A bit of an odd reading year. Productive, but with most books occupying an uncomfortable middle place between research and pleasure (novels picked up for pleasure flagged as they were read; research works less relevant than I once thought as the manuscript moved along), maybe the inevitable result of being in the middle of a draft. The books I wound up enjoying the most, I think, were those that stood reassuringly in one camp or the other. Some old, others just published or about to be. I don’t have too much time to say much about them here.
Top 10
The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson (re-read)
The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt (re-read)
Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature — Dan Sinkyin
Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North America — Allan Greer
The Ghostly Tales of Henry James — Henry James, ed. Leon Edel
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee (re-read)
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles — Mike Davis
Reading for pleasure, or non-manuscript research (in order)
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles — Mike Davis
Dune — Frank Herbert
On the Marble Cliffs — Ernst Jünger, tr. Tess Lewis
Julian — Gore Vidal
Crossing to Safety — Wallace Stegner
Dune Messiah — Frank Herbert
Northanger Abbey — Jane Austen
Orlando: A Biography — Virginia Woolf
Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape — Cal Flyn
Shadowlands: A Journey Through Britain's Lost Cities and Vanished Villages — Matthew Green
The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics — Martin J. Sklar
The Ambassadors — Henry James
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West — Cormac McCarthy
Children of Dune — Frank Herbert
Hell Bent —Leigh Bardugo
Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy — Timothy Shenk
God Emperor of Dune — Frank Herbert
The Necessity of Art — Ernst Fischer
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee
The Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare — John Lisle
On the Aesthetic Education of Man — Friedrich Schiller, tr. Keith Tribe
The New Negro Aesthetic — Alain Locke
Black Skin, White Masks — Frantz Fanon
Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character — Mario de Andrade, tr. Katrina Dodson
MIND MGMT Comprehensive Report 1 of 3 — Matt Kindt
MIND MGMT Comprehensive Report 2 of 3 — Matt Kindt
The Berlin Stories — Christopher Isherwood
Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair — Sarah Schulman
MIND MGMT Comprehensive Report 3 of 3 — Matt Kindt
Blood on the Forge — William Attaway
The Fortune of the Rougons — Émile Zola, tr. Brian Nelson
Notes — Gauraa Shekhar
The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt
Spelunky — Derek Yu
The Ghostly Tales of Henry James — Henry James, ed. Leon Edel
From Doon With Death — Ruth Rendell
Negations: Essays in Critical Theory — Herbert Marcuse, tr. Jeremy J. Shapiro
The Fellowship of the Ring — J.R.R. Tolkien
Everything the Darkness Eats — Eric LaRocca
Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination — Adam Shatz
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature — Erich Auerbach, tr. Willard R. Trask
The Twin Towers — J.R.R. Tolkien
Life and Fate — Vasily Grossman, tr. Robert Chandler
The Return of the King — J.R.R. Tolkien
Septology — Jon Fosse, tr. Damion Searls
Laura from the Valley — Mark Gregory Lopez
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories — William Gass
How High We Go in the Dark — Sequoia Nagamatsu
The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
North Woods — Daniel Mason
Old Masters: A Comedy — Thomas Bernhard, tr. Ewald Osers
Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature — Dan Sinkyin
Main Currents of Marxism, 1–The Founders — Leszek Kolakowski, tr. P.S. Falla
Shah of Shahs — Ryszard Kapuscinski, tr. William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand
Foe — J.M. Coetzee
The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
Main Currents of Marxism, 2–The Golden Age — Leszek Kolakowski, tr. P.S. Falla
Haifa Republic — Omri Boehm
Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory — Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
On the Natural History of Destruction — W.G. Sebald, tr. Anthea Bell
Hell House — Richard Matheson
The Sun King — Nancy Mitford
My Death — Lisa Tuttle
The Storyteller Essays — Walter Benjamin, tr. Tess Lewis
Stay, Illusion — Lucie Brock-Broido
The Master Letters — Lucie Brock-Broido
Ulysses — James Joyce
The Princess Casamassima — Henry James
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections — Walter Benjamin, tr. Harry Zohn
The Alienist — Caleb Carr
The Temptation of St. Antony — Gustave Flaubert, tr. Kitty Mrosovsky
Walter Benjamin: The Story of a Friendship — Gershom Scholem
Correction: prior version excluded mention of Children of Dune. Credit to Joe for the notice.
A selection of manuscript research (in order, those that I dug through more or less completely)
The Spanish Frontier in North America — David J. Weber
Tejano Legacy: Ranchers and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900 — Armando C. Alonzo
Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empire and Land in Early Modern North America — Allan Greer
Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the Borderlands — Kelly Lytle Hernández
A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America — Michael E. McGerr
Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848–1928 — William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb
Bandits — Eric Hobsbawm
Primitive Rebels — Eric Hobsbawm
The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture — Neil Foley
The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas — Monica Muñoz Martinez
Progressive and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era — Lewis L. Gould
Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography — D.W. Meinig
Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers — Robert M. Utley
Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas — Jerry Thompson
Origins of the New South, 1877–1913 — C. Vann Woodward
The War Along the Border: The Mexican Revolution and Tejano Communities — ed. Arnold de León
Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution — John Mason Hart
Boss Rule in South Texas — Evan Anders
Militarizing the Border: When Mexicans Became the Enemy — Miguel Antonio Levario
Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1936 — David Montejano
Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans — Benjamin Heber Johnson
The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution —Friedrich Katz
Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen —Christopher Capozzola
The Great Plains — Walter Webb
Arise! Global Radicalism in the Era of the Mexican Revolution — Christina Heatherton
A Critical Theory of Police Power — Mark Neocleous
The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph — Albert O. Hirschman
Bonus: Favorite Movies
Mississippi Masala (1991) — Mira Nair
The Long Goodbye (1973) — Robert Altman
Topsy-Turvy (1999) — Mike Leigh
The Age of Innocence (1993) — Martin Scorsese
Anatomy of a Fall (2023) — Justine Triet
Talk to Me (2023) — Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou
Showing Up (2022) — Kelly Reichardt
Nashville (1975) — Robert Altman
Eve’s Bayou (1997) — Kasi Lemmons
EO (2022) — Jerzy Skolimowski