It was a pretty good year, especially for fiction. I stand no chance of ever catching up on my backlog of books to read, so these are less “Books of the Year” than “Books of My Year,” ones which happened to be published in 2013 (or late 2012). A boom in non-Waggish writing resulted in me not having time to write up some of these books, which I really do regret. I spent a month rereading old Pynchon novels alongside Bleeding Edge, which was blessedly worthwhile, but did not help my productivity. Reading list longa, vita brevis.
The order is fairly random though I have tried to put my favorites toward the top of each section. Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo was probably foreordained to be at the top, while the final appearance of Lem’s Summa Technologiae in English was a major event for me. (See my review here.) As with War and War when I first read it, I don’t have a lot to say about Seiobo right now. Maybe in ten years.
As with last year, I haven’t read the entirety of some of the nonfiction selections: Judith Herrin’s two volumes of essays will take some time, while the Maimonides book had me flagging on several topics that just aren’t my thing.
If anyone’s curious as to why some book or other made the list, feel free to ask in the comments. Thanks again for reading my work here or elsewhere.
(As always, I do not make any money from these links; they’re just the easiest way to get the thumbnails.)
Literature
Deaths in Venice: The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach (Leonard Hastings Schoff Lectures)
Price: $36.47
18 used & new available from $5.00
The Four Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching, Analects, Chuang Tzu, Mencius
Price: $116.61
3 used & new available from
Georges Perec and the Oulipo: Winter Journeys (Atlas Anti-classics)
Price: $27.85
44 used & new available from $22.45
Tales of the German Imagination from the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann (Penguin Classics)
Price: $15.90
40 used & new available from $3.89
Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets)
Price: $14.42
16 used & new available from $10.00
Nonfiction
Nagarjuna's Middle Way: Mulamadhyamakakarika (Classics of Indian Buddhism)
Price: $23.33
28 used & new available from $4.98
Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece
Price: $31.00
18 used & new available from $20.29
The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000
Price: $38.99
20 used & new available from $34.66
The Nonlinear World: Conceptual Analysis and Phenomenology (Springer Series in Synergetics)
Price: $73.00
14 used & new available from $73.00
The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance
Price: $118.47
7 used & new available from $112.90
Oral Tradition and the Internet: Pathways of the Mind
Price: $32.00
22 used & new available from $14.42
The Circle of Socrates: Readings in the First-Generation Socratics
Price: $25.00
13 used & new available from $21.14
Language, Truth, and Literature: A Defence of Literary Humanism
Price: $130.00
6 used & new available from $117.38
The Mind within the Brain: How We Make Decisions and How those Decisions Go Wrong
Price: $38.30
31 used & new available from $4.64
Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory
Price: $32.00
9 used & new available from $11.01
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
Price: $41.95
39 used & new available from $9.06
Margins and Metropolis: Authority across the Byzantine Empire
Price: $17.82
1 used & new available from $17.82
How Did Poetry Survive?: The Making of Modern American Verse
Price: $37.00
6 used & new available from $24.97
Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman
Price: $14.20
79 used & new available from $3.49
The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us
Price: $50.20
4 used & new available from $38.75
Comics
The Amazing, Enlightening And Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley
Price: $19.35
21 used & new available from $7.99
Price: $11.57
217 used & new available from $0.73
Walt Disney's Donald Duck (WALT DISNEY DONALD DUCK HC)
Price: $27.04
50 used & new available from $13.75
