I have to say that 2013 was not a good reading year for me.
Although I didn’t get through as much as last year, it wasn’t the quantity so
much as the fact that I really didn’t enjoy many of the titles. This year, I
resolve to put down a book that I’m not enjoying, something that I’ve only done
once previously, with Nabokov’s Pale Fire (I couldn’t bring myself to read all
those footnotes).
But humbugs aside, I’ve picked my Top 5 for 2013, and can
wholeheartedly recommend each title. They are listed here in the order they
appear in my 2013 library, although if I had to pick a book of the year, it
would be the Gleick title:
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, David Foster Wallace
Meticulously witty and insightful look at various aspects of life.
The essay on grammar and usage is scarily brilliant.
Fascinating look at what it takes to succeed in various athletic
events. Marathon runners are short and basketball players have disproportionally
large wingspans. A nice counter (though still, I think, a complement) to
Gladwell’s 10,000 hours.
A Guide to the Serbian Mentality, Momo Kapor
Wonderfully witty series of short essays about life in Serbia and
Serbs in general. Much better if you’ve lived in Belgrade, but enjoyable
nonetheless, I’d wager.
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, James Gleick
Great writing about the history communication and data, from
talking drums to DNA and the internet. I couldn’t put it down.
Heidi Postlewait, Andrew
Thomson
Must read for anyone who’s worked in developing countries,
but also recommended for anyone curious about what Worldwide and I do, and
whether it is a good use of taxpayer money.
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Title
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Author
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The Executioner’s Song
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Norman Mailer
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Farewell, My Lovely
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Raymond Chandler
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The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions
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Rolf Dobelli
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Sleights of Mind: What the neuroscience of magic reveals about
our brains
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Susana Martinez-Conde, Stephen L. Macknik, Sandra Blakeslee,
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Dear Life
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Alice Munro
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Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
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David Foster Wallace
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Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
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Luc Sante
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The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and
Why It Matters
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Rose George
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Fragments
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Heraclitus
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The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic
Performance
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David Epstein
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Is Paris Burning
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Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins
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An Intimate History of Humanity
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Theodore Zeldin
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Pulphead: Essays
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John Jeremiah Sullivan
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This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant
Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
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David Foster Wallace
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Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone
Who?s Been There
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Cheryl Strayed
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Tales from Ovid
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Ted Hughes
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How to Write for Children: And Get Published
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Louise Jordan
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Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great
Stagnation
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Tyler Cowen
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The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand-Year Journey to Your
Inbox
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John Freeman
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Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris
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A. J. Liebling
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Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the
World of Competitive Scrabble Players
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Stefan Fatsis
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Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe,
900-1900
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Alfred W. Crosby
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This Will Make You Smarter
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John Brockman
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The Magic of Belgrade
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Momo Kapor
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Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke
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Rob Sheffield
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Six Memos for the Next Millennium
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Italo Calvino
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Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
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Kathryn Schulz
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How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of
Character
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Paul Tough
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A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a
True Story
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Dave Eggers
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The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking
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Edward B. Burger,
Michael Starbird
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The Man In The Iron Mask
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Dumas
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Ready For a Brand New Beat: How "Dancing in the
Street" Became the Anthem for a Changing America
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Mark Kurlansky
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a
Curious Character
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Richard P. Feynman
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The Mismeasure of Man
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Stephen Jay Gould
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A Guide to the Serbian Mentality
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Momo Kapor
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Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story From
Hell On Earth
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Kenneth Cain,
Heidi Postlewait,
Andrew Thomson
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Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
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Charles Wheelan
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Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You about Being
Creative
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Austin Kleon
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Complete Serbian: Teach Yourself
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Vladislava Ribnikar,
David Norris
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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show
Business
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Neil Postman
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Resurrection
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Leo Tolstoy
|
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Consider the Fork: A History of how We Cook and Eat
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Bee Wilson
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The Economy of Prestige: prizes, awards, and the circulation of
cultural value
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James F. English
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The Hobbit, Or, There and Back Again
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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
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Notes From Underground
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Big-Time Sports in American Universities
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Charles T. Clotfelter
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Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What
They Do
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Meredith Maran
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The Book of Disquiet
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Fernando Pessoa
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Wuthering Heights
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Emily Bronte
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The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square
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Steven A. Cook
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The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
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James Gleick
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Feynman
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Jim Ottaviani
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One Fat Englishman
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Kingsley Amis
|
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The Red Badge of Courage
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Stephen Crane
|
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College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It
Means for Students
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Jeffrey J. Selingo
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On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits
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Wray Herbert
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The Giver
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Lois Lowry
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Emma
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Jane Austen
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Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life
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Adam Phillips
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Summer Ball
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Mike Lupica
|
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The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of
Fiction
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Stephen Koch
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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
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Jonathan Haidt
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End Zone
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Don DeLillo
|
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Greenback: The Almighty Dollar and the Invention of America
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Jason Goodwin
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The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America
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Martin Amis
|
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The presidency of Calvin Coolidge
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Robert H. Ferrell
|
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What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How successful people
become even more successful
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Marshall Goldsmith
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World War One: A Short History
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Norman Stone
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White Guard
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Mikhail Bulgakov
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Pawn of Prophecy
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David Eddings
|
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Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital
Disorder
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David Weinberger
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A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of
Holland to the Middle Danube
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Patrick Leigh Fermor
|
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The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
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J. Maarten Troost
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Travel Team
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Mike Lupica
|
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Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery (The Sports Beat, 1)
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John Feinstein
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When the Game Was Ours
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Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson, Jackie MacMullan
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The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
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Leonard Mlodinow
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Everything That Rises Must Converge
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Flannery O'Connor
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Wild Things
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Clay Carmichael
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