Another year down, and once again I lament I only found time for a small number of the books I had hoped to read. Here’s the rundown of what I managed to squeeze between two jobs and trying to actually write some things of my own. Please note, since this happens every year: If you don’t see your own book on here, it doesn’t mean I don’t like it. I may have started it and not finished it. I may have read it and neglected to make a note in my reading notebook. Maybe I just don’t like you. In any case, relax.
Patton Oswalt, Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film
Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poetry
Henry Miller, Sexus
A. Poulin, ed., Contemporary American Poetry
David Ferry, Bewilderment
Richard Garrett, Clash of Arms, the World’s Greatest Land Battles
Donald Hall, Back Chamber
Joe Queenan, One for the Books
David R. Higgins, Jagpanther vs. SU-100
Lavinia Greenlaw, Minsk
Daniel Hahn, Poetic Lives: Shelley
Hunter S. Thompson, Screwjack
Algernon Blackwood, Tales of the Mysterious and Macabre
E.F. Benson, Collected Ghost Stories
Edith Wharton, Ghost Stories
Charles Dickens, Selected Short Fiction
P.G. Wodehouse, Ring for Jeeves
John Davie, trans. Horace, Satires and Epistles
John Dryden, Poetical Works
Niall Rudd, trans., Juvenal, Satires
Quincy R. Lehr, Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar
A.M. Juster, trans., Horace, Satires
Ben Greenman, The Slippage
R. S. Gwynn, Dogwatch
Honoré de Balzac, Droll Stories
Iain Haley Pollock, Spit Back a Boy
Karl Kirchwey, Engrafted Word
James Matthew Wilson, Some Permanent Things
Franz Kafka, Complete Stories
F. Marion Crawford, For the Blood is the Life and Other Stories
Charlotte Perkins Gillman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Jan Schreiber, Peccadilloes
Bram Stoker, Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories
W.W. Jakobs, The Monkey’s Paw and Other Stories
Henry James, Turn of the Screw
H.P. Lovecraft, Bloodcurdling Tales
Algernon Blackwood, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories
John Suckling, Works
Ambrose Bierce, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Washington Irving, History, Tales, and Sketches
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Selected Tales and Sketches
Guy de Mauppasant, Collected Stories
Edgar Allan Poe, Annotated Tales
Robert M. Bender, ed., Five Courtier Poets of the English Renaissance
J. Kirby-Smith, Celestial Muse, Poetry and Music through the Ages
Tales of 1,000 Nights, Volume 1
CA Conrad, Frank Sherlock, The City Real and Imagined
Rick Mullin, Sonnets from the Voyage of the Beagle
Elizabeth Scanlon, Odd Regard
Frank Sherlock, Spaced Between these Lines Not Dedicated
Michael and Matthew Dickman, 50 American Plays
Richard Wilbur, trans., Moliere, Tartuffe
Ian Fleming, From Russia with Love
A.R. Ammons, The Really Short Poems
J.T. Barbarese, Black Beach
Steve Almond, Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Save Your Life
Charles Addams, Creature Comforts
Steve Martin, Shopgirl
Juliana Gray, Anne Boleyn’s Sleeve
Amy Glyn, Modern Herbal
Philip Larkin, Complete Poems, ed. Archie Burnett
James Booth, Philip Larkin: Life Art, Love
Joe Queenan, If You’re Talking to Me Your Career Must Be in Trouble
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop
Barry Unsworth, The Big Day
Julian Barnes, Sense of an Ending
Arthur Schnitzler, Casanova’s Return to Venice
Ben Lerner, 10:04
Robert Fagles, trans., Homer, Odyssey
Peter Bagge, Buddy Bites the Bullet
Stephen Burt, Belmont
Timur Vermes, Look Who’s Back
Jan Schreiber, Sparring with the Sun, Essays
George Orwell, The Clergyman’s Daughter
W.B. Yeats, The Plays
Callie Siskel, Arctic Revival
Christopher Ricks, True Friendship: Geoffrey Hill, Anthony Hecht, and Robert Lowell Under the Sign of Eliot and Pound
Heinrich Boll, The Train Was on Time
H.T. Lenton, World War Two German Surface Vessels
George Saunders, Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon
Rick Geary, The Borden Tragedy (A Treasury of Victorian Murder)
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Lorenzo da Ponte, Memoirs
Chuck Klosterman, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains Real and Imagined
Gary Snyder, This Present Moment
Langston Hughes, The Panther and the Lash
Charles Addams, Happily Every After
Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea
Rick Geary, The Bloody Benders (A Treasury of Victorian Murder)
Gary Snyder, Danger on Peaks
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Roan Ricardo Phillips, The Ground
Donald Hook, Madmen of History
Seymour Freidin and William Richardson, eds., Fatal Decisions: Six Decisive Battles of WWII from the Viewpoint of the Vanquished
Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Donald Tyson, The Necromonicon
Kenneth Munson, Fighters and Bombers of World War II, 1939-45
Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo
Christopher Hitchens, Arguably
Adrian Wood, Warships of the Ancient World
