Waggish

David Auerbach on literature, tech, film, etc.

Tag: books of the year (page 2 of 3)

David Auerbach’s Books of the Year 2022: Literature

31 December 2022 / / 1 Comment

Scheduling constraints mean this year’s list is going to come out in stages, with the overall top at the end. It was a very busy year for me, focusing on my forthcoming book Meganets. Of the literature, Ottessa Moshfegh, Yiyun Li, and Alta Ifland all came in with very, very strong new novels, and Percival Everett and John Crowley were reliably excellent. Moshfegh’s is probably her best to date. I have not finished Goytisolo’s Antagony, but it’s too major not to list.

Lapvona: A Novel
Moshfegh, Ottessa (Author)
Penguin Press


Flint and Mirror
Crowley, John (Author)
Tor Books


The Book of Goose: A Novel
Li, Yiyun (Author)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Speaking to No. 4
Ifland, Alta (Author)
New Europe Books


Dr. No: A Novel
Everett, Percival (Author)
Graywolf Press


A Very Old Man: Stories (New York Review Books Classics)
Svevo, Italo (Author), Randall, Frederika (Translator), Rich, Nathaniel (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Peter the Great's African: Experiments in Prose (New York Review Books Classics)
Pushkin, Alexander (Author), Chandler, Robert (Editor), Chandler, Robert (Translator), Dralyuk, Boris (Translator), Chandler, Elizabeth (Translator)
NYRB Classics



After (NYRB Poets)
Narayanan, Vivek (Author)
NYRB Poets


The Best of Lucius Shepard, Vol. 2
Shepard, Lucius (Author)
Subterranean Press


Antagony (Spanish Literature)
Goytisolo, Luis (Author), Riley, Brendan (Translator)
Dalkey Archive Press


Memories of Starobielsk: Essays Between Art and History (New York Review Books Classics)
Czapski, Jozef (Author), Valles, Alissa (Translator), Gross, Irena Grudzinska (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Blind Owl
Hedayat, Sadeq (Author), Tabatabai, Sassan (Translator), Tabatabai, Sassan (Introduction)
Penguin Classics


Late Fragments: Flares, My Heart Laid Bare, Prose Poems, Belgium Disrobed (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Baudelaire, Charles (Author), Sieburth, Richard (Translator)
Yale University Press


Telluria (New York Review Books)
Sorokin, Vladimir (Author), Lawton, Max (Translator)
NYRB Classics


Their Four Hearts (Russian Literature)
Sorokin, Vladimir (Author), Klassen, Gregory (Illustrator), Lawton, Max (Translator)
Dalkey Archive Press


Spadework for a Palace (Storybook ND Series)
Krasznahorkai, László (Author), Batki, John (Translator)
New Directions


A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East
Krasznahorkai, László (Author), Mulzet, Ottilie (Translator)
New Directions


Homeward from Heaven (Russian Library)
Poplavsky, Boris (Author), Karetnyk, Bryan (Translator)
Columbia University Press


The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes
Joyce, James (Author), Flynn, Catherine (Author)
Cambridge University Press


The Poems (The Swiss List)
Walser, Robert (Author), Pantano, Daniele (Translator), Pantano, Daniele (Afterword)
Seagull Books

David Auerbach’s Books of the Year 2021

22 December 2021 / / 0 Comments

My two top books are both monuments of, and to, scholarship. The much-needed new edition of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy pays respects to a work that is close to my heart in its obsessive, searching, elephantine reach. Many years ago the writer John Crowley recommended two books to me: The Man Without Qualities and The Anatomy of Melancholy. He clearly saw me well. Mary Ann Lund’s book offers a good introduction to Burton if the monster tome itself seems unapproachable.

Susan Bernofsky’s biography of Robert Walser is simply the best literary biography I’ve read in some time, meticulously researched and beautifully written, the result of Bernofsky’s 30 years of deep engagement with Walser. The writing itself is exceptional, making it also the most literary literary biography I have read in many a year.

Otherwise, it was a good year for books, better than 2020 overall, with the exception of comics, where remarkable entries seemed quite thin (at least among established publishers). This possibly owes to the ongoing genteelification of the medium and the concomitant insecurities. But Brecht Evens’s long awaited new work is his greatest yet, beautiful and dense, with stunning use of color.

