frankkevinmurphy.blogspot.com: Reading and viewing highlights 2018

2023

● Poverty, By America
Matthew Desmond

● The Vulnerables
Sigrid Nunez

● Who By Fire
War, Atonement, And
The Resurrection of Leonard Cohen
Matti Friedman

● At Night All
Blood is Black
David Diop

● Atonement
Ian McEwan

● A New Ireland
How Europe's Most Conservative Country Became Its Most Liberal
Niall O'Dowd

● Strangers to Ourselves
Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
Rachel Aviv

● Killers of the Flower Moon
The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
David Grann

● The Lost City of Z
A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann

● The Wren, The Wren
Anne Enright

● The Fraud
Zadie Smith

● Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

● Don't Tell Anybody The Secrets I Told You
Lucinda Williams

● Old God's Time
Sebastian Barry

● Just Once, No More
Charles Foran

● If On a Winter's
Night a Stranger
Italo Calvino

● Cloudsplitter
Russell Banks

● The Story of the
Lost Child
Elena Ferrante

● The Idiot
Elif Batuman

● Some Hellish
Nicholas Herring

2022

● Recollections of
My Nonexistence
Rebecca Solnit

● The Promise
Damon Galgut

● Let Me Tell You
What I Mean
Joan Didion

● Lessons
Ian McEwan

● American Urbanist /
How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life
Richard K. Rein

● Where You End
and I Begin
Leah McLaren

● A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews

● Walking Home / The Life and Lessons of a City Builder
Ken Greenberg

● Interior States
Meghan O'Gieblyn

● Stray Dogs
Rawi Hage

● Irish Journal
Heinrich Böll

● We Don't Know Ourselves / A Personal History of Modern Ireland
Fintan O'Toole

● A Brief History of Equality
Thomas Piketty

● In Transit
Mavis Gallant

● Reptile House
Robin McLean

● The Sentence
Louise Erdrich

● The Bond King − How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost it All
Mary Childs

● Men Without Women
Haruki Murakami

● The Double
Fyodor Dostoevsky

● How to Avoid a
Climate Disaster
Bill Gates

● Homesick
for Another World
Ottessa Moshfegh

● Scarborough
Catherine Hernandez

● The Night Watchman
Louise Erdrich

● Moby Dick
Herman Melville

● Pity the Beast
Robin McLean
● Year of the Monkey
Patti Smith

2021

Fight Night / Miriam Toews
People Cities : The Life and Legacy of Jan Gehl / Annie Matan + Peter Newman
God Human Animal Machine : Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning / Meghan O'Gieblyn
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead / Olga Tokarczuk
What Are You Going Through / Sigrid Nunez
The Friend / Sigrid Nunez
Shuggie Bain / Douglas Stuart
Flights / Olga Tokarczuk
Harlem Shuffle / Colson Whitehead
* Pilgrim at Tinker Creek / Annie Dillard
A Moveable Feast : Restored Edition / Ernest Hemingway
* To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
The Maytrees / Annie Dillard
* An American Childhood / Annie Dillard
* On Caaan's Side / Sebastian Barry

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**The Abundance / Annie Dillard
That Old Country Music / Kevin Barry
** Inside Story — A Novel / Martin Amis
Cascade / Craig Davidson
Emotionally Weird / Kate Atkinson
* Money : The True Story of a Made-Up Thing / Jacob Goldstein
A Thousand Moons / Sebastian Barry
The Committed / Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Sun Also Rises / Ernest Hemingway
Three Stories and Ten Poems / Ernest Hemingway
* Life After Life / Kate Atkinson
In Our Time / Ernest Hemingway
How to Pronounce Knife / Souvankham Thammavongsa
* When More is Not Better − Overcoming America's Obsession With Economic Efficiency / Roger L. Martin
Right of Way : Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America / Angie Schmitt
* Nomadland : Surviving America in the 21st Century / Jessica Bruder
Through the Garden / Lorna Crozier
The Lying Life of Adults / Elena Ferrante
No One is Talking About This / Patricia Lockwood
* The Great Believers / Rebecca Makkai
The Island Walkers / John Bemrose
** Priestdaddy / Patricia Lockwood
Death in Her Hands / Ottessa Moshfegh
Losing the Signal − The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry / Jacquie McNish, Sean Silcoff
👎 Snow / John Banville

