* = Re-read
Check out past years: 2012, 2013 (skipped), 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

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1) You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

2) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

3) Veins of the Earth by Patrick Stewart

4) McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh 
The ending is clear almost from the first page, but you keep reading anyway*. Great stuff.

*It’s almost as if there is MORE to enjoying a story than being surprised by the ending????

5) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? by Horace McCoy 
Ah yes, the violent and bloody underbelly of….the marathon dance craze??? Marathons that last upward of a MONTH??? Incredulity, if nothing else, keeps you reading right to the end.

6) What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing
by Peter Ginna
I’ve no interest in becoming an editor, but as an author I figured there’d be some useful stuff in here. From that perspective I’ll say this - writers, even ones who only want to self-publish, would do well to breeze through this to get a better understanding of a process they’ve been through or want to go through, but also a better understanding of the editors themselves.

7) Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

8) The High King by Lloyd Alexander

9) The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander

10) The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories by Denis Johnson

11) Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane
Beautiful stuff, and a great reminder of all sorts of precious sensations to be found out in the world or in your childhood memories.

12) Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches by John Hodgeman
I like John Hodgeman in general, but honestly haven’t dug any of his books of false facts or the stand-up routines centered around such things. That stuff just feels like someone scatting nonsense (Blood tornado! Deranged millionaire! DOG STORM! Yeah!) to the tune of a particular vibe (the doodles in the margins of your high school notebooks).

But it’s clear the guy can be a consummate storyteller and so I happily picked up this book of his ostensibly true tales. It’s charming, funny, and sincere. Huzzah! I look forward to whatever comes next from Hodge Man.

13) The World of Late Antiquity 150-750 by Peter R.L. Brown 

14) The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

15) The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell (Translator)

16) The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander 

17) Blindsight by Peter Watts

18) Killing Gravity by Corey J. White 

19) How to Thrive in the Next Economy: Designing Tomorrow’s World Today by John Thackara

20) Echopraxia by Peter Watts

21) The Colonel by Peter Watts

22) The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God! by Joe Eszterhas
It’s a big book of quotable notables intermixed with a guy who really wants you to know he slept with Sharon Stone. There’s some chuckles to be had, especially if you’re irritated by Robert McKee, but let’s just say I’m glad I got this half-off from a used book store.

23) The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks  
Writers of fiction would do well to read this.

24) Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do about It  by Kate Harding

*25) The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

26) Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
A reminder that dystopian tales don’t have to be cranked to eleven, and are often much more effective that way.

27) Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman Games
I don’t normally include RPG books in this list, but at about 450 pages I reckon this one earns a spot. I had a lot of thoughts about it, which you can read here.

28) Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria by Lin Carter  
Look man, either you want to read a Conan rip-off where a convenient flying ship pulls our hero out of trouble at Just. The. Right. Time. or you don’t. Nothing I say here will change that. I dipped into this soon after discovering the infamous Appendix N reading list.

29) Dear Life by Alice Munro

30) A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from History’s Most Orthodox Empire by Anthony Kaldellis

31) Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future by Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann

32) Writing the Pilot: Creating the Series by William Rabkin

33) Ways of Seeing by John Berger
If you’ve already done some university level art studies you may find most of this old hat.But if you haven’t? It’s a great primer, and I strongly recommend it. Heck, I wish I’d had it put in front of me in high school.

34) Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

35) A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

36) Polyamorous Love Song by Jacob Wren
This book came out a few years ago. Just a few days ago I found it on the dollar shelf at a great used book and record shop in Montreal (Cheap Thrills). I never bother with stuff from the dollar shelf because it’s usually about as good as the price suggests.

But.

The title & cover grabbed my eye. Then I stood and read the entire first chapter, not because I needed that much to erode any skepticism but because it gripped me. Your mileage may - nay, will - vary, of course. For me, the contents of this book were exactly what I needed. It might be what you need too, especially if you are someone who creates any kind of art and is struggling with it in the face of an increasingly rabid world.

37) Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

38) Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed by Jacob Wren

39) Rich and Poor by Jacob Wren

40) Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh  

41) Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

42) Room to Dream by David Lynch,  Kristine McKenna
A great book whose format of a conversation between biography and autobiography really works! Both halves strangle the “lone genius” bullshit almost right out of the gate and, especially in Lynch’s chapters, there’s some kind of amusing punchline at the end of every other paragraph. An excellent read that is enjoyable even if you haven’t seen every minute of his creative output.

43) Warrior of World’s End by Lin Carter 
This book contains a sentient metal bird called a “Bazonga” and a chapter called “Flight of the Bazonga”, to give you an idea. It’s fun and dumb and yes.

44) Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

45) Twelve Tomorrows by Wade Roush (Editor)

*46) A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh  

47) The Dying Earth by Jack Vance
I was going to write my own review but then I saw BIll’s here and it’s just so much better than what I was going to say, as well as echoing much of my own thinking.

48) Dune by Frank Herbert
It is Dune.

49) Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison
This book does not in fact contain the famous twist from the film. That changes a lot, an awful lot. Frankly it evokes, read now, climate change at least as much if not more than overpopulation. I’m not sure if I’d recommend reading it, frankly, though not for any lack of talent on Harry Harrison’s part.

50) Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell 

51) Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film by Patton Oswalt

52) The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason by Chapo Trap House

*53) Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut  
Though it gifts us a few of his best quotes, such as “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”, I feel like Mother Night is only necessary reading for completionists. It often feels like a short story filled out to novel length, and lacks any of the fantastic or meta-textual elements of his other works.

54) Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History by Kyle Newman,  Jon Peterson, Michael Witwer, Sam Witwer

STATS
Non-Fiction: 20
Fiction: 34
Poetry Collections:0
Comic Trades: 0
Wrote Myself: 0