Books I read in 2014

I read some great short stories at the beginning of 2014, but most of the full-length novels I read were forgettable. Two books loomed large over the year for me: Donna Tartt's "Goldfinch" and Phil Klay's book of short stories "Redployment." After I read "Goldfinch," no other book could compare. Reading actually felt less fun. I fell into a slump, feeling like no other book would ever compare again, until I read "Redeployment." I can't wait to read it again. Other super props to "Lonesome Dove," "The Tender Bar" and the two Sherman Alexie books I read.

1. Sherman Alexie - War Dances (****)

2. Barry Hannah - Ray (***)

I could have used more of an anchor at times reading this book. It's all over the place. But holy cow the sentences.

3. Eudora Welty - A Curtain of Green and other storise (*****)

Welty is so skilled at describing people. Every story has a new way of rendering characters physically. They are all so sharp and original. These stories cracked me up, even as some have a sinister lining.

4. Antonya Nelson - Nothing Right (****)

This is a rough lot of characters. Nearly every story has an adulterer. But Nelson made each one feel real. This collection showed me the expanses short stories can hold. But a few of the tales dragged on. I grew tired of some of the repeated tensions (so many car accidents). I also wish they had stayed in one geography. Because so many of the stories happened in Kansas, I felt confused in the handful that moved to Texas, Montana or Arizona.

5. Wells Tower - Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (****)

Junot Diaz said the difference between a novel and a short story is a short story can be perfect. In this collection, Wells Tower has a quite a few pieces of perfection. There were a few that didn't thrill me, but overall, I loved this book. I love his voice. His sentences show new ways of seeing and feeling the world.

6. Amy Hempel - Reasons to Live (*****)

This collection is so funny and surprising. I hadn't had so much fun in reading in years. This book especially works because the humor comes with grave emotions. "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" is so sublime. I was laughing until I was sobbing.

7. Rainbow Rowell - Eleanor & Park (**)

This just was not my thing. I don't usually read young adult novels, but reviews made me think this was the kind that crossed barriers. But it's definitely a young adult novel. The voice really annoyed me.

8. Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch (*****)

I would have read another 800 pages of this book. Tartt takes no shortcuts. Life is lived at its actual pace. I love the breadth of knowledge showcased here. Tartt always knows just the right reference for the time, the place, the character. I got lost inside these pages.

9. Adelle Waldman - The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P (*)

This reminded me of the young adult book I had just read. The sentences and the character lacked sophistication. It's hard to delineate what makes good writing and what makes amateur writing, but it's easy to recognize in the reading. In this case, I might have liked the book more if Waldman had spent less time laboring over how awful Nate is. She needed a "save the cat" scene early on to make me like him. Instead, she wrote him as a one-dimensional character. It made me feel like she had issues with some guy out there and couldn't see any humanity through her own hurt. This was not fun to read.

10. Ben Marcus - Leaving the Sea (**)

Experimental pieces aren't for me. I need an anchor. I loved the first section, though.

11. Edwidge Danticat - Claire of the Sealight (****)

All of the stories don't tie up neatly in the end. They form the lives - the losses, the disappointments -- that becomes the air around Claire. We need those other stories for the reader to know in the end what world waits her. I loved each of the chapters as if they were short stories. The way each revealed more about he last was a special treat. Great characters and great writing.

12. Raymond Carver - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (****)

Initially, I admired this book more than I enjoyed it. The minimalist tone just didn't draw me in. But halfway through, I think I learned how to read them and liked them much more. I still don't think the tone is exactly for me, but it is so impressive what he can do with just a few words. Each sentence does a lot of work conveying information. The stories all feel real and funny and human and alive.

13. Lorrie Moore - Bark (***)

Maybe my hopes were too high for this collection, but I just didn't feel very excited reading it. There were nice sentences here and there, good plots and great first lines. But the stories lacked some magic. I left a few feeling confused about what actually happen and others unsure if there was much meaning in the final words. Every piece has run before in a magazine, and I think I might have enjoyed any of them in that context. But they never quite worked together to make a satisfying book.

14. Sherman Alexie - The Loneranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (*****)

15. Ishmael Beah - Radiance of Tomorrow (***)

I admire the details and the intimate look this novel offers readers jot a world they may never know. But I wish it had more focus. The scope is too large. It's hard to keep all the characters straight. There are many micro plots. Years pass. If it had been more closely focused on Bockarie, I think I could have settled in better. Still, I felt like the book taught me a lot, and the language is new and interesting.

16. Kiese Laymon - Long Division (***)

There is a lot to love in Kiese Laymon's debut. The characters are fresh, vivid. The sentences are special. The plot is original.

But the novel also felt overly didactic. It has some important messages, but I think Laymon could have imparted them better without having his characters repeat them over and over again. This could have used a show-don't-tell edit. The time traveling aspect also felt too heavy handed. But it was fun to read, and there are a few phrases in here I absolutely love (see: getting nice with myself). I love the book's perspective, and I would definitely buy his work in the future.


17. Gary Shteyngart - Little Failure (***)

The jumpy narrative prevented me from ever settling down for a compulsive reading session. It's just too clever and too bouncy to feel like a genuine story. But he does have considerable talents. And certain scenes were fun to ready, but I prefer a story with slightly fewer winks.

18. Phil Klay - Redployment (*****)

No review I could write would do justice to just how good this collection is. It is the best book I have read all year. So moving and beautiful and real.

19. Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World (***)

I loved the structure -- and many sections -- of this book. I am particularly impressed by Hustvedt's ability to render so many different kinds of voices. And I love the story -- the initial plot, the characters, the twists. But the novel as a whole just wasn't consistent enough for me to rate it higher. Harriet's notebooks are difficult to read. They are boring and too jumpy, and whole that may be the point, it did not make for good reading. I didn't get anything from them so I started skipping them somewhere in the 200s. I initially also liked the academic references but they began to slow the story down. Finally: the barometer. He made Harriet seem cooky, I guess, which is useful, but overall he again just slowed down my reading and did not add enough. All great ideas that should have been more closely edited down to what matters.

20. James Salter - A Sport and a Pasttime (***)

Great sentences, great descriptions. The only problem is I never felt like reading it. It was easy enough once I got in -- again, he writes such dreamy lines -- but the book never beckoned me back. I am not too wild on the perspective and treating of sexuality, either.

21. Chris Kraus - I Love Dick (**)

Very inventive and interesting, but it droned on too long. I felt like it was often saying the same thing.

22. Jeffrey Renard Allen (***)

The writing is beautiful but also incredibly difficult to follow. I am reading this at the tenth of the pace I normally read. It's slow-going and dense, at times confusing but always beautifully rendered.

23. John Green - The Fault in Our Stars (****)

A few months ago, I read Eleanor and Park. It was one of those YA books that newspapers promise adult adults will love, too. I hated it. It felt very much like a young adult book to me.

The Fault in Our Stars is very much a YA book, too, but the writing is so much better then E&P was. It is the book I would have loved to have read as a teenager. Yes, the language is a bit too much at times. No, regular teens don't talk this way. But that's why we read books sometimes. To disappear. To remember how big life once felt. For my part, I got totally lost in the story. It was a welcome break from the business of adult reading.

24. Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove (*****)

25. Dinaw Mengestu - All Our Names (***)

I really liked reading this book. The plot moves forward nicely. The mystery keeps you hanging on. But I only gave it two stars because I just felt some distance the entire time I read it. I never felt like I really knew the characters. Because of that, I never really believed or felt moved by their love (neither the romantic nor the platonic). The last line is pretty but it did not resonate with me at all because I just did not emotionally believe it.

26. John Jeremiah Sullivan - Pulphead (****)

I had more fun reading this than I've had reading anything all year. And on the strength of more than half the essays (On This Rock, Mr. Lytle, The Final Comeback of Axl Rose, Peyton's Place, Unknown Bards, the Last Wailer), I want to give it five stars. The work is so impressively original. No one else thinks up the connections he makes. But there were just too many duds for this to be a perfect book. That's fine. I fully support his trying everything he wants to try because sometimes it is just so awesome. But I personally never want to read him writing about government or the environment again. And I want to forget I ever read Violence of the Lambs.

27. Alice Goffman - On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (***)

The level of research in "Fugitive" is astounding. It really reminds me of a more data-driven "Random Family."

But this is not a book of journalism. It may be more readable than an average ethnography, but it's less readable than an average book. There are definitely sections to devour. And it's most always interesting and well written. There is so much poetry in the quotes. But it was also often repetitive. And I found it difficult to keep the characters straight by the third chapter. There are stories here and there, but they don't all piece together one after the other. There is no plain arc.

To that end, I actually most enjoyed reading the final methodology note. It was written like an actual whole story -- with a beginning, middle and end -- rather than in chunks of narrative.

Of course, I may be asking the book to be something it never intended to be. It was billed as scholarship, not narrative nonfiction. Still, with all the press it's getting, I thought this might be helpful for potential readers to know ahead of time.

28. JR Moehringer - The Tender Bar (*****)

Wow. I have loved Moehringer's journalism, so I expected this to be good. Still, it really exceeded my hopes. All the note-taking he did in bars really paid off. I have never read a memoir that felt more real. The sentences are great; the themes potent. This book blew me away. Definitely going into my top 10 favorite books of all time.