Raffaele D’Amato and Andrea Salimbeti, Bronze Age Greek Warrior 1600-1100 BC
Nic Fields and Donato Spedaliere, Troy C. 1700-1250 BC
Martin Dugard, Killing Patton
Justin Quinn, Early House
This is Spinal Tap, Official Companion
David M. Ewalt, Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It
Kevin Young, Book of Hours
Tomaz Salamun, Soy Realidad
Roberto Bolano, Nazi Literature in the Americas
Noah Van Sciver, Fante Bukowski
Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Capote
Richard Mattheson, Hell House
Adrian Tomine, Killing and Dying
Gregory Waldon, Tigers in the Ardennes: The 501st Heavy SS Tank Battalion in the Battle of the Bulge
Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City
Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures with Extremists
Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Heaven
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
John Berryman, Recovery, a Novel
Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Tama Janowitz, Slaves of New York
Stephen Crane, Great Short Works
Daniel Nester, How to Be Inappropriate
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair
Stephen Burn, ed., Conversations with David Foster Wallace
Ranjit Bolt, The Art of Translation
Burton Raffel, The Art of Translating Poetry
John Frederick Nims, Sappho to Valery
Albert Baugh and Thomas Cable, History of the English Language
David Crystal, Stories of English
2014
- Mark Lardas, Bonhomme Richard vs Serapis: Flamborough Head 1779
- George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
- Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
- James Matthew Wilson, The Violent and the Fallen
- Iain Banks, Wasp Factory
- Christian Hawkey, Book of Funnels
- Jean Shepherd, Fistful of Fig Newtons
- Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her
- Philip Larkin, High Windows
- Shigeru Mizuki, translated by Jocelyne Allen, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths
- Anne Carson, Glass, Irony, and God
- Geoffrey Hill, A Treatise of Civil Power
- Ernst Junger, translated by Michael Hofmann, Storm of Steel
- Rachel Kushner, Flamethrowers
- Chris Bullard, Dear Leatherface
- Randall Jarrell, Complete Poems
- Ian Fleming, Moonraker
- Willard Spiegelman, Seven Pleasures
- David Mason, Sea Salt
- Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems
- Daniel Nester, editor, Incredible Sestina Anthology
- James Longenbach, Art of the Poetic Line
- Jessica Piazza, Interobang
- Daivd Konow, Bang Your Head
- Oxford Poetry, 100 Years
- Robert Pinsky, Gulf Music
- Alice Munro, Dear Life
- Lydia Davis, Collected Stories
- Robert Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, History of Opera
- Leo Tolstoy, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, Anna Karenina
- Yoshida Mitsuru, translated by Richard Minear, Requiem for the Battleship Yamato
- Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard
- Carson McCullers, Member of the Wedding
- William Todd Schultz, Tiny Terror: Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered Prayers
- Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, Soldiers: German POWs on Fighting, Killing, and Dying
- LeRoi Jones, Dutchman
- Edward St. Aubyn, Lost for Words
- Saul Austerlitz, Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community
- Jeff Smith and Jessica Abel, editors, Best American comics 2013
- Christian Wiman, Hard Night
- Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff: Selected Writings on Rock Music
- Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jacques Tardi, West Coast Blues
- Renata Adler, Speedboat
- Joshua Mehigan, Accepting the Disaster
- Quincy Lehr, Heimat
- Ernest Cline, Ready Player One
- Mary McCarthy, Groves of Academe
- C. Hugh Hildesley, The Complete Guide to Buying and Selling at Auction
- Brett Milano, Vinyl Junkies
- David Barber, Wonder Cabinet
- Harold Johnson and Jeff Leason, The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan : Advanced Dungeons and Dragons C1
- William Shakeseare, Love’s Labor’s Lost
- Sylvia Plath, Crossing the Water
- Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival
- JRR Tolkien, Two Towers
- Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets
- ee cummings, Xaipe
- Sharon Mesmer, Annoying Diabetic Bitch
- Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- W.H. Auden, Look, Stranger
- Jon Stallworthy, Survivors’ Songs: From Maldon to the Somme
- Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- Homer, Robert Fagles translator, Iliad
- Jim Harrison, Farmer
- Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress
- Michael Robbins, Second Sex
- Shirley Jackson, Haunting of Hill House
- Hugh Cole, Battle of the Bulge
- Joseph Kerman, Opera as Drama
- Gary Shteyngart, Absurdistan
- Ian Fleming, Diamonds are Forever
- Matthew Zapruder, Sun Bear
- Christopher Buckley, But Enough About You: Essays
- H.G. Wells, Invisible Man
- Elisabeth Vincentelli, Abba’s Abba Gold (33 1/3)
- Daniel Tobin, The Net
- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
- Daniel Clowes, Caricacture
- Geoffrey Nutter, Rose of January
- Scott McCloud and Bill Kartalopoulos, Best American Comics 2014
- John Keegan, The Mask of Command: Alexander the Great, Wellington, Ulysses S. Grant, Hitler, and the Nature of Leadership
- Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty
- Chelsea Minnis, Poemland
- Thomas Devaney, Calamity Jane
- Kingsley Amis, Collected Poems
2013
- Eric Rasmussen, The Shakespeare Thefts
- Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus
- Ian Fleming, Casino Royale
- Devon Bixler, Notes for the Conquest
- Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband
- Sebastian Junger, War
- Edgar Istel, The Art of Writing Opera Librettos
- Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities
- Alina Simone, Note to Self
- Ann Charters, Portable Sixties Reader
- Andrei Codrescu, The Poetry Lesson
- John Keegan, War and Our World
- Samuel Pepys, Days of Excess, excerpts from the diaries
- Charles Bukowski, The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps
- Joseph Epstein, In a Cardboard Belt
- Christopher Hitchens, Missionary Position
- Steve Zaloga, Japanese Special Attack Weapons: Kamakaze
- Mark Stille, Italian Battleships of World War II
- George Green, Lord Byron’s Foot
- Christopher Isherwood, Mr. Norris Changes Trains
- David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
- George Saunders, Tenth of December
- Joseph Epstein, Partial Payments
- Quincy Lehr, Shadows and Gifts
- Henri Cole, Touch
- Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn
- Gregory Gibson, Hubert’s Freaks
- Paul Muldoon, Maggot
- Brenda Shaughnessy, Our Andromeda
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods
- David Yezzi, Birds of the Air
- George Saunders, Pastoralia
- A.S. Byatt, Ragnarock
- Mark Stille, USN Destroyer vs. ISN Destroyer, Osprey Duel Series
- Shakespeare, Othello, Arden edition
- George Saunders, The Braindead Megaphone
- Daisy Fried, Women’s Poetry
- David Sedaris, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls
- Rick Gekoski, Lost, Stolen, or Shredded
- Wallace Stevens, Selected Poems
- Russell Davis, End of All Seasons
- David Rothman, Part of the Darkness
- Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
- David Rothman, Book of Catapults
- Deborah Baker, The Blue Hand, The Beats in India
- W.G. Sebald, Natural History of Destruction
- Shakespeare, The Tempest, Arden edition
- Frank Bidart, Star Dust
- Ben Lerner, Leaving the Atocha Station
- Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Poems
- Ian McEwan, In Between the Sheets
- Gregory Dowling, David Mason
- Ben Mazer, New Poems
- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom
- David Mason, The Country I Remember
- George Saunders, Civil War Land in Bad Decline
- J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring
- Andrew Hudgins, Clown at Midnight
- Noel Botham and Bruce Montague, Catch That Tiger: Churchill’s Secret Order That Launched the Most Astounding and Dangerous Mission of World War
- Norman Mailer, The Fight
- John Betjeman, Nip in the Air
- W.H. Auden, Cyril Connolly, Patrick Leigh-Fermer, Edith Sitwell, Christopher Sykes, Evelyn Waugh, and Angus Wilson, The Seven Deadly Sins
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
- John Polidori, The Vampyre
- Paul Gruskin, The Art of Modern Rock
- Alexander McCall Smith, What Auden Can Do For You
- Tom Disch, Dark Verses and Light
- Paul Roland, Nazis and the Occult
- Cyril Ray, ed., The New Compleat Imbiber
- Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell, The Disaster Artist
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
- Ian Winwood and Paul Brannigan, Birth, School, Metallica, Death, Volume One
- Matthea Harvey, Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form
- The Ned Rorem Reader
- Derf Backderf, My Friend Dahmer
- Bruce Thornton, Guide to Classics
- Randall Bytwerk, Paper War: Nazi Propaganda in One Battle, on a Single Day, Cassino, Italy, May 11, 1944
- Tom Bissell, Magic Hours
- Michael Kerrigan, World War II Plans That Never Happened 1939-45
- John Ashbery, April Galleons
- Roberto Bolano, The Savage Detectives
- Seamus Heaney, Human Chain
- David Brooks, The Paradise Suite: Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive
- Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
- Joe Sacco and Adam Hochschild, The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme
- Ian Fleming, Live and Let Die
- Genevieve Gauckler, Charles Freger and Robert McLiam Wilson, Wilder Mann
2012
- Jennifer Egan, Visit from the Goon Squad
- Chris Bullard, O Brilliant Kids
- Philip Pullman, Lyra’s Oxford
- Dante, Purgatorio, Mandelbaum translation
- Naomi Klein, No Logo
- P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves
- Frank O’Hara, Selected Poems
- Martin Amis, War Against Cliche
- Joe Bonono, Highway to Hell
- Quotable Christopher Hitchens (cover to cover!)
