Books Of The Year?

Yo, I'm a student, I don't have time for this reading stuff. I haven't read any books published (I almost said "released") in 2000. But for my album list this year I'm including whatever it is I liked, from any year. So. Gravity's Rainbow, which I read a second time and loved even more. John Berryman's Dream Songs, which I'm still reading (read the first book of them) - they have turned out to be my favorite poetry ever, which is a feat. The Hurley translations of Jorge Luis Borges' Collected Fictions is wonderful, though I've only read scattered bits. Wittgenstein's little note on aesthetics, psychology, and religious belief had something of an effect on me. David Toop's Ocean of Sound is required reading for anyone who likes any "weird" music of say the last 20 years, maybe 100. Turgenev's Fathers and Sons reminded me of how exhilirating a novel could be. So did Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman,, which I recommend for anyone concerned about consumerism or feminism, anyone who likes a thickly psychological novel, or anyone who just likes a ripping good read.

Oh yas yas - and Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, which I'm nowhere near finishing but which is awesome. And there's a grammatical error in my previous post, for which I am truly deeply regretful in the bottom of my black, pedantic heart.

Michel Houellebec, "Les Particules Elementaires". English translation is out. Devastating.

D.T. Atwell's "Second and Fourth Age of Mankind". Funky future sci-fi with man made blackholes, time travel and Earth narrowly avoiding destruction twice (including the mother of all battles over prehistoric Earth).....

Hm...published this year? Bother. Can't recall if I actually read any from this year worth noting. My continual self-imposed disinterest in most fiction precludes a lot of that, though I will allow for Dorothy Dunnett's _Gemini_ almost certainly being this year's triumph. First, however, I will have to get around to reading it. ;-)

Discovery of the year was Iain Banks -- _Complicity_ was a sharp novel. Fave nonfiction from this year actually came out last year, but I only just got around to reading Marc Almond's _Tainted Life_ this year once I found a copy. Astonishing stuff, best rock/pop autobio yet. Julian Cope's _Repossessed_ and Bill Drummond's _45_ also made for compelling and diametrically opposed reading.

Most of what I read this year was on websites, actually. ;-)

Vollmann -- The Royal Family. Amis -- London Fields. Reed -- Mumbo Jumbo. Roth -- The Counterlife.

Fiction: David Mitchell's Ghostwritten (actually from 99) shows him to be one of the few young Brit-Lit things with a sense of stylistic and structural ambition (cf the miserable 'All Hail the new Puritans'). An English novel that moves through space-time with a confidence that recalls Pynchon's V - who woulda thunk it?

Non-fiction: Paul Morley's Nothing was a kind of under-the-weather English cousin to Dave Eggers' A Heart-Breaking Work of Staggering Beauty - a self-concious memoir of bereavement and recovery that showed real heart beneath the cleverness.

Pop etc: David Cavanagh's My Magpie Eyes are Hungry for the Price was dismissed by Alan McGee as 'the accountant's story', which just goes to show how bad his judgement is these days. Obsessively researched, it's a kind of elegy for a time when indie labels could hope for something more than cottage industry and vanity releases. At least 10 cracking Lawrence-from-Felt anecdotes, too.

Lord, Tom, am I supposed to read my books to see which was a new release this year??? I have no clue which ones were. I'm really enjoying Moon: Life and Death of a Rock Legend, which I believe came out this year. Otherwise...? I have no idea if any of what I've read is from the year 2000.

Super-Cannes by J.G. Ballard, of course.

Naomi Klein - "No Logo"

Been delaying answering this one until I finished reading the books I got for Christmas. Anyway, as it turns out - Paul Morley's "Nothing", hands down. Read it.

Runners-up: Bill Drummond's 45, Houellebecq's Atomised, Klein's No Logo parts 1-3, and Dan Rhodes' Anthropology and Benjamin's Arcades Projects are the two good books this year which would've made better websites!

Houellebecq, "Atomised", that's the only actual new one I can think of. "Just a Whore Like The rest", Richard Meltzer, but that's an anthology of old stuff. Lots of old stuff.

Steven Connor, DUMBSTRUCK.

Probably.

Three of my favorites this year:

Dan Rhodes - Anthropology Zsuzsi Gartner - All the Anxious Girls on Earth Jessica Treat - Not a Chance

GHOSTWRITTEN by David Mitchell, NOTHING by Paul Morley NOCTURNAL BUTTERFLIES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE by Jose Manuel Prieto