Objectively The Best Reads You Should Have Found And Conquered This Past Year
(That is, if I were you.) Featuring fiction, essays, journalism, magazines, and experiments in digital storytelling.
I’m still really into print, but I love what the verb ‘to read’ can now mean. Below are a few things I read this year. They are the works that I could recall without much effort because they struck and stuck to me in some way.
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Largehearted Boy’s List Of Online Online ‘Best Of 2013’ Book Lists
End-of-year ‘best of’ lists are kind of absurd, because what does ‘best’ mean? Until the day that a computer system with full sentience is able to read everything in the universe and judge each individual read against a huge amount of critera — and most likely even then — any ‘best of’ list, including this one, is interesting for no other reason except to play a game of ‘spot both the prejudices and anxieties in the list-maker’.
But if you love lists anyway, despite their ludicrousness, then Largehearted Boy’s List Of Online Online ‘Best Of 2013’ Book Lists is for you. Every year for the past six years, music blogger Largehearted Boy has compiled a directory of all the ‘best of the year’ book lists. If such a thing doesn’t turn you off lists forever, then perhaps you should look up at the ceiling right now because your name is written there in the #1 spot of a list called ‘The Most Gullible People in the World’. Look! It’s up there!
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Blood & Thunder #2, by Gang Atelier
This second edition of this comics anthology had a limited press run of 300, so if you haven’t already got a copy to hug alone at night in your big cold bed, then boohoohoo to you.
Edited by artist Leigh Rigozzi, this beautiful 230-page Risograph-colour art object uses six different paper stocks and a wide range of inks to showcase the best comic artists from Australia and New Zealand, including Simon Hanselmann, Lachlan Conn, Jo Waite, Sam Wallman, and Mandy Ord.
Clad in a hot foil letterpressed cover, the work inside is beautiful, even if and when the stories are as ugly as life.
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What is Missing, by Maya Lin
To try and properly describe the What is Missing site would be like trying to build and mould a 1:1 replica model of the Earth. This is a ‘best of’ list, remember, not a Borges story!
In short, the site is a memorial to vanishing nature, a multi-media multi-site memorial that employs visual, aural, factual and emotional media to show you what’s what, and why. Honouring extinct or endangered species, ecosystems lost or degraded, and, on a positive note, conservation efforts that have done some good, What is Missing will apparently be Maya Lin’s last great monument.
Use your eyes and your ears and your mind and your heart to explore this universe that exists within a speck.
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‘Depression Part Two’, by Hyperbole and a Half
The long-awaited (not really; I don’t think anyone was waiting for it, which is another reason it’s so excellent) follow-up to ‘Adventures in Depression’ from writer/illustrator Allie Brosh is ‘Depression Part Two’.
Read it and whimper/laugh/empathise.
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‘Thanksgiving in Mongolia’, by Ariel Levy for The New Yorker
Did someone say “whimper”? Best ready yourself to turn that into a full snotblown blubber, because this piece will slay you with a cutlass made from candour and torment.
Subtitled “Adventure and heartbreak at the edge of the earth”, you might wish you could fall off that edge by the time you read and reread the last few lines — if it weren’t for the fear of missing the next thing Ariel Levy writes.
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‘What Do You Desire?’, by Emily Witt for N+1
“Who wants to touch it?” asked Donna. “Who wants to play with this worthless little cunt?” The bar patrons obligingly hit, fingered, and spanked her. From her handbag, from which the riding crop still menacingly protruded, Donna now withdrew a device that crepitated electric sparks and started shocking Penny with it. Ramon removed what remained of Penny’s clothes, then his belt, and began gently swiping it at Penny, who was soon pinioned on the floor.
Emily Witt, entering her 30s single and adrift, heads to San Francisco to spend time with Kink.com’s Princess Donna Dolore and attend a gangbang “where all the men were dressed as panda bears.”
Like a game of nude Twister the piece intertwines the personal with the plural; like a game of nude Twister you’ll find yourself staring really closely at things that are normally hidden.
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‘Writing’, Tully Hansen for Overland
How many different ways can Tully Hansen’s ‘Writing’ be read? That’s the wrong question, actually. The right question is: how do you go back from here, and would you ever want to, and is storytelling suddenly new again? (That’s really three questions, sure, but pretend they’re hidden in layers that you have to click through, because that’s what this ‘Writing’ piece does: it immediately infects the reader, it changes behavior, it adds dimension.)
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‘On the Road with Julia Gillard’, by Chloe Hooper for The Monthly
Remember Jules? She buggered up some things, but she was kind of ripped off in the end. Remember Jules.
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‘Reincarnation in Exile’, Tim McGirk for The Believer
What do you look for when you’re trying to find a new Lama?
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‘The Elvis Impersonator, the Karate Instructor, a Fridge Full of Severed Heads, and the Plot 2 Kill the President’, by Wells Tower for GQ
Maybe the biggest Australian shame of all is the crapness of our version of GQ magazine. There’s such an opportunity there for the most rad and excellent longform investigative writing! Instead all we get is Style and Girls and Luxury and Food and Sport. Can we rectify this, please?
(Also, Wells Tower: that guy can fucking construct a story.)
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Apology magazine (and every other marvellous literary magazine in the world)
The first two issues of this new perfect-bound bookazine are so great. The third issue isn’t far away! You should start reading it. You should read more literary journals and magazines! It’s where the best stuff starts.
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‘A Tribute to Ned Vizzini’, Cecil Castellucci for L.A. Review Of Books
Ned Vizzini died a few days ago. He committed suicide. Ned wrote a book for teenagers about depression and toured the United States talking with people about depression. His book about depression, It’s Kind Of A Funny Story, was turned into a good Hollywood film. He wrote other books, and articles and TV shows.
Thousands of people have left messages on his Facebook wall expressing how important he was and is to them, how he saved their lives, how his death has cracked them wide open. It seems impossible that a single person could’ve had a personal connection with so many other people.
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Sam Cooney is a writer whose fiction, essays and journalism have been published in literary journals, magazines, anthologies and websites in Australia and overseas. He is the editor and publisher of The Lifted Brow, and he tweets from @samuelcooney and @theliftedbrow