Best of 2013

I'm reading a lot of different book blogs at the moment and everyone seems to be putting out some thoughts on their favourite reads of 2013, or best books, or something along those lines, so I'm jumping in on the action since the year has drawn to a close. I was reflecting on all the posts I made in 2013 and making a list on my phone of some of the books I wanted to mention, and I thought to myself, 'I'll keep it to around ten books or so, that should be a nice round number. After all, I only read 52 books last year.'

For my top books of the year, I have 20 out of 52.

So I guess I'll start out this way - I really enjoyed a lot of the books I read last year, and that warms my cockles because I'm all about the enjoyment. However for the purposes of this post I would like to single out the books that really obsessed me this year. I recently came across from Nora Ephron which I think sums up the way I feel about reading books like this perfectly:

“There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.”

Here are the books which rapture-ised me this year:

Wild by Cheryl Strayed - I absolutely loved this memoir and everyone who I've passed it onto has also really enjoyed reading it. I just loved it. There's a film out later this year, so hopefully they do a good job with it.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill - this book of short stories blew my mind. I read the majority of it on a car journey to France with my family. Normally I get terribly car sick and can't read at all in the car, so it's a testament to how good these stories are that I just couldn't stop myself reading them.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting - this book kind of crept up on me, and I didn't realise just how addictive it was going to be, until I started reading it and then couldn't tear my eyes away. Much like 29th Century Ghosts, I had to sacrifice some sleep to get deeper into this book. Totally worth it.

Joyland by Stephen King - I really enjoyed this book for the story and the characters and all the usual reasons, however I also find myself looking back at this book with a particular fondness because of the circumstances under which I read it. It was perfect. I was in the gorgeous Cornish countryside, in pretty much total solitude with Luke. Totally at peace and the perfect circumstances under which to fully immerse myself and enjoy this book.

Honourable mentions go to: The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits; The Round House by Louise Erdrich; We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver; N0S-4R2 by Joe Hill; Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I loved all of these books but they didn't quite suck me in as much as the books above, for whatever reasons.

I'm feeling really excited about reading in 2014 - I've received some wonderful books for Christmas and my birthday, and there are some really great new books that I'm looking forward to getting my hands on, as well as some older books that I'd love to re-visit. So many books and so little time! If there was a job out there where I could become some sort of professional reader, I'd be set for life. I'd love to take a year off work and spend it caught up in my own rapture of the deep...

New Bookshelves

I moved out of home a few months ago into a flat without much space, however luckily there was enough space for a set of bookshelves, which I built and still have. I have some photos, and some of the books are still very familiar as they still haven't been read in the last two years, and some are newer.

I still have a huge number of books at my dad's house, however the ones I have left there are the ones I am much less likely to read, some of which I will most likely get rid of by giving to charity, or giving to people if I think they might get something out of them. But I really can't be bothered to read books I'm not going to enjoy. I'm already a fairly ruthless reader, and I tend to give up quite often on books I'm not enjoying, but I think now I've finished my experiment I'll become even more ruthless. I will not be spending any time reading something that I don't enjoy. So there.

A new system

I've been thinking: I need a better system for selecting books, and the pedant in me has come up with a foolproof system which will still stay true to the original aims of this project. This was to read my 111 acquired books before buying any new ones.

It's obvious to me now that I have at least partially failed: I now have way over 111 books. Realistically, I'll probably end up with more before I come anywhere NEAR to finishing the books I already have. But I'm okay with that. This will be my system, similar to the goldfish bowl approach I considered last week:

This is Box A. Box A will always contain 111 bits of paper with the titles of 111 different books written on them. Once I have finished reading a book, I will select a new piece of paper from the handy hole in the top of the box, and that will be the next book I read.

This is Box B. Box B will contain the names of all the pesky extra books I accumulate over the course of this project, which will more than likely be lifelong. I will add new books to this box as and when I need to. Now here's the clever part: once I have selected a new book from Box A, the number will be down to a lame 110. Therefore, I will select a new title from Box B and add it to Box A.

So clever. And I also managed to waste quite a bit of time decorating my two boxes, specially for selection purposes.

