Best Movies of 2012: Part 2

Turns out I’ve seen 65 movies from 2012, including one movie I saw in between starting and ending this post. None of the movies I forgot about yesterday were in my bottom third of the year, so I won’t have to edit that post outside of putting different numbers on each entry. I’ll be doing that once I finish the last post in this series (likely on Monday). So even though I left off yesterday’s list at 41, I’ll be starting today’s at 44 and going from there down to 21. Sit back and enjoy.

44. The Queen of Versailles. B.

What’s my driver’s name?

An interesting documentary about a family that was building the biggest house in the US turned into an even more interesting documentary about living in a changing world when the economic collapse of 2007 hits. It’s fascinating to see what these people see as normal and what happens when they are confronted with normal normality. These were the 1%, and the film goes to great lengths to show how they’re real human beings with real problems.

43. Wreck-It Ralph. B. *

Is it “Turbo” to want a friend? Or a medal? Or a piece of pie every once and awhile? Is it “Turbo” to want more out of life?

An enjoyable animated film about overcoming your programming or something like that. Its message is one I don’t really get behind. I think it goes too close to “accept who you are in life” which is fine when it’s a personality trait but not so fine when it’s a job. We see Ralph being a caring person even though he’s supposed to be the villain. By the end of the movie he’s still the villain. That’s not cool. It is a really well made movie, though, and fun to watch.

42. Jeff, Who Lives at Home. B.

You know what? I have a asshole for a brother and it breaks my heart.

A few great scenes here highlight the superb acting and character stuff going on. It’s a little over the top. I like that. I’m having some problems coming up with things to say about it, though, which is why it’s down here .

41. Haywire. B. *

I don’t even know how to play that. I don’t wear the dress. Make Paul wear the dress.

Fantastic punching and kicking with a hole at the center of the film. Casting an MMA fighter as the lead solves some problems (the intensity of the action is top notch) but creates others (she can’t act). Luckily there are plenty of supporting male actors that take up the acting slack. The fight with Michael Fassbender is one to watch.

40. Brave. B. *

There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it.

Pixar’s first Disney Princess movie was pretty ok but not indicative of their super high standards. It does things these stories don’t normally do and it looks great as their films always do. I wish there was something special here. There just isn’t. It’s perfectly fine.

39. Frankenweenie. B.

You do not understand science, so you are afraid of it. Like a dog is afraid of thunder or balloons. To you, science is magic and witchcraft because you have such small minds. I cannot make your heads bigger, but your children’s heads, I can take them and crack them open. This is what I try to do, to get at their brains!

I love all of the little classic movie touches that Burton puts on this claymation remake of an early short of his. Filming it in black and white was also a great touch. It’s a little too inconsequential for me, even though the final 20 minutes or so have some great action stuff and pulls the ideas at play into overdrive.

38. Dredd 3D. B+. *

It’s all a deep end.

See, The Raid: Redemption? This is how you do a big dumb action movie. It has the same basic plot but there are at least sketches of characters to keep me interested in what’s going on. More importantly, the directors justify all the slowmo action with a plot device that makes everything look awesome. I’d gladly watch another in this world.

37. Wanderlust. B+.

This is historic. The revolution has begun – all because this courageous woman saw an unjust world and waved her boobies at it.

A pretty funny comedy with the always worth-watching Paul Rudd and a fantastic supporting cast. It’s a fish out of water story that manages to get across the problems with the fish and the new surroundings he finds himself in.

36. Argo. B+.

It’s got horses in it, it’s a Western.

It’s got a great opening scene which sets up the stakes for the rest of the film and ratchets up the tension a few notches every minute. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t do much with that. All too much talking going on. Affleck’s best remains Gone Baby Gone.

35. John Carter. B+. *

Ah, Zodanga, where the men are as limited as the menu and woman are as hard as the beds.

The budget, and how ticket sales couldn’t match it, seemed to be all anybody was talking about with John Carter. That’s a shame, because it’s a super fun movie full of just-right performances for the kind of movie they’re in and stellar visual touches thanks to Pixar alum Andrew Stanton. As a space opera and a movie it bests any of the Star Wars films.

34. 21 Jump Street. B+. *

We’re reviving a canceled undercover project from the ’80s and revamping it for modern times. The people behind this lack creativity and they’ve run out of ideas, so what they do now is just recycle shit from the past and hope that nobody will notice.

This movie is proof positive that movies based on nostalgia tv shows can actually be good. It’s the chemistry between the two leads and the surprising performance from Channing Tatum that makes this movie work as well as it does. Funny and even a little touching.

33. Safety Not Guaranteed. B+.

To go it alone or to go with a partner. When you choose a partner you have to have compromises and sacrifices, but it’s a price you pay. Do i want to follow my every whim and desire as I make my way through time and space, absolutely. But at the end of the day do I need someone when I’m doubting myself and I’m insecure and my heart’s failing me? Do I need someone who, when the heat gets hot, has my back?

One of those “quirky” comedy romance things that has a lot more going for it. I’ll watch Aubrey Plaza in anything, she’s always great. The romance here is believable and a bit sad. The ending is just what I wanted from a movie like this.

32. Bernie. B+.

We must always be on guard for the mischievous lip drift. Even the slightest hint of teeth can be disastrous. You cannot have grief tragically becoming a comedy.

This was the year of unexpected people giving standout performances and Bernie continues the run. Jack Black is perfect as a good man gone bad in this weird little movie. Based on a true story, some of the people interviewed in the pseudo-documentary parts are the real townsfolk. That’s cool. This one is worth it just for a career best show from Jack Black. Everything else is icing.

31. Amour. B+.

Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.

The second Oscar Best Picture nominee to show up on the list. This one is in French! And surprise surprise, it’s depressing as hell. An old couple has to deal with the mental and physical deterioration of the wife, played superbly by Emmanuelle Riva. Michael Haneke can be depended upon to give his audience and emotional time, I just prefer his more “out-there” works like The White Ribbon or Funny Games.

30. The Bay. B+.

I’m going to show the world what happened here.

One of those found footage movies that seem to be all over the place. This is, like many of them, a horror film and it’s at its best early on while the chaos and footage from multiple sources ramp up the tension and keeps everybody on the edge of their seats. The movie gets more ridiculous as you find out what’s happening, though there are still some fantastically disturbing scenes (the police going into the house).

29. Killing Them Softly. B+.

They cry, they plead, they beg, they piss themselves, they cry for their mothers. It gets embarrassing. I like to kill ’em softly. From a distance.

I’ll almost always like Brad Pitt. I think he has the right tools to be a blockbuster star and an indie darling. Here he re-teams with The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik to great effect. It’s stylish as hell and has some interesting things to say about the American pursuit of whatever we’re pursuing. Check out that final scene for some greatness.

28. The Amazing Spider-Man. B+. *

You should see the other guy, who in this case is a large, giant lizard.

Much of the talk about this film had little to do with the film itself. Let’s put aside the concept of a “necessary” film (are any? aren’t all?) and judge this movie for what it is, a great reboot of a series that deserved better than it got in its previous incarnation. I never liked many of the actors in the previous versions and Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and co. were all steps up for me. Now that we’ve got the origin covered, I’m excited to see where this series goes.

27. The Impossible. B+. *

Lucas, go help people. You’re good at it.

Holy wow that tsunami scene is incredible. The most intense thing I’ve witnessed since 127 Hours. That movie, however, built up to THE SCENE and then had a cathartic release and then credits. This movie kind of fizzles after the first 30 minutes or so. There’s still some great acting going on, including a newcomer performance (Tom Holland) that bests that other new kid on the block from Beasts. It just can’t sustain the gut punch over the entire film.

26. Jiro Dreams of Sushi. A-.

I’ve never once hated this job. I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it. Even though I’m eighty five years old, I don’t feel like retiring. That’s how I feel.

An inspiring documentary about dedication to a craft/art and what it can bring you. Jiro makes the best sushi in the world and his work ethic is second to none. Besides being an interesting look at how he runs his restaurant, it’s also a bit of a character study. Jiro isn’t some uptight jerk, he just knows what he knows and does what he does. A late trip out to the countryside to meet with some old schoolmates sheds a little extra light on this fascinating man.

25. The Grey. A-.

Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day.

Liam Neeson fights wolves this is not. It’s actually a carefully considered existential survival film. Who would have thought? Well photographed and intense in the right ways with a sublime ending, this one might be the surprise of the year.

24. Silver Linings Playbook. A-.

You know, for a while, I thought you were the best thing that ever happened to me. But now I’m starting to think you’re the worst.