Keep reading, and happy new year, as happy a one as is feasible.

BOOKS OF THE YEAR

The Anatomy of Melancholy
Burton, Robert (Author)
Penguin Classics


Clairvoyant of the Small: The Life of Robert Walser
Bernofsky, Susan (Author)
Yale University Press

LITERATURE

Be as Children (Dedalus Europe Book 0)
Sharov, Vladimir (Author), Ready, Oliver (Translator)
Dedalus


The Wife Who Wasn't: A Novel
Ifland, Alta (Author)
New Europe Books


The Symphonies
Bely, Andrei (Author), Stone, Jonathan (Translator)
Columbia University Press



Kapo (New York Review Books Classics)
Tisma, Aleksander (Author), Williams, Richard (Translator), Rieff, David (Afterword)
NYRB Classics


The Trees: A Novel
Everett, Percival (Author)
Graywolf Press


Impostures (Library of Arabic Literature, 65)
al-Ḥarīrī (Author), Cooperson, Michael (Translator), Kilito, Abdelfattah (Foreword)
NYU Press


At Night All Blood Is Black
Diop, David (Author)
Picador Paper


Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Tadeusz Borowski (Author), Madeline G. Levine (Translator)
Yale University Press


Terminal Boredom: Stories
Suzuki, Izumi (Author), Barton, Polly (Translator), Bett, Sam (Translator), Boyd, David (Translator), Joseph, Daniel (Translator)
Verso Fiction


Chasing Homer
Krasznahorkai, László (Author), Miklós, Szilveszter (Performer), Batki, John (Translator), Neumann, Max (Artist)
New Directions


The Notes: or On Non-premature Reconciliation (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Hohl, Ludwig (Author), Cohen, Joshua (Foreword), Lewis, Tess (Translator)
Yale University Press


Brief Lives of Idiots
Cavazzoni, Ermanno (Author), Richards, Jamie (Introduction)
Wakefield Press


Kalevala: The Epic of the Finnish People
Lönnrot, Elias (Editor), Korpela, Jukka (Introduction), Friberg, Eino (Translator)
Penguin



The Book of All Skies
Egan, Greg (Author)
Greg Egan


We All Hear Stories in the Dark [Trade Paperback 3 Volume Set]
Robert Shearman (Author), Michael Marshall Smith (Author), Lisa Tuttle (Author), Angela Slatter (Author), Steven Moffat (Author), Reggie Oliver (Illustrator), Reggie Oliver (Illustrator)
PS Publishing


The Stone Face
Smith, William Gardner (Author), Shatz, Adam (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Storm
Stewart, George R. (Author), Rich, Nathaniel (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Good Behaviour (New York Review Books Classics)
Keane, Molly (Author), Gentry, Amy (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Rakes of the Old Court: A Novel (Northwestern World Classics)
Caragiale, Mateiu (Author), Cotter, Sean (Translator)
Northwestern University Press


McGrotty and Ludmilla (Canons)
Gray, Alasdair (Author)
Canongate Canons


PARADISE: Dante's Divine Trilogy Part Three. Englished in Prosaic Verse by Alasdair Gray
Gray, Alasdair (Author), Alighieri, Dante (Author)
Canongate Books


The Life Written by Himself (Russian Library)
Petrov, Archpriest Avvakum (Author), Gluck, Michael (Editor), Brostrom, Kenneth (Translator)
Columbia University Press


ANTHOLOGY OF TANG AND SONG TALES: THE TANG SONG CHUANQI JI OF LU XUN
Victor Mair (Author), Victor Mair (Editor), Zhenjun Zhang (Editor)
World Scientific Publishing Company


The Penguin Book of Spanish Short Stories
Jull Costa, Margaret (Editor), Jull Costa, Margaret (Translator), Bunstead, Thomas (Translator), Bush, Peter (Translator), Phillips-Miles, Kathryn (Translator), Deefholt, Simon (Translator), Maude, Kit (Translator)
Penguin