2020

This Wheel's on Fire − Levon Helm and the Story of the Band / Levon Helm and Stephen Davis
Martin Eden / Jack London
Neighborhood / Emily Talen
*The Year of Magical Thinking / Joan Didion
The Celtic Twilight / W.B. Yeats
The Only Story / Julian Barnes
Love / Roddy Doyle
Strange Hotel / Eimear McBride
Palaces For The People − How social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization and the decline of civic life / Eric Klinenberg
The Water Dancer / Ta-Nehisi Coates
Dark Lies the Island / Kevin Barry
Maximum Canada − Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough / Doug Saunders
* Slouching Towards Bethlehem / Joan Didion
* Actress / Anne Enright
* The Price of Peace − Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes / Zachary D. Carter
People, Power, and Profits / Joseph E. Stiglitz
Julieta, Three Stories / Alice Munro, Foreword by Pedro Almodóvar
Our Lady of the Flowers / Jean Genet
Little Cat / Tamara Faith Berger
* The Hare With Amber Eyes, A Hidden Inheritance / Edmund de Waal
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves / Karen Joy Fowler
Recollections of My Nonexistence / Rebecca Solnit
* Maidenhead / Tamara Faith Berger
Queen Solomon / Tamara Faith Berger
The City is Not a Tree, The 50th Anniversary Edition / Christopher Alexander, ed Michael Mehaffy
Apeirogon / Colum McCann
Minor Monuments / Ian Maleney
A Change of Climate / Hilary Mantel
** Night Boat to Tangier / Kevin Barry
The Nickel Boys / Colson Whitehead
The Cockroach / Ian McEwan
* City of Bohane / Kevin Barry
* There Are Little Kingdoms / Kevin Barry
* Beatlebone / Kevin Barry
* Strong Towns, A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity / Charles Marohn
The Wreckage / Michael Crummey
The Dalkey Archive / Flann O'Brien
* Cane / Jean Toomer
Flights / Olga Tokarczuk

2019

* The Innocents / Michael Crummey
No Place To Go : How Public Toilets Fail Our Public Needs / Leslie Lowe
Chop Suey Nation / Ann Hui
Apron Strings / Jan Wong
A Man of the People / Chinua Achebe
Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf
I Heard You Paint Houses / Charles Brandt
Walking Home, The Life and Lessons of a City Builder / Ken Greenberg
The Walkable City : From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond / Mary Soderstrom
* My Year of Rest and Relaxation / Ottessa Moshfegh
Toronto Reborn / Ken Greenberg
* The Orphan Master's Son / Adam Johnson
* A Paradise Built in Hell / Rebecca Solnit
Machines Like Me / Ian McEwan
** The Places In Between / Rory Stewart
Original Prin / Randy Boyagoda
* Beirut Hellfire Society / Rawi Hage
* Deep River Night / Patrick Lane
Who the Hell is Jane Jacobs / Deborah Talbot
Woolgathering / Patti Smith
* Say Nothing : a True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland / Patrick Radden Keefe
Less / Andrew Sean Greer
Eileen / Ottessa Moshfegh
Application for Release from the Dream / Tony Hoagland
My Life / Anton Chekhov
* From the Fifteenth District / Mavis Gallant
Canadians Abroad (from Home Truths) / Mavis Gallant
* Lands of Lost Borders
Out of Bounds on the Silk Road / Kate Harris
Sing, Unburied, Sing / Jesmyn Ward
Where the Line Bleeds / Jesmyn Ward
Ties / Domenico Starnone
Urban Nation, Why We Need to Give Power Back to Cities to Make Canada Strong / Alan Broadbent
Washington Black / Esi Edugyan
DeNiro's Game / Rawi Hage
* Fifteen Dogs : An Apologue / André Alexis
Trick / Domenico Starnone
Precious Cargo / Craig Davidson
The Saturday Night Ghost Club / Craig Davidson
French Exit / Patrick deWitt