29. Jeff Hobbs - The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace (***)

I loved the beginning of this book. But the book's tone takes a sharp turn when the author appears 125 pages in. The childhood portions were so well reported. It feels strange that the Yale portions of this book rely so much more heavily on the author's own experiences. It becomes too much about Jeff Hobbs. I wouldn't mind some details about Hobbs to understand the juxtaposition of Rob's being his roommate, but I don't need to know all about Hobb's track issues and the first time he smoked marijuana. Which gets to my bigger issue with this book: Hobbs includes too much -- too many characters, too many details. This is a story about Robert -- not Raquel. I get that he did the reporting. And I don't mind his recreating scenes. But I don't understand why some of the scenes are in here. They don't really propel the narrative. They just feel like a tedious re telling of Rob's life. By the end, I had trouble feeling like this life was "short" at all. I had read every single conversation he had ever had.

Overall, I enjoyed it, though. I loved reading the first section and the rest of the book was quite instructive, if no longer exciting to read.

30. Don DeLillo - Pafko at the Wall (****)

Pretty lines and some times - many times - brilliant. At other times I felt like there were too many words and not enough meaning. I think this may be my own failing as a reader or as someone who doesn't really know baseball. But there was plenty to underline, especially in the novellas beginning.

31. Susan Orlean - Saturday Night

I read this a few years ago, when I was a younger journalist, and I thought it was so quirky and fun. Reading it now I see how well she builds context in many of the pieces. The details are fun and often funny, but the reason they work is the set-up. That said, the idea is better than the sum here. Some of the essays are brilliant: some are just too-long Talk of the Towns. I lost steam. There was little to distinguish them after a while. I needed more (and by that I mean different) Big Thoughts to keep the momentum going.

32. Lena Dunham - Not That Kind of Girl (***)

33. Anne Lamott - Bird By Bird (*****)

34. Hilary Mantel - The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher (****)

Best songs of 2014

This is no music critic's list, no higher thought allotted into the making of it. I picked the songs I liked best, the ones I played more than others. You might find some embarrassing (Yes, Coldplay and Nick Jonas), but when I look back on this year, this will be what I played and played. Some are stand-ins for others (Like I nearly always listened to Taylor Swift, Too Many Zooz, St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Sinkane, Beyonce as albums. And some have deplorable lyrics ("Try Me"), but this is what was in my headphones as I rode the bus home.


1. Spoon - "Inside Out"

2. I LOVE MAKONNEN f/ Drake - "Tuesday"

3. Beyoncé - "Drunk In Love" (See: nearly any other song on this album. This was just the most ubiquitous)

4. Coldplay - "Magic"

5. FKA Twigs - "Two Weeks"

6. Future Islands - "Seasons (Waiting on You)"

7. The War on Drugs - "Red Eyes"

8. Sharon Van Etten - "Your Love is Killing Me"

9. Taylor Swift - "Out of the Woods"

10. Sinkane - "Mean Love"

11. Too Many Zooz - "To The Top" / "F.W.S."

12. Rae Sremmurd - "No Flex Zone"

13. Todd Terje f/ Bryan Ferry - "Johnny and Mary"

14. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - "Sunday Candy"

15. Vic Mensa - "Down On My Luck"

16. Jamie XX - "Sleep Sound"

17. Rick Ross - "Sanctified"

18. White Sea - "They Don't Know"

19. Beyoncé - "Mine"

20. Boots f/ Beyonce - "Dreams"

21. Sinkane - "Young Trouble"

22. Rae Sremmurd - "No Type"

23. Beck - "Blue Moon"

24. Bleachers f/ Grimes - "Take Me Away"

25. How to Dress Well - "Words I Don't Remember"

26. JJ - "All White Everything"

27. Ages and Ages - "Calamity is Overrated"

28. Ought - "Today More Than Any Other Day"

29. Party Next Door - "West District"

30. Dej Loaf - "Try Me"

31. Mac DeMarco - "Brother"

32. J. Cole - "G.O.M.D."

33. Darkside - "Gone Too Soon"

34. Angel Olsen - "Hi-Five"

35. Childish Gambino - "Sober"

36. Grimes - "Go"

37. Nick Jonas - "Jealous"

38. St. Paul & The Broken Bones - "I'm Torn Up"

39. Milosh - "Right Never Comes"

40. P. Reign f/ Drake - "DnF"

Best albums 2014

1. BEYONCÉ - BEYONCÉ

I am cheating because this is my barely-updated blog, and I make the rules here. No, Beyonce's album didn't come out in 2014. It slipped in too close to the end of 2013 to be counted then, but I can't let it go unnoted. It defined my year. We did the "Drunk in Love" dance. We mimicked the way she said "surfbort." We pretended to rollerskate, careening along as she sang "Blow."

The older I get, the less abashed I feel. I love pop music. However manufactured it was, Beyonce's album always felt new and rule-breaking. The songs (particularly "Partition," "Mine" and "***Flawless") broke down and reassembled in new configurations. But they weren't disjointed. Like the Madonna and Michael Jackson records of the 1980s, these were pop hits that weren't just singles but part of a bigger album narrative.

These songs were the soundtrack to the few nights I stayed up past 11 p.m., and they were the sounds that anchored me back to some version of myself that felt young. 2013 was a year of big let-downs and big decisions -- all of which left me feeling rooted and regulated. "BEYONCÉ" was all bounce and thud, cusswords and catchphrases (I woke up like this!), and when we danced around this tiny house together, I felt back on the brink of a limitless future.


2. TOO MANY ZOOZ - F NOTE

Years ago, a friend and I danced dizzy around his Missouri home to old jazz records. We did the Peanuts. We did some version of the swing. We were a decade younger than everyone around us, and we drank enough beer to prove it. But our movements dissolved in the dramas of being 23 and on to the next thing. We reconnected this year, and he sent me this video near the beginning of our talking. This wasn't the jazz we listened to in Missouri. But it felt familiar. We wrote and listened, trying to close the gaps years leave. These bursts of brass were the perfect notes for regaining a friendship. I listened to these songs exclusively for weeks, thinking nothing is lost. In our 30s we can get back what we had.

As with the Beyonce album, I can't disconnect this one from the visuals -- a young baritone sax player grinding his way through the scales. By the time I saw that sax player grooving on a Portland stage this fall, the old friend had already retreated away again. The songs were so good I didn't even notice - I was dancing alone this time.


3. TAYLOR SWIFT - 1989

The post-30 metabolism is slow and droning. I can't eat ice cream the way I once could. I took up running this year, hoping to edge my way back down the scale. It's a miserable venture at first. My lungs hurt. My legs hurt. And worst of all: I was bored. That changed when "Serial" and this Taylor Swift album came out. I could stay on the treadmill for 45 minutes, listening to the murder mystery unwind or Taylor tell the story of the boy she lost. The drums and choruses here have the right kind of rhythm for powering through the miles.

Swift repeats themes, too. Her elusive boy is always driving reckless, crashing or recovering. She is wearing red lipstick, hoping he won't forget. The repetitions stick out because Swift is so good at painting a scene. Every song paints a tidy little portrait. Here they are moving the furniture to dance. Here they are somewhere before or after a breakup, terrified of monsters that turn out to be trees. They lyrics are all so specific yet universal enough that you can fill in your own stories. (I've got a blank space baby, and I'll write your name).

Best of all: This is an album made my someone super self aware of every criticism that has ever been lobbed her way. (Shake it off!) And she owns them all here. It's the kind of confidence you need to hear when taking up running for the first time at 31.


4. Sinkane - Mean Love

5. The War on Drugs - Lost in the Dream

6. Spoon - They Want My Soul

7. Ages and Ages - Divisionary

8. Mac DeMarco - Salad Days

9. CunninLynguists - Strange Journey Vol. 3

10. J. Cole - 2014 Forest Hills Drive

11. St. Paul & The Broken Bones - Half the City

12. Hundred Waters - Morning Rang Like a Bell

13. Kindness - Otherness

14. Angel Olsen - Burn Your Fire For No Witness

15. Beck - Morning Phase


* I'm not including D'Angelo here, even though it is the perfect album I have waited all of the 2000s for, because it didn't come out until so late in the year. I reserve the right to name it the best album of 2015.

Best songs of 2013

I've been making lists of my 50 favorite songs for a whole decade this year.


1. Drake - Hold On, We're Going Home

I’m a sucker for a good pop song, and this year was full of them. But unlike “Mirrors” or "Royals" or “Wrecking Ball,” I never tired of hearing this Drake track. His voice is so smooth here, soothing his girl into knowing it is going to be all right. It’s kind of dancey, kind of pretty and very catchy.

2. Disclosure f/ London Grammar - Help Me Lose My Mind

Her voice is so pretty on both ends of the register. Disclosure managed to make a timeless track on its very of-the-moment album.

3. Ciara - Body Party

There’s a handicap in Ciara’s favor here: “My Boo” is one of my favorite songs of all time. But any other pop star might have trudged all over my beloved hook. Ciara and Mike Will Made It instead elevated it. Shout out to the video, which we replayed at the end of every hangout.

4. Waxahatchee - Swan Dive

I love the lyrics here -- the words, yes, but also the way Katie Crutchfield bends them over lines. She has a funny way of enjambing, where the middle of sentences rise up, and I love it.

5. Chance the Rapper - Chain Smoker

I have never heard a rapper use words the way he does. This track is stuffed full, packed with internal rhymes that would make Rakim proud.