Though I prefer David O. Russell‘s weirder films over his family dramas, I still like his last two movies quite a bit. Here it’s the better-than-usual portrayal of mental illness and solid acting from Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro looking like he actually cares about the movie he’s in that vaults this as high as it is on my list. And who doesn’t love a dance scene as the climax of a movie? Curmudgeons, that’s who.

23. Zero Dark Thirty. A-. *

You can’t run a global network of interconnected cells from a cave.

Going in I thought this had a good shot at making my top ten for the year. As you can see, it didn’t. I liked it a lot, I just didn’t love it. There’s the torture stuff that everybody is obligated to talk about (it doesn’t condone torture, nor does it say that torture was essential to the finding of Osama) but the really interesting stuff is what Jessica Chastain is doing. She builds a character slowly but surely so that by the last shot we feel as conflicted as she seems to. I wish there was more drama, but I like what we got.

22. ParaNorman. A-. *

I have cheered the un-cheerable, Norman. And I’m not letting you give up now.

My favorite animated film this year by a long shot, ParaNorman also has fun horror references and packs even more character stuff into the film than Frankenweenie does. It looks great and is even a little scary. There are some wonderful things going on a bit below the surface that make for one of the more subversive and interesting kids films in a while..

21. Chronicle. A-. *

And as human beings, we’re considered the apex predator but only because smaller animals can’t feed on us because of weapons and stuff, right? A lion does not feel guilty when it kills a gazelle, right? You do not feel guilty when you squash a fly… and I think that means something. I just think that really means something.

Yet another found footage movie. I always say that a new found footage movie should do something different with the formula. Chronicle does, introducing a bit more filmic creativity with a plot-justified floating camera. We are no longer tethered to some dude’s wrist. Chronicle also has a pretty cool story going for it, combining teen angst with superpowers in a clever and interestingly dark twist on the superhero genre.

Well, that’s all for now. Leave a comment if you think any of these movies should be higher or lower on a list. Or if you have anything else to say. Check back on Monday for the final part of the list.

Best Movies of 2012: Part 1

I’ve seen 61 movies from 2012 as of this writing. That is, I believe, a record for me. And now I will inflict upon you my recounting of them. As usual, this will be from the bottom up and I’ll break it into 3 pieces for easier digestion. If the title is underlined, click it for a full review. If it has a star at the end it means I saw it in theaters.

61. Underworld: Awakening. F.

This is a new war and it’s only beginning.

I think it’s about time to stop this whole thing. We’re now jumping years ahead and making ever more ridiculous creatures. It’s a werewolf but bigger! Scary!

60. The Raid: Redemption. F.

Pulling a trigger is like ordering a takeout.

I shouldn’t fall asleep during a movie which is almost entirely action and yet I did. A complete lack of character and story make this 90 minute movie feel like a slog.

59. Resident Evil: Retribution. D.

How do you think Umbrella populates these test scenarios? Hundreds of people dead each time they run a simulation. Umbrella imprints them with basic memories, just enough to ensure a correct emotional response to the threat of the bio-hazard. In one life, she could be a suburban housewife. The next, a businesswoman in New York. The next, a soldier working for Umbrella.

Another movie with pretty much only action but at least this one has the generosity to make up crazy stuff. Zombie dragons? Sure, why not. I’ll still watch the next one.

58. The Devil Inside. D.

You’ll burn.

One of those yearly possession movies. Entirely ho hum. At least it makes you read a little.

57. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. D+.

You will tell me or I will eat your stinking soul!

Four out of my bottom five movies have a colon in the title. There must be something there. This is better than the previous movie in the series because of Idris Elba. This doesn’t mean very much.

56. The Campaign. D+. *

Remember the politician that punched a baby? Well, he’s at it again. He just punched Uggie, the dog from the Academy Award-winning film The Artist.

One fantastic scene (The Lord’s Prayer) cannot save this. Zach Galifianakis keeps on trying, for which I salute him.

55. Chernobyl Diaries. D+.

Have you heard of extreme tourism?

A scary movie devoid of scares except for one (the bear). It does have a good sense of place, though.

54. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. C-.

Pop your pecs.

The Rock is charismatic as hell. He’s always fun to watch. And there are some fun ideas here. It mostly doesn’t hold together, though.

