Sunday, December 10, 2017

MY 2017 READING CHALLENGE

Hi Everyone--

Because I have a mess of grading, travel, and writing to finish up before the end of the year, I wanted to post my reading list for 2017 and talk about some of my favorite reads. For poetry, I absolutely adored Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong and Depression and Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim. They were both beautifully haunting and I can't recommend them enough.

My choices for novels/short story collections this year were a little all over the place, but I'm very much okay with that. I read a lot of memoir this year, and particularly enjoyed Hunger by Roxane Gay. It was raw, honest, and hopeful in brilliant ways, and as someone who deals with body issues, particularly dysmorphia, this was a book that I truly needed and enjoyed. Naturally, I worked in a Stephen King book or two, as per my usual, and I just finished up Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman as I'm writing this, and thoroughly enjoyed that, too.

For graphic novels this year, I sort of slacked a little, but I adored My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the movie interpretation of it, especially now that I'm working off of the high of watching Mindhunter

Something new that I did this year was challenge myself to start reading magazines more, particularly those with a focus on dark/speculative fiction. I didn't get to read as much as I would have liked--I was aiming for 50 stories--but who knows. Maybe I'll surprise myself and sneak in some more reading before the end of the year is up. Having said that, a few of my favorites were:(1) "A Human Stain" by Kelly Robson, (2) "The Changeling by Sarah Langan, (3) "Death's Door Cafe" by Kaaron Warren, (4) "The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado, and (5) Kiss of the Mouthless Girl by Giovanni De Feo.  

Poetry
  • The Madness Vase by Andrea Gibson
  • Blind Huber by Nick Flynn
  • Mortal Trash: Poems by Kim Addonizio
  • Lucifer at the Starlite by Kim Addonizio
  • What is This Thing Called Love: Poems by Kim Adonizio
  • Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
  • ‘Til Death: Marriage Poems by Jim and Janice Leach
  • Lay Ghost by Nathaniel Mackey
  • Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair
  • L’Heure Bleue or The Judy Poems by Elisa Gabbert
  • Last Sext by Melissa Broder
  • Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur
  • Swamp Isthumus by Joshua Marie Wilkinson
  • Fjords Vol. 1 by Zachary Schomburg
  • Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck
  • All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton
  • The Master of Disguises by Charles Simic
  • The Moon Before Morning by W. S. Merwin
  • Whiskey Words and a Shovel I by R. H. Sin
  • Whiskey Words and a Shovel II by R.H. Sin
  • The Princess Saves Herself in this One by Amanda Lovelace
  • Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire
  • Meat Heart by Melissa Broder
  • An Assortment of Sky Things by Christina Sng
  • Jackknife: New and Selected Poems by Jan Beatty
  • Beautiful Chaos by Robert M. Drake
  • Forever Words by Johnny Cash
  • Scarecrone by Melissa Broder
  • In the Circus of You by Nicelle Davis
  • Objects for a Fog Death by Julie Doxsee
  • Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire
  • I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World by Kyung Ju Kim
  • A Collection of Nightmares by Christina Sng
  • Depression and Other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
  • There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker
  • The Chaos of Longing by K. Y. Robinson
  • The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur


Books/Collections: Fiction/Nonfiction
  • White by Tim Lebbon
  • The Turtle Boy by Kealan Patrick Burke
  • Odd Man Out by James Newman
  • Snowed by Maria Alexander
  • Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions from a Writing Life by Kim Addonizio
  • Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
  • Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
  • Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
  • So Sad Today by Melissa Broder
  • We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1) by J.K. Rowling 
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) by J.K. Rowling
  • The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
  • The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer
  • Glue by Constance Ann Fitzgerald
  • This is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp
  • Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
  • Lust and Wonder by Augusten Burroughs
  • Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow
  • Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot
  • Gwendy’s Button Box by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar
  • I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
  • The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
  • #Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso
  • Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman 
  • The Girls by Emma Cline
  • Hunger by Roxane Gay
  • Slade House by David Mitchell
  • Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch
  • Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
  • Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
  • In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
  • The Horror of It All: One Moviegoers Love Affair with Masked Maniacs, Frightened Virgins and the Living Dead by Adam Rockoff
  • Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
  • Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made the World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie by Gunnar Hansen
  • Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
  • I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
  • Shit Luck by Tiffany Scandal
  • Puppet Skin by Danger Slater
  • Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
  • You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero
  • The Green Kangaroos by Jessica McHugh
  • And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
  • The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
  • There is No F*cking Secret by Kelly Osbourne
  • Psycho: Sanitarium by Chet Williamson
  • Asylum by Madeleine Roux
  • You’ll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac by Edie Kerouac-Parker
  • The Crabian Heart by Erik Hofstatter
  • Black Mad Wheel by Josh Malerman
  • Thinner by Stephen King
  • Deathtrap by Ira Levin
  • Ararat by Christopher Golden
  • Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King
  • Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen: A Celebration of the World's Most unheralded Fright Flicks by ADam Lukeman
  • Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Graphic Novels/Comics
  • Tomie: Complete Deluxe Edition by Junji Ito
  • Fight Club 2 by Chuck Palahniuk
  • The Tragical Comedy of Mr. Punch by Neil Gaiman
  • The Metamorphosis by Peter Kuper
  • Give it Up! and Other Short Stories by Peter Kuper
  • The Batman Adventures: Mad Love by Paul Dini
  • Dissolving Classroom by Junji Ito
  • My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
  • Wytches, Volume 1 by Scott Snyder
  • The Hidden by Richard Sala


Short Stories
  • A Human Stain by Kelly Robson
  • Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss
  • Come See the Living Dryad by Theodora Goss
  • The Night Cyclist by Stephen Graham Jones
  • The Spindly Man by Stephen Graham Jones
  • La beaute sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine
  • meat+drink by Daniel Polansky
  • The Hanging Game by Helen Marshall
  • Caro in Carno by Helen Marshall
  • It Feels Better Biting Down by Livia Llewellyn 
  • The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
  • Death's Door Cafe by Kaaron Warren
  • The Garbage Doll by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
  • I Make People Do Bad Things by Chesya Burke
  • Persephone by Seanan McGuire
  • Hairwork by Gemma Files
  • Redcap by Carrie Vaughn
  • Alchemy by Carrie Vaughn
  • The Changeling by Sarah Langan
  • The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin
  • God Product by Alyssa Wong
  • And In Our Daughters We Find a Voice by Cassandra Khaw
  • Fabulous Beasts by Priya Sharma
  • The Ordinary Woman and the Unquiet Emperor by Catherynne M. Valente
  • The Last of the Minotaur Wives by Brooke Bolander
  • More Than Nothing by Nisi Shawl
  • Hourglass by Clare Beams
  • The Music Room by Stephen King
  • Kiss of the Mouthless Girl by Giovanni De Feo
  • When We Taste of Death by Damien Angelica Walters
  • The Beautiful Thing We Will Become by Krisi Demeester
  • eyes I dare not meet in dreams by Sunny Moraine
  • Figs, Detached by Jenn Grunigen
  • Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987) by A.C. Wise
  • Secret Keeper by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
  • Ghostling by E. Catherine Tobler
  • Necksnapper by MP Johnson

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