The Spirit of Controversy: and Other Essays (Oxford World's Classics)
Hazlitt, William (Author), Mee, Jon (Editor), Grande, James (Editor)
Oxford University Press


Samuel Johnson: Selected Works
Johnson, Samuel (Author), DeMaria, Robert (Editor), Fix, Stephen (Editor), Weinbrot, Howard D (Editor)
Yale University Press

HUMANITIES

Philosophy and Religion in Plato's Dialogues
Nightingale, Andrea (Author)
Cambridge University Press


Lucian, True History: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary
Clay, Diskin (Author), Brusuelas, James H. (Editor)
OUP Oxford


Expanding Horizons in the History of Science
Lloyd, G. E. R. (Author)
Cambridge University Press


Inwardness: An Outsider's Guide (No Limits)
Ganeri, Jonardon (Author)
Columbia University Press



St. Matthew Passion (signale|TRANSFER: German Thought in Translation)
Blumenberg, Hans (Author), Müller-Sievers, Helmut (Translator), Fleming, Paul (Translator)
Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library


Cassirer (The Routledge Philosophers)
Matherne, Samantha (Author)
Routledge


Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music
Sulzer, David (Author)
Columbia University Press



The Philosophical Stage: Drama and Dialectic in Classical Athens
Billings, Joshua (Author)
Princeton University Press



Uncountable: A Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present
Nirenberg, David (Author), Nirenberg, Ricardo L. (Author)
University of Chicago Press




Plato's Sun-Like Good: Dialectic in the Republic
Broadie, Sarah (Author)
Cambridge University Press


A User's Guide to Melancholy
Lund, Mary Ann (Author)
Cambridge University Press

SCIENCE AND TECH




Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality
Wilczek, Frank (Author)
Penguin Books



The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
Solms, Mark (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company



SOCIAL SCIENCE

Outrageous Fortune: Gloomy Reflections on Luck and Life
Miller, William Ian (Author)
Oxford University Press



Information: A Historical Companion
Blair, Ann (Editor), Duguid, Paul (Editor), Goeing, Anja-Silvia (Editor), Grafton, Anthony (Editor)
Princeton University Press


Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing
Thompson, John B. (Author)
Polity


The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance
Prasad, Eswar S. (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press



The Banks Did It: An Anatomy of the Financial Crisis
Fligstein, Neil (Author)
Harvard University Press

HISTORY AND POLITICS


My Seven Lives: Jana Juráňová in Conversation with Agneša Kalinová
Juráňová, Jana (Author), Kalinová, Agneša (Author)
Purdue University Press


Law and the Party in China: Ideology and Organisation
Creemers, Rogier J. E. H. (Editor), Trevaskes, Susan (Editor)
Cambridge University Press


The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution
Yang, Jisheng (Author), Mosher, Stacy (Translator), Jian, Guo (Translator)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Plokhy, Serhii (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company


Cicero: Political Philosophy (Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought)
Schofield, Malcolm (Author)
Oxford University Press


India and the World: A History of Connections, c. 1750–2000
Markovits, Claude (Author)
Cambridge University Press


China's Leaders: From Mao to Now
Shambaugh, David (Author)
Polity


Hobbes's Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations
Martinich, A.P. (Author)
Oxford University Press

COMICS

The City of Belgium
Evens, Brecht (Author)
Drawn and Quarterly


Donjon Monsters T13: Réveille-toi et meurs
David B. (Drawings), Sfar, Joann (Contributor), Trondheim, Lewis (Contributor)
DELCOURT


Alberto Breccia's Dracula (The Alberto Breccia Library)
Breccia, Alberto (Author), Breccia, Alberto (Artist)
Fantagraphics Books


Trots and Bonnie
Flenniken, Shary (Author), Hathaway, Norman (Editor), Flake, Emily (Introduction), Hathaway, Norman (Designer)
New York Review Comics


Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise (New York Review Comics)
Panter, Gary (Author), Rudick, Nicole (Afterword), Ruscha, Ed (Foreword)
New York Review Comics


Lewis Trondheim's The Fly
Trondheim, Lewis (Author)
Papercutz


Dungeon: Zenith vol. 4: Outside the Ramparts (4)
Trondheim, Lewis (Author), Sfar, Joann (Author), Boulet (Illustrator)
NBM Publishing


