c. 450 bc: prometheus bound by aiskhylos
| title | author | format | genre | pub date | original language | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| chess story | stefan zweig | novella | fiction | 1941 | german | |
| operators and things | barbara o'brien | book | nonfiction | 1958 | english | this book presents itself as an anonymous memoir of one woman's experience with schizophrenia triggered by work-related trauma. that might ring some alarm bells for anyone familiar with the context of midcentury american popsci books about psychology, and i won't pretend this book feels entirely true and authentic. on the other hand, it's fascinating. i've broken my brain by trying to warp it to fit a toxic job before, and barbara's experiences felt chillingly accurate in that regard. then again, there's also, like, aliens. great book! |
| invitation to a beheading | vladimir nabokov | book | fiction | 1959 | russian | |
| wisconsin death trip | michael lesy | book | nonfiction | 1973 | english | this book!! it's a collection of photographs from a rural-ish area of wisconsin in the 1890s, paired with reproductions of local newspaper articles and organized by year. the 1890s were a really rough time, economically, and the news articles are filled with stories of people who resorted to violence against themselves, their families, or their community out of desperation (see "brain broken," previous note). near the end of the decade, though, the recession started to lift, and you can see this upturn play out in the book. |
| the sponsored life | leslie savan | book | nonfiction | 1994 | english | |
| no logo | naomi wolf | book | nonfiction | 1999 | english | |
| the last days of judas iscariot | stephen adly guirgis | play | drama | 2005 | english | for my interview with a vampire (2022) stans out there: eric bogosian was in the original cast of this as satan. |
| an oresteia | anne carson/aiskhylos/sophokles/euripides | play | drama | 2009 | ancient greek | |
| the seventh function of language | laurent binet | book | fiction | 2017 | french | |
| real life | brandon taylor | book | fiction | 2020 | english | |
| piranesi | susanna clarke | book | fiction/fantasy | 2020 | english | |
| h of h playbook | anne carson | book | fiction | 2021 | english | |
| to walk alone in the crowd | antonio munoz molina | book | nonfiction | 2021 | spanish | |
| trust | hernan diaz | book | fiction | 2022 | english | |
| the salt grows heavy | cassandra khaw | novella | fiction/horror | 2023 | english | |
| babel | r.f. kuang | book | fiction/fantasy | 2022 | english | |
| y/n | esther yi | book | fiction | 2023 | english | |
| people collide | isle mcelroy | book | fiction | 2023 | english | |
| white cat, black dog | kelly link | collection/short story | fiction/horror | 2023 | english | |
| our share of night | mariana enriquez | book | fiction/horror | 2023 | spanish | |
| the curator | owen king | book | fiction/fantasy | 2023 | english | |
| until you continue to behave | carter davis | book | fiction/sci-fi | 2019 | english | i really enjoyed this book when i first read it, but it took a while to really set in, which is why i'm adding it to my favs list almost a year later. it's a cartoony, psychadelic, multimedia corporate dystopia story told by a truly weird narrator who works for a medical technology company, and the ways that that breaks bad are unsettlingly realistic. there's a scene where the narrator meets someone who relies on one of his company's faulty medical devices and asks for help fixing it, something the narrator can't do, that i can't get out of my head. |
| ancient greek · danish · english · french · german · hungarian · japanese · russian · spanish | ||||||||
c. 450 bc: prometheus bound by aiskhylos
1881: ghosts by henrik ibsen
1895: the king in yellow by robert w. chambers
1941: chess story by stefan zweig
1949: crooked house by agatha christie
1958:
1959: invitation to a beheading by vladimir nabokov
1973: wisconsin death trip by michael lesy
1975: amphigorey too by edward gorey
1983: amphigorey also by edward gorey
1994: the sponsored life by leslie savan
1999: no logo by naomi klein
2002: if not, winter: fragments of sappho by anne carson
2005:
2006: the sea of monsters by rick riordan
2007: the titan's curse by rick riordan
2008: the battle of the labyrinth by rick riordan
2009:
2012:
2013: london falling by paul cornell
2014: horrorstor by grady hendrix
2015:
2016: the ballad of black tom by victor lavalle
2017:
2018: the poppy war by r.f. kuang
2019:
2020:
2021:
2022:
2023: