April '25 Reading

 Starting out with Catullus for National Poetry Month, then on to Ovid. 

1. The Nation of April 2025. Elie Mystal on airline regulation--fixing prices on flights is like stamps. "The CAB [Civil Aeronautics Board] would give popular, well-travelled routes to airlines if the airlines agreed to serve less popular routes as well, for a fixed fee. It was a way to make air travel from NY to Akron affordable, because that route was subsidized by the fares for NY to Chicago."
2. Poems of Catullus translated by Peter Whigham. Catullus is a rapper with erudite vocab, an arsenal of different flows, private references, and nasty sex rhymes. 
3. The NYer of 4/7/25. Daniel Mendelsohn on Catullus: " Much of the poem [Attis] takes the form of an anguished monologue the young man delivers after he wakes up the next day, short on body parts and long on regrets."
4. Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald. Out-of-context on a live mic ("Leave it alone Pete" and "He's going to get an ax," which is a guitar) created an urban myth. OR DID IT!?!
5. NYer of 4/14/25. Another reason for de-extincting dire wolves (sort of) and "this is really important" says the startup CEO, is their prominence in recent pop culture. Huh?
6. NYer of 3/31/25. Crazy investigation by Ronan Farrow of corrupt Johnson City, TN police who were paid off by serial rapist for years.
7. The Art of Love by Ovid. How to find 'em, woo 'em, and keep 'em. 
8. The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. The unicorn described as Venus emerging from sea-foam at beginning. 
9. The NYer of 1/24/22(!). Reread a lovely lyrical story-essay, "What's the Deal, Hummingbird?" by Arthur Krystal. "Why isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?" vs. "Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?"
10. The Nation of May 2025. "In the dialogues, philosophical conversation involves a sort of role-play, with one person acting as the 'theory builder,' who tries to establish the truth of some idea, and the other acting as the 'refuter,' who tries to tear the idea down. This resolves an apparent paradox between the dueling commitments of good inquiry: seeking out truth (and thus being somewhat confident that you’ve found it) and avoiding falsehood (and thus being skeptical that you’re in possession of the truth after all)." Olufemi O. Taiwo reviewing Agnes Callard.
11. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Created with Gremais squares: Reader--Book/Not-Reader--Not-Book. 

May '25 Reading

 Maybe get some serious reading done between classes ending and starting?

1. The New Yorker 100th Anniversary Issue. Seth's tribute to first NYer art editor, Rhea Irvin. 
2. NYer of 4/28/25. Gopnik:"Slavery had a cursed past, and a present to be tolerated, but no future."
3. The Confessions of St. Augustine. 
4. NYer of 4/21/25. Phish played 13 donut themed shows in a row. One was "Boston Cream," featuring medleys of songs by Boston and by Cream. 
5. NYer of 5/5/25. Mark Twain proposed a return of Tom and Huck when they were both 60, failures, miserable. They die.
6. Ubik by PKD. I didn't get the end, where the other guy is on the coin. Was Dick just ready to move on? 
7. Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskins. Woodstock was an artists' colony taken up by hippies. One night, Santana (the only touring act), Jimi Hendrix, and a jam session with some of the Band was all going on the same night. 
8. NYer of 6/5/23. Burkhard Bilger article on old Stax songwriters reunited to listen to lost demos and identify the performers. 
9. NYER OF 5/16/22. Profile of Matthew Wong, deceased Canadian artist. Sort of an outsider, an outsider who learned and lived online. 
10. NYer of 4/11/22. Lauren Collins profile of Stephane Bourgoin, French expert on serial killers whose lies and exaggerations were exposed online. 
11. NYer of 5/29/23. James Wood on Mozart: "Don Giovanni closes with the seducer's six survivors--the castoffs, the cuckolded, the bereaved--sweetly singing their way back to normality, as they rejoice that the wicked always get their deserts, while 'we, good people, will now gaily sing to you the old, old refrain.'"
12. NYer of 5/12&19/25. A. Lane on NYer memoirs and histories: "Every night and every morning, [William] Shawn and [Lillian] Ross spoke on the phone, and only once did Cecile [Shawn] answer when Ross called. Shawn had just died. 'He's gone,' Cecile said."
13. NYer of 2/6/23. "Public opinion" and the idea of objective journalism invented by Walter Lippman in the 1920s. 
14. The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. In the "ende" it wasn't as good as The Princess Bride because the lesson was too serious and on the nose. 