53. Cosmopolis. C-.

Where is your office? What do you do exactly? You know things, I think this is what you do. I think you acquire information and turn it into something awful.

Besides The Raid: Redemption, this is probably going to be the biggest controversy here. I really didn’t get anything from this movie. There’s a lot of stuff going on but it means nothing to me. It’s almost a void of a movie.

52. Safe House. C.

You practice anything a long time, you get good at it. You tell a hundred lies a day, is sounds like the truth. Everyone betrays everyone.

“No one is safe, no one is house.” Doug Benson.

51. Friends with Kids. C.

I know that she is honest; she won’t even take the little shampoo bottles from the hotel room, or sneak into the movie theater for a double feature. She always buys a second ticket. Always.

It’s nice to see Adam Scott in a leading role. The movie is kinda dumb, though. It has one great scene at a dinner table that hints at what the movie could have been. It isn’t.

49. Wrath of the Titans. C+. *

You want me to say it, brother? You want me to say I’m afraid? Doesn’t that go without saying? When mortals die, their souls go somewhere – there’s no place where gods go when they die! There’s nothing, just oblivion.

This is the first movie on this list that I can say I had a good time with. Use it as a line of demarcation between good and bad. Or not bad and bad. It’s a CGI fest that works at being spectacular.

48. Lockout. C+.

That’ll freeze the nerves in this spot for 24 hours. You want some in your mouth?

SPACE JAIL! Guy Pearce does a pretty darn good Kurt Russell in this spiritual successor to Escape from New York. And that Irish guy is pretty cool.

47. Snow White and the Huntsman. B-.

I was ruined by a king like you once. I replaced his queen. An old woman. And in time I too would have been replaced. Men use women. They ruin us and when they are finished with us they toss us to the dogs like scraps.

An amalgam of fairy tale tropes and more obvious homages plus a great villainous performance from Charlize Theron and an insane one from Sam Spruell as her brother.

46. The Dark Knight Rises. B-. *

There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.

at the halfway point when I did my mid-year list. How the mighty have fallen. Let’s all hope that Christopher Nolan moves on to something that actually interests him again because it felt like all of his passion left between The Dark Knight and this. He’s on a bit of a skid now and since I have one of his movies in my top 100 (The Prestige), I hope he can pull himself out of it. At least Bane and Catwoman are fun.

45. The Hunger Games. B-. *

My mother said, ‘It looks like District 12 may finally have a winner.’ But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about you.

A book adaptation that fails by being too faithful to the source material. It needed some actual adaptation instead of just copying all the dialogue from the book and filming it with a shaky cam. And they ruined the wolf things at the end. I have high hopes for the next film, though, because of a new director and some more room to wiggle.

44. Beasts of the Southern Wild. B-.

Everybody loses the thing that made them. It’s even how it’s supposed to be in nature. The brave men stay and watch it happen, they don’t run.

Boy, this one totally should have worked for me. I love magical realism and pseudo-fairy tale movies (see the high placement of Magnolia and Where the Wild Things Are on my top 100 for proof). It really didn’t though. Looks great and some nice performances from non-actors but they can’t pull this one together.

43. Premium Rush. B-.

I like to ride. Fixed gear. No brakes. Can’t stop. Don’t want to, either.

Dumb fun. Michael Shannon is pretty fun being evil. Too much non-action, though.

42. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. B-.

Men have enslaved each other since they invented gods to forgive them for doing it.

This is way better than I expected it to be. There’s a fight on top of a stampede of horses. And the slavery/vampire fodder thing is kinda clever. It does what it needs to do.

41. Killer Joe. B-.

You insult me again, and I’ll cut your face off and wear it over my own.

Bleak as hell and also kinda funny. Matthew McConaughey is fantastic. The last scene is hilarious and brutal at the same time. Weird. Watch Bug instead.

Come back tomorrow for the next 20 movies on my list. Have anything to say about these films? Leave me a comment and we’ll have a talk.

Best Books Read in 2012

I didn’t read enough books to make a 2012 only list, so these will be all the books I read last year, old and new. And listed in order from worst to best. Find me on Goodreads and follow along as I try to read 40 books this year. I got through 34 last year, so I’m rounding up to the nearest ten.

30. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

“No one in the world gets what they want and that is beautiful”

I really didn’t care for this one at all. Too many references and not enough character. It’s kind of a silly story about a guy so famous and rich people study his favorite books and movies to find clues to winning his inheritance. There are some fun sequences, and the virtual reality world has some interesting concepts to it, but I just didn’t care about any of the characters and their silly preoccupations with this rich guy and their own minor flaws. There’s nothing a few words with a therapist couldn’t fix here. Silly.

29. Batman: Hush – Jeph Loeb

This one suffered from comparisons to the Arkham City game I played just before I read it. It tries to cram a bunch of the characters and villains into a big conspiracy or something and it just ends up feeling like a visit to each person’s area in a videogame with a boss fight and then a few words about not knowing what’s going on. And the new villain is pretty dumb, I thought. Just play the game, it’s got a better story and a better sense of how to use these characters. I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

28. The Fall – Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

“Power revealed is power sacrificed. The truly powerful exert their influence in ways unseen, unfelt. Some would say that a thing visible is a thing vulnerable.”

The second book in this vampire series continues to build the mythology but I mostly didn’t care about it. There are a few scary scenes but it just didn’t mean anything to me. It’s just so rote. Not enough GdT in this collaboration.

27. The Map of Time – Felix J. Palma

“Merrick belonged to that class of reader who was able to forget with amazing ease the hand moving the characters behind the scenes of the novel.”

This book kept almost being really great. It would peak during the middle of each of the three stories set in Victorian London when things looked like they would be going in one direction. But then they would turn to something less interesting and less exciting. I get what Palma’s going for (I don’t want to spoil what is a fun if frustrating read), I just didn’t really care about it. It’s unfortunate. A book with Jack the Ripper, time travel, and H.G. Wells should be great. This is mostly missed potential.

26. The Infernals – John Connolly

“Why is there always one bloke in these boy bands who looks like he came to fix the boiler and somehow got bullied into joining the group?”

The followup to a really great book (The Gates), this one also disappointed. It got better once everybody got into Hell and there was some nice fairy-tale qualities there, especially in the torture forest scene. All the characters from the first book return and that’s kind of a bad move, I think. It would have done better to introduce more new characters instead of rehashing old ones in new roles. It’s still a fun and easy read, scary enough for a kids book, but again, much missed potential.

25. A Feast for Crows – George R.R. Martin

“When you smell our candles burning, what does it make you think of, my child?”
Winterfell, she might have said. I smell snow and smoke and pine needles. I smell the stables. I smell Hodor laughing, and Jon and Robb battling in the yard, and Sansa singing about some stupid lady fair. I smell the crypts where the stone kings sit. I smell hot bread baking. I smell the godswood. I smell my wolf. I smell her fur, almost as if she were still beside me.
“I don’t smell anything,” she said.”

The least of the A Song of Ice and Fire books is still a pretty good book. I understand Martin’s decision to split this book and the next in half, characterwise, but you really lose a sense of the scope when you’re only dealing with certain characters in the whole book. There are lots of memorable happenings, though, including a fantastic arc for Cersei.

24. X’ed Out – Charles Burns

I loved Black Hole, Burns’ previous graphic novel, so I thought I’d give this one a try. Mostly I’m just confused by it. It’s surreal as hell and I don’t know many of the references I’m told are contained within. I’ll finish out the series, but I’m not in any hurry to do so.

23. The Thief – Megan Whalen Turner

“They’re going to leave me. All I wanted to do was lie in the dry prickly grass with my feet in a ditch forever. I could be a convenient sort of milemarker, I thought. Get to the thief and you know you are halfway to Methana. Where ever Methana might be.”

I’m assured that the rest of this series gets really good and I believe it because the book gets better as it goes along and by the end I really liked the world and the characters. It’s kind of typical genre fare for the majority of the story and even though it’s told in first person you don’t get any sense of the main character until the end. That’s all on purpose, though, so it’s not as bad as it seems at first glance. I’m excited to keep reading this year.

22. This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don’t Touch It – David Wong

“There are two types of people on planet Earth, Batman and Iron Man. Batman has a secret identity, right? So Bruce Wayne has to walk around every second of every day knowing that if somebody finds out his secret, his family is dead, his friends are dead, everyone he loves gets tortured to death by costumed supervillains. And he has to live with the weight of that secret every day. But not Tony Stark, he’s open about who he is. He tells the world he’s Iron Man, he doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t have that shadow hanging over him, he doesn’t have to spend energy building up those walls of lies around himself. You’re one or the other – either you’re one of those people who has to hide your real self because it would ruin you if it came out, because of your secret fetishes or addictions or crimes, or you’re not one of those people. And the two groups aren’t even living in the same universe.”

