#stardate 2k17

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They’ve already sold out of slots but this is proof of a single good higher power.

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Every year I put together a list of the 10 best books I read, ordered by when I read them. 2017 was... truly something... and I only liked 3 of the 26 on my list. BUT this was evened out by this year’s books now being my all-time favorites (and you all get to enjoy a very long list of dishonourable mentions.)

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov: I was lucky to find a really good translation of this with footnotes (thank you Richard Pevear) and I’m going to be obsessed with it until I die. Romance, religion, absurdism, and oppression feat the devil, hotboy, a bottle of sunflower oil, a succubus, an ugly twink, and his dramatic as hell boyfriend who’s a furry with a gun. And that list doesn’t even include The Master or Margarita. 

Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders: Life-changingly beautiful. Which I know is a dramatic claim but it honestly kind of made me want to cry and never stop.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson: This is one of the most popular books in the US for a reason. My two cents are that I would never have read a book just about H.H Holmes, or a book just about the architecture of the world’s fair, but somehow combining the two is one of the best stories ever told. I also love the little details like dinner menus and street addresses.

Honourable Mentions

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith: I will spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why this woman hated gay men so much, but I don’t think there’s really an answer. Either way it’s impossible for me not to get wrapped up in stories of intrigue, insanity, and murder.

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut:  ‘Can a person be defined by their actions and nothing else?’ is a pretty heavy question, so it deserves a pretty heavy answer (this was a rough one to read but still quality KVJ.)

Strange Weather by Joe Hill: I’m always wary of putting in short story/novella collections as a single work since they tend to vary in quality, but cor Joe Hill is a good writer. I absolutely loved one of these (I’ll leave it to you to find out which), and one of them really freaked me out because it’s set exactly where I grew up and where I commuted all summer (I’ve never experienced that in a story before so every time he would mention a specific street name I was just... ‘BLUHAHE.’)

Dishonourable Mentions

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs: I really liked Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children when I was fourteen and wanted to finish the series for nostalgia’s sake. If there’s one thing I learned this past year it’s never revisit anything for nostalgia’s sake this man cannot write.

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater: I read all four books over the course of the year because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out the hype and was just waiting for them to get good. Or maybe I’m just a masochist. Either way, not terrible but very, very, underwhelming.

Welcome to Night Vale by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor: Like reading a philosophy textbook written by Hot Topic itself.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel In Letters by Mark Dunn: Literally losing the alphabet is a great and interesting concept, but when it’s this flowery and romantic with a ‘mysterious solution’ that’s far too easy notice? No thanks.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King: I’ve been told by multiple people that the Dark Tower series gets really good if you can just make it through the first two books. I made it through and lost any and all desire to continue. He wrote the first book in college, so maybe the sheer number of boobs and bullets is easier to dismiss but THEN we come to...

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King: Racism!!!!!!!! Disguised as anti-racism!!!! My favorite!!!! (Botched a much more interesting concept with this one too, yikes Stephen.)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer: Has this man ever actually talked to a child or an autistic person or an autistic child? Also I’m a pretentious bastard but this was a bit much even for me.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh why are you so obsessed with underage sex and weird kinks and ghost rape and dream incest and classical music and also acting like there’s a venn diagram between all of these things? How and why are you doing this? 

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai: This was one of those books that was all the worse because I absolutely loved the first 100 pages of it. And then it wasn’t fun anymore and just a garbage fire. Respect Women Juice.

[cctinsleybaxter]

this man is literally setting us up for him livetweeting his own untimely demise

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Offering to a God and Cursed Sunchips Place spotted in Boulder.

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I just-

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2017 sketchbook

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@ God why the fuck do our neighbors have a baby opposum in a hamster ball out in the hallway of our complex I’m so tired

[cctinsleybaxter]

I was having an existential crisis last night and now these are the top two things on my September to-do list.

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Selected Bar Quotes From My Friend That Led To Me Ordering Another Pint And Also Wanting To Die

“I should buy some jeggings”

“Better get a stick shift because we’re coming in clutch”

“Anyway a run in with the cops was always on my to-do list so 6 months probation seems reasonable” -literally, I am not kidding, seconds later- “O fuck we gotta go to the weed store I want edibles for my plane ride”

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Wow you CANNOT drive in these

My friend putting on some eclipse glasses immediately after I handed them to him last night

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Just tell us about anything! Spread the news! Whatever news there is!

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Hi Brett

There’s got to be a fix for this.

[cctinsleybaxter]

Argentinian artist Marta Minujín has used thousands of prohibited books to construct a replica of the Parthenon in Athens on a Nazi book-burning site in Kassel, Germany. All the books were donated by the public from a shortlist of over 170 titles that are either currently or formerly prohibited. [X] [X]

[cctinsleybaxter]

Shoutout to the guy sitting in the row ahead of me on the airplane who spent over two hours telling the woman next to him his life’s story. I’m glad for you that she was interested, but shockingly enough I could also hear you, and I now know more about you than I do my closest comrades and probably even myself. Most of all I hate that I’m going to store this information for no reason, and will mentally have February 8th, 1993 marked on the calendar as your birthday for the rest of my natural life.

[cctinsleybaxter]

New horrifying aesthetic: Airport shop playing radio on the muted speakers and Sunday Bloody Sunday comes on. No one says anything. It’s completely silent aside from one person’s luggage rolling over the carpet.