SLAY Don't Wait

the online process of Matt Slaybaugh

You are here: Home / Archives for Infinite Jest

Books I Read (in 2014) and Recommend

01.06.2015

Here’s a list of my favorite books among those I read cover to cover in 2014. (I’m keeping a list here. I just made it, but it goes back to the middle of 2010.)

– Jim Henson: The Biography – Brian Jay Jones
– Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
– HHhH – Laurent Binet
– All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy
– The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America – George Packer
– After the Music Stopped – Alan S. Blinder
– The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap – Matt Taibbi
– Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage – Haruki Murakami
– Star Wars: Darth Plagueis – James Luceno

Well, that’s about half of the books I finished this year, so I was pretty lucky that I mostly read really memorable stuff.

The two that will stick with me the most? Life After Life and The Unwinding. Those go on the list of books I’d recommend to anyone and everyone.

HHhH is one of the oddest books I’ve ever read, and that’s saying something. I read it in a cabin at Lake Hope in a single day. After the Music Stopped is the definitive account of the financial crisis and the aftermath. Trust me, I’ve read more than a few, if you only read one, this is it. The Jim Henson book was charming and inspiring, I’ll certainly re-read it. And Darth Plagueis? I’m not ashamed, it’s a great work of fiction, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. I’ll definitely read Luceno’s next book.

Currently I’m re-reading Infinite Jest (I often read bits of it, but this time I started at the beginning.) I’m also reading IQ84, which I gave up once when I was a third of the way through. That’s also a 900-pager, so I feels like I’ve been reading just those two forever.

Filed Under: books Tagged With: 2014, David Foster Wallace, endorsements, Infinite Jest, IQ84, read

David Foster Wallace unpacked

03.09.2010

The Henry Ransom at U of Texas just got a million more subscribers to their blog.

The Center just became the home of the tragically late David Foster Wallace’s archives, and they’ve unpacked his books, and started making a list of all the words he circled in his dictionary. [Read more…]

Filed Under: books Tagged With: David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, Updike

- - // a Slay Matthews production // - -