Nuft and the Last Dragons, Volume 1: The Great Technowhiz (NUFT & LAST DRAGONS GN)
Milton, Freddy (Author), Milton, Freddy (Artist)
Fantagraphics Books


When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers
Krimstein, Ken (Author)
Bloomsbury Publishing

ART

Myself and My Aims: Writings on Art and Criticism
Schwitters, Kurt (Author), Luke, Megan R. (Editor), Grundy, Timothy (Translator)
University of Chicago Press


Aby Warburg: Bilderatlas Mnemosyne: The Original
Warburg, Aby (Author), Heil, Axel (Contributor), Ohrt, Roberto (Contributor), Scherer, Bernd (Contributor), Sherman, Bill (Contributor), Wedepohl, Claudia (Contributor)
Hatje Cantz

David Auerbach’s Books of the Year 2020

22 December 2020 / / 1 Comment

In this chaotic, surreal, and trying year, books as always provided a source of steadiness and continuity, when there was enough time and space to give them full attention.

My two books of the year are both superior anthologies suffused with the editor/translators’ love and reverence for their authors–inspiring feats in themselves. The third volume of Musil translated by Genese Grill and published by Contra Mundum is a massive and masterful anthology of Musil’s plays and theater writings, the most substantial new Musil volume in years, expertly rendered and annotated. Hannes Bajohr, Florian Fuchs, and Joe Paul Kroll collectively perform an even greater feat in drawing together Blumenberg’s essays across the breadth of his career and finally producing an approachable entry point to his work in English. The introductions to both volumes are superb. The works are old, but Grill, Bajohr, Fuchs, and Kroll are their animating spirits today.

The same goes for Steve G. Lofts’s new translation of Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, a massive undertaking of an underappreciated work by an underappreciated philosopher, the third Davos participant who saw more widely than Carnap and more humanely than Heidegger. A more affordable edition is warranted. And the long-awaited reissue of Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl’s Saturn and Melancholy, done with immense care and comprehensiveness, is a model example of cultural history at a level of depth and intimacy that has always been rare, and is perhaps becoming rarer.

Fantagraphics’s reissues of Alberto Breccia’s stunning work also deserve more attention. I read part of Perramus when Fantagraphics issued it 30 years ago and was blown away by Breccia’s singular style; its’ good to have the whole thing finally. His version of The Eternaut is also remarkable.

I hesitate to mention too many other books for fear of neglecting the others, but I will say that of the science and technology books, several deal with subjects that are currently inundated with popularizations. In my eye, those below are notably superior to the rest of their crowd, though the marketplace of ideas has apparently and frustratingly failed to raise these books above their brethren. To a lesser extent, the same applies to history and politics.

Jacob Burckhardt said that the 20th century would be the age of oversimplification. The 21st has so far been the age of increasingly desperate and defensive oversimplification, across all domains of knowledge. Here’s to the fight against it.

(Final note: for an anthology of short plague-related stories, please check out my little project The Enneadecameron, featuring worthy tales by John Crowley, Irina Dumitrescu, Genese Grill, Alta Ifland, and many more.)

BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Theater Symptoms: Plays and Writings on Drama
Musil, Robert (Author), Grill, Genese (Translator), Grill, Genese (Introduction)
Contra Mundum Press


History, Metaphors, Fables: A Hans Blumenberg Reader (signale|TRANSFER: German Thought in Translation)
Blumenberg, Hans (Author), Bajohr, Hannes (Translator), Fuchs, Florian (Translator), Kroll, Joe Paul (Translator)
Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library

LITERATURE

Eros, Unbroken
Kim, Annie (Author)
Word Works


The Long White Cloud of Unknowing
Samuels, Lisa (Author)
Chax Press


The Bern Book: A Record of a Voyage of the Mind (American Literature)
Carter, Vincent O. (Author), McCarthy, Jesse (Introduction)
Dalkey Archive Press


Peach Blossom Paradise (New York Review Books Classics)
Fei, Ge (Author), Morse, Canaan (Translator)
NYRB Classics


Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories of Nikolai Leskov (New York Review Books Classics)
Leskov, Nikolai (Author), Chandler, Robert (Translator), Rayfield, Donald (Translator), Edgerton, William (Translator), Rayfield, Donald (Introduction)
NYRB Classics


Alexandria: A Novel
Kingsnorth, Paul (Author)
Graywolf Press


Impostures (Library of Arabic Literature, 65)
al-Ḥarīrī (Author), Cooperson, Michael (Translator), Kilito, Abdelfattah (Foreword)
NYU Press


Rogomelec (The Envelope-silence, 6)
Fini, Leonor (Author), Skwersky, Serena Shanken (Translator), Kulik, William T. (Translator), Eburne, Jonathan P. (Introduction)
Wakefield Press


Meaning a Life: an Autobiography
Oppen, Mary (Author), Yang, Jeffrey (Introduction)
New Directions


The Lost Writings
Kafka, Franz (Author), Stach, Reiner (Editor), Hofmann, Michael (Translator)
New Directions


Collected Stories
Hazzard, Shirley (Author), Olubas, Brigitta (Editor), Heller, Zoë (Foreword)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux


Surviving: Stories, Essays, Interviews (New York Review Books Classics)
Green, Henry (Author), Yorke, Matthew (Editor), Updike, John (Introduction), Yorke, Sebastian (Afterword)
NYRB Classics



Lame Fate | Ugly Swans (36) (Rediscovered Classics)
Strugatsky, Arkady (Author), Strugatsky, Boris (Author), Strugatsky, Boris (Author), Vinokour, Maya (Author)
Chicago Review Press


The Third Walpurgis Night: The Complete Text (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Kraus, Karl (Author), Bridgham, Fred (Translator), Timms, Edward (Translator), Perloff, Marjorie (Foreword)
Yale University Press


Death in Her Hands: A Novel
Moshfegh, Ottessa (Author)
Penguin Press


I Live in the Slums: Stories (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
Can Xue (Author), Gernant, Karen (Translator), Chen, Zeping (Translator)
Yale University Press


Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath
Ha, Quan Manh (Translator), Babcock, Joseph (Translator)
Columbia University Press


Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow (Russian Library)
Radishchev, Alexander (Author), Reyfman, Irina (Translator), Kahn, Andrew (Translator)
Columbia University Press


A Lover's Discourse
Guo, Xiaolu (Author), Guo, Xiaolu (Author), Guo, Xiaolu (Author)
Grove Press


The Selected Poems of Tu Fu: Expanded and Newly Translated by David Hinton
Fu, Tu (Author), Hinton, David (Translator)
New Directions


Instantiation
Egan, Greg (Author)
Greg Egan


The Evidence
Priest, Christopher (Author)
Gollancz


Piranesi
Clarke, Susanna (Author)
Bloomsbury Publishing


Dispersion
Egan, Greg (Author)
Subterranean Pr


Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas: A Novel
de Assis, Joaquim Maria Machado (Author), Costa, Margaret Jull (Translator), Patterson, Robin (Translator)
Liveright

HUMANITIES

Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art
Klibansky, Raymond (Author), Panofsky, Erwin (Author), Saxl, Fritz (Author), Despoix, Philippe (Editor), Leroux, Georges (Editor)
McGill-Queen's University Press


Michelangelo’s Design Principles, Particularly in Relation to Those of Raphael
Panofsky, Erwin (Author), Panofsky-Soergel, Gerda (Editor), Spooner, Joseph (Translator), Panofsky-Soergel, Gerda (Introduction)
Princeton University Press


The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language
Cassirer, Ernst (Author), Gordon, Peter E. (Foreword), Lofts, Steve G. (Translator)
Routledge


The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 2: Mythical Thinking
Cassirer, Ernst (Author), Gordon, Peter E. (Foreword), Lofts, Steve G. (Translator)
Routledge


The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 3: Phenomenology of Cognition
Cassirer, Ernst (Author), Gordon, Peter E. (Foreword), Lofts, Steve G. (Translator)
Routledge


Inky Fingers: The Making of Books in Early Modern Europe
Grafton, Anthony (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press



A Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Music (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World)
Lynch, Tosca A. C. (Editor), Rocconi, Eleonora (Editor)
Wiley-Blackwell