2018
Son of a Trickster / Eden Robinson
Traplines / Eden Robinson
Milkman / Anna Burns
Dubliners / James Joyce
Something for Everyone / Lisa Moore
I've Been Meaning To Tell You / David Chariandy
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know / Colm Tóibín
Women Talking : A Novel / Miriam Toews
The Sunset Limited / Cormac McCarthy
Birds of America : Stories / Lorrie Moore
Calypso / David Sedaris
A Bend in the River / V.S. Naipaul
Heart Berries : A Memoir / Terese Marie Mailhot
**The Story of Lucy Gault / William Trevor
Foe / Iain Reid
A Bit on the Side / William Trevor
*Warlight / Michael Ondaatje
E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island / Robert Amos
*Just Let Me Look at You : On Fatherhood / Bill Gaston
Us Vs Them — The Failure of Globalism / Ian Bremmer
*Brother / David Chariandy
Walking in the City With Jane: a Story of Jane Jacobs / Susan Hughes
*Playthings / Alex Pheby
***The God of Small Things / Arundhati Roy
Testimony / Robbie Robertson
Ted Harrison Collected / Robert Budd
At Swim-Two-Brids / Flann O'Brien
No Laughing Matter — The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien / Anthony Cronin
The Third Policeman / Flann O'Brien
Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Principles of Economic Life / Jane Jacobs
2017
Cataract City / Craig Davidson
Dark Age Ahead / Jane Jacobs
The Mother of All Questions / Rebecca Solnit
Martin John / Anakana Schofield
A Mariner's Guide to Self-Sabotage / Bill Gaston
Manhattan Beach / Jennifer Egan
Nutshell / Ian McEwan
Old Man, Old Dog / Tim Lander
Dead as Doornails / Anthony Cronin
Shanghai Grand / Taras Grescoe
Maximum Canada / Doug Saunders
Smile / Roddy Doyle
Daddy Lenin and Other Stories / Guy Vanderhaeghe
*His Bloody Project / Graeme Macrae Burnet
Through the Children's Gate / Adam Gopnik
*The Underground Railroad / Colson Whitehead
*Days Without End / Sebastian Barry
Canadian Cities and Sovereignty, The Lost Massey Lectures / Jane Jacobs
The Look of Architecture / Witold Rybczynski
Smith and Other Events / Paul St. Pierre
Not My Father's Son / Alan Cumming
The Nature of Economies / Jane Jacobs
Hillbilly Elegy / J.D. Vance
Paula Spencer / Roddy Doyle
The Woman Who Walked into Doors / Roddy Doyle
The New Urban Crisis / Richard Florida
Urban Acupuncture / Jaime Lerner
The Actual / Saul Bellow
*Lincoln in the Bardo / George Saunders
Distilled — A Memoir of Family, Seagram, Baseball, and Philanthropy / Charles Bronfman with Howard Green
*The Sympathizer / Viet Thanh Nguyen
Passion / Alice Monro
The Lost Daughter / Elena Ferrante
*Frantumaglia / A Writer's Journey — Elena Ferrante
Eyes on the Street — The Life of Jane Jacobs / Robert Kanigel
All That Man Is / David Szalay
*Here I Am / Jonathan Safran Foer
2016
Becoming Jane Jacobs / Peter L. Laurence
Swing Time / Zadie Smith
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / James Joyce
Re Joyce / Anthony Burgess
Ulysses / James Joyce
The Lesser Bohemians / Eimear McBride
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing / Eimear McBride
Two More Pints / Roddy Doyle
The Orchard Keeper / Cormac McCarthy
Everything is Illuminated / Jonathan Safran Foer
The Embassy of Cambodia / Zadie Smith
About a Boy / Nick Hornby
More Baths Less Talking / Nick Hornby
Fever Pitch / Nick Hornby
The Waves / Virginia Woolf
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close / Jonathan Safran Foer
The Wife / Anton Chekhov
Keynes Hayek — The Clash that Defined Modern Economics / Nicholas Wapshott
Where We Want to Live — Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities / Ryan Gravel
All the Light We Cannot See / Anthony Doerr
M Train — Patti Smith
A Thousand Farewells — A Reporter's Journey from Refuge Camp to the Arab Spring / Nahlah Ayed
The Brothers Karamazov — Book 1 / Fyodor Dostoevsky
Mountain City Girls — The McGarrigle Family Album / Anna and Jane McGarrigle
Sixty — A Diary of My Sixty-First Year / Ian Brown
The Nature of Economies / Jane Jacobs
The Dying Animal / Philip Roth
History's People — Personalities and the Past / Margaret MacMilllan
In Persuasion Nation / George Saunders
The Faraway Nearby / Rebecca Solnit

2015
Congratulations, by the Way — Some Thoughts on Kindness / George Saunders
Walking to Hollywood — Memories of Before the Fall / Will Self
The Flâneur — A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris / Edmund White
Death Without Company — A Walt Longmire Mystery / Craig Johnson
Thirteen Ways of Looking / Colum McCann
Crash / JG Ballard
Empire of the Sun / JG Ballard
Millennium People / JG Ballard
Cities and the Wealth of Nations — Principles of Economic Life / Jane Jacobs
The Story of the Lost Child / Elena Ferrante
The Days of Abandonment / Elena Ferrante
The Green Road / Anne Enright
Troubling Love / Elena Ferrante
The Economy of Cities / Jane Jacobs
Genius of Common Sense — Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities / Glenna Lang and Marjory Wunsch
Systems of Survival — A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics / Jane Jabobs
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay / Elena Ferrante
The Story of a New Name / Elena Ferrante
My Brilliant Friend / Elena Ferrante
Amnesia / Peter Carey
All My Puny Sorrows / Miriam Toews
Remainder / Tom McCarthy
Wanderlust — A History of Walking / Rebecca Solnit
C / Tom McCarthy
Story of the Eye / Georges Bataille
Nora Webster / Colm Tóibín
Washita / Patrick Lane
The Children Act / Ian McEwan
Goya / Robert Hughes
Soccernomics — Why England loses, why Spain Germany and Brazil win and why the US, Japan and even Iraq are destined to become the kings of the world's most popular sport / Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
Possibilities / Herbie Hancock
Invisible Cities / Italo Calvino

