I'm back, and somehow still alive. I took a break from writing for a while, but figured I should at least return to do my year end lists. As for the Golden Nuggets series, I kind of lost interest after a while, but hopefully I can think of something else to write about after too long. The first portion of my 2020 in review was the top ten books that I read. Being in the house a lot more last year, I had a lot more time to get some reading done, and I tackled a lot. These are not books that came out in 2020, merely books I happened to read in 2020. Stay tuned for my top album discoveries list, most disappointing albums list and my top ten albums of the year.
James Joyce- Finnegans Wake
Reading this book is definitely something else, and one of the most challenging and rewarding reading experiences of my life. I even read Anthony Burgess' Rejoyce prior to undertaking this, being aware of the novel's historic difficulty, but it barely prepared me. This novel is so dense, impenetrable, and experimental that Joyce scholars haven't been able to fully agree on the bare bones of the plot, almost 100 years later. The thing that I find so fascinating about it is that mystique, and that every sentence contains multiple meanings, depending on if you're taking the words at face value, or if you're reading them aloud, and the words spoken sound out different meanings. Read some passages for yourself if you want to know what I mean. This is dream logic in literary form.
Questlove- Creative Quest
I read this book early on into quarantine, and it helped me make use of some of the extra time I had sitting around at home to do more and to think more creatively. Questlove shares some anecdotes about some of the experiences in his career regarding creativity and being your most productive self, and I hope to maybe apply some of these suggestions more often into my daily life.
Albert Camus- The Plague
This book's plot, which revolves around a small city's quarantine and isolation due to plague, should seem incredibly familiar to most of the people reading this, since it seems shockingly accurate to the modern world's response (or lack thereof) to the COVID-19 pandemic, which as of this writing, has been going on for almost a year. I read this probably around April, and it was almost a window into the denial, selfishness, and stupidity of people at large that was to follow. Albert Camus' grasp of the human condition was amazing, and it's a little sad that a book written over 70 years ago could still be so relevant regarding these types of issues.
Thomas Pynchon- The Crying of Lot 49
I got into a little bit more Pynchon last year, tackling this novel, as well as his short story collection, Slow Learner. This kind of underground war between rival secret post offices was pretty interesting, and learning about the real roots of some of the old companies gave this story a more grounded reality. I bet if these secret post offices actually existed, they wouldn't have let Donald Trump try to kill them to steal an election. I'm going to try and dig deeper into Pynchon this year if I can.
Tom Wolfe- The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
I've always been interested in the psychedelic movement of the mid to late '60s, but I never gave this book a read until last year. Tom Wolfe creates a bit of a journalistic novel of the events surrounding Ken Kesey, his Merry Pranksters, and the Acid Tests which would introduce a lot of people to LSD. I found the descriptions of the group's day to day activities fascinating, and really wish I could see their films or hear some of the tape recordings they made around this time. It also gave me a little bit of a window into the beginnings of Owsley's chemistry career, and made me want to pick the recent biography on him.
Anthony A Barrett- Caligula: The Corruption of Power
I have seen and heard many accounts of Caligula's life and reign, some more accurate than others. This book is probably one of the most thoroughly researched and accurate books on the subject. Though a little dry in spots, and slightly confusing in others (but that mostly stems from ancient Romans naming every kid the exact same thing, or a very slight alteration of it), the book takes a little bit of the controversy and exploitative nature of the other accounts away and tries to give a more realistic portrait of Gaius Caligula. If you're looking for exploitation, go for Tinto Brass or Bruno Mattei. If you're looking for fact, perhaps start here.
Flannery O'Connor- Collected Works
Flannery O'Connor is among the best Southern Gothic writers to ever pick up a pen, and I was glad to finally read her entire output. This volume collects her two novels, her short story collections, including unpublished works, some of her prose pieces, and a truly exhaustive number of personal letters. If her fiction didn't give you a picture of who she was and what she believed in, her letters definitely will. I began to see some push back against her writings this year with accusations of racism, which if people actually read her, would know is hilarious, as her views are anything but. She writes racist, bigoted, and immoral characters, but they are always framed in a poor light and the error in their ways is made apparent in the story. She's showing you what becomes of people who believe these things, not that she believes them.
David Foster Wallace- A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
I also dug deeper into David Foster Wallace's bibliography last year, reading this and his first story collection The Girl with Curious Hair. I had never been exposed to his non fiction before, besides "This is Water", which I guess is more of a speech than anything. So I had a question. How does the writer of Infinite Jest cover a state fair? Or a cruise to Jamaica? The answer is in an incredibly intelligent, often hilarious style. He even made subjects such as mathematics and physics in tennis interesting, which I would normally find boring or tedious. It's a shame he's not around to see the world of today, because I would love to hear his thoughts on it's current predicament.
Tom Mullen- Anthology of Emo Volume 2
This is the second collection of transcribed interviews of the Washed Up Emo Podcast that has been released, and it is no less enthralling. A few artists, such as Jim Adkins of Jimmy Eat World, were known to me, but it was also very fun for me to read about bands I had never heard of, being only a kid when a lot of these bands were touring in their prime. It turned me on to a lot of new (to me) bands, and gave me some greater knowledge of the genre. Also, if you're not subscribed to the podcast, you should do that.
Paul A Woods- Morrissey in Conversation
This book collects a number of interviews done with Morrissey throughout his career, from the early '80s with the Smiths, up through his solo stuff. For those wondering, this book's last interview was from around 2006, so much too late to touch on Morrissey's latest controversial statements. It's interesting to see his opinion on Thatcher and other topics back then, and then to see what he allegedly supports now. It's also interesting to see what the press always focused on with him. As an American, I'm not too familiar with the British press, but they seem a lot more fickle, and much more interested in things we would consider tabloid journalism. A lot of questions were asked to Morrissey; very little had much to do with music.
So, that's about it for now. For my next entry, I'll be discussing albums that I either discovered or rediscovered in the year 2020. Stay safe out there, and mask up.
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