This year felt like an off year for me when it came to reading. I’ve long been an evangelist for electronic reading, and every year for the last half a decade or so has given me reason to continue my excitement until this one. Blloon, an alternative to Kindle Unlimited, has not been successful in creating a sustainable business out of eBook subscriptions and has entered a period of ‘refuelling’, Oyster, the beautiful spiritual successor to Readmill has been absorbed into Google Play, and the downward trend of eBook sales in favour of their physical counterparts continues to chug logarithmically along. It seems like the only players left in the game are Amazon, Apple and Google, and that’s never a position anyone likes a market to be in. What is a die-hard .epub fan to do? I am holding out hope for a technology that acts as more of a mediator than a content provider, so that the terrible economics of licensing content do not have to interfere with the technology through which we access that content (Rdio listeners will share that sentiment). That being said, I did read many books this year that I really enjoyed, and as a habitual list-taker, I’ve included them all in the list below for posterity. I’ve highlighted the books that I’d really recommend.
- So Many Books: Reading and Publishing in the Age of Abundance by Gabriel Zade (2003)
- Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change by Leo Babauta (2013
- Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki (1914)
- The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (2011)
- Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin (2007)
- Red Mat by Jan Chipchase (2013)
- Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle (2014)
- Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone (2013)
- Us Conductors by Sean Michaels (2014)
- Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami (2001)
- Trains are …Mint by Oliver East (2008)
- Taipei by Tao Lin (2013)
- The brief guide to Mindfulness by Leo Babauta (2014)
- The Platform Sutra: the Teachings of Hui-Neng by Red Pine (2006)
- The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit (2013)
- The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
- Understanding Thermodynamics by H.C. Van Ness (1973)
- I am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki (1905)
- Someday This will be Funny by Lynn Tillman (2011)
- In Praise of Shadows by Juni’chirō Tanizaki (1933)
- The Lankavatara Sutra by Red Pine (2013)
- Everlasting Dérive by Kawai Shen (2014)
- Hyperart: Thomasson’s by Genpei Akesagawa (2010)
- Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá (2011)
- The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (2002)
- Proper Go Well High by Oliver East (2012)
- Richard Yates: a Novel by Tao Lin (2010)
- The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard (1958)
- You’re my Favourite Client by Mike Monteiro (2015)
- The Lotus Sutra translated by Gene Reeves (2013)
- Elektrograd: Rusted Blood by Warren Ellis (2015)
- 33 1/3 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walter Graves (2014)
- The Gate by Natsume Sōseki (1908)
- Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz (2014)
- About Looking by John Berger (1980)
- Fox 8 by George Saunders (2013)
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki
- Murakami (2013)
- The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders (2007)
- Cunning Plans: Talks by Warren Ellis (2015)
- Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)
- Selected Tweets by Mira Gonzalez and Tap Lin (2015)
- Open City: a Novel by Teju Cole (2011)
- Shopgirl: a Novella by Steve Martin (2000)
- Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin (2007)
- Octopussy and The Living Daylights by Ian Fleming (1964)