Wisdom as a Way of Life: Theravāda Buddhism Reimagined
Collins, Steven (Author), McDaniel, Justin (Editor), Hallisey, Charles (Introduction)
Columbia University Press


Time in Ancient Stories of Origin
Walter, Anke (Author)
OUP Oxford


Anger: The Conflicted History of an Emotion (Vices and Virtues)
Rosenwein, Barbara H. (Author)
Yale University Press


Who Needs a World View?
Geuss, Raymond (Author)
Harvard University Press




Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age
Damrosch, David (Author)
Princeton University Press


Classical Indian Philosophy: A history of philosophy without any gaps, Volume 5
Adamson, Peter (Author), Ganeri, Jonardon (Author)
Oxford University Press




Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers
Misak, Cheryl (Author)
Oxford University Press


Early Modern German Philosophy (1690-1750)
Dyck, Corey W. (Author)
Oxford University Press


Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture
Harvey, Eleanor Jones (Author), Sues, Hans-Dieter (Preface)
Princeton University Press




SCIENCE & TECH

The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
Falk, Seb (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company


Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing
Brayne, Sarah (Author)
Oxford University Press


How the Brain Makes Decisions
Boraud, Thomas (Author)
Oxford University Press



The Phantom Pattern Problem: The Mirage of Big Data
Smith, Gary (Author), Cordes, Jay (Author)
Oxford University Press


Metazoa: Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind
Godfrey-Smith, Peter (Author)
Farrar, Straus and Giroux



Darwin's Psychology: The Theatre of Agency
Bradley, Ben (Author)
OUP Oxford


The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn
Richard W. Hamming (Author), Bret Victor (Foreword)
Stripe Press

HISTORY



The Invention of China
Hayton, Bill (Author)
Yale University Press


China’s Good War: How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism
Mitter, Rana (Author)
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press


Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
Herrin, Judith (Author)
Princeton University Press




Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World
Schuman, Michael (Author)
PublicAffairs


Away from Chaos: The Middle East and the Challenge to the West
Kepel, Gilles (Author), Randolph, Henry (Translator)
Columbia University Press



Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades
Bailyn, Bernard (Author)
W. W. Norton & Company



Has China Won?: The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy
Mahbubani, Kishore (Author)
PublicAffairs


The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History
Mikaberidze, Alexander (Author)
Oxford University Press

SOCIAL SCIENCES

France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime
Elster, Jon (Author)
Princeton University Press


The Blind Storyteller: How We Reason About Human Nature
Berent, Iris (Author)
Oxford University Press


What’s Wrong with Economics?: A Primer for the Perplexed
Skidelsky, Robert (Author)
Yale University Press

COMICS AND ART

The Eternaut 1969 (The Alberto Breccia Library)
German Oesterheld, Hector (Author), Breccia, Alberto (Artist)
Fantagraphics Books


Perramus: The City and Oblivion (The Alberto Breccia Library)
Breccia, Alberto (Author), Sasturain, Juan (Author), Mena, Erica (Translator)
Fantagraphics


The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud
Tsurita, Kuniko (Author), Holmberg, Ryan (Translator)
Drawn and Quarterly


Nymph
Marzocchi, Leila (Author), Marzocchi, Leila (Artist)
Fantagraphics Books


Stay
Trondheim, Lewis (Author), Chevillard, Hubert (Artist)
Magnetic Press


Infinity 8 Vol.7: All for Nothing (INFINITY 8 HC)
Trondheim, Lewis (Author), Boulet (Author), Kennedy, Mike (Editor), Boulet (Artist)
Magnetic Press


Infinity 8 vol.8: Until the End (INFINITY 8 HC)
Trondheim, Lewis (Author), Killoffer (Artist)
Magnetic Press


Barnaby Volume Four (BARNABY HC)
Johnson, Crockett (Author), Nel, Philip (Series Editor), Robbins, Trina (Introduction), Clowes, Daniel (Cover Art)
Fantagraphics Books



Winter Warrior: A Vietnam Vet's Anti-War Odyssey
Gilbert, Eve (Author), Camil, Scott (Author)
Fantagraphics