6. Jason Isbell - Cover Me Up

I always listen to the lyrics over the instrumentation, and I love the story this song tells. His voice sounds great, too. I wish I had thought of this line, in particular: So girl leave your boots by the bed, we ain't leavin' this room til someone needs medical help or the magnolias bloom.

7. Mikal Cronin - Weight

This song just makes me happy.

8. Kanye West - Bound 2

In an era of Kanye innovation, this was old school, a reminder of how good it felt to listen to him in the College Droupout days. Plus, there's a Martin reference! I'm especially fond of the live performance with Charlie Wilson on Jimmy Fallon.

9. Daft Punk - Instant Crush

Julian Casablancas never sounded so good. So smooth and moody.

10. Vinnie Dewayne - Nowhere

Y'all watch out for this Portland rapper. He looks and sounds like Kendrick Lamar, but I think he has something special of his own to add, too. He's bringing rap back to storytelling.


11. Arcade Fire - Afterlife

12. Vampire Weekend - Step

13. Justin Timberlake - Mirrors

14. Local Natives - Mt. Washington

15. J. Cole - Power Trip

16. London Grammar - Strong

17. Kanye West - Blood on the Leaves

18. Disclosure - Latch

19. Janelle Monae f/ Erykah Badu - Q.U.E.E.N

20. Kanye West - Hold My Liquor

21. Jason Isbell - Songs that She Sang in the Shower

22. Lana Del Ray and Cedric Gervais - Summertime Sadness remix

23. Vampire Weekend - Hannah Hunt

24. Neko Case - Night Still Comes

25. Janelle Monae - What an Experience

26. Daft Punk - Doin' It Right

27. Neko Case - Local Girl

28. Blood Orange - It Is What It Is

29. Justin Timberlake - Let the Groove Get In

30. Tegan and Sara - I was a Fool

31. Waxahatchee - Lively

32. Earl Sweatshirt f/ Frank Ocean - Sundah

33. Vampire Weekend - Diane Young

34. Jhene Aiko f/ Childish Gambino - Bed Peace

35. The National - I Should Live in Salt

36. Janelle Monae f/ Miguel - Primetime

37. Sampha - Without

38. James Blake - Retrograde

39. J. Cole - She Knows

40. Mariah Carey f/ Miguel - #Beautiful

41. The Killers - Just Another Girl

42. Drake - f/ Jhene Aiko - From Time

43. Glenn Waco f/ Mic Capes - Paradise

44. Youth Lagoon - Dropla

45. Lady Gaga f/ R. Kelly - Do What You Want

46. Torres - Honey

47. the Internet - Dontcha

48. Volcano Choir - Byegone

49. Tegan and Sara - Closer

50. Rhye - Open

Favorite albums of 2013

I mostly bought singles the past few years, but I decided in 2013 to concentrate on albums. Lucky me, it was a great year for them. Here are my top 15. Mainly, I chose based on lyrics or how much fun I had listening.


1. Waxahatchee - Cerulean Salt

This is totally an album the 18-year-old version of me would have loved, would have found very important and made for me alone. That it somehow made me feel all those things at 30, too, is a neat little trick. I love the lyrics, and I love her voice. The CD rarely left my car stereo.

2. Jason Isabel - Southeastern

Another one chosen for lyrics. He has a great voice, but it was the stories that kept me replaying.

3. Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City

I've liked this band well enough on past albums, but this one is so much better crafted. I love all the meditations on religion, the freaky drops and leaps lead singer Ezra Koenig takes with his voice. Some of the songs made me dance; others made me ache. There was a song for all seasons, and I played the hell out of it.

4. Blood Orange - Cupid Deluxe

This is just my kind of sound -- groovy, vaguely retro r&b. Individual songs don't stand out as much, but I'm always in the mood to hear the whole.

5. Disclosure - Settle

For me, this is a great collection of songs. The different guest singers leaves a slightly disjointed feel to me, but the songs are just so good.

6. Janelle Monae - Electric Lady

She can rap and sing and wield a story and a hook. She put on a mean concert, too.

7. Kanye West - Yeezus

So unlike anything anyone else is doing. It's the album I most admire of the year, but I'm rating here on personal listening habits.

8. Neko Case - The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight

Reviewers seem to think this is her most perfect album, but sadly, it's my least favorite. It's the first album of hers I've ever skipped songs. But even at half-mast, she's still better than most everyone else to me. And there are a few stand-outs here.

9. Drake - Nothing Was The Same

I had a similar reaction here: I love his earlier albums so much more, but this one also has such great moments (including my favorite song of the year). He blazes his own trails.

10. Ciara - Ciara

So very catchy.

11. Justin Timberlake - 20/20 Experience

He is not a great lyricist, but the first disc of this project (I refuse to acknowledge the dreadful second) is so fun. How he made seven-minute songs catchy and instant-replayable I don't know. But these songs soundtracked my spring.

12. Chance the Rapper - Acid Rap

I have never heard anyone use words the way he does. Taffier than taffy, springier than a rubber band. This guy has skill. And hooks.

13. J. Cole - Born Sinner

I love his storytelling.

14. Arcade Fire - Reflektor

This album made me a fan again after the snoozefest of The Suburbs. It's crazy with its genre-mixing, but I like the songs.

15. The National - Trouble Will Find Me

Another solid double from The National. I like their sound and their weird sentences.

Books I read in 2013

I thought I'd read 40 books this year, but, oh well. The books I did read were mostly great and inspired me to start trying fiction writing.


1. Ben Lerner - Leaving the Atocha Station

This reminded me somewhat of "Open City" in that the philosophy matters more than the plot. This book is sillier, wry-er than Teju Cole's, though. It's still very thoughtful, but just in a more clever, of-the-moment way. I enjoyed reading it. It's short. Probably wouldn't read it a second time, though.

2. Mitchell S. Jackson - Oversoul

I love his voice. I like the fiction here better than the essays, but I'm really excited to see what Jackson writes in the future.

3. Anuradha Roy - The Folded Earth

I really enjoyed reading this. It didn't break any narrative grounds or do anything particularly special, but I just liked reading it. The imagery is nice, the story is good, the characters are memorable. I felt really a part of the world, and I never felt eager for the novel to end.

4. Daniel Handler - Lemony Snicket: Who Could That Be At This Hour?

I love the language. It is so fun, so lip-smackingly clever. Can't wait to read the next in this series.

5. George Saunders - CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

So fun. So brilliant. I felt so lucky to be reading. The last piece -- the novella -- dragged on, but the short stories. Oh my gosh the short stories. Everything I wish David Foster Wallace or Gary Shteyngart would be.

6. Daniel Handler - Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events

I liked it, but I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the new Lemony Snicket. I was bummed to see a repetition of tropes ("xx here means xx"), and this one was much darker than the new book.

7. Jennifer Egan - A Visit From The Goon Squad

I skipped this when it first came out because I thought it was a futuristic book. I bought it after seeing Saunders read because I was so hungry for books and felt, OK, I better do this. But it's not futuristic. I love the non-linear structure. I love the writing and the characters. It challenged me to remember everyone and their place in the main character's life, but that was part of the fun. It taught me a new way to view life. Plus, reading it always seemed more fun than watching TV (this coming from an unabashed TV lover). The very last chapter was too blatant to be enjoyable for me, but overall, I loved the meditations on the passing of time.

8. Mary Doria Russell - Sparrow

I put off reading this for months after my former editor sent it to me. A book about a group visiting an alien planet did not seem like my kind of thing. But this editor has always recommended good books, so I finally picked it up. I didn't love the parts that had to with aliens, but 75 percent of the book actually deals in religion, loneliness, purpose and love. And those parts were great. It's dense, but the characters are well drawn. It took me a while to read because it wasn't a book that begged me to read it every second, but ultimately, I really enjoyed it.

9. Alexis M. Smith - Glaciers

I read this tiny meditation very quickly. I don't normally like to read a book set in Portland -- books are for escaping! -- but I found reading this one while reading the bus to be a nice time. It's well written and thoughtful, a good nod to what's to come from her.

10. JT LeRoy - Sarah

Despite all the controversy surrounding the writing of this book, I enjoyed reading it. I thought it was well enough written, and the plot was really engrossing.

11. Cheryl Strayed - Tiny Beautiful Things

I don't think of myself as the advice book type, but I loved this. Her advice in all situations basically boils down to: You know what to do it. It's going to suck, but you have to do it. That voice kept resounding in my head at work, as I headed down to Louisiana to film the documentary. If I had been having love problems, this would have been a godsend. Instead, I used it to push myself at work. It's incredibly written, so beautiful that it made me go buy "Wild," a book about hiking that I assumed I'd never attempt. I read it each day as if it were my devotion. It was everything I had always wished devotionals would be.

12. Karen Russell - Vampires in the Lemon Grove

I shouldn't like this book. Russell's stories are often set in times and tones (hello, magical realism) that I just do not like. But she writes such great sentences. Those looping words kept drawing me in, even through plots I would generally say I won't like. Some stories were better than others, but overall, I felt a gnawing ache of jealousy as I read this. To be this good. Sigh.

13. Nathan Englander - What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank

I loved these stories. Though they tell of a world fairly unfamiliar to me (most of the stories have at least one foot in Israel), Englander's voice makes each piece feel close at hand, relatable. Though the Holocaust and Orthodox Judaism cast a pall over most of the stories, they span generations and places and moods. There is lightness here, even when the stories are dark. It's an imaginative and confidently written collection, and I read it in like two days.