- Douglas Coupland, Life After God
- Dan Leroy, Paul’s Boutique
- Brock Clarke, Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England
- Charles Burns, X’d Out
- Charles Dickens, Hard Times
- Gonzague Saint Bris, World of Jules Verne
- William Butcher, Jules Verne, Definitive Biography
- Jules Verne, Around the World in 80 Days
- Jules Verne, Five Weeks in a Balloon
- Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Jules Verne , 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas
- Robert Lowell, Near the Ocean
- Bill Janovitz, Exile on Main Street
- Peter Bagge, Buddy Does Jersey
- Michael Robbins, Alien Vs. Predator
- J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
- Chris Ware, Lint
- Gordon Williamson, German Heavy Cruisers 1939-1945
- Ian Mcewan, Black Dogs
- Quincy Lehr, Obscure Classics of English Progressive Rock
- Jim Fusilli, Pet Sounds
- Gordon Williamson, German Pocket Battleships, 1939-1945
- Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
- Ben Katchor, Cardboard Valise
- P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
- William T. Vollman, Riding to Everywhere
- A.E. Stallings, Olives
- H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds
- Daphne Carr, Pretty Hate Machine
- Jack Gilbert, Dance Most of All
- Joel Conarroe, editor, Eight American Poets
- Wells Tower, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
- Patrick Smith, Tenth Muse
- Northrop Frye, editor, Sound and Poetry
- David Mason, Scarlet Libretto
- John Addington Symonds, Essays Speculative and Suggestive
- Musical Antiquary, Volume I
- John Hollander, Vision and Resonance
- David Lehman, Fine Romance
- Virgin Thompson, Music with Words
- Gary Schmidgall, Literature as Opera
- James Anderson Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of Relations Between Poetry and Music
- Aristotle, Poetics, Malcolm Heath translation
- Philip Rupprecht, Britten’s Musical Language
- Paul Kilda, edtior, Britten on Music
- Derek Williams, Romans and Barbarians
- W.H. Auden, Selected Essays
- Gerry Cambridge, Notes for Lighting a Fire
- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
- Michel Houellebecq, Map and the Territory
- John Carey, Pure Pleasure
- Richard Evans, The Third Reich at War
- Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Arden edition
- Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
- Otto Skorzeny, Skorzeny’s Special missions
- M. Owen Lee, Wagner’s Ring: Turning the Sky Round
- J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roofbeams
- Don Delillo, Cosmopolis
- Roberto Bolano, The Third Reich
- Tom Wolf, A Man in Full
- Seth, George Sprott
- Mark Lardas and Peter Dennis, CSS Alabama vs USS Kearsarge: Cherbourg 1864
- Ken Ford, Howard Gerrard, Alan Gilliland, and Paul Wright, Run The
- Gauntlet: The Channel Dash 1942
- Jehanne Dubrow, Stateside
- Catie Rosemurgy, My Favorite Apocalypse
- Thomas Devaney, Series of Small Boxes
- Michael Dickman, End of the West
- Michael Dickman, Flies
- Rupert Matthews, Hitler as Military Commander
- Henri Cole, Blackbird and Wolf
- Peter Bagge, Everyone is Stupid But Me
- Josh Sims, Icons of Men’s Style
- Ronald Latham, ed., Travels of Marco Polo
- Shriley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
- Roberto Bolano, 2666
- Seamus Heaney, Seeing Things
- David Yezzi, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
- Bejamin Anastas, Too Good to Be True
- Steven Zaloga and Tony Bryan, Lorraine 1944: Patton Vs Manteuffel (Campaign Series, 75)
- Yann and Romain Hugault, The Grand Duke
- Best American Comics 2012
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
- Ezra Pound, The Cantos
- William Cookson, Guide to The Cantos
- Charles Burns, The Hive
2011
- William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea
- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22
- Seamus Heaney, The Haw Lantern
- Nicholson Baker, Anthologist
- Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist
- Don Thompson, The $12,000,000 Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art
- Howard Nemerov, Collected Poems
- Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking
- Seamus Heaney, Field Work
- Patton Oswalt, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland
- Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man
- Bruce Bawer, Prophets and Professors
- Gregory McNamee, Return of Richard Nixon
- Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold Considered as a Murderer
- Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall
- Rae Armantrout, Versed
- Zadie Smith, On Beauty
- Michael Chabon, Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
- William Burroughs, The Job
- Stevyn Zaloga, Panther Vs. Sherman
- A.N. Wilson, Tolstoy
- Ted Hughes, Lupercal
- Rachel Wetzsteon, Silver Roses
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Rosemary Edmonds
- CA Conrad, Book of Frank
- David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
- Phil Hoy, Seven American Poets
- Christopher B. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich
- Joan Didion, White Album
- Tina Fey, Bossypants
- Nikki Sixx, Heroin Diaries
- A. E. Hotchner, The Good Life According to Hemingway
- Cyril Edwards, trans, Nibelungenlied, Oxford Classics
- Henry Miller, Black Spring
- Martin Amis, Moronic Inferno
- Alan Bennett, Uncommon Reader
- Shakespeare, MacBeth, Yale series
- Philip Larkin, Whitsun Weddings
- Philip Larkin, High Windows
- Saul Bellow, Herzog
- Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
- Justin Taylor, Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever
- John Carey, Pure Pleasure
- Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game
- Ian McEwan, Cement Garden
- Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity
- Muriel Spark, Far Cry from Kensington
- Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain
- Adrian Tomine, Scenes from an Impending Marriage
- Christian Lander, Whiter Shades of Pale
- Christopher Buckley, Florence of Arabia
- George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
- Hunter S. Thompson, Songs of the Damned
- Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve
- William Kennedy, Ironweed
- Max Brooks, World War Z
- H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines
- Joseph Epstein, Life Sentences
- Justin Quinn, Close Quarters
- Barnaby Conrad, Martini, An Illustrated History
- Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Goering: The Rise and Fall of the Notorious Nazi Leader
- Chris Ware, Acme Novelty Library 1
- David Higgins, King Tiger Vs. IS-2
- Bram Stoker, Dracula
- Kingsley Amis, Green Man
- Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary
- Jason Guriel, Pure Product
- Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murad, trans. Maud
- Leo Tolstoy, Kreuzer Sonanta, trans. Maud
- Samuel Manashe, New and Selected Poems
- Gabriella Ibieta, ed, Latin American Writers
- Anthony Preston, World’s Worst Warships
- Robert Desaix, Night Letters
- Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, trans Christopher Fry
- Kim Deitch, Alias, Cat
- Best American Comics 2011
- Mark Stille, Imperial Japanese Navy Battleships
- Richard Ford, Women with Men
- Erik Davis, Led Zeppelin IV
- Thomas Foster, 25 Books that Changed America
- Richard Humble, Hitler’s High Seas Fleet
- Muriel Spark, The Finishing School
- Clive James, Opal Sunset, New and Selected Poems
2010
- Sinclair Lewis, Babbit
- William Logan, Whispering Gallery
- Best American Comics 2009
- Best American Comics 2010
- Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
- William T. Vollman, Europe Central
- Evelyn Waugh, Scoop
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
- William Logan, Strange Flesh
- Hunter S. Thompson, Hey, Rube
- Frederick Seidel, Collected Poems
- Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil (various translators, New Directions)
- Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes
- Calvin Tomkins, Lives of the Artists
- Paul Siegell, Wild Life Rifle Fire
- Katy Evans-Bush, Oscar and Henry
- Dave Sim, Glamourpuss
- Alvaro Mutis, Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, translated by Edith Grossman, five novels:
- The Snow of the Admiral
- Ilona Comes with the Rain
- The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port of Call
- Abdul Basher, Dreamer of Ships
- Tryptich on Sea and Land
- Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
- P.J. O’Rourke, Holidays in Hell
- Kevin Prufer, Fallen from a Chariot
- Harvey Pekar, The Beats
- Rutu Modan, Exit Wounds
- Kenneth Rexroth, Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile
- Mark Dawson, Solitary Conversations
- Anna Akhmatova, Selected Poems
- Maurizio Catelan (Phaidon), by Francesco Bonami, Nancy Spector,
- Barbara Vanderlinden, and Massimiliano Gioni
- Zora Neale Hurston, Complete Stories
- Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
- Jill Essbaum, The Devastation
- The Complete Graphic Work of Jack Levine, Kenneth W. Prescott and Emma-Stina Prescott
- William S. Burroughs, The Ticket that Exploded
- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Superfreakonomics
- David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
- Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
- Horace, Odes and Epodes, Joseph Clancy, trans
- Anton Joachimsthaler, The Last Days of Hitler: Legend, Evidence and Truth
- David Sedaris, When You are Covered in Flames
- Damion Searls, What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going
- Daisy Fried, My Brother is Getting Arrested Again
- Sapphire, Push
- James Thurber, Credos and Curios
- Robert Lowell, Collected Prose
- Joshua Ferris, The Unnamed
- Paul Johnson, Modern Times
- Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore
- Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
- Victor Davis Hanson, The Father of Us All
- John O’Hara, Appointment in Samara
- T.S. Eliot, The Confidential Clerk
- Donald Hall, White Apple and the Taste of Stone, New and Selected
- Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
- Ian McEwan, Solar
- Evan Thomas, Sea of Thunder, Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign 1941-1945
- Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, Peter Carson, trans
- David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp
- Lester Bangs, Mainlines, Bloodfeasts, and Bad Taste
- David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
- Christopher Buckley, Supreme Courtship
- Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana
- Alan Powers, Front Covers
- Martin Amis, The Information
- Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms
- Graham Annable, Further Grickle
- Hunter S. Thompson, Better Than Sex
- Edwin Gaustad, Ben Franklin
- Martial, Epigrams, William Matthews, trans
- Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
- Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel
- Philip Roth, American Pastoral
- John Foy, Techne’s Clearinghouse
- Robert Lowell, Notebook (Red)
- T.C.F. Hopkins, Confrontation at Lepanto
- Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, David Yezzi, ed.
- Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities
- Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
- J.L. Carr, Month in the Country
- Steve Mateo, Let It Be
- Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, What’s Left of It
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick
- Matthew Zapruder, Come On All You Ghosts
- Nicholas Basbanes, Among the Gently Mad
- Thomas Aylesworth, Monsters from the Movies
- Peter Bagge, The Bradleys
- Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange
- David Sedaris, Holidays on Ice
- A.M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life
- Dan Breithaupt, Aja (33 1/3)
- Mark Polizzotti, Highway 61 Revisited
- Jane Smiley, Charles Dickens
- Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
- Robert Stern, Kriegsmarine
- Seamus Heaney, North
- Timothy Donnelly, The Cloud Corporation
- John Ashbery, Notes from the Air
- Julia Wertz, Drinking at the Movies
- W. Somerset Maugham, Razor’s Edge
- Jay McInerney, How it Ended
- Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle
- Hunger S. Thompson, Curse of Lono
- Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
- W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists
- Philip Hoy, W.D. Snodgrass in Conversation
- Rachel Wetzsteon, Home and Away
- Michael Reck, Ezra Pound, a Close-Up
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler (Hugh Aplin translator)
- William Burroughs, Place of Dead Roads
- Kay Ryan, Niagara River
- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
- Tom Wolf, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
- Matthew Zapruder, The Pajamaist
- Jill Alexander Esbaum, Heaven
- Pictopia, Volume One
- Andi Watson, Slow News Day
- Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift
- Mountain Man Dance Moves, by the editors of McSweeney’s
- Annie La Ganga, Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints
- Daniel Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
- Franz Wright, Wheeling Motel
- Tom Wolf, The Right Stuff
- Plato, Trial and Death of Socrates
- Jon Stallworthy, War Poet
- John Danielle, Master of Reality
- Esquire Handbook of Style, by the editors of Esquire
- Batton Lash, Tales of Supernatural Law
- Robert Jackson, The World’s Great Battleships, from the Middle Ages to the Present
- Gillian G. Gaar, In Utero
- Christopher Buckley, Boomsday
- Heather Green, No Omen
- Kaya Oakes, Slanted and Enchanted: the Evolution of Indie Culture
- Daniel Clowes, Eightball
- Richard Ford, Multitude of Sins
- David Cross, I Drink for a Reason
- Anthony Thwaite, Ruins of Time
- Peter Bagge, Buddy Does Seattle
- Paul Fussell, Bad, or the Dumbing of America
- Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur
- Theresa Ortolani, Endurance
- Ethan Rilly, Pope Hats One
- Donald Barthelme, Flying to America
- John Updike, Pigeon Feathers
- Allison Hoover Bartlett, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
- Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw
- Jamie McKendrick, Crocodiles and Obelisks
- Peter Bagge, Everyone is Stupid Except for Me
- Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water
- Ian McEwan, Comfort of Strangers
- Sharon Olds, The Father
- Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
- John Updike, The Complete Henry Bech
- New British Poetry, edited by Don Paterson and Charles Simic
- John Updike, Bech at Bay
- Jason Shinga, Bookhunter
- Geoffrey Brock, Weighing Light
- Tim Clayton, Hogarth
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
- Craig Arnold, Made Flesh
- Danny Sugerman, Appetite for Destruction
- Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point
- Jason Lutes, Berlin, Book Two
- Hugo Wilkes, Low
- Craig Arnold, Shells
- Douglas Coupland, Generation X
- Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet
- Tony Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic
2009
- Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
- Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word
- George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier
- Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch
- Ben Katchor, Beauty Supply District
- Charles Burns, Big Baby
- George Orwell, Why I Write
- Tom Wolfe, In Our Time
- Tom Wolfe, Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine
- Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
- Kimball and Kramer (eds.), Lengthened Shadows
- Amy Clampitt, Westward
- Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
- Robert Crumb, R. Crumb’s America
- Gay Talese, The Gay Talese Reader
- W.H. Auden, Academic Graffiti
- Gabrielle Bell, When I am Old
- Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
- Cusquena Paintings in the Churches of Cusco [no author]
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Feast of the Goat
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes
- Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries
- Sarah Hannah, Inflorescence