March '25 Reading

 New month

1. City Poet: A Life of Frank O'Hara by Brad Gooch. His ironic nickname in the Navy was "Butch."
2. Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun. Frank O'Hara's sister didn't want Calhoun to write this book for reasons that were actually borne out by the book. It was really about her relationship with her father.
3. Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Stye=conversations embedded in paragraphs, present tense, narration of main character observing herself. 
4. Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie. Great first chapter with Ariadne Oliver choosing a hat for a literary party. 
5. Rocannan's World by U.K.LeG. The beginning, originally a short story, is a complete melding of fantasy and science fiction. 
6. The Nation of March 2025:  "In other social systems, oppression is directly enacted and therefore obvious: When a feudal lord forces his serfs to give up a certain quantity of grain, for instance, or a pharaoh forces his subjects to perform a certain amount of labor, the structure of power is clear. In capitalist societies, on the other hand, the gaps between rich and poor may be just as stark, but the mechanisms of exploitation and the methods of domination are far murkier. Everyone appears to be acting of their own free will: Wage workers enter into contracts of their choosing, and the overall social order seems to emerge from a mass of individual choices. Countless workplaces operate independently, under the private direction of whoever owns them—and yet they are all connected to one another through the globe-spanning networks of trade and commerce that send prices shooting up or crashing down. To understand this system, one cannot simply take it at face value, as economists typically do. One must instead examine its hidden depths, the relationships and forms of power that constitute its inner workings. This, Reitter and North’s edition insists, is the crucial point of Capital: Both essence and appearance, both the material world and its abstract representation, are critical to understanding capitalism." Review by Alyssa Battistoni.
7. NYer of 3/10/25. Lane quotes Ross Macdonald: "'This is practically a slum,' George said. 'I thought that Malibu was a famous resort.' / 'Part of it is. This is the other part.'" (The Barbarous Coast)
8. Planet of Exile by U.K.LeG.
9. The Golden Ass by Apuleius. 
10. Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti. Several phrases "Desolation Row" are from Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels: "a perfect image of a priest, "her sin is her lifelessness"
11. NYer of 3/24/25. Things by Perec sounds good and was model for Perfection by Vincenzo Latronio's Perfection.
12. NYer of 3/3/25. Cartoon of man wearing hat in apparent self-satisfaction: "Rakish angles don't work for you."
13. Nyer of 3/17/25. Movie Eephus sounds perfect for me. 
14. Sex Criminals V. 3:Three the Hard Way. That title... and the character range broadens (anime demon)

Feb '25 Reading

 Here goes...

1. Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara. From Personal Poem: "we go eat some fish and some ale it’s/cool but crowded we don’t like Lionel Trilling/we decide, we like Don Allen we don’t like/Henry James so much we like Herman Melville"
2. The Nation of January '25. Sam Adler-Bell compares Complete Unknown to a super-hero movie vis-a-vis Easter eggs: "Opinions may differ, but I don't enjoy being infantilized in this way. 'Fan service' is a sickening, adolescent ordeal. If a film aspires to be art, it cannot possibly succeed through flattery--ie. by showing us stuff we already know." 
3. NYer of 1/20/25. Lorne Michaels started writing for Laugh In, where they made the writers work out of a motel room. 
4. Speed-the-Plow. "You're an old whore. You think you're a ballerina because you work with your legs."
5. Sex Criminals v. 1, One Weird Trick. The book is rife with wordplay, puns, and, naturally, innuendo. The 'two page spread' starts the book 'with a bang.'
6. Sex Criminals v. 2, Two Worlds One Cop. The meta-narrated fight with Jon and Suzie is like the dark counterpart to the transcendent Fat Bottomed scene in v. 1. 
7. Metamorphoses of Ovid. This is really one of the best books I've ever read. 
8. NYer of 2/10/25. Arn on still-life, specifically Giorgio Morandi: "Be honest: you don't really comprehend the three dimensions you inhabit, you just got tired of trying"
9. In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey. Jackass thinks he needs to explain his allusions when all he did was call England a "green and pleasant land."
10. Words by Robert Creeley. Including "A Piece": "One and/one, two,/three.
11. The Use of Photography by Anne Ernaux and Marc Marie. Not so great. 
12. NYer of 1/27/25. Sheila Heti's "The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea."
13. NYer of 2/3/25. Arthur Krystal on John of Patmos: "Drawing inspiration from Hebrew texts and whatever shrooms grew on the island, John ramped up Daniel's' visions to include angels with feet of fire, the Whore of Babylon, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and a hundred and forty-four thousand virgins (or parthenoi), most likely male."