2014

The Zone of Interest / Martin Amis

I Sailed With Magellan / Stuart Dybek

Fire in the Hole / Elmore Leonard

Lionel Asbo — State of England / Martin Amis

Breaking Smith's Quarter Horse / Paul St. Pierre

Degrees of Nakedness / Lisa Moore

Traveling Sprinkler / Nicholson Baker

The Sea / John Banville

Open / Lisa Moore

The Myth of the Muslim Tide — Do Immigrants Threaten the West? / Doug Saunders

The Human Stain / Philip Roth

Joshua Then And Now / Mordecai Richler

Walkable City — How Downtown Can Save America. One Step at a Time / Jeff Speck

The War That Ended Peace — The Road to 1914 / Margaret MacMillan

Sweet Tooth / Ian McEwan

Remembrance / Alistair MacLeod

The Testament of Mary / Colm Tóibín

Dear Life / Alice Munro

Happy City — Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design / Charles Montgomery

The Book of Evidence / John Banville

The Guts / Roddy Doyle

The Orenda / Joseph Boyden

City Primeval / Elmore Leonard

Extraordinary / David Gilmour

Raylan / Elmore Leonard

Archive 2013

Mount Pleasant / Don Gillmor

True History of the Kelly Gang / Peter Carey

The Moonshine War / Elmore Leonard

Wrong About Japan — A Father's Journey With His Son / Peter Carey

Experience — A Memoir / Martin Amis

Caught / Lisa Moore

TransAtlantic / Colum McCann

Two Pints / Roddy Doyle

The Power Broker — Robert Moses and the Fall of New York / Robert A. Caro

Maus — A Survivor's Tale / Art Spiegelman

The Art of the Impossible — Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power 1972 - 1975 / Geoff Meggs & Rod Mickleburgh

Tenth of December: Stories / George Saunders

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! / Art Spieglelman

In The Shadow of No Towers / Art Spieglelman

Things I Didn't Know — A Memoir / Robert Hughes

Barcelona / Robert Hughes

NW / Zadie Smith

Out of the Blue / Jan Wong

The World / Bill Gaston

Pinboy — A Memoir / George Bowering

Cuba Libre / Elmore Leonard

True North — A Life in the Music Business / Bernie Finkelstein

The Secret Scripture / Sebastian Barry

Mortality / Christopher Hitchens

Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Volume 1 / Charles L Marohn Jr

Dance on the Earth — A Memoir / Margaret Laurence

A Jest of God / Margaret Laurence

Ablutions — Notes for a Novel / Patrick DeWitt

Me Talk Pretty One Day / David Sedaris

Barcelona — The Great Enchantress / Robert Hughes

The Deportees / Roddy Doyle

Paula Spencer / Roddy Doyle

Who Killed Mom? — A Delinquent Son's Meditation on Family, Mortality and Very Tacky Candles / Steve Burgess

Life of Pi / Yann Martel

Tinkers / Paul Harding

Outer Dark / Cormac McCarthy

Bonk — The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex / Mary Roach

Straphanger — Saving Our Cities and Ourselves From the Automobile / Taras Grescoe

The Secret Knowledge — On the Dismantling of American Culture / David Mamet

The Great Reset — How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosterity / Richard Florida

The Stone Angel / Margaret Laurence

Triumph of the City — How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier / Edward Glaeser

A Bird in the House / Margaret Laurence

The Life of Margaret Laurence / James King

A Long Long Way / Sebastian Barry

Running in the Family / Michael Ondaatje

Summertime / J.M. Coetzee

Annie Dunne / Sebastian Barry

Night Train / Martin Amis

An Emergency in Slow Motion — The Inner Life of Diane Arbus / William Todd Schultz