I guess this is the fairest way to do it, to give myself a chance to both get through my old books and to give the new ones a chance, too. Realistically, I'll have to allow myself a veto every now and again. I don't want to start reading books without slightly looking forward to reading them.

My shelves

I've been wanting to do a post on my shelves for a while now, but I was waiting for the books that I posted myself from Vintage to arrive. They finally did this morning. Yay!

This is how they looked around a year ago

The original 111 books

Top shelf - A-E

Middle shelf - E-S

End shelf - S-Z & comics

The photos below are all the books I snagged from Vintage, plus some others that I MIGHT have bought when I shouldn't have, because I went to Fopp and they were only £3 each.

To more accurately see what's on these new shelves, go back to this post to see what's new.

Good grief, I have my work cut out for me, don't I?

Reaching ten

So I said to myself that I would look back reflect on how things are going so far when I had read my first ten books, as that seemed to be a good number to choose from.

Already, in this first six weeks or so of doing this, things have changed. A job came up where I couldn't possibly say no to taking free books (especially since I'm not getting paid any real money), and I also learned that I might have a bit of a blind spot regarding gender. Hm.

I've tried to think about the best way to move forward with this, and I think I'm going to have to go for a more random approach. At the moment, I've been asking Pete for help with picking out my next book, for a bit of discipline (otherwise I would pick all the new ones, and the old ones would be left behind again) but he also has his prejudices. So I think I'm going to go for a goldfish bowl approach. Write all the names on a bit of paper, mix them up and then pick one at random each time. Then I'll have an even chance between the new and the old ones, and I'll be happy either way. The bowl will decide for me.

I'll have to wait a week or so to implement this, as I'm still waiting for some books to arrive from the office (I posted some home to myself so that I wouldn't have to carry them all).

One more thing: I am going to buy a book.

Today, probably. I am going to buy Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. Because I read about it last year and I saw a copy in real life yesterday and it just looks too amazing not to own. I have to have this book.

A disturbing trend

I've been following the recent news articles regarding the disparity between male and female authors and reviewers, and noticed something a little disturbing about my own reading habits.

Laura Miller's piece over at Salon.com sums up the what's been going on so far really well if you haven't been following along. Basically what's been happening is some researchers decided to to a quantitative analysis of books which are reviewed in 14 major publications such as the NYRB and the New York Times, and see what the difference was between the number of books reviewed which were written by men and those written by women. The results are astonishing.

Books written by men are overwhelmingly reviewed over those written by women. Not only that, but book reviews are overwhelmingly written by men, rather than women within those same publications.

Now a lot of head scratching is going on, because no one can quite work out why. In fact, studies have shown that women tend to read more diversely than men do, so if anything, the disparity ought to swing the other way, but that's not the case. Laura Miller suggests that it might be to do with the fact that male reviewers don't tend to care as much about the kind of issues women write about. Does women's writing seem 'less' important than stuff written by men? Is men's writing taken more seriously? Both male and female authors certainly have trashy names that I could roll off the tip of my tongue...

I decided to do a casual analysis of my own book list and see how I fared. I guess I shouldn't be that shocked by the results below, considering that I did pick out all these books.

Of my original 111 books, 84 are by men, 25 by women and 2 are collections.

Of the new list, 23 are by men and 8 are by women.

This leaves me with a total percentage of: 75% male authors, 23% female authors and 2% mixed.

I guess I get brownie points for being a female reviewer, right?

Like I said, I bought all these books, so how can I possibly be surprised that they are mostly by men? I'm a little disappointed in myself, because I consider myself to be a feminist and a champion of women's writing, and I can't figure out how this happened. I would have to stress that I did not consciously choose  not to buy women's books.

I guess all I can think to account for how this might have happened is to go back to the original roots of this project. My aim was to get through the 111 books that I had left over from previous years. Thinking back, I have read and loved a great many books by both women and men, and I can't say with absolute certainty, but one reason that I might have so many books authored by men left on my shelves might be because they were the ones left behind.

Here are some female authors I have read and loved in the past year: Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Catherine O'Flynn, Emma Donoghue, Monica Drake, Jennifer Egan, A.M. Homes, Miranda July, Susie Orbach, Natasha Walter, Kat Banyard, Jessica Valenti, Delphine de Vigan, Charlotte Roche, Audrey Niffenegger and others, I'm sure.