Jason Pargin writes the second in his comedy/horror series under the pseudonym of his main character. The first book in the series is higher on the list. This one is less inventive and not as fun, but I seem to be one of the few with that opinion. It’s still a fun read. Again some scary parts but I would have preferred more.

21. The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss

“I swear I’ve never met a man who has your knack for lack of social grace. If you weren’t naturally charming, someone would have stabbed you by now.”

Another followup in a fantasy series. When will they end? I can’t deny the cleverness on display here and I never hated my time reading. Everything just feels so drawn out. There’s a part in the middle that feels interminable. I liked the first book a lot better and I will again continue the series, this one didn’t do much for me, though.

20. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut

“I love you sons of bitches. You’re all I read any more. You’re the only ones who’ll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that’ll last for billions of years. You’re the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You’re the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell.”

This was a re-read for me of the second Vonnegut book I ever read. I remember liking it more than I did this time. Now I recognize the almost comical single-minded focus of the satire. Yes, rich people are silly and care about silly things. It’s good, it just isn’t as good as I remembered.

19. Red Seas Under Red Skies – Scott Lynch

“Mew,” the kitten retorted, locking gazes with him. It had the expression common to all kittens, that of a tyrant in the becoming. ‘I was comfortable, and you dared to move,’ those jade eyes said. ‘For that you must die.’ When it became apparent to the cat that its two or three pounds of mass were insufficient to break Locke’s neck with one mighty snap, it put its paws on his shoulders and began sharing its drool-covered nose with his lips. He recoiled.”

Here’s another second in a fantasy series with a higher previous entry on this list. Heh. Anyways, our master theif and his musclebound best friend go to the high seas and infiltrate a pirate ship in the pseudo-Italian fantasy world. Lynch has created a fantastic group of characters and an excellent world, but this one was a little too scattershot, especially when compared to the first in the series.

18. Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson

“What? Is that boy crazy?”
“Most young men his age are somewhat crazy, I think,” Sazed said with a smile. “However, this is hardly unexpected. Haven’t you noticed how he stares at you when you enter a room?”
“I thought he was just creepy.”

Look at that, another fantasy novel. I guess I like those. Another great group of characters and a very interesting magic system based on burning metals to attract or propel things and do other stuff. And the toppling of the evil emperor is always a fun goal.

17. The Passage – Justin Cronin

“Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet’s chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn’t happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth.

Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.”

What a weird vampire book. The opening is so intense and then it turns into a strange soap opera for a few hundred pages. And then it becomes a road novel. And then it becomes The Walking Dead. And it’s also pretty damn well written for a vampire book. I’m excited to read the follow up to see if Cronin can keep up the weirdness.

16. John Dies at the End – David Wong

“And watch out for Molly. See if she does anything unusual. There’s something I don’t trust about the way she exploded and then came back from the dead like that.”

The book before This Book is Full of Spiders, it serves as an introduction to a totally crazy world full of drugs that give you magic powers and meat monsters and alternate dimensions. It’s totally nuts. And funny, and even scary a few times.

15. Locke and Key (Vols. 1-4) – Joe Hill

Comic books! Horror! Pun titles! The Locke kids move back to their family mansion after their father is killed in a horrible event. They find keys that have helped the Locke kids throughout the ages fight evil. The best is the key that goes into the base of the head and opens up the mind. You can put a book in and know all of the knowledge contained within, or take out your fear. It’s a great concept and the generational storytelling is pretty awesome. I’m excited to see it wrap up this year.

14. Wonderstruck – Brian Selznick

“Ben remembered reading about curators in “Wonderstruck”, and thought about what id meant to curate your own life, as his dad had done here. What would it be like to pick and choose the objects and stories that would go in your own cabinet? How would Ben curate his own life? And then, thinking about his museum box, and his house, and his books, and the secret room, he realized he’d already begun doing it. Maybe, thought Ben, we are all cabinets of wonders.”