14. Charlie Le Duff - Detroit

When I picked this up from the library, I snorted. There he is, journalism's grittiest, most self-indulgent son splashed across the front pages of his own book. The title suggests this is a book about Detroit, but, as with all his work, it's really about Charlie Le Duff. The cover photo is apt. When he is good, he is great. Sometimes he is not, sometimes he is too bull-headedly himself, but I knew going into the book that he would be. There's plenty to skim through, and it is not, as he would hope, the definitive book on Detroit. He is of that place, but he is not the whole place himself. He doesn't back down ever, and he nearly always describes the race of the person he talks about. A younger version of me would have glazed over it, but the Portland version of me bristled at times. Sometimes it sounds like he's doing that just to show how ballsy and real and unfraid and direct he is. And sometimes I don't need that point drilled in so hard. But it's a fun read.

15. Jess Walter - Beautiful Ruins

This is a great story. I read it over a long weekend and was always eager to choose it over TV. But that's in part because it felt like TV -- a little mindless. I didn't love the voice. At times, Walter just seems to be trying too hard. But the story was great, and I'd recommend it to anyone in need of a good yarn.

16. George Saunders - Tenth of December

I didn't like it as much as CivilWarLand, but there were some really standout pieces here. The Simplica Girl Diaries is one of the best short stories I've ever read. And overall, it was a very fun, incisive book.

17. Colum McCann - TransAtlantic

This is my disappointment of the year. I loved McCann's last book, Let The Great World Spin. It's one of my favorite books of all time. I was eager to lose myself again in his sentences. And he does have some good sentences here, but TransAtlantic fails to differentiate between voices the way Let the Great World Spin so expertly did. Everyone speaks in lofty fragments, rendering each character into one, undistinct somebody. I could never lose myself in this book. Because every sentence was so high in the clouds, I never got a chance to feel the weight of any one line. Mostly, the book felt like work, never like fun. And finally, near the last third, I just gave it back to the library.

18. Mitchell Jackson - The Residue Years

This book is made of the kind of sentences I want to remember forever. I saw Jackson read last year and have been waiting for this book ever sense. It is pulsing and alive, so so good. Again, it made me jealous of his style. It's the kind of book I wish I could write.

19. Claire Vaye Watkins - Battleborn

I loved all of these stories, but the first and last are especially perfect. I can't wait to read it again. Again! I am so jealous of her talent.

20. Cheryl Strayed - Wild

Cheryl is the master. This book, like the advice columns, is just so good. 

21. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

This was hands-down my favorite book of the year. The sentences aren't as good as those in Residue Years or in Battleborn, but the story is just so good. Which reminds me: Story always trumps sentences.

22. Mark Leibovich - This Town

When he's on, he's on, but this book is a structural mess. Too meandering to really hold me. I prefer him in shorter doses -- he's killer on the news desk.

23. Rachel Kushner - The Flamethrowers

I loved the first half of this book. I rented it from the library and was immediately sad because there were so many good lines I wanted to underline. I kept a running list in my journal instead, a list that soon stretched pages. By the time the action heads to Italy, though, my fever had cooled. I felt less and less like reading it once the novel shifted.

24. Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones

Tough read, but brilliantly written. Important work. I could only read a chapter a day, though.

25. Justin St. Germain - Son of a Gun

I really enjoyed the way St. Germain structured this book, going between his own life and the Tombstone legends. I read the book in only a few days. It's well written, though I wouldn't call him a voicey writer. I didn't find myself underlining any sentences. But I really enjoyed reading it.

26. Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland

Lahiri's prose is so beautiful. I love many things about this book -- including the killer last paragraph -- but parts of the story felt too rushed, too paraphrased. I wanted the story to be slowed or more focused, less overarching. I didn't feel the story benefited by showing readers the entire cycles of the character's lives. But I really enjoyed reading it. For all its scope, it was a quick read.

27. Meg Wolitzer - The Interestings

I just never came to really care about these characters. I felt like the novel was always telling me about them and who they are, rather than showing me. That left me with a shallow connection. There was nothing to keep me wanting to read more. I know Wolitzer is super accomplished and experienced, but her style reminded me of a college writer still finding her voice.

28. Jesmyn Ward - Men We Reaped

There are so many beautiful sentences in Men We Reaped. At times, the books feel repetitive or just not done enough (maybe a few more years of distance or editing would have helped?) but I think it's headed in the right direction. Lack of options, lack of government investment in equal infrastructure and economic development, self-medicating precipitated by generations of untreated depression -- these are real factors, nearly always insurmountable. It was clearly a tough write for Ward, and I admired the book.

29. Questlove - Mo Meta Blues

I loved this book. It's such a fun way to learn about the history of hip-hop, its sample sources, its commercialization. This book is so well written, too. Great read and great history of Philadelphia.

30. Jayne Anne Phillips - Black Tickets

I loved the sentences (or, frequently, the fragments) in this book. Very intense read, though, so I was glad to have the break between stories. I like the tiny stories especially.

31. Allie Brosh - Hyperbole and a Half

Not every story is great, but most made me laugh out loud or mutter "so true" to myself. I love how open she is.

32. Ben Fountain - Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

After a while, the criticisms and points seemed repetitive, but I really like this book. The sentences are almost too good for the narrator. I don't believe an uneducated 19-year-old kids knows some of the words Fountain puts in his brain, but as a reader, it was fun to read them. Neat conceit for a book, too: The whole novel takes place during a Cowboys football game.

Books I read in 2012

Again, interrupting my regularly scheduled here's-a-picture blog posting to bring you my year-end wrap-ups. If you're the reading type and looking for a book, here's a list of all the books I read in 2012. Kate Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" is the best book I've read in half-a-decade. I can't wait to read it five more times.


1. Brian Selznik - Wonderstruck
Like Huge Cabret, this is engaging both visually and narratively. Easy to read, and super fun.

2. Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
I still liked it, though not as much as I did when I read it 10 years ago. I've become more sensitive in the last decade, both to questions of who can tell whose stories and also to gender issues. Still, it's a great story with great language.

3. Daniel Handler - Why We Broke Up
I hated the language but loved the pictures. Maira Kalman is one of my heroes.

4. Craig Thompson - Habibi
This is a total mess. It lacked focus and felt over-full with history and religion and parables. I could have moved past that -- the beautiful drawings are a nice anchor -- but the hyper-sexed nature of the book made the novel unbearable. There's a glut of naked women pictures -- including an exacting, eroticized and lengthy rape scene -- but not one picture of a naked man. Disgusting. I hated it.

5. Chad Harbach - The Art of Fielding
I wanted to skip work to stay home and read this book. I resisted it for a while, thinking a book about baseball sounded totally boring. Boy, was I wrong. The end felt a little too rushed and tidy for me, but at that point, I had already pledged allegiance to its characters, its story. Amazing work.

6. John D'Agata and Jim Fingal - The Lifespan of a Fact
This was super entertaining and super infuriating. Both authors look bad for most of the book -- D'Agata like a jerk, Fingal like an uptight dork. I went into the book feeling wholly loyal to Final, to truth in facts. I felt slightly more warm to D'Agata's argument (especially because he is vaguely open in the essay about learning later that some of his facts were wrong) by the end of the book, but ultimately I think a lot of what he wanted to change was really unnecessary. The essay that the book is built around wasn't that compelling for me, and seeing its facts debunked one by one made it only less so.

7. Katherine Boo - Behind the Beautiful Forevers
I waited four years for this book, so by the time I actually held it in my hands, I worried I'd be disappointed. But I wasn't -- not once. Katherine Boo writes better than anyone I can think of. To illustrate that, here are some of my favorite lines from the book: "built like a blade of grass," "He didn't like the moon, though: full and stupid bright," "mule-brained with panic," "One distinction of his father was that his hair looked good even when his head was in a ditch," "It was the walk of a boy on his way to school, taking his time, eating air." It's a pretty amazing feat, too, to write a book with so many characters -- all of whom are foreign for American readers, with Indian names -- and make them memorable, relatable, alive. The best book I read this year.

8. Teju Cole - Open City
This is a lovely, meditative book. I never wanted to rush home and read it the way I did with Art of Fielding or Beautiful Forevers, but I liked the ritual of reading a few chapters before bed. It's insightful and worldly, full of great moments and introspections.

9. Lauren Groff - The Monsters of Templeton
It was too crowded with subplots and voices for me to ever find a grasping point. There was something naive and inexperienced about it that I can't quite quantify. But it did have some experimental elements, which I admire. Apparently so does Lorrie Moore. Thus sayeth the book jacket. But I wouldn't recommend it.

10. Langston Hughes - The Ways of White Folks
These short stories are so readable and -- even 80 years after the collection was first published -- incendiary and important. I read the first 70 pages in one sitting, eventually begging myself to go to bed. I picked the book right back up as soon as I woke up. It should be required reading for high schoolers.

11. Johan Harstad - Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to you in all the Confusion
I really loved the first half. I like the whole book, but it did start to drag after 300 pages. The language is so lovely, though, and I found lines to keep all the way through. It's very vivid and Romantic and lonely and hopeful (in places). I could probably read it again in a few years.

