100, or, the end of 52/52

So, this is my one hundredth post here! That’s weird, considering how short a time I’ve been posting here… In honor of this excellently numbered post, I will post an excellently numbered list: the books I read this year. 52 books in 52 weeks ended up being 44 and change, but I am still glad I tried! Not exactly an impressively literary list, but here it is, roughly in order of how they were read.

1. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
2. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
3. You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem
4. Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
5. Maus by Art Spiegelman
6. Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me ed. by Ben Karlin
7. Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
8. The Mole Sisters series by Roslyn Shchwartz
9. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
10. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
11. A Woman Trapped in a Woman’s Body by Lauren Weedman
12. As the World Burns: 50 Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan
13. Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith
14. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
15. Dogs and Water by Anders Nilsen
16. The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot
17. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
18. At a Crossroads by Kate Williamson
19. The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken
20. Quiet, Please by Scott Douglas
21. It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden
22. Legacy of Luna by Julia Butterfly Hill
23. Ways of Seeing by John Berger
24. Joseph by Nicolas Robel
25. Print Liberation by Nick Paparone, Jaime Dillon, and Lurin Jenison
26. The Diary of Frida Kahlo
27. Watchmen by Alan Moore
28. Screenprinting by Robert Adam and Carol Robertson
29. Monologues for the Coming Plague by Anders Nilsen
30. Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi
31. Maus II by Art Spiegelman
32. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and other Stories by Carson McCullers
33. Craft, Inc. by Mateo Ilasco
34. A Walk In the Woods by Bill Bryson
35. Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
36. The New Kings of Nonfiction ed. by Ira Glass
37. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
38. All the Names by Jose Saramago
39. Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
40 and 41. Two Love and Rockets collections, by the Hernandez brothers
42. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
43. By it’s Cover by Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger
44. That Salty Air by Tim Sievert

45-52? Countless art books that I kept on my desk this year as references… mostly pictures, but I certainly learned something from them!

top three of the year: All the Names by Saramago, Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut, and The Savage Detectives by Bolaño. Woo hoo!

so glad i found these tonight. really felt fitting to this evening. found them here.

also, anything in the Great Loves series published by Penguin. Beautiful, right?

reading list

so, i’m getting ready to post the list of books i read this year (not quite a book a week, but still worth mentioning!), and i’ve already starting compiling a list of books i want to read next year. a lot of these additions to my reading list were based on the beautiful cover design (among other things), so i thought i’d share a few with you.

Roberto Bolaño’s insanely long masterpiece written in the last years of his life, 2666. Beautifully designed by Charlotte Strick.

This one seemed interesting (this is the UK version).

This one too, designed by Paul Sahre:

And this one, which makes me laugh:

more to come.

cacti!

i can’t wait to go visit my cacti/succulents on tuesday! i hope zac has been watering them while i was away.

beautiful photos taken by ellyyap.

beautiful photos by katie baum. found via the beholder.

I seem to be posting quite a bit of balloon related art here. I am intrigued by this fact. Maybe you’ve noticed some patterns, too? Anyway, I decided to tag all the balloon art I post. You can click the link at the bottom of the post to see the other posts on this topic. FUN!

Both these photos were found on 20×200, the first is by Dorthe Alstrup, and the second was made by Juliane Eirich.

Found in the klein family’s etsy shop. Their super short bio: “we are lovers of nature, gardens and revolutionary ideas and people.” Totally something I can get behind.

found on ffffound.

Photos by Alex Prager. Very Hitchcock-esque, no? Reminds me of Cindy Sherman’s film stills.

Can’t figure out who made this. I know I found it on Dezeen, though.

Clementine Granita

this would have been the perfect treat after you had your wisdom teeth out. recipe here.

aint life grand?

Amateur Photographer has an interesting article about Poloroid’s idea of putting out an instant printing digital camera… if i unserstand it right… This was back in August, though, so who knows if anything ever happened with that.

so so so pretty. made by loyal loot collective (what a name!).

a pie chart.

not sure what kind of pie this is… lemon? squash? a little too yellow to be pumpkin. found here.

Knitted by  Theresa Honeywell.

Ana Serrano may be the most amazing artist I’ve found all year. I am in love with this sculpture. There are more detailed pics on her website.

really cute animation. found on booooooom.

a painting called “kitten explosion” by Shawna McLellan. Enough said.