Tag: Goodreads

Favorite Books of 2017

Goodreads tells me I read one less book this year than last. Though always tempted to read ever more and more, I’ve become less concerned about hitting arbitrary reading quotas, so I’m able to better enjoy the books I do read. Here are the 2017 books I enjoyed the most, with links to reviews I wrote when I read them:

  1. Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper (review)
  2. Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler (review)
  3. High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic by Glenn Frankel
  4. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
  5. The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski (review)
  6. Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks (review)
  7. How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs (review)
  8. Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen (review)
  9. The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek by Howard Markel (review)
  10. The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse (review)

Honorable mentions:

  • The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures by the Library of Congress
  • Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  • The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries by Anders Rydell (review)
  • My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues by Pamela Paul
  • Rainy Lake House: Twilight of Empire on the Northern Frontier by Theodore Catton

January 4, 2018 Add Comment

Media of the moment

I want to do more to account for what I read and watch. I do use Goodreads for tracking books, Letterboxd for movies, and my Logbook for all of them in one place. But between occasional reviews on the blog here and there, a lot of other noteworthy pieces of art pass through my consciousness almost without comment.

So I’m gonna blend my “Music of the Moment” feature with Kottke’s ongoing “recent media diet” feature (minus the grading part) into Media of the Moment to try to briefly highlight and recommend cultural bits I’ve encountered recently.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan. The latest selection for a two-man book club I’m in. Neil deGrasse Tyson should take notes.

How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs is one of my favorite thinkers and writers, and in this book he fulfills a W. H. Auden line he quotes in the book: “Be brief, be blunt, be gone.” See also: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.

“The Imposter” by Béla Fleck. Watched the documentary about Fleck making a banjo concerto for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, then got the CD of said concerto, and it’s great.

Landline. Really enjoyed Gillian Robespierre’s previous film Obvious Child, and she returns to form here with her muse Jenny Slate. I think I liked Obvious Child more, but this captures a particular time and family well.

The Florida Project. The latest from Sean Baker, the director of Tangerine, one of my favorites of 2015. Knew basically nothing about it when I saw it; I recommend the same for you. Best Actress for the lead.

Two Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark. Always liked Shepard as an actor. After he died I heard about this collection of correspondence with his longtime friend and discovered a wise, searching, highly quotable dude.

November 4, 2017 Add Comment