12. Jeanette Winterson - Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
I don't really like her writing voice -- its a little too cheesy woozy in parts, too fragmented in many places and also too braggy throughout -- but there is a lot of meaningful meditation in here, and I found some pieces to be quite helpful. Ultimately, I was glad to be done with it, even though it was super short. She just really annoys me as a narrator. She stopped the story quite often to talk about literature, which seems like something I'd like, but it just kept taking me out of her actual life. I know her story is one of books, but I felt like those interstices kept me at a distance from ever really knowing her. The memoir felt like it was written for her and not a reader.

13. Alison Bechdel - Are You My Mother?
After Winterson, I was loathe to begin another lesbian-bad-mother memoir, but my hold was up at the library, so I had no choice. I decided just to read a page to see what it was like. Then I read an extra 25 before bed. Really fun and smart.

14. Nell Freudenberger - Lucky Girls
I really liked reading this. I don't think I'll remember details sharply with time, but I always felt in the mood to read it. It is not the most remarkable literature feat I've ever read, but I certainly think Freudenberger writes well beyond her years. Each story was entertaining and vivid and singular and fresh.

15. Nell Freudenberger - The Newlyweds
I really liked reading this, too. Freudenberger tells a good story. Near the end, it started to crawl a little (and I had hoped for a different ending altogether), but I would recommend it.

16. Richard Ford - Canada
I love the first sentence: "First, I will tell but the robbery our parents committed, then about the murders which happened later." From there through the rest of the first half, I was hooked. I couldn't wait to go home and read. I love the way Ford, in all his books, makes big statements about the world through one person's own feelings. In this book, he spends a lot of time talking about who we are and who we become -- is that fated or altered? If you rob a bank, have you always been a bank robber, your true self just waiting for the right reveal? I really loved it, but the second half was too slow and dark. I wish the first half had been one book, not just a set-up for a lesser half.

17. Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story
I read an excerpt of this in the New Yorker and didn't like it. Then I heard Shteyngart read the same excerpt on Fresh Air and really liked it. Finally, I bought the book on a whim and read the first 70 pages in one sitting. It's so fun and clever and yet also a serious indictment.

18. Michael Ondatajee - Cat's Table
Really lovely and subtle story, filled with great sentences and great feelings. He made a lot of plot out of very little.

19. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc - Random Family
I read this a few years ago, after it first came out, and wanted to read it again as inspiration for some work I want to do with my own journalism. The first part (the first 140 pages) are really hard to slog through. It feels like paraphrasing. Giant moments are given the same length and power as meaningless one. When one main character accidentally kills his best friend, it takes all of a paragraph. There's no arc. Throughout part I, I kept thinking, well maybe that is intentional. Poverty is exhaustive and cyclical and the writing does echo that. But as a reader, it just doesn't work for me. I wanted her to let scenes hang longer. It always felt like a round-up of things that had happened, without ever just letting me live in them. The second part is much better. Whole scenes play out with better detail, dialogue, thoughts. I think these are the parts LeBlanc was actually there for. She worked on it for 10 years, so I imagine she got better as she went along. Anyway, once I got to the second part, I wanted to read it more often. It is an admirable feat of reporting, and it did take readers to a place they would never go on their own. And I like that there are no false happy endings.

20. Junot Diaz - Drown
He writes like no one else. Though I really liked his novel The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I think Diaz is best at the short story. Each piece is marked by great one-liners, such as "Nothing moved fast, even the daylight was slow to fade."

21. Donald Ray Pollock - Knockemstiff
Another book with a great first paragraph: "My father showed me how to hurt a man one August night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old. It was the only thing he was ever any good at. This was years ago, back when the outdoor movie experience was still a big deal in southern Ohio. Godzilla was playing, along with some sorry-ass flying saucer movie that showed how pie pans could take over the world." It's very dark but original and in the kind of voice I'd want to write a book in. I wanted to always be reading it.

22. Lee Maynard - Crum
This book was a lot like Knockemstiff -- It's the story of an Appalachian town with a cast of colorful, dirt-poor characters. Crum isn't even a shade as good as Knockemstiff, though. The writing just isn't as sharp or pretty. It's repetitive and self-indulgent and nearly forgettable. It wasn't terrible. It just wasn't good the way Knockemstiff is. However, it, too, has a killer first paragraph:

23. Michael Chabon - Telegraph Avenue
I love the themes and conceit of this book -- the story of a street on the last ledge before gentrification, the story of families, of Blaxploitation films, of a teenager in love. But I did not love reading it. Mostly, this book felt overwritten to me, dense to the point of being unreadable. The long paragraphs (one sentence is 12 pages long) didn't hook me in; they had me reaching for my iPhone to distractedly play Bejeweled. Still, it's well researched, and the plot is a great one. But I wish an editor had axed about 100 pages of descriptions ( or 90 percent of the similes) out of it.

24. Zadie Smith - NW
This is one of the most inventive books I've ever read. It's real work to read, and I could do with a few more readings before I totally understand even the chronology, but it's a rewarding book. It's a book of ideas, a book of now. Essentially, Smith looks at four characters who grew up on the same block and traces them to where they are now. But jumps in time challenge the reader. The shifts create irony, create new ways of seeing each character. The first 108 pages took me almost two weeks to read. They're rough to work out, woozy and all over the place. The second section is straight-forward, so readable and likable. The next is again post modern, but still very likeable. It charges ahead in 185 short clips. I've read Smith's novels "White Teeth" and "On Beauty" each twice, and I imagine I'll take a few more rounds with this one, too.

25. Junot Diaz - This Is How You Lose Her
When I'm in the middle of a Diaz book, all I want to do is be reading Junot Diaz. It messes up my journalism because I want to write all wacky, too, but I can't pull it off the way he does. Like "Drown" before it, this collection is addictive and exciting.

26. Diana Fredrics - DIANA
Apparently this is the first lesbian autobiography. My landlord gave me a copy, and I found it actually crazy interesting. Much of the action takes place in the 1920s, and it is remarkably similar to lesbian life now. The realizations, the unravelings, the coming-to-terms all resonated. Pretty well written, too.

Best songs of 2012: 01 - 12

Oops, the end of December waylayed me with virus. Still not firing on all cylinders, but here are my top 10 favorite songs of 2012.


1. Frank Ocean - Bad Religion

The real genius of this song, for me, is that such a personal song became so ubiquitous. For me, Ocean's song sounds exactly like what I felt 10 years ago -- 19, desperately wishing I weren't gay, but desperately wishing my bad news girl interest love me back. I, too, felt like I had three lives balanced on my head like steak knives. I never could make her love me. (See also: this live version)

2. Usher and Diplo - Climax

This is my most-listened to song of 2012 -- addictive, beautiful and pessimistic. The four minutes tell the story of whole months of my 2012. Usher's voice has never sounded better, and Diplo distills dubstep into its greatest pop potential.

3. Kendrick Lamar - Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst

I could happily pick any song from Lamar's album to fill this spot. But "Sing About Me" stands out because of its message (that stories have power, that telling THIS story is his calling), its rhymes (In pajamas and Dun-ta-duns / when thunder comes it rains cats and dogs), its rhythms (that pause after "I'll wait" !) He's saying big things here, but comes out so easy. For me, no one has painted such a perfect ethnography since Nas's "Illmatic."

4. Earl Sweatshirt - Chum
Earl raps more bars with longer, more tongue-twisting lines than any other artist right now. That's apparent in "Oldie." Here, his verses are shorter but no less complex. (Mama often was offering peace offerings / think, wheeze cough, scoffing and he's off again) There are traces of the rambunctious young gun of OFWGKTA that first introduced him to the world, but this is a different Earl. Sensitive, open and earnest.

5. Schoolboy Q f/ Kendrick Lamar - Blessed

I love the way the aggressive, contemplative lines lay over the dream-pop beat. This was the first song of the year that showed me that rap could return to the form I once loved, that rap could still be ABOUT something. Plus, that Kendrick Lamar verse has the craziest cadence.

6. Miguel - The Thrill

His voice sounds so good. I just want to drive around all night listening to this song.

7. Frank Ocean - Summer Remains

The music bloggers can have their "Pyramid" love. For me, the other best Frank Ocean song of the year is the one he made "just f**** around" with his Macbook one night.
This song has some of my favorite lyrics of the year (The tide stole my youth / the creases in my brow ain't tanlines / saltwater swole my eyes / the sun burned me back and blue / too cold this side of June)

8. Stay Calm - Let Me Clear My Throat

I love how the beat charges ahead, how Claudia Meza's voice sounds with Zac Pennington's. And I love the line "Broke both legs but I'll be just fine." I can't stand to listen to it only once.

9. Bat for Lashes - Laura

Her voice is so good, and in this sparse piece, you can really hear the vulnerability it holds.

10. Japandroids - The House That Heaven Built

Like everyone, I feel about 17 and unstoppable when I hear this song.

Best songs: 2012

I've made lists of my favorite songs, books and movies of the year since I first had a geocities blog -- white background, courier new font, zero pictures -- in high school. I like going back to see what moved me in particular years. Sometime I find out later that the real best song of the year was one I never heard (see: entire Avett Brothers album I and Love and You). Anyway, here is all but the top 10. I'll post those later this week with a little write-up on each on why it made my 2012. Links to YouTube on all of them; I asterisked ones that have really good videos.

