Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Books I've Read in 2020

...or at least that I've finished in 2020. There are many more I'm still in the process of reading.

January:

Circuit by John Greiner (2020, Whiskey City)
Death of a Selfish Altruist by Chris Stroffolino (2017, Iniquity)

February:

Those Who Pray to Rice by Julio Montalvo Valentin (2019, NightBallet)
Dog Alley by Hugh Merrill (2018, Stubborn Mule)
Alex in Movieland (1943-1973) by Alex Gildzen (2020, Crisis Chronicles)

March:

Looking Back at Elyria: A Midwest City at Midcentury by Marci Rich (2019, The History Press)
Radish Legs, Duck Feet by Sayuri Ayers (2016, Green Bottle)
The Beats: A Graphic History by Paul M. Buhle (ed.), Harvey Pekar et al (2009, Hill & Wang)
How I Became Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones (1996, Grove)

April

Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane DiPrima (1998 ed., Penguin)
The Rabbits With Red Eyes by Juliet Cook (2020, Ethel Zine and Micro)
One Evening by Yohji Izawa and Canna Funakoshi (1991, Marcel Dekker)
Sunshine State by Gregg Shapiro (2019, NightBallet)
A Quiet Ghost by M. J. Arcangelini (2020, Luchador)
typing with e.e. cummings by Lori Desrosiers (2019, Glass Lyre)
Love, H: The Letters of Helene Dorn and Hettie Jones by Hettie Jones (2016, Duke University)

May

Serving by Kari Gunter-Seymour (2020 revised ed., Crisis Chronicles)
Reflections by Hermann Hesse (1974 ed., Farrar Straus Giroux)
Artists in the Underworld by Richard Wayne Horton (2019, Human Error)
an extra doughnut permanently lent by Sara Adams (2020, Ghost City)

June

Autobiography by Morrissey (2013, Penguin Classics)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1972 edition, Washington Square)
The Gathering of My Name by Cornelius Eady (1991, Carnegie Mellon University)
A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca (2002 edition, Grove)
Dutchman & The Slave: Two Plays by Amiri Baraka (1971 ed., Harper Perennial)

July

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (2018, Penguin)
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014, Graywolf)
The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks (1991 ed., Third World)
Actual Air by David Berman (2019 ed., Drag City)
The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums by Joshua Michael Stewart (2020, Human Error)
The 24 Hour Store Was Closed by Paul Richmond (2020, Human Error)

August

Some Tricks I Was Born Knowing by D. M. Spratley (2020, Ghost City)
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi (2016, Bold Type)
Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods by Noelle Howey (2002, Picador)
The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa trans. by Sawako Nakayasu (2020, Modern Library)

September

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (2019, One World)
The Can Book by Pascal Bussy & Andy Hall (1989, Harrow)

October

i saw god cooking children / paint their bones by John Compton (2020, Blood Pudding)
Fort Pitt Tunnel Blues by John Dorsey (2020, Maverick Duck)
Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors by Carolyn Srygley-Moore (2020, Crisis Chronicles)

November

Your Baby's First Word Will Be DADA
by Jimmy Fallon (2015. Feiwel & Friends)

December

All Gates Open: The Story of Can by Rob Young & Irmin Schmidt (2019, Faber & Faber)
The Circus of His Bones by Steve Brightman (2020, Kung Fu Treachery)
Basho: The Complete Haiku trans. by Jane Reichhold (2008 ed., Kodansha)
The Vagina Analogues by Michelle R. Smith (2020, self)
Beowulf trans. by Seamus Heaney (2001, W.W. Norton)
The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac (1994 ed., Grove)

4 comments:

  1. Wow... I'm impressed John. So many wonderful reads. What an inspiration. And these will act as suggestions for me to add to my own list.
    May 2021 be kind and generous to you and allow you to do even more in the poetry world.

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    1. Thank you, Chris! I hope 2021 will be kind and generous to you as well. And thank you again for gifting me that Jimmy Santiago Baca book!

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  2. dude, in awe of your volume here.

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    1. A couple of them took me a while to finish. I began reading The Subterraneans on my birthday in 1993. But I went to prison (a month later) before I got through it and it's taken me this long to get back to it.

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