2019 reading

In 2018, I decided to keep track of my reading in order to avoid falling back into the bottomless rut that is Marvel Unlimited. Sharing my 2018 reading list turned out to be a pretty good way of keeping myself honest, so I decided to repeat it for 2019.

I didn't count any ongoing serialized comics, journal articles, or other short-form works. Nor did I count any books I read strictly for work; technically that category should include the George Pérez books and Panther's Rage, but I can't pretend I wasn't also reading them for me. Here's what I read in 2019:

January

Francis Spufford, Red Plenty

Howard Chaykin, The Shadow: Blood and Judgment

Eric Nolen-Weathington, Modern Masters vol. 2: George Pérez

Jonathan Abrams, All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of the Wire

Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark, Gotham Central vol. 1

Laurent Binet, HHhH

Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon, The Winter Men

February

Hartley Lin, Young Frances

Don McGregor and Billy Graham, Panther’s Rage

George RR Martin, ed., Wild Cards: Mississippi Roll

Adrian Tomine, Killing and Dying

March

Marlon James, Black Leopard Red Wolf

Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark, Gotham Central vol. 2

April

Dean Motter and Michael Lark, Batman: Nine Lives

Sophie Goldstein, House of Women

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl

May

Howard Chaykin, Time²: The Epiphany

Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Jonathan Coe, Expo 58

June

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson, Astro City (2013)

July

Francis Spufford, Golden Hill

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Don McGregor and Gene Colan, Panther’s Quest

Cole Pauls, Dakwäkãda Warriors

August

Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, Crisis on Infinite Earths

Jacques Tardi, The Arctic Marauder

Christopher Lawrence, George Pérez: Storyteller

Tom Peyer and Jamal Igle, The Wrong Earth

September

Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Olivier Coipel, and Chris Batista, Legion Lost/Legion Worlds/The Legion

Eleanor Davis, The Hard Tomorrow

Emil Friis Ernst, Dr. Murder and the Island of Death

Ed Piskor, Hip Hop Family Tree vol. 3

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies

November

Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

Naoki Urasawa, Pluto vol. 7

Sarah Glidden, Rolling Blackouts

December

Naoki Urasawa, Pluto vol. 8

Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie

Jaime Hernandez, Is This How You See Me?

Howard Chaykin, Power and Glory

Christian