**11. Kendrick Lamar - Swimming Pools (Drank)
12. First Aid Kit - Emmylou
13. Heartless Bastards - Low, Low, Low
14. Frank Ocean f/ Earl Sweatshirt - Super Rich Kids (love this tongue-twisting rap from Earl)
**15. Solange - Losing You
**16. Perfume Genius - Hood
17. Fiona Apple - Werewolf
18. Purse Candy - Fire Fight (free download)
19. The xx - Angels
20. Miguel - Adorn

21. Hot Chip - Look At Where We Are
**22. Grimes - Oblivion
23. The Walkmen - The Love You Love
24. Kendrick Lamar - Collect Calls
25. The xx - Chained
26. How to Dress Well - Ocean Floor for Everything
27. Chromatics - Back from the Grave
28. Mystikal - Hit Me
29. Alabama Shakes - Hold On
30. Waxahatchee - Be Good

31. Solange - Sleeping in the Park (Twin Shadow remix)
32. Just Friends - Avalanche
33. Azealia Banks - Jumanji
34. Damien Jurado - Museum of Flight
35. The Walkmen - We Can't Be Beat
36. Blood Diamonds f/ Grimes - Phone Sex
37. Miguel - How Many Drinks?
38. Chairlift - I Belong in Your Arms
39. Sky Ferreira - Everything is Embarrassing
40. The Killers - Runaways

**41. Odd Future - Oldie
42. Hodgy Beats - Cookie Coma
43. Kanye West - White Dress
**44. Danny Brown - Grown Up
45. Rihanna - Diamonds
46. Angel Haze - Werkin Girls
47. Summer Camp - Life
48. How to Dress Well - & It Was You
49. THEESatisfaction - QueenS
50. Rhye - The Fall

Best of 2011: Movies

These are the five best movies I saw this year.

1) Bombay Beach
Nothing inspired me this year the way this movie did. I would happily watch scenes from it every day. It's beautifully shot. It pushes the boundaries of documentary. And the characters are indelible. For a taste, check out this excerpt.

2) Weekend
Two men have one weekend together. This has the best aspects of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset with its own charm. Easily the sweetest, best gay movie I've ever seen. Somehow it's soft, subtle and beautiful, even with a cocaine and sex scene or two.

3) Beginners
Mike Mills' most recent film is quirky in a smart, enjoyable way that his wife's film (The Future by Miranda July) just wasn't. I think that's because underneath the bells and whistles, this is a sweet, pure story. I love the score, the acting, the plot development and the main character's illustrations.

4) Blue Valentine
When I was watching this movie, I found it totally cute and sweet. But I felt wrecked for weeks after by its doomed-love-is-hopeless message. Even now, nearly a year later, I can't hear the film's central song -- "You and Me" -- without a knot tangling inside my gut. Unlike the other movies in this list, I never want to see this one again. Too powerful.

5) Bill Cunningham New York
This movie is so charming, but it also handles some serious and sad moments with aplomb.

See, our lips bend.

The year will soon be over, and I'll return to documenting other people. These last weeks become pretty navel-gazey for me. Here is one other, a list of all the books I read in 2012. My goal for the year was 24 books. [EDIT Anna reminded me of another book I had read, plus I read one more, so GOAL ACCOMPLISHED soundly].

Those magazines started to pile up, though.


1. Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed
I liked the first half, hated the second.

2. J.M. Coetzee - Summertime
Great structure experiment, really engaging and fun to read.

3. Kristen Hersh - Rat Girl
This surprised me in how well written it is. It's weird at times, but also (again surprisingly) optimistic.

4. Jeff Lumine - Tales from The Farm
Too quiet for me

5. Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City
I'm glad I read it (finally), but I didn't think the second person was actually necessary.

6. Richard Russo - Empire Falls
LOVED IT. Would read it again, happily. Great characters, great plot, great details.

7. Tom McCarthy - Remainder
Great premise taken too far

8. John D'Agata - Halls of Fame
Very original and interesting, but ultimately too experimental for my tastes

9. Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns
For this, I have mostly expletives. It is so good. Reading it felt very important -- both politically and personally to me. I learned so much about my own family and our region. BUT. It could have been 100 pages shorter easily if she didn't repeat herself so much.

10. Darrin Strauss - Half a Life
I heard this story on This American Life, so I thought it would be repetitive, but it was actually really interesting and well written. It's a quick read.

11. Karen Russell - Swamplandia!
So fun to read. Very imaginative, but still relatable. I definitely want to read it again after some of the details go foggy. Right now, it's still so vivid in my brain. I could have done without some of the near-the-end creepiness/ghost talk, but still, I really liked it.

12. Gabrielle Hamilton - Blood, Bones & Butter
The first two-thirds of this book filled me with such immense pleasure. I couldn't stop telling people to read it. I bought my best friend a copy. All I wanted to do was go home and read it. The last third totally ruined that feeling -- it's boring, off-topic and totally unnecessary. I'm going to forget it exists, though, and just concentrate on the giddiness I felt reading the beginning and middle.

13. Carsten Jensen - We, The Drowned
Epic, a serious masterpiece. It is so long, and it's and not a subject I'd normally be interested in, but it was absolutely worth the time. It's beautifully written, deftly woven and richly detailed.

14. Arthur Phillips - The Tragedy of Arthur
Really inventive. I thought it dragged toward the end, but definitely unlike any other book I've ever read.

15. Yann Martel - Beatrice and Virgil
I liked the play section best. Otherwise, it was very didactic. It tried too hard to convince me that it's important.

16. Myla Goldberg - Bee Season
I never really got into it. The voice is too precious, and at this point (though maybe this was not true when this book came out), spelling bees have been overcovered.

17. John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
I can't believe I hadn't read it before. I loved every second of this book. It's hilarious, inciteful, vivid. A total blast.

18. Ruth Reichel - Tender at the Bone
I'm so glad I read this after Blood, Bones & Butter because it is so much better. I wouldn't have enjoyed Hamilton's book nearly as much had I known this existed. Also, this doesn't have a bad ending. Really fun to read. I want to be Ruth Reichel's friend at any age.

19. Adam Levin - The Instructions
Possibly the largest book I've ever read. Carrying it around will invite stares. But I loved it. Reading it felt like reading the Bible to me, devotional. I wrote a lot of fragments down in my journal, and despite being so massive, I found it really readable.

20. Rachel DeWoskin - Big Girl Small
Totally hated it

21. Jeffrey Eugenides - A Marriage Plot
After the massiveness of The Instructions and the disappointingness that was Big Girl Small, I stopped reading books for a month or two. This was the perfect return. The characters felt so real to me, and I felt like I was learning something at every turn. It was well written in a way that does not demand to be noted -- it didn't inspire me into sighs and immediate underlinings the way his previous two novels did -- but rather it's written well in a way that makes the language beside the point. I never once found a sentence I didn't like, which left me to the business of just reading instead of critiquing. Totally fun to read and again the kind of book I'd easily read again after I've lost the vivid impressions I have of it now.

22. Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia
I really liked listening to her interview on Fresh Air, but I didn't really like this book. There are parts I wanted to write down in my journal -- mostly meditations on memory or the way courting changes as you grow older -- but I never felt totally invested. I did read nearly all of it in one day, though, so it's a quick read.

23. Brady Udall - The Lonely Polygamist
Somehow this book was both complicated and simple. Though there are a lot of characters, the three most detailed are very alive and rich. It's a good story, entertaining and fast-paced. The end started to feel a little too dark and long -- and the ultimate end annoyed me -- but I still liked it.

24. Tea Obreht - The Tiger's Wife
I loved this so much. It's whimsical but serious, really well written and engrossing. The novel moves between three different stories/timelines, and critics have said she shifts just when each story gets good. That's true, but it made me so excited to keep reading so I could get back.

25. Tom Perrotta - The Leftovers
This was super easy to read and focuses on one of my life-long fascinations: The Rapture. I like a lot of the situations Perrotta comes up with, but his diction lacks something special for me. Some of the dialogue just seemed too easy. But I had fun reading it.

26. Hank Steuver - Tinsel
I really liked parts of this, but ultimately it felt like a long newspaper article to me. I bet it was really fun to report, so mostly I felt jealous reading it, but I didn't like the way Southerners are depicted as such an other. But I'm probably being sensitive. There were some really fun parts.

Best of 2011: Songs (1-10)

ONE - BEYONCE - 1 + 1
Nearly every time I've heard this song (including the 45 times in a row I listened after I first heard it), I have been blown away by the way Beyonce manages to make such a special moment out of a song so simple. Though the song's actual structure and melody aren't innovative (in the way that say "Countdown" is), this is a song for this specific time we are in. "We ain't got nothing but love." The sentiment isn't new ("Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey"), but it's one that has persisted an unusually long time now. For much of our country, connections, relationships and love are the only riches people have -- and with job growth so slow, the only riches some can even hope to have. The country is in war or conflict or holding zones all over the place. Taking in national news -- political debates increasingly boiled down to polarizing impracticalities -- can feel like its own war. When I hear this song, I imagine a woman in this time, our time, caught in a whirlwind -- "Just when I ball up my fists" -- but mollified, protected by love -- "I realize I'm lying right next to you."