Okay, I feel a bit better now.

UPDATE: You ARE taking books, aren't you?

Since last week, I have taken the following books:

• The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. - Jaques Strauss
• The Echo Maker - Richard Powers
• Reheated Cabbage - Irvine Welsh
• In Great Waters - Kit Whitfield
• Personal Days - Ed Park
• Solar - Ian McEwan
• Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
• Half the Human Race - Anthony Quinn
• The Hare With the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal
• Teach Us To Sit Still - Tim Parks
• Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler
• Spring - David Salazay
• The Illumination - Kevin Brockmeier
• The Afterparty - Leo Benedictus
• Small Is Beautiful - E.F. Schumacher
• Glister - John Burnside
• Life Inc. - Douglas Rushkoff
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner - Nick Hayes
• Vignettes of Ystov - William Goldsmith
• Wilson - Daniel Clowes
• X'ed Out - Charles Burns

This could be getting out of hand.

You ARE taking books, aren't you?

This past week I've been doing some publicity work experience at Random House in London. It's been good so far; everyone is really nice and it's interesting to see the difference between a small indie publisher like Melville House, who employ under ten people, to move to a publicity department which has more than that number alone, and that's only for half a dozen of their imprints.

Anyway, this post isn't to talk about my work experience, but to talk about what someone said to me on my second day. I arrived and set up my things, turned on my computer etc, and one of the publicists turned to me and said, "Cassie, you ARE taking books, aren't you?". I kind of froze for a second because I thought maybe she was accusing me of taking books, but she was in fact saying quite the opposite.

She encouraged me to take books, see what the different publicists were working on and to feel free to ask for a copy of anything if it caught my eye. Heavenly.

I guess since they're a big company, it's the kind of thing they can afford to do, and since they're only paying my travel and food expenses, then I also have the added feeling of not feeling that bad when they suggest I take books. However this does leave me with a slight problem with regards to this project.

I now have way over 111 books.

It's not a huge problem - I kind of have over that amount already. There are a few on my list that I have grouped togther (like Kavalier & Clay and The Escapists) because they seem to go so well together. The idea was for me not to buy any more books until I have finished all the ones on the list.

So I guess technically I'm not breaking any rules, since I'm not actually buying any books. And I simply cannot say no to taking books for free.

So far I have accumulated:

• Pulse by Julian Barnes
• Savage Lands by Clare Clark
• February by Lisa Moore
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
• Precious by Sapphire
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter
• Swamplandia by Karen Russell
• Things We Didn't See Coming by Steven Amsterdam
• What to Look for in Winter by Candia McWilliam
• Deloume Road by Matthew Hooton

I'm sure there will be several more before my second week is over.

I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I don't feel like I can read them ahead of my other books. That was what this whole project has been about. I can't just get new books and read them ahead of the others! Can I?

I might make a couple of exceptions depending on the book. Some new ones, for example. Or if I really really don't want to read any of the others. We'll see. I'm keeping them separate for now...

How this happened

One hundred and eleven books. My goodness, I have been naughty.

Buying books for me has become a compulsion. Maybe it has always been there. I love books, but lately it seems to me that I love buying them even more. I love to do it. I love going into a bookshop, picking up a book, putting it back down, touching it. Choosing it. Feeling like I just have to have it, right at that moment. I guess some people get this feeling with shoes or gadgets or lingerie, but for me, it’s books. I can promise you at for all the books on this list that I bought, when we were together in the bookshop, I just had to have them.

It took me quite a long time to write up this list of books. Well, an hour or so. And then another ten minutes to go back over everything and try to remember in what year I bought it all. I know virtually all the titles I have up there by heart, mainly because I have owned many of them for such a long time.

When I look at this list, I must admit that I don’t feel all that proud of it. I feel like it doesn’t quite reflect what I normally read, because for the past six or seven years, these are the books that have, until now, been left behind. I also can’t help but think of all the money I’ve spent on these books. It’s not as much as you’re thinking. I spent a year over 2009 and 2010 working as a Bookseller, and then a few years back I worked through my summers and Christmases as a Bookseller while I was a student, so a lot of my spending has happened during the times when I have been both employed and surrounded by books. My last stint as a Bookseller is mostly to blame for the majority of what’s on this list. Some of them were bought with my staff discount; others were grabbed as proof copies.