Jan. '25 Reading

 A new year, and a fresh start. 

1. The Aeneid by Virgil. Aeneas built walls and made laws. Roman Empire in a nutshell. 
2. The NYer of 12-30-24. English has high "codability" for sight and sound--i.e., it's easy to describe what you see and hear. Other languages do much better with smell. 
3. NYer of 12/9/24. Transformative experiences "provide new knowledge that previously would have been inaccessible to us, and with that knowledge our preferences, values and self-conception are fundamentally altered" Alice Gregory on I.A. Paul.
4. NYer of 3/14/22. Music and the Rothko Chapel. 
5. NYer of 4/18/22. Edward Gibbon was four-eight, obese, and his contemporaries called him 'Mssr Pomme de terre.'
6. NYer of 6/20/22. Robert King co-creator of "The Good Wife," broke in working for Roger Corman.
7. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear. Libertarians are just dicks is the take away. A town in rural New Hampshire attracts both a lot of libertarians because they don't like to pay taxes and a lot of bears because they don't like to pay taxes for proper wildlife management or to obey rules that say don't feed the bears. Both humans and bears are infected with toxoplasmosis that causes poor impulse control. 
8. Creature From the Black Lagoon by two writers, one line artist, two colorists, and a letterer. How is it that Image, founded on the principle of creators' rights, is doing IP?
9. House of the Unholy by Brubaker and Phillips. I am starting to think they're phoning it in. I've thought that about Brubaker before and am seeing it in Phillips. 
10. Un Lun Dun. Highly inventive in many ways, including the naming of things ("the Hex" for a gang of six magicians, "Skool" for a character composed of a collective of sea life in a diving suit, etc). Turns out to start he sidekick, which is thematically appropriate. 
11. NYer of 6/6/22. There's a gang of LA County Sheriffs where they get tattoos of skeletons with bushy mustaches. They're called the banditos. 
12. Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. People could make a difference, if they work together and do the right thing. So we are doomed. Cool things, like drilling glaciers, ships with photovoltaic sails, airships, wildlife corridors to re-wild half the plant, and carbon coins earned by carbon sequestration. 
13. NYer of 1/13/25. Czeslaw Milosz poem written in D.C. addressed to friend in Paris, describing a "Summer Movie.. In Central Park": "I see how the ambassador's limousine glides/Past the white masts on which various flags/Of fictitious color sway in a mild breeze."

Only 4 book-length works of prose, but made a good dent on magazine backlog.

STL #130.1: Analysis and Reconsiderations, Pt. I

I started this post almost two years ago. I had just finished the multi-part STL #129, and the top 100 list that it resulted in. 

My framing question is, does this belong on this list where it is, why or why not? The underlying question is, "What does it mean to have favorites?" in regard to art. The idea of loyalty/allegiance has come up already, and we'll see what to add to that

Let's go through the list, starting at the end.

