A list I feel much better about is that of the books I’ve read this year. By far the stand-out of the bunch is Underground by Haruki Murakami. It’s unlike many Murakami books in that it is non-fiction, and not about a benign 30-something man with an underplayed talent who has to leave Tokyo to find a woman who in a previous time of his life was once meaningful and he now must return to. It’s amazing how many times he can write one story. Underground however is a staggeringly beautiful account of the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo Subway by the Aum Shinrikyo on March 20th, 1995. The interviews are thoughtful, deep, human, and on a few occasions brought me to tears. It took me over a month to finish this book and I can’t wait until enough time has passed to read it again.
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
- How to be a Graphic Designer without Losing your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy
- The Manual Volume 4
- This Could Help by Patrick Rhone
- You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming
- The Inspection House by Emily Horne and Tim Maly
- The Concept of Non-Photography by Francois Laurelle
- Noa by Paul Gaugin
- The Chairs are Where the People Go by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti
- An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Parisby Georges Perec
- The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma by Red Pine
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
- Pamphlet Architecture 28 by Smout Allen
- Landscape Futures Geoff Manaugh
- The Elegance of a Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
- What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
- Thinks… by David Lodge
- These Days by Jack Cheng
- Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo
- The Summer is Over and We are Not Yet Saved by Joey Comeau
- The Heart Sutra by Red Pine
- The Complete Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau
- The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong
- The Diamond Sutra by Red Pine
- Sanshiro by Natsume Sōseki
- Shoplifting from American Apparel by Tao Lin
- Rotary by Adrian Comeau
- Patricide by Joyce Carol Oates
- No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai
- Hidden in Plain Sight by Jan Chipchase
- Sorekara by Natsume Sōseki
- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus
- Darkness Visible by William Byron
- Underground by Haruki Murakami
- No Logo by Naomi Klein
- Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein
- The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō
- Alpine Review No. 1: Antifragility
- South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
- One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau
- Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
- On Web Typography by Jason Santa Maria
- After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
- After Dark by Haruki Murakami
- High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
- How To Build a Time Machine by Brian Clegg