The rest of the list, particularly the stuff which has been sitting up there for a while, is either stuff that I have always meant to get round to reading (like Fragile Things, or A Room of One’s Own) or is stuff that I bought at the time thinking it sounded great, but am now not so sure that it will be as enjoyable as I thought (like This is Where I Leave You, and Yes Man). Others were given to me (like Recovery and Ten Storey Love Song), which are not quite to my taste, and others I have tried to read and enjoy but have not yet been able to (like Generation X and Slaughterhouse 5).

Right now, I’m unemployed which leaves me with two things that I desperately need to get this project off the ground – the first is no money. I can’t buy new things without having a job, so instead I have pledged to make the effort to get through all of these books before I buy any more. The second thing I have which is really a by-product of having no job, is having lots of time; I am a quick reader.

I should explain how I managed to end up with such a huge number of books without realising it. It wasn’t hard to do. In the past couple of years I have moved four times, and each time a selection of books would come with me, and then when I had to move again, those books would remain packed up and I would start acquiring books again without realising the remaining large number of books that I already owned still tucked away in a box somewhere.

In August last year I was offered a job at a publishing house in New York for a few months, so I dropped pretty much everything and moved all my stuff back home before moving out there with just a suitcase. At home, I had half-heartedly tried to unpack my remaining things and put my books up onto a shelf, not quite realising that the count was already well into the 60s.

In New York, they had other books. Other lovely, lovely books. And of course I couldn’t resist! I came home with my luggage roughly 10kg overweight with the books I had bought out there.

Then there was Christmas and my birthday, and the couple of trips into my old store where I had missed out on some English releases while I was away, and I added those to my shelves. It wasn’t until a few days later, I did a count and realised that I had one hundred and eleven books on my shelves. I knew that something needed to be done. I knew that I needed to start reading some of these or else they would probably never get read. And in the meantime, I am not to buy any more books. I’m not sure I can do it. I have a great little library to choose from now, but with that number of books, it could be a year before I can buy anything new.

Shit.

I guess I’m just going to have to put that compulsion on hold for a while.

The List

These are my book lists. They are a little confusing, I guess, so I'll do my best to explain them and how I keep track of them. This top list is my pool of 111 books. I will always have a pool of 111 books to choose from. Once a book on here has been read, it is moved to the bottom list, of finished books. Then, a book from the middle list is selected at random to take its place.