100. Princess Bride: This is an utterly charming fairy tale marred by the execrable performance of Billy Crystal. It is metadiscursive, with the Falk/Savage framework, but still a ripping good adventure yarn. There are also kissing parts. This is one of a handful of movies I'll watch every time they come on, along with The Warriors and the much less good Hammett. If I were to replace it, and Rob Reiner is represented by Spinal Tap a bit further down so it might be warranted, I might either go with The Thin Man (charming, though differently so) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (as an adventure). But this is feeling pretty safe; there's no other film quite like it. 99. Ms. 45. Abel Ferrara needs to have a spot here, as a big, brawling, broken visionary. I'm sure his body of work has as many misses as hits, but this combines his gutter aestheticism with his Catholic mysticism. Bad Lieutenant does the same, but it's been so long since I've seen that I don't have as much confidence in it.
98. Aguirre, Wrath of God: As I said, it wouldn't feel right if I didn't have Herzog on here. This carries his philosophical stamp but still maintains a life of its own. Unlike Reiner but like Ferrara, he has a distinct vision so I don't think it would be fair to include more than one.
97. Snake Eyes: The story is nothing great, but who cares about that when you have a typically deranged Nic Cage performance and DePalma's camera zooming all around. I will address the DePalma issue later; I haven't counted the number but I'm clearly violating the Ferrera/Herzog principle I just stated. So maybe not a secure slot.
96. Clueless. Working theory: Amy Henkerling directed both the great teen movie of the 80s (Fast Times) and the great post-teen movie of the 90s (this). "Post-teen" hear doesn't mean college as opposed to high school, but an awareness of the previously established tropes. Other movies in this category might include Mean Girls, Lady Bird, Easy A, Book Smart, and Election. But this feels superior to all those, so is secure on the list. 95. Bride of Frankenstein. While I've been more of an auterist in my approach so far, this is all about the performance by Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley and the Bride. People like to talk about how this is a sequel that surpasses the original, which I agree with. 94. Yes, Madam! Not to be confused with "Yes Madam" (1995) or "Yes Madam" (2003), this film would, in literal translation, be known as "Royal Elder Sister." While I confuse some Hong Kong actioners in my head, this has Cynthia Rothrock and that really tall white guy who can't act, plus the best fall I can think of. The ending is crazy and not in a good way; highly flawed, but that's ok with me. 93. 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are two other Kubriks I can think of coming up, but this is such an epic achievement I have have trouble letting it go. The music and editing, the disjunction between the opening and the main story, the Star Child. The movie is virtually flawless, which might be a problem. 92. WALL-E. Both this and Up stand out for distinct set pieces: the silent movie opening and the life story segment in the latter. As I think about it, I prefer Up so I could swap them. But I don't really like the trend in animation Pixar exemplifies, so I'm a little torn. 91. House of the Devil. There's a movie-ness to this horror gem, and an adorable final girl performance by Jocelin Donahue. Maybe not the best movie apart from its movieness, but safe on this list.

In my earlier draft, I commented that I had recently seen Beau Travail, "which is better than any of these movies and I like it more." That raises the question of what other movies I could add, but I'll table that for now. It's going to be hard to find openings for new movies, given this start. In this short start, I see themes of allegiance, uniqueness, the sheen of perfection as a detriment, and a certain aesthetic craziness as a plus.

90. Hud. Again, it's a performance that stands out--Patricia Neal as Alma. Yet another I'd like to watch again to see how I feel about it currently. 89. The Shining. Probably fallen in my estimation over the years, as I've rewatched it and watched more horror films. It should stay at least for the Room 237 reasons. 88. Team America: World Police. "Gary, you can't blame yourself for something that bears did." The pinnacle of irreverence? I also love Borat, but they can't both be on here. 87. Rosemary's Baby: Lean forward to see around the door. Rewatched recently--it holds up. 86. Strangers on a Train: The glasses of Patricia Hitchcock are what this is all about. One of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock's but could be replace. 85. Phantasm. Pure independent inspiration. Essential. 84. Glengarry Glen Ross: Are we speaking? Or talking? Not the greatest movie qua movie though. 83. Down By Law. Beautiful opening pan. "It is a sad and beautiful night." 82. Amour. Maybe the scariest movie Isabel Adjani has been in, as her mother washes herself down the drain. Much scarier than the tentacle porn of Possession, which is apparently undergoing a resurgence. 81. This Is Spinal Tap: We're not saying she has to smell the glove. But she should at least sniff it. And this should stay. Weirdly this seems like a weaker set of films than 91-100. I might scratch Hud, Glengarry, Strangers, and DBL. I've also watched Possession two more times since my snide remark regarding Amour, and feel bad about what I said. Another theme I've seen regarding favorites is performance, even though I tend to belittle it. I've alluded to seven performances in an evaluative way: 5 women (all approvingly) and 2 men (not so much).

80. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is my favorite Sam Peckinpah movie. It's also probably the best title of any movie ever. I haven't seen it for years, but feel a sense of connection with Warren Oates. 79. Starship Troopers. Seems low for one of the best satires of all time. Could shoot up at least 20 places. 78. Night of the Living Dead. Well, then, this could shoot up 30 places 77. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. I originally wrote "Kind of a general placeholder for the Shaw Brothers production style" but watched it again since. This is a lock. 76. Taxi Driver. There's a lot of NY grit out there, and a lot on this list? If I could keep either this or Ms. 45 superfluous, which would it be? 75. Children of Men. All this exercise is doing is to make me want to see these movies again, to see if they're as great as I remember. The set piece we all remember (wait, there are two of them) is (are) what stand out in my memory. 74. Chinatown. Case in point, I saw this again in the last six months. If I hadn't, I might have set it aside. 73. Barry Lyndon. I'm slightly annoyed with myself with this choice, which strikes me as precious and self-congratulatory. But it's certainly a great movie. 72. Wicker Man. One of the touchstones of filmed folk horror, and my personal entree into the genre. I watch it most Octobers, and this placement is a little high. 71. A Woman Under the Influence. In exploring my poetic aesthetic, I've said that I value "complicated surfaces, luminous detail, competing systems, slight shifts, sonic design, and reserved mystery." This is a complicated surface and there are sure to be luminous detail in the performances of Falk and Rowlands. "Reserved mystery" means it resists the intelligence almost successfully. The proxy for sonic design would be something like visual beauty, which you might not find here. The application of "competing systems" is a bit trickier, but it might have to do with the dialogue with movie-ness I mentioned above (an interesting concept in relations to Cassavettes.)

Written previously: "I've just recently seen a A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven), and like Beau Travail it seems a candidate for this list. They both seem, at the moment, more deserving of Alfredo Garcia, Children of Men, and Barry Lyndon." The first two movies mentioned are certainly great, but I feel like I've come around on the others as well. Currently, it's Wicker Man and Taxi Driver (of all films) that feel over-rated. An aspect of any list like this is posturing: some in the movies I would leave out even though I like and remember them, and some in the ones I include, even though I barely recall them.

70. Blow Out. Kind of a nexus of art films of the 60s, paranoia films of the 7os, and uniquely 80s sleaze. While Snake Eyes, mentioned above, is a sentimental favorite, this is better while also formative. In a face-off, Nic would go and John would stay. 69. Yojimbo. Now, and forever the epitome of cool. 68. Night of the Hunter. See above. While I haven't watched it in years (a recurring theme), nothing quite looks like it in my memory. 67. The Conversation. Similar to Blow Out, but I don't feel as attached. A candidate for deletion. On rewatch, I still like it, though end seems a little off now. Leaving it in. 66. It Follows. Early in my eventual embrace of horror. A unique world. 65. Heathers. Sharp satire, but see under Clueless. 64. Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff. Strong performances, but also remarkable visual flair considering it's essentially four people in a room. 63. King Kong. I often bring this up as the pinnacle of special effects. I mean, why would it need to be 'more realistic' than this? 62. Heat. I like it a lot, but is it that good? Update: On re-watch, I liked it by not that much. 61. Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41. Now and forever. 60.Love Witch* I don't remember what the star means. If it was for deletion, I reject it now. A vivid aesthetic. The director might see it differently than I do, which I like.

The Conversation, Heathers, and possibly Heat could be in trouble. [Update: Strike Heat in next revision.] 59. Fast Times and Ridgemont High: Not high art, but encapsulates an era. Stellar performance by young Jennifer Jason Leigh. 58. 8 ½ It's cute but unintentional that this comes in at an eighth spot. Needs a rewatch to by sure. This or another Fellini? 57 Goodbye Dragon Inn. As a posture, I like that I like this, and the next movie. 56. Enter the Dragon* More cute positioning. My operating theory is that martial arts cinema is really about the body in extremis, for whatever good that does. 55. American Movie Ok, so there's a "personal pantheon" effect of movies that at one point in my life evoked something special for me. For American Movie, which I'm thinking I've written about before, 54. Audition This is another "pp" in that it was the scariest movie I'd ever seen. 53. Warriors. The fact it wasn't ruined by Lin Manuel Miranda's execrable concept album is testimony to this. 52. Meet Me in St. Louis. The greatest musical of the classic period, at least that I can recall. 51. Singing in the Rain. It was great when I saw it, everyone says it's great, the way it's described makes me think I'd still think it's great, but I really need to see this again. Really, I have no recourse but to remove it and start a subsidiary list of movies needing a more recent viewing:

1. Singing in the Rain
2. 8 ½
3. It Follows
4. Night of the Hunter
5. Children of Men
6. A Woman Under the Influence
7. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

But of these six, I feel that all but SitR, 8 1/2, possibly It Follows should remain. Films in some degree of trouble include the two Dragon films, The Conversation, Heathers, Wicker Man, Hud, The Shining, and Taxi Driver. Movement would open up space for previously rejected (Black Christmas, Clueless) and/or more recently watched (Gator Bait, Beau Travail) films.

Onward to the end.

STL #131: The Year(s) in Reading, 2023 and 2024

Note: STL #130 is still in process. 

It is early 2025, so time to compile my year in reading list. I seem to have put off making the 2023 list, so that took some notebook archaeology but I came up with some material for that year as well. 

The focus of the year was engaging with series, so I'll split it in two parts. First up, series that I started and finished, had started and finished, or restarted and refinished. 

1. In Search of Lost Time: A reread, but really came so much more came alive. I also reread Beckett's trilogy; also better on rereading. 
2. Per Wahloo and Maj Showall's Martin Beck novels, also collectively known as The Story of a Crime. 
3. The Mars Trilogy of Kim Stanley Robinson. Despite enjoying Red Mars, I would not typically have proceeded to Green and Blue under normal conditions. 
4. Agatha Christie's Poirot books. Ok, I didn't "finish" in the sense of reading all 39 of the novels. But I read many more, including the series end Final Curtain. However, I did finish Chesterton's Father Brown stories by finally getting my hands on the late Scandal of Father Brown (1935)
5. The Slough House books by Mick Herron. Which I didn't "finish" because it's ongoing. 

Other favorite books from 2023 (sans commentary, because I've a ways to go)

1. The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor
2. Human Target by Tom King and Greg Smallwood
3. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.
4. Cold Millions by Jess Walters
5. Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Gluck

In 2024, I read a short story every day. Here are the highest rated stories, excluding re-reads like "That Evening Sun Go Down" and "Where I'm Calling From."

1. "Crazy Sunday" and "Babylon Revisited" by F. Scott F.
2. "The Farmer's Children" by Elizabeth Bishop
3. "The Whole World Knows" by Eudora Welty
4. "The Destructors" by Graham Greene
5. "The Girl on the Plane" by Mary Gaitskill
6. "Vandals" and many others by Alice Munro
7. "Pretty Good Jazz Piano" by Richard Yates
8. "The Conventional Wisdom" by Stanley Elkin
9. "Harmony of the World" by Charles Baxter
10. "What You Pawn I Will Redeem" by Sherman Alexie
11. "An Abduction" by Tessa Hadley
12. "Again Again Again" by Mary Robison
13. "The Good Husband" by Nathan Ballingrud
14. "Alisa" by Lyudmila Vlitsky
15. "Between the Shadow and the Soul" by Lauren Goff
16. "Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine" by Thom Jones
17. "The Boy Upstairs" by Joshua Ferris
18. "What's the Deal, Hummingbird" by Arthur Krystal

Finally, here's the top 10 books of 2024:

1. Best American Short Stories of the Twentieth Century ed. John Updike. Lorrie Moore's similar anthology on the first 100 years of the series also had a lot of good ones. 
2. Selected Stories 1968-1994 by Alice Munro. So many stories that I rated highly in my daily notebook. 
3. Bad Dreams by Tessa Hadley. Could be paired with Munro, but a half-step off (of perfect). 
4. True Grit by Charles Portis. A reread, but this time through the tremendous narration of Donna Tartt. 
5. Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. As I wrote in my notebook, "Starts as a comedy of manners and ends as Satanic conversion story, without changing tone! There are several moments that serve as evidence of the occult, and the reader explains them away until at the end we realize we've been viewing Lolly the same as everyone else." 
6. Guy Davenport's correspondence with Hugh Kenner, plus many of his short story collections. I got to the point where I skimmed Kenner's bristly, reductive letters to focus on Davenport's humane and richly populated missives. 
7. Wonder Twins: Activate by Mark Russell and/or Rainbow Rowell's She-Hulk. My two favorite comics of the year. 
8. The Science-Fiction Hall of Fame ed. Robert Silverberg. Also a re-read, but something of value in each story. Includes the all-time classics "Nightfall" and "Nine Billion Names of God," both of which overcome any literary short-comings. 
9. Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell. "Magical" in that way only YA novels about magic can be. 
10. Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet. Read in January and not remembered that well, but this one passage: "That was established now—they both had lovely homes. They'd bought them with money."