A fun dual tale of a young deaf woman and a boy who loses his mother. It really is a fun book, despite that description. The girl’s story happens all in pictures and the boy’s in prose and when they cross over it’s glorious. The pencil drawings a really beautiful and they accent the nice writing. I hope this follows in Hugo’s path.

13. The Lies of Locke Lamora – Scott Lynch

“I’ve got kids that enjoy stealing. I’ve got kids that don’t think about stealing one way or the other, and I’ve got kids that just tolerate stealing because they know they’ve got nothing else to do. But nobody–and I mean nobody–has ever been hungry for it like this boy. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He…steals too much.”

I kind of loved this. It helped that I read it while on vacation to Italy as it takes place in a pseudo-Renaissance-Venice. Lynch just gets so much out of his characters and plot and setting. It’s such a fun romp. If you liked Ocean’s 11 and you can handle some fantasy stuff, give it a shot.

12. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods – A.S. Byatt

“He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.”

A little book, but not small. It’s the Norse myths combined with some autobiographical WWII stuff. Byatt gets nature and the nature of humanity and it’s all on display in this one little work.

11. A Dance with Dragons – George R.R. Martin

“An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child’s riddle?”

Martin does what he does. Nothing can match the greatness of the third entry to the series, but this one does a good job of getting back to what made the series work. It gets bogged down in Dany running the city and all that crap but the rest is so good. Some amazing scenes on display.

10. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

“Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.”

I read this all in one sitting. Haddon gets into the mind of the autistic main character so well that you see the world differently for the rest of the day. It’s inventive and even a little scary. A truly moving book.

9. Swamplandia! – Karen Russell

“A single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity. It went on and on, until my own lungs were burning.
“What bird are you calling?” I asked finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer.
The Bird Man stopped whistling. He grinned, so that I could see all his pebbly teeth.

“You.”

What a debut novel. It’s everything that Beasts of the Southern Wild should have been. The tale of a family in the Everglades that runs a gator show/park which gets thrown into chaos after the mother dies. It’s a fairy tale, a journey into hell, an account of working at a low-rent Sea World. It’s magical realism and I loved it.

8. Cosmicomics – Italo Calvino

“To fall in the void as I fell: none of you knows what that means… I went down into the void, to the most absolute bottom conceivable, and once there I saw that the extreme limit must have been much, much farther below, very remote, and I went on falling, to reach it.”

I just love the combination of science and humor and inventiveness that Calvino displays here. There are all kinds of great short stories that take a scientific concept and turn them into really fantastic little fairy tales. The moon one in particular is fantastic.

7. The Wind Through the Keyhole – Stephen King

“There’s nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.”

King revisits his Dark Tower world for a bit of an origin story with a fairy tale at it’s core. It’s three framing stories deep, which is fun, but the meat of the story is where all the magic is. It’s a wonderful addition to the mythos King has so lovingly curated.

6. American Gods – Neil Gaiman

“People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghost, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.”

I read the majority of this years ago but never finished it. It’s big, sometimes unwieldy, and I love it. The concept alone is enough to get it a top 10 spot. Shadow is a great character and all the gods he gets to visit are well-realized.

5. A Storm of Swords – George R.R. Martin

“It all goes back and back,” Tyrion thought, “to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.”

Holy wow! So much stuff! Deaths! Deaths! Deaths! This is where the ASOIAF series really takes off. I can’t wait for the TV show to take it on.

4. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

“Do you think I’m wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it’s only noon. You couldn’t be something that hundreds of others are.”

This might have the best writing on this whole list. It’s beautiful throughout. Check out my full review.

3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

“Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.”

I don’t know why it took me so long to read what is considered on of Murakami’s best works. I haven’t been disappointed by him yet, and the craziness on display here is why I keep going back. Magical realism at its best, and since that’s the best genre of literature… Read my full review.

2. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – Dave Eggers

“Pain comes at me and I take it, chew it for a few minutes, and spit it back out. It’s just not my thing anymore.”

There’s a lot of parent-loss on this list. Make of that what you will. This one is mostly autobiographical, from what I can tell, and it contains a lot of humor and pathos that you kind of expect from a situation like this. Inventive in its literary ambition, it’s a fantastic book. Full review here.

1. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

“Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

It’s a rare book that has an innovative form to go along with a spectacular story. Cloud Atlas is a book of halves and it’s really cool. I love all of the different styles of writing on display here, and the characters are outstanding creations. It’s so so good.