- T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and The Waste Land, annotated by Valden James Madson
- Adam Kirsch, Invasions
- Adam Kirsch, The Modern Element
- Hal Sirozitz, Before, During, and After
- E.A. Robinson, Selected Poems
- Dana Goodyear, Honey and Junk
- Davis McCombs, Dismal Rock
- Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House
- David Mason, Ludlow
- Lynn Levin, Imaginarium
- George Plimpton, The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair
- Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up
- Tom Wolfe, The Pumphouse Gang
- Jenny Holzer, The Venice Installation
- Philip Roth, Everyman
- Simon Armitage (translator), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Robert Lowell, Life Studies
- Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead
- Erica Dawson, Big-Eyed Afraid
- Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees
- Drawn and Quarterly Showcase Volume One
- Drawn and Quarterly Showcase Volume Two
- Harvey Pekar, Another Day
- Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
- Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
- Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men
- John Ashbery, A Worldly Country
- Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
- Nathanael West, Day of the Locust
- Sophie Hannah, Pessimism for Beginners
- P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves
- J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
- Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets
- W.H. Auden, As I Walked out One Evening
- Mary Jo Bang, Elegy
- Henry Taylor, Brief Candles
- Arthur Nersesian, The Fuck-Up
- Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt
- J. Allyn Rosser, Foiled Again
- David Leaf (ed.), KISS, Behind the Mask
- P.G. Wodehouse, Luck of the Woosters
- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
- Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
- Johannes Steinhoff, Final Hours
- Tom Disch, About the Size of It
- T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
- Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell
- Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain
- Jay McInerny, Model Behavior
- W.S. Di Pierro, Brother Fire
- Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff
- Simon Armitage, Selected Poems
- David Davies, Nelson’s Navy
- Kevin Huizenga, Curses
- Eavan Boland, Outside History
- Joshua Ferris, And then We Came to the End
- Jeanette Winterson, Boating for Beginners
- Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
- Sarah Vowell, Party Cloudy Patriot
- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
- Michael Quadland, That Was Then
- Tom Disch, Castle of Indolence
- Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
- Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation
- Tom Disch, Castle of Perseverance
- Tom Disch, Camp Concentration
- Greg Sanders, Motel Girl
- D.H. Lawrence, Birds, Beasts, and Flowers
- Howard Griffin, Conversations with Auden
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
- The Upanishads
- Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
- Ben Katchor, Julius Kniple, Real Estate Photographer
- Jonathan Ames, The Alcoholic
- Henry James, The Ambassadors
- Paul Fussell, Class
- Christian Landor, Stuff White People Like
- Drawn and Quarterly Showcase, Volume Four
- Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle
- Jason Lutes, Berlin: City of Stones, Part One
- Gahan Wilson, Monster Collection
- Charles Addams, Half-Baked Cookbook
- Robert Frost, Versed in Country Things
- Stewart O’Nan, Last Night at the Lobster
- Wendell Stacy Johnson, W.H. Auden
- Frederick Seidel, Cosmos Trilogy
- Philip Larkin, Jill
- Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool
- S. Eddy Bell, Lulu and Mitzy, Best Laid Plans
- David Yezzi, Azores
- Paul Siegell, Poemergency Room
2008
- Alistaire Horne, The Age of Napoleon
- Philip K. Dick, Selected Stories
- Henry Reed, The Auction Sale, introduction by Jon Stallworthy
- Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means to Me
- Catullus, Odi et Amo, translated by Roy Arthur Swanson
- Jennifer Omand, Squarecat Comics, Volume One
- Mark Steyn, America Alone
- W.H. Auden, About the House
- Michel Rabagliati, Paul Moves Out
- Jon Stallworthy, Body Language
- Marilyn Taylor, Subject to Change
- George Herbert, Selected Poems, edited by R.S. Thomas
- Eric Pankey, For the New Year
- Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves
- C.K. Williams, The Vigil
- Gustave Dore/Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
- C.K. Williams, Flesh and Blood
- Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores
- Chris Ware, Quimby the Mouse
- Ovid, Amores, translated by Peter Green
- Morri Creech, Field Knowledge
- Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga
- Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf
- August Kleinzahler, The Strange House Travelers Keep
- Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers
- Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poems
- Frederick Seidel, Going Fast
- Joshua Beckman, Shake
- G.M. Hopkins, Poems
- Debra Ginsberg, Waiting
- Philip Larkin, Girl in Winter
- W.H. Auden, The Double Man
- Scott Donaldson, E.A. Robinson, A Life
- Sam Lipsyte, Home Land
- Gilbert Hernandez, Sloth
- Peter Porter, Selected Poems
- Lynn Truss, Talk to the Hand
- James Merrill, Water Street
- Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
- Justin Quinn, Fuselage
- Justin Quinn, The O’o’a’a Bird
- James Merrill, Braving the Elements
- Michel Houelbecq, Possibility of an Island
- Chuck Klosterman, IV
- Peter Young, English Civil War Armies
- Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde
- Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
- Dana Gioia, Barrier of a Common Language
- Raymond Carver, Ultramarine
- Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
- Dana Gioia, Interrogations at Noon
- Dana Gioia, Daily Horoscope
- William T. Vollman, Poor People
- Harold Brodkey, This Wild Darkness
- Bob Dylan, Chronicles I
- H.L. Hix, Surely as Birds Fly
- Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, Pride of Baghdad
- Thomas Lux, The Cradle Place
- Andrew Marvell, Poems, with drawings by Kurt Roesch
- Rodney Jones, Transparent Gestures
- Michael Schmidt, Great Modern Poets
- David B., Epileptic
- Scott Morse, Southpaw
- Adrian Tomine, Stories, the Best of Optic Nerve
- Philip K. Dick, Man in the High Castle
- X.J. Kennedy, Cross Ties, Selected Poems
- Adriane Tomine, Optic Nerve, #-
- Jeffrey Brown, Cat Getting Out of Bag
- Seamus Heaney, District and Circle
- Joe Queenan, Queenan Country
- James Merrill, Country of a Thousand Years of Peace
- W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists, New and Selected Poems
- Charles Bukowski, Come On In!
- Jeffrey Brown, Clumsy
- Bill Coyle, God of this World to His Prophet
- Eavan Boland, Selected Poems
- Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians
- Jack Wiler, Fun Being Me
- Jeffrey Brown, Every Girl is the End of the World for Me
- Jan Schreiber, Orvietto, wood engravings by William Rueter
- Don Paterson, Landing Light
- David Jones, The Sleeping Lord
- John Ashbery, Can You Hear, Bird?
- Marilyn Taylor, Seven Very Liberal Arts
- Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women
- James Fenton, Children in Exile
- Wendy Cope, Serious Concerns
- Major Jackson, Leaving Saturn
- Lawrence Durrell, Justine
- Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan, eds., A Passion for Books
- William Logan, Reputations of the Tongue
- Wendy Cope, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
- Seamus Heaney, New Selected Poems
- Charles Simic, Walking the Black Cat
- Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
- Richard Wright, Native Son
- William Logan, Vain Empires
- Joe Matt, Spent
- Jeffrey Brown, Unlikely
- Henry James, Washington Square
- Sharon Olds, Satan Says
- Jeffrey Brown, Miniature Sulk
- Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
- Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
- Justin Quinn, Waves and Trees
- Charles Bukowski, Women
- Rebecca Wolff, Figment
- Par Lagerkvist, The Sybil
- Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument
- Until the Fingers Being to Bleed a Bit
- Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
- Joshua Mehigan, The Optimist
- William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
- Charles Simic, Book of Gods and Devils
- John Ashbery, Houseboat Days
- Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
- Yvor Winters, In Defense of Reason (includes The Morality of Poetry, The Experimental School, Poetic Convention, Primitivism and Decadence, The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention, Maule’s Curse, The Significance of Hart Crane’s The Bridge)
- Hart Crane, The Bridge
- Scott Miles, Trenches
- John Knowles, A Separate Peace
- W.D. Snodgrass, Make Believes, Verses and Visions
- Jeffrey Brown, Big Head
- Jeffrey Brown, Any Early Intimacy
- Elizabeth Dieffendorf, Books of the Century
- David Horowitz, Indoctrination, U.
- P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores
- James Merrill, Scattering of Salts
- Joshua Furst, Short People
- Robert Coover, Pricksongs and Descants
- Sarah Hannah, Longing Distance
- William Faulkner, Light in August
- Flannery O’Connor, Complete Stories
- Seth, Vernacular Drawings
- Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
- Ernest Hemingway, True at First light
- Paul Muldoon, Horse Latitudes
- C.P. Cavafy, Poems
- John Ashbery, The Tennis Court Oath
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
- Robert Coover, Pricksongs and Descants
- Toni Morrison, Sula
- Jeanette Winterson, Stone Gods
- Best American Comics 2008
- Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
- Henry Green, Loving
- Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals