiling at Larkin’s poems on occasion, even though a lot of his earlier ones seemed whiny.
A Tiny Bit Marvellous vs. The Casual Vacancy
Winner: The Casual Vacancy!
Let’s see. A book I really didn’t like up against a book I thoroughly enjoyed! The Casual Vacancy examines poverty in ways that are difficult and complex, expressed through Rowling’s incredibly readable style. A Tiny Bit Marvellous is about a family of emotionally stunted...let’s just let you fill in the rest of that sentence yourselves, shall we?
The Seduction of an English Scoundrel vs. Invisible Man
Winner: Invisible Man
I almost feel like I have to apologize to Ralph Ellison for this match-up. If it helps, there was not even a second when I thought “Hmmm. Trashy romance over utterly amazing novel about blackness in the United States?” Not even a nanosecond. I promise. Pretty much anything would have won over Seduction, but I should stress now how much Invisible Man was one of the best books I read this year.
Ulysses vs. Altered Carbon
While I didn’t love the poetry, the later “cranky old man” poems lift this above the fairly straightforward nonfiction about extreme long distance running. Neither set my world on fire, but what I remember from almost a year ago had me smiling at Larkin’s poems on occasion, even though a lot of his earlier ones seemed whiny.
A Tiny Bit Marvellous vs. The Casual Vacancy
Winner: The Casual Vacancy!
Let’s see. A book I really didn’t like up against a book I thoroughly enjoyed! The Casual Vacancy examines poverty in ways that are difficult and complex, expressed through Rowling’s incredibly readable style. A Tiny Bit Marvellous is about a family of emotionally stunted...let’s just let you fill in the rest of that sentence yourselves, shall we?
The Seduction of an English Scoundrel vs. Invisible Man
Winner: Invisible Man
I almost feel like I have to apologize to Ralph Ellison for this match-up. If it helps, there was not even a second when I thought “Hmmm. Trashy romance over utterly amazing novel about blackness in the United States?” Not even a nanosecond. I promise. Pretty much anything would have won over Seduction, but I should stress now how much Invisible Man was one of the best books I read this year.
Ulysses vs. Altered Carbon
Winner: Altered Carbon
Okay, before the hate mail starts, let me remind you that this is an EXTREMELY subjective list of the books I enjoyed this year. Sometimes it’ll be the classics. Sometimes it won’t be. If Ulysses hadn’t taken me five months to read (it was a mistake to read it at the same time as Infinite Jest, yes), the results might have been different. It’s a great book, a classic, and in the end, I just enjoyed the noir stylings of Altered Carbon more.
So, what do you think of the first battles? Comments? Virulent disagreement?
Okay, before the hate mail starts, let me remind you that this is an EXTREMELY subjective list of the books I enjoyed this year. Sometimes it’ll be the classics. Sometimes it won’t be. If Ulysses hadn’t taken me five months to read (it was a mistake to read it at the same time as Infinite Jest, yes), the results might have been different. It’s a great book, a classic, and in the end, I just enjoyed the noir stylings of Altered Carbon more.
So, what do you think of the first battles? Comments? Virulent disagreement?
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