The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1919-1921 (GEORGE HERRIMAN LIBRARY HC)
Herriman, George (Author), Herriman, George (Artist)
Fantagraphics Books



The Daughters of Ys
Anderson, M. T. (Author), Rioux, Jo (Illustrator)
First Second


Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting
Storr, Robert (Author)
Laurence King Publishing


Philip Guston Now
Guston, Philip (Artist), Cooper, Harry (Contributor), Godfrey, Mark (Contributor), Greene, Alison de Lima (Contributor), Nesin, Kate (Contributor), Fischli, Peter (Contributor), Hancock, Trenton Doyle (Contributor), Kentridge, William (Contributor), Dean, Tacita (Contributor), Ligon, Glenn (Contributor), Roberts, Jennifer (Contributor)
D.A.P./National Gallery of Art


Year of the Rabbit
Veasna, Tian (Author), Dascher, Helge (Translator)
Drawn and Quarterly


The Phantom Twin
Brown, Lisa (Author)
First Second


Solutions and Other Problems
Brosh, Allie (Author)
Gallery Books


Stuck Rubber Baby 25th Anniversary Edition
Cruse, Howard (Author), Bechdel, Alison (Introduction)
First Second


Paying the Land
Sacco, Joe (Author)
Metropolitan Books


Albrecht Dürer
Metzger, Christof (Editor)
Prestel


Glass Town: The Imaginary World of the Brontës
Greenberg, Isabel (Author)
Harry N. Abrams


Anselm Kiefer in Conversation with Klaus Dermutz (The German List)
Kiefer, Anselm (Author), Dermutz, Klaus (Author), Lewis, Tess (Translator)
Seagull Books


Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual – Revised and Expanded Edition
Gamwell, Lynn (Author), Tyson, Neil deGrasse (Foreword)
Princeton University Press

Books of the Moment

11 June 2020 / / 2 Comments


The George Herriman Library: Krazy & Ignatz 1916-1918

Price: $26.00

42 used & new available from $18.37


Cane (Penguin Classics)

Price: $13.83

31 used & new available from $7.50


Invisible Man

Price: $11.37

221 used & new available from $1.31



Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale

Price: $49.96

3 used & new available from


Plan B

Price: $16.59

11 used & new available from


Whoreson

Price: $8.99

44 used & new available from $7.55


Hue and Cry: Stories (Art of the Story)

Price: $16.99

63 used & new available from $3.50


Oreo

Price: $12.60

62 used & new available from $4.99



Bloodchild and Other Stories

Price: $11.44

89 used & new available from $3.46


Stuck Rubber Baby 25th Anniversary Edition

Price: $15.24

56 used & new available from $4.99


The Known World

Price: $14.75

22 used & new available from $14.75


Erasure: A Novel

Price: $10.89

55 used & new available from $7.49



David Auerbach’s Books of the Year 2018

21 December 2018 / / 2 Comments

To be a true reader or writer today is to exist primarily in a state of longing and loneliness (sehnsucht, in the German term), because the vast majority of one’s closest associates are dead. Over the course of the 20th century the world of letters separated rather violently from the world of consequence, and so loving writing as writing requires either myopic self-delusion or an absurd appreciation for the spiritual residue of artistic impact. I don’t have the former in me, so it is the latter that drives me.

A remarkable amount of excellent archival issues came out this year, particularly in fiction and literature. The two placed in the pole position are not necessarily more deserving than many others. Rather, I chose them because they seemed to be most resonant with this year, despite being written decades ago. Both are very unorthodox Cold War retrospectives, both vaguely “documentary”-like, and yet animated by almost opposite sensibilities.

Ironically, I found Anniversaries to be a gloomier tale than Kolyma Stories, in the same way that gray is a gloomier color than black, or Faith is more enervating than Closer. Likewise, Johnson’s self-appearance in Anniversaries is more despairing than Shalamov’s varied appearances in Kolyma, because there is a certain abdication of moral authority Johnson took on in writing Anniversaries that is either disingenuous or terrifying. I think it’s the latter.

Continue reading

« Older posts Newer posts »

David Auerbach

About the author

Send me an E-mail

Feeds

© 2024 Waggish

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