1. The Behaviour of Moths – Poppy Adams - 2010
2. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott - 2008
3. The Pregnant Widow – Martin Amis
4. Mad, Bad and Sad – Lisa Appignanesi - 2011
5. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood - 2009
6. The Tent – Margaret Atwood - 2008
7. City of Glass – Paul Auster - 2010
8. Crash – JG Ballard - 2010
9. Transition – Ian Banks - 2011
10. What It Is – Linda Barry
11. Nurture Shock – Po Bronson - 2010
12. The Lost Continent – Bill Bryson - 2009
13. A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson - 2009
14. X-ed Out – Chalres Burns
15. Wilson – Daniel Clowes
16. The House of Sleep – Jonathan Coe - 2010
17. Gates of Eden – Ethan Coen - 2009
18. Generation X & Generation A – Douglas Coupland - 2010
19. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski - 2010
20. True Things About Me – Deborah Kay Davies - 2010
21. Customer Service – Benoit Dureutre - 2010
22. Sum – David Eagleman - 2010
23. The 19^th Wife – David Ebershoff - 2010
24. You Shall Know Our Velocity – Dave Eggers - 2010
25. How We Are Hungry – Dave Eggers - 2010
26. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers - 2008
27. Bait and Switch & Nickel and Dimed – Barbara Ehrenreich - 2010
28. Smile or Die – Barbara Ehrenreich - 2010
29. Twilight of the Supeheroes – Deborah Eisenberg - 2010
30. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides - 2010
31. Ten Stories About Smoking - Stuart Evers
32. Footnoes to Sex – Mia Farlane - 2010
33. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer - 2010
34. The Age of Obscurity – Michael Foley - 2010
35. The Quickening Maze – Adam Foulds
36. Tiger, Tiger - Margaux Fragoso
37. Palo Alto – James Franco - 2011
38. A Million Little Pieces – James Frey - 2009
39. Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman – 2006
40. Howl – Allen Ginsberg
41. Resurrection – Mark Guggenheim - 2010
42. Tinkers – Paul Harding - 2011
43. In Praise of Slow – Carl Honore - 2010
44. Atomised – Michel Houllebecq - 2008
45. Spurious - Lars Iyer
46. The Waterproof Bible – Andrew Kaufman - 2010
47. On the Road – Jack Kerouac - 2009
48. The End of Overeating – David Kessler - 2010
49. Lisey’s Story – Stephen King - 2009
50. Blockade Billy – Stephen King - 2010
51. Danse Macabre – Stephen King - 2008
52. Secret Windows – Stephen King - 2010
53. Eat Your Heart Out – Felicity Lawrence - 2010
54. Richard Yates – Tao Lin - 2010
55. Bed – Tao Lin - 2010
56. Let the Right One In – John Ajvide Lindqvist - 2009
57. The Ask – Sam Lipsyte - 2011
58. Hospital – Toby Litt - 2010
59. Naïve. Super – Erlend Loe – 2008
60. Girls – Luna Brothers - 2011
61. And This is True – Emily Mackie
62. A Book of Silence – Sarah Maitland - 2010
63. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 2008
64. Life of Pi – Yann Martel - 2008
65. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier - 2008
66. No Country For Old Men – Cormac McCarthy - 2009
67. C – Tom McCarthy
68. Even the Dogs – Jon McGregor - 2011
69. Bright Lights, Big City – Jay McInery - 2010
70. This Is Not Chick Lit - Elizabeth Merrick
71. Ten Storey Love Song – Richard Milward - 2009
72. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell - 2009
73. Collected Stories – Lorrie Moore - 2010
74. Runaway – Alice Munro - 2010
75. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami - 2010
76. The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama - 2009
77. Fugitives and Refugees – Chuck Palahniuk - 2010
78. Diary – Chuck Palahniuk - 2010
79. People Who Eat Darkness – Richard Lloyd Parry
80. Stuffed and Starved – Raj Patel - 2010
81. Youth in Revolt – C.D. Payne - 2010
82. Repeat it Today with Tears – Anne Peile
83. The Losers’ Club – Richard Perez - 2010
84. The Well and the Mine – Gin Phillips - 2010
85. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maitenence – Robert Pirsig - 2008
86. The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan - 2010
87. Half the Human Race – Anthony Quinn
88. Reclaiming the F Word – Catherine Redfern & Kristin Aune - 2011
89. Anthropology – Dan Rhodes - 2010
90. How to Live Off-Grid – Nick Rosen - 2010
91. The Philosopher and the Wolf – Mark Rowlands - 2008
92. Swamplandia! - Karen Russell
93. 253 – Geoff Ryman - 2010
94. The Blindfold Test – Barry Schecter - 2010
95. Fast Food Nation – Eric Schlosser - 2010
96. Sex – Granta 110 - 2010
97. The Accidental – Ali Smith - 2010
98. The Book of Other People & Changing My Mind– Zadie Smith - 2010
99. A Field Guide to Getting Lost – Rebecca Solint - 2011
100. Solitude: A Return to the Self – Anthony Storr - 2011
101. Spring – David Szalay
102. A Fraction of the Whole – Steve Toltz
103. The Road to the Dark Tower – Bev Vincent - 2010
104. Slaughterhouse 5 – Kurt Vonnegut - 2008
105. Yes Man – Danny Wallace – 2006
106. Peter and Max – Bill Willingham - 2011
107. The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolf – 2010
108. The Vindication of the Rights of Women - Mary Wollstonecraft  - 2011
109. New York Four – Brian Wood
110. Bonsai – Alejandro Zambra – 2010

This is the list of books that I have accumulated since around 2005. The year is the year they were acquired, not the year they were published. My aim in to read them. All of them. In no particular order.

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Update: 4th February & 9th February

Since doing work experience at Random House in London, I have resigned myself to accumulating more books. This is the secondary list.