Diane Arbus: A Biography / Patricia Bosworth

February / Lisa Moore

A Visit From the Goon Squad / Jennifer Egan

Vox / Nicholson Baker

At The World's End — Curt Lang's Vancouver 1931 - 1998 / Claudia Cornwall

Mothers and Sons / Colm Tóibín

The Perfect Order of Things / David Gilmour

Bad Animals — A Father's Accidental Education in Autism / Joel Yanofsky

Sparrow Nights / David Gilmour

The Battle for Gotham — New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs / Roberta Brandes Gratz

The Empty Family / Colm Tóibín

Life & Times of Michael K / J.M. Coetzee

On Canaan's Side / Sebastian Barry

The Pregnant Widow / Martin Amis

Life / Keith Richards

Half Blood Blues / Esi Edugyan

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts — Close Encounters With Addiction / Gabor Maté

A Good Man / Guy Vanderhaeghe

House of Holes — A Book of Raunch / Nicholson Baker

Let the Great World Spin / Colum McCann

The Cat's Table / Michael Ondaatje

The Sense of an Ending / Julian Barnes

Disgrace / J.M. Coetzee

The Gathering / Anne Enright

Pigeon English / Stephen Kelman

The Forgotten Waltz / Anne Enright

The Blue Light Project / Timothy Taylor

Snowdrops / A.D. Miller

Far to Go / Alison Pick

The Sisters Brothers / Patrick DeWitt

The Comfort of Strangers / Ian McEwan

Maxwell Bates: Canada's Premier Expressionist of the 20th Century — His Art, Life and Prisoner of War Notebook / Nancy Townshend

Must You Go? My Life With Harold Pinter / Antonia Fraser

The Dead Republic — Book 3, The Last Roundup Trilogy / Roddy Doyle

Oh, Play That Thing — Book 2, The Last Roundup Trilogy / Roddy Doyle

Walking Home — The Life and Lessons of a City Builder / Ken Greenberg

Nemesis / Philip Roth

Last Words / George Carlin

Under an Afghan Sky — A Memoir of Captivity / Mellissa Fung

Black Dogs / Ian McEwan

A Star Called Henry — Book 1, The Last Roundup Trilogy / Roddy Doyle

God is Not Great — How Religion Poisons Everything / Christopher Hitchins

Makeshift Metropolis / Witold Rybczynski

Bullfighting / Roddy Doyle

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha / Roddy Doyle

All the Devils Are Here — The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis / Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera

A Freewheelin' Time — A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties / Suze Rotolo

Herzog / Saul Bellow

The Rational Optimist — How Prosperity Evolves / Matt Ridley

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal / Ben Mezrich

The Sentimentalists / Johanna Skibsrud

Chronicles Volume 1 / Bob Dylan

Doris McCarthy — My Life / Doris McCarthy with Charis Wahl

Arrival City — The Final Migration and Our Next World / Doug Saunders

St. Urbain's Horseman / Mordecai Richler

Belling the Cat — Essays Reports and Opinions / Mordecai Richler

Mordecai & Me / Joel Yanovski

Why Orwell Matters / Christopher Hitchens

The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 / Paul Krugman

Mordecai — The Life and Times / Charles Foran

The Film Club / David Gilmour

A Perfect Night to go to China / David Gilmour

On Songwriting / Bob Snider

Portnoy's Complaint / Philip Roth

Solar / Ian McEwan

Time's Arrow / Martin Amis

Urban Nation: Why We Need to Give Power Back to the Cities to Make Canada Strong / Alan Broadbent

The Golden Mean / Annabel Lyon

Money — A Suicide Note / Martin Amis

Economics For Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism / Jim Stanford

Hitch 22 / Christopher Hitchens

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept / Elizabeth Smart

Fordlandia — The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City / Greg Grandin

Deception / Philip Roth

When She Was Good / Philip Roth

The Story of the Night / Colm Tóibín

There is a Season / Patrick Lane

Marshall McLuhan / Douglas Coupland

Just Kids / Patti Smith

Brooklyn / Colm Tóibín

Picasso and Dora / James Lord

The Nature of Economies / Jane Jabobs

Homage to Barcelona / Colm Tóibín

Homage to Catalonia / George Orwell

Wrestling With Moses : How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City / Anthony Flint

"...a computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual's encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind."
— Marshall McLuhan, 1962

"I've been uplinked and downloaded, I've been inputted and outsourced. I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I'm a high-tech lowlife...and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond... so I'm interactive, I'm hyperactive and from time to time I'm radioactive "
— George Carlin, 2004

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Sunday, January 20, 2019

Reading and viewing highlights 2018

Reading and viewing
highlights 2018