That she conveys this -- an anger, a fear, a trust bubbling below the surface -- with such a controlled tone and a beat that barely varies (it's hardly even there) is just proof of her talent. Atlanta singer-songwriter The-Dream wrote this song, under a different name, for his own second album. He also wrote most of "Single Ladies," so his talent is one that really finds magic with Beyonce. He leaked his demo sometime this year, and while I think his voice is great, the juxtaposition of his intended version with Beyonce's underscores for me how much of the power of this song is Beyonce's vocal talent. Take, for example, the cell phone video Jay-z shot of her rehearsing before she performed the song for the first time (on American Idol). For my money, she is the aught's most consistent (and evolving) pop star. Hundreds of listens after that first 45-spin run, this song still makes me cry. And even though I wasn't in love this year, when she sings "I don't know when I'm gon' die, but I hope that I'm gon' die by you," I feel exactly what she means.

TWO - ADELE - ROLLING IN THE DEEP (JAMIE XX REMIX, featuring CHILDISH GAMBINO) (plus the original, plus Lil Wayne's SFTW cover)
Because this was the most unavoidable song of 2011, I get that music bloggers are going to lash out against it. But I love the lyrics, and I loved dancing to it. It was covered and remixed every which way, which I think is one of the great themes of the year. The communal-nature of the Internet, where we all can somehow exist in one space, has taken music back to the share and sample like crazy nature of the 1960s. Somehow, this song felt like it belonged to all of us. And even though it was everywhere all of the time, the lyrics made Rolling the Deep feel personal, too. We could have it had it all, indeed.

THREE - HOLCOMBE WALLER - HARDLINERS
After a dark February and March, this song became my daily devotional. Holcombe's sweet voice, beseeching, "Repeat after me: I won't stop loving" made me hopeful for some future I wasn't always sure would exist for me. I love the line, "Don't laugh 'cause there just might be a soft curve in your hardest line." For me, this song is pure and beautiful deliverance -- not to mention catchy and backed by a gorgeous and smart video.

FOUR - THE WEEKND - THE BIRDS, PT. 1
I spent many an hour at the gym, biking or running faster because of this song's furious cadences. That snare running below his smooth voice!

FIVE - YOUTH LAGOON - 17
I love the pacing, the lyrics and the build-up in this sweet song about imagination and youth. It's pretty cinematic sounding, which is why Ryan and I made a video inspired by it.

SIX - AUSTRA - LOSE IT
This dark, cold and synthy song is catchy and dance-y. It's also somehow accessible, despite being sung by one of the weirdest voices -- that operatic warble!! -- of the year.

SEVEN - BEYONCE - COUNTDOWN
This song is stuffed full -- with lyrics, with samples and horns and drums and synths. THIS is Beyonce crazy in love, and though it's teeming, it never feels dizzying. For me, this song is Pavlovian -- if it's on, I can't not dance. I've danced in my kitchen, in the car, in the living room while my cat eyes me warily. The video -- somehow even crazier than the production -- is my favorite of the year (tied with Rihanna's "We Found Love").

EIGHT - JAMES BLAKE - WHY DON'T YOU CALL ME?
The first 30 seconds of this song kill me. This song is probably the shortest on the list, and even its 1:36 includes multiple seconds of silence. But that line -- why don't you call me what we both know I am -- says more than enough.

NINE - NICOLAS JAAR - I GOT A WOMAN
This song, a woozy seductive reimagining of Ray Charles' I Got a Woman tucked behind some French, soundtracked many a rainy Portland day for me. So dreamy.

TEN - FRANK OCEAN - NOVACANE
I love Frank Ocean's voice. On this song -- a tale of meeting a girl and smoking novacane -- he sounds his best - sexy, mysterious, lonely and new.

Best of 2011: Songs (11 - 25)

11. Lil Wayne - Six Foot Seven
This song has the best one-liners of any rap song this year ("Woman of my dreams, I don't sleep so I can't find her," "Paper chaser, tell that paper, 'Look, I'm right behind you,'"). My favorite is "Real Gs move in silence like lasagna." Wayne doesn't tell many stories with his songs anymore, and that saddens me, but he is still the wittiest rapper working. Run all that over this frenetic, "Day-O" sampling beat (thanks to "A Milli" producer, Bangladesh!) and you have a song so joyous it had me dancing 12 months of the year.

12. The Weeknd - Wicked Games
For me, this song is "House of Balloons'" center. It sets up the themes, the sound. In some ways, it's the least risky -- "Glass Tables" is weirder and more innovative, sound-wise -- but I like simple when it's done well. All said and done, this was the song I returned to most often from The Weeknd. Abel Tesfaye's a belter, a hook-maker. And here, that all comes together perfectly.

13. Youth Lagoon - Afternoon
Much of Youth Lagoon's album is sad, a quiet unraveling and study of his anxiety. This song is bouncier, happier, the kind of song you want to listen to at sunset as you drive. The lyrics -- about a metaphorical demon -- are just as sad as the others, but what stays with you after hearing this one is the oh oh ohs, the beats that sound like whistles, at the song's end. And they are pretty dang joyous.

14. Fleet Foxes - The Shrine/An Argument
This is by far the weirdest song on the album, so for my first few listens, I skipped over it. When I did listen, I kept getting stuck at "Sunshine over me no matter what I do." For a line that seems so sunny, it sounds so sad. Eventually, I came to feel both meanings -- usually at once -- as I listened. Sunshine, when you don't want to feel it, can be painful ("In the morning waking up to terrible sunlight ... when you talk you hardly look in my eye"). But by the year's end, that line felt hopeful, if still urgent. I love the turns this song makes, and, as always, I love Fleet Foxes' harmonies.

15. The Head and the Heart - Lost in My Mind
This is just an old-fashioned, foot-stomping alt-country revival of a song. I love the harmonies. I love the beat. I love the lyrical concept (along with the line, "Put your dreams away for now"). On many late-night drive homes, I sang this song as loud as I could, my rallying cry of 2011.

16. Lana Del Rey - Video Games
Ryan and I liked this song long before we knew there was a video or controversy or snobbery about her. I think it's ridiculous that in 2011 people are surprised to find someone may have been manufactured. Her plastic surgery lips are her own business. Personally, I just like this song. It's haunting, dark and pretty and thoroughly modern in its imagery.

17. The Vaccines - Wetsuit
This album reminds me of the early days of Interpol. This song is my favorite, mostly because it sounds like being 28: "We all got old at breakneck speed. Slow it down, go easy on me."

18. Drake - Marvin's Room
In this thoughtful, somber song, Drake gives voice to the late, drunken call to an ex. For most rappers, this moment would be reduced to one line -- and it'd probably be a drunken text -- but Drake is unlike other rappers. He expands the moment into a meditation -- on lost love, on his own life failings, on what it means to need someone "to put this weight on." Somehow he also squeezes in gender and race relations.

19. tUnE-yArDs - Powa
Her voice is just so special. I feel like she is most in control of it on this song.

20. Lil Wayne - How to Love
This sounds unlike any other Weezy song. The lack of frills makes Wayne sound more genuine than he usually does. I don't love hearing auto tune, but it's just barely there. The song is so plaintive and straight-forward. On it, Lil Wayne raps over a slow bass line about a woman who has had a lot of moments but none that were real. This perspective is new for Wayne, too. He usually has some choicely misogynistic words for women. With his next singles, he was back to old business, but I'm grateful for this respite.

21. The Weeknd - Coming Down
Abel Tesfaye's voice sounds especially beautiful and urgent here. As with other Weeknd songs, this one starts slowly with Tesfaye's voice at a sultury almost-whisper. Then, at "Ihe party's finished and I want you to know," the song explodes with a desperate beauty. This album, and this song especially, is, sonically, the sexiest I heard all year.

22. Adele - Someone Like You
I've had to stop myself several times this year from sending a note to someone saying "For me, it isn't over." Who didn't get all choked up and nostalgic with lost love listening to this?

23. ROSTAM - Wood
This is so soothing and pretty.

24. Drake and Rihanna - Take Care
My favorite aspect about music in 2011 is the way musicians keep building on each other’s work. Crack-addled (yet still clear somehow) Gil Scott-Heron wrote “I’ll Take Care of U.” Then Jamie XX pushed it forward with his remix. And now Rihanna and Drake are spinning it still further forward with this track, a song about "dealing with a heart (you) didn't break," about dating someone whose past comes with them.

25. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - FFunny FFriends
Music blogs call this song krautrock, kaleidoscope and psychadelic. I don't have words for it, but the first time I heard it, I wanted to hear it again. And again. And again. I thought it was something old, maybe dubbed from a cassette tape in the midwest somewhere. But it's new and from Portland, and I love it.

Best of 2011: Songs (26 - 50)

I work on my favorite songs list all year long, so by the time December comes, the ranking can feel arbitrary. Did I really like this song more than the one below it? Hard to tell, but here I'll just settle on the order that feels right this week.

26. Austra - The Future
27. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
28. The Rapture - How Deep Is Your Love?
29. Azealia Banks - 212
30. Wild Flag - Future Crimes
31. Rihanna - Drunk on Love
32. Rye Rye f/ Robyn - Never Will Be Mine
33. Bon Iver - Holocene
34. James Blake and Bon Iver - Fall Creek Boys Choir
35. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
36. Dirty Mittens - Any Time, Any Day
37. AgesandAges - No Nostalgia
38. Rihanna - We Found Love
39. Yelawolf - Throw It Up
40. Fleet Foxes - Sim Sala Bim
41. Childish Gambino - Freaks and Geeks
42. Little Dragon - Ritual Union
43. Lloyd f/ Andre 3000 and Lil Wayne - Dedication to My Ex
44. The Vaccines - All in White
45. Nicki Minaj - Super Bass
46. Chris Brown and Busta Rhymes - Look At Me Now
47. M83 - Midnight City
48. Burial - NYC
49. Cults - You Know What I Mean
50. Beirut - East Harlem

Best of 2011: Albums

I've been making best-of-the-year lists since 2003. This week on my blog I'll unveil my favorite albums, songs and movies from this year. First, the albums:


1. The Weeknd - House of Balloons
This album is so dark and creeping, but Abel Tesfaye's sweet croon is like a north star guiding you through that darkness. I love the way the first song, "High for This," builds so that by the time it's over, you're already deep into Tesfaye's world without really knowing how you got there. The songs are catchy, innovative and perfectly paced. And though I don't inhabit most of the worlds he describes, listening to "House of Balloons" pretty much always has an emotional effect on me.

2. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Robin Peckhold is a little younger than I am, but I feel like the lyrics on this album perfectly sum up what it feels like to be 28 right now. The album is beautiful -- at times sweeping, at times quietly pensive -- and searching. It sounded right soundtracking my sunny days just as well as it did the foggy ones.

3. James Blake - James Blake
The silence on this album -- and there is a lot of it -- somehow feels both full and empty to me. This is the album I wanted to hear when I was sad, as if I could pour myself into Blake's many pauses. I admire what he's able to do with dubstep, but the songs I like best here are the ones that sound like snippets of gospel songs. The first 30 seconds of "Why Don't You Call?" sounds like a perfect little demo to me. I always want to hear them again.

4. Youth Lagoon - The Year Of Hibernation
I get that the sound of this album might not be for everyone. He recorded it by playing the original bedroom recordings in a garage and recording them again. That means the album can sometimes have a tinny, far-away sound to it, but underneath that is some very honest and beautiful songwriting. I love the lyrics of "17" and the way "Montana" builds so steadily until it erupts. I love the way it feels to listen to "Afternoon" while driving around during the fall. Nearly all of the songs evoke something purely cinematic, and I pretty much never grew tired of hearing them.

5. The Vaccines - What Did You Expect from the Vaccines?
I don't necessarily think the Vaccines are doing anything innovative here, but I just love listening to this record. I came back to it all year long, always finding a new favorite song. I listened to it at the gym, driving through the suburbs, cooking dinner in my city apartment. It's somehow dark and infectious at the same time.

6. Drake - Take Care
It took me a while to get into this album. I preferred his early, yearning mixtape. But "Take Care" has so many good songs and shows Drake really expanding his style (On "Thank Me Later," he often recycled through the same repetitive rhythms). And he is still rapping about subjects that no one else talks about. He's innovative, and I hope he pushes himself to keep experimenting.

7. Tennis - Cape Dory
This is so fun to listen to. A lot of the songs sound the same -- lyrically and sonically -- but I like those themes and sounds so much it doesn't bother me (plus it's such a short little album). The lyrics have a few little gems ("shifty wind that gusts and dies"), her voice is great and I usually feel pretty happy listening.

8. tune yards - w h o k i l l
I don't think this album is as innovative as it's praised for being. Merril Garbus admits that she modeled it after the music of the Ba'Aka pygmies in Central African Republic. Having been there and listened to their vocal polyphonies, I can say tune-yards' songs really do sound a lot like them. But she pushes them further, adding more drama and more layers, and I think her lyrics are at times really great (See: My Country). But the real secret weapon here is that voice. I thought she was a man for her whole first record, but it's mostly impossible to tell where that sound is coming from. She has such an incredible and powerful range. Really fun to listen to.

9. Beyonce - 4
For my money, she is the most interesting, consistent and talented pop star recording. She tries all kinds of sounds on this album, at times stuffing songs with a dozen samples and genres. Whatever she throws at the wall seems to stick; 4 churned out hit after hit this year. And she somehow does that without sounding like she is trying very hard. She is so good it feels effortless.

10. AgesandAges - Alright You Restless
Like the Tennis album, this one is comprised of songs that sometimes sound just like the one before it. But it doesn't sound like any other album I heard this year, so I'll forgive it its repetitions. I love all the voices, the church-like joy of the songs. There's not a dud on here.

Honorable Mentions: The Roots - Undun; Frank Ocean - Nostalgia, Ultra; Cults - Cults; Dirty Mittens - Heart of Town

Favorite songs pf 2010 (1.10)

1. Robyn - Dancing On My Own
There are slower, prettier versions of this song that fit the wistful lyrics better, but I prefer the electric original. Something about the energy is both desperate and defiant at the same time. Plus, the electric has that funny little percussion piece (it sounds like a pencil beating on a pipe to me) that I find absolutely addictive. Homegirl dances like crazy, and why not? This lonely song is somehow the most fun single of 2010. For a while, I couldn't decide if this or "Bloodbuzz Ohio" was my favorite, but for me, the choice boiled down to this: This song sounds like 2010 to me. When I think back to this year, this will be the song I remember as defining my moments.

2. The National - Blood Buzz Ohio
A gorgeous song about one of life's most conflicting duties -- going home. The "blood" here is family, home, which can give the best and worst buzzes. The instrumentation is magical, I think, and Matt Beringer's baritone shines all the more in its levelness because the music is so soaring. Honestly, I love this song too much to be able to write about it.

3. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II
I wish, I wish Régine Chassagne sang more often. I know Arcade Fire is an album band, and this song fits in thematically with "The Suburbs," but "Sprawl II" is its own moment, totally removed from anything else in its glory. It is the song at its musical and lyrical best. I love that they twisted a Haitian proverb (Beyond mountains, there are mountains) into a comment on something decidedly American. Sometimes, I wonder if the world's so small. It's the only Arcade Fire song that ever made me do the Running Man dance.

4. Best Coast - Our Deal
This song is just so plaintive and pretty. "When you leave me, you take away everything." I'd say the song is sad, but it feels a bit different than that. It's more ... resigned, I guess. She wishes he'd tell her things, but that's not their deal, so ... that's it. Vocally, this is Bethany Cosentino at her best (probably because she sounds a lot more Neko Case than surfer girl).

5. Kanye West and Bon Iver - Lost in the World
Bon Iver's "Woods" (from 2009's Blood Bank EP) had good parts, but it dragged on into some lengthy weirdness. Here, Kanye takes the best part of Bon Iver's original and builds it into a hell of a song. This song is so full, it reminds me of church. Kanye's retreat isn't a whiskey still -- it's the whole damn city. Either way, they're lost. And as the Gil Scott-Heron sample (from 1970's Comment #1) asks, "Who will survive in America?"

6. Big Boi - Turns Me On
I love this looping lush vocal/keyboard beat. I just love how much the voices play into making that beat. It's so funky and smooth, partially, I think, because those keys really anchor everything. It's a hell of a nasty song, lyrically, but the sound is so smooth you could miss that nastiness. Big Boi is just so creative, so unlike any other rapper. This song, this whole album, is so far ahead of where the rest of rap is, I cannot believe he wrote it two years ago.

7. Janelle Monae featuring Big Boi - Tightrope
Monae is definitely my 2010 crush of the year. She has such a pretty face, and I've always been a sucker for saddle oxfords. I don't know how to characterize most of her songs, but this one is such an obvious hit. Is it a rap song? Is it soul? Jazz? Big band? Who cares! It makes me want to dance. I like how they repurpose the chorus line "I've got to keep my balance" into some kind of repeated chant background noise at the end. My favorite part is when she sings (raps?) "Some callin' me a sinner. Some callin' me a winner. I'm callin' you to dinner. You know exactly what I mean. I'm talkin' boutcha."

8. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream
When Randi first told me she liked this song, my response was something akin to "Absolutely no way will I listen." I hated every Katy Perry song I had ever heard. Then, one late night driving home from work, I heard it on the radio, and I was hooked. It is just a perfect pop song. It totally lives up to its theme - listening to it, I feel like a teenager again (in the good kind of way, that is). This song reminds me of Ryan. He's so full of youthful joy, and spending Saturdays with him this fall (usually watching Gossip Girl or doing something photograph related), I remembered that I'm not old, not yet. Anyway, this song makes me feel downright joyous.

9. Drake - The Resistance
This song is everything I love about Drake. Sometimes I worry he's going to become too much of a mainstream rapper, rhyming about how awesome he is. But this song is him at his lyrically best. It's a song about the changes he has made since becoming famous, the way his friends resent the fact that he isn't the same man he used to be, and how all of that scares him. "What am I afraid of? This is what dreams are supposed to be made of." What other rapper would write lines like this: "I heard they just moved my grandmother to a nursing home, and Il be acting like I don’t know how to work a phone. But hit redial you’ll see that I just called some chick I met at the mall that I barely know at all. Plus this women that I messed with unprotected texted saying she wish she woulda kept it. The one I’m laying next to just looked over and read it. Man, I couldn’t tell you where the fuck my head is. I'm holding on by a thread." It's a struggle he never resolves on this album. The theme carries on into the next song ("Over") with more energy but the same confusion.

10. LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yourself Clean
I love most songs on this album, but this one immediately stood (and continues to stand) out to me. The lyrics are more clever, and I love the beat and the way it builds into something so dancey and energetic. This summer, I spent my lunch breaks biking up some ferocious hills near my office. I began each ride listening to that song precisely because of the way it builds. I usually made it to the first hill just as the song really kicked off. I moved my foot harder down on the pedal just as he sings, "I miss the way the night comes."