1. O: A Presidential Novel - Anonymous
2. Unnatural – Philip Ball
3. Pulse – Julian Barnes
4. The Tangled Spell - Carolyn Bear
5. Boxer Beetle - Ned Beauman
6. The Afterparty – Leo Benedictus
7. Glister – John Burnside
8. Savage Lands – Clare Clark
9. Shampoo Planet – Douglas Coupland
10. Miss Wyoming – Douglas Coupland
11. Logicomix - Apostos Doxiadis
12. A Week in December – Sebastian Faulks
13. Lost in a Good Book – Jasper Fforde
14. Delusions of Gender - Cordelia Fine
15. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
16. Hate: A Romance - Tristan Garcia
17. The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Moshim Hamid
18. The Rime of the Modern Mariner – Nick Hayes
19. This Book Will Save Your Life - A. M. Homes
20. Deloume Road – Matthew Hooton
21. The Summer Without Men - Siri Hustvedt
22. Five Bells – Gail Jones
23. Advice For Strays – Justine Kilkerr
24. Chew Volume 1 – John Layman
25. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
26. The Lost Book of the Odyssey – Zachary Mason
27. Solar – Ian McEwan
28. What to Look for in Winter – Candia McWillaim
29. February – Lisa Moore
30. Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? – Lorrie Moore
31. A Gate at the Stairs – Lorrie Moore
32. Menage – Ewan Morrison
33. Beloved – Toni Morrison
34. Personal Days – Ed Park
35. Teach Us to Sit Still – Tim Parks
36. The Echo Maker – Richard Powers
37. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
38. Life Inc. – Douglas Rushkoff
39. St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
40. Precious – Sapphire
41. Firmin - Sam Savage
42. Small is Beautiful – E. F. Schumacher
43. The End – Salvatore Scibona
44. On Beauty - Zadie Smith
45. The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. – Jacques Strauss
46. The Lonely Polygamist – Bradley Udall
47. The Hare with Amber Eyes – Edmund de Waal
48. Reheated Cabbage – Irvine Welsh
49. In Great Waters – Kit Whitfield
50. How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe – Charles Yu

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The finished books - click on the title to see my review.

1. The Help – Kathryn Stockett - 2011
2. Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon & The Escapists – Brian K. Vaughan - 2010/2011
3. Your Voice in my Head – Emma Forrest - 2011
4. I Am Legend – Richard Matheson - 2009
5. Fup – Jim Dodge - 2010
6. Super Sad True Love Story – Gary Shteyngart - 2011
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz - 2010
8. Local – Brian Wood - 2010
9. The Death of Bunny Munro – Nick Cave - 2010
10. The Still Point – Amy Sackville - 2010
11. The Beaufort Diaries – T Cooper - 2010
12. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean Dominique Bauby - 2008
13. This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper – 2010
14. Tree of Codes - Jonathan Safran Foer and Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Schulz
15. Heroes and Villains - Angela Carter
16. The Moneyless Man - Mark Boyle
17. The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King – 2009
18. The Unit - Ninni Holmqvist
19. Things We Didn't See Coming - Stephen Amsterdam
20. Shoot the Damn Dog - Sally Brampton
21. The Best American Comics 2010 edited by Neil Gaiman
22. Darkness Visible - William Styron
23. The Coma - Alex Garland
24. The Illumination - Kevin Brockmeier
25. A Dark Matter - Peter Straub
26. Vignettes of Ystov - William Golsmith
27. Light Boxes - Shane Jones
28. Annabel - Kathleen Winter
29. The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott
30. Black Hole - Charles Burns
31. Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
32. The Devil Within - Stephanie Merritt
33. Northline - Willy Vlautin
34. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
35. Delirium - Lauren Oliver
36. Player One - Douglas Coupland
37. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne
38. A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
39. The Psychopath Test - Jon Ronson
40. The Game - Neil Strauss
41. World War Z - Max Brooks
42. Grow Up - Ben Brooks
43. Go To Sleep - Helen Walsh
44. The Night Bookmobile - Audrey Niffenegger
45. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
46. Bed - David Whitehouse
47. Sarah - J.T. Leroy
48. How To Be A Woman - Caitlin Moran
49. The Last Werewolf - Glen Duncan
50. Wilson by Daniel Clowes