"People always say that it’s nice to have someone with whom to share the experience when you’re traveling, and this is certainly true. But sometimes, it can be so nice to NOT have to share a moment with someone, to NOT have to turn to your traveling companion and verbally acknowledge what you’ve just seen, but rather to selfishly take it all in for yourself. You can tell the rest of the world about it later, if you want. For now, it’s just yours."
—
I <3 <3 <3 traveling alone. When I think of my best moments, the moments when I’ve felt the most confident, the most glamourous, the most like the person I want to be, they all take place in airports and airplanes, by myself, at the beginning of a journey.
[How the Internet Changed Solo Travel: The Hairpin]
(via chiaraatik)
TRUE! Nothing’s better than having a glass of wine at the airport before the flight takes off, or on the train while looking out the window en route to whatever final destination. Then the trip sucks sometimes, but at least that beginning was awesome. Plus there are so many hot guys at the airport. It’s messed up how many there are, sometimes.
(via thehairpintumblr)
(via thehairpintumblr)
In 2011 I read 68 books, compared to 2010’s 57 books. Some of these are series of comics (i.e. Preacher) and are only listed once.
I did this last year because I was trying to make a best-of list, and I hate ranked lists like that, so instead here’s every book I read in 2011 in reverse order I read them (December to January). Book club picks (I’m in two) are indicated with an asterisk. Thank you Goodreads.
- Bleak House, Charles Dickens
- Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (audiobook), Mindy Kaling
- The Third Reich (serialized in The Paris Review), Roberto Bolaño
- Preacher, Garth Ennis (took about six months to read all nine)
- The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, Elif Batuman
- Zone One, Colson Whitehead
- La Perdida, Jessica Abel*
- The Waves, Virginia Woolf
- The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach
- Us, Michael Kimball*
- Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson*
- From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell*
- In Patagonia, Bruce Chatwin (second read)
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (I had to read this for work)
- Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, Donald Antrim
- Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
- The Apocalypse Reader, edited by Justin Taylor
- A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, Josh Neufield* (during the “hurricane,” not because I’m that theme-happy but to prepare for book club)
- The Lagoon, Lilli Carre
- Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
- Stone Arabia, Dana Spiotta
- The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason
- In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, Nathaniel Philbrick
- Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work, Jason Brown
- Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, Leslie Chang
- Galore, Michael Crummey
- Maggie the Mechanic, Jaime Hernandez*
- Ragtime, E. L. Doctorow*
- Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
- We Don’t Live Here Anymore: Three Novellas, Andre Dubus
- Where I’m Calling From: New and Selected Stories, Raymond Carver
- 2 Sisters, Matt Kindt
- Citrus County, John Brandon
- The Razor’s Edge, W. Somerset Maugham*
- The Complete Essex County, Jeff Lemire*
- No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
- The Whale, Philip Hoare
- You Think That’s Bad, Jim Shepard
- Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, Joan Didion
- Play it as it Lays, Joan Didion
- Other People We Married, Emma Straub*
- Boys and Girls Like You and Me, Aryn Kyle
- Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (third read)*
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
- And the Heart Says Whatever, Emily Gould
- The Adults, Alison Espach
- Touch, Alexi Zentner (read to review)
- Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
- The Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht
- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway* (second read)
- Blankets, Craig Thompson* (second read)
- Witz, Joshua Cohen (I started this book over Christmas 2010 and finished it in March 2011)
- Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
- A Contract with God, Will Eisner*
- In Watermelon Sugar, Richard Brautigan (read in a cabin on mountain next to the fireplace, which was perfect)
- Ghosts, Cesar Aira
- The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruis Zafron
- Summer in Algiers, Albert Camus
- Revolver, Matt Kindt
- Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates* (second read)
I’m most of the way through Bolaño’s Between Parentheses but I haven’t finished it yet.
The first book I read in 2012 was Elissa Schappell’s Blueprints for Building Better Girls.
"There are conversations that you’ll have in a car you’d otherwise never have. If no one else could hear you, if you weren’t sitting so close, if the driver didn’t have to look at you, if there wasn’t always the possibility you could crash and die. Ray told me stuff I’d never tell anybody."
— Elissa Schappell, “Aren’t You Dead Yet?” from Blueprints for Building Better Girls, which I am currently reading and will be recommending to every single person I know and don’t know. Perfect way to kick off my 2012 year in reading. (via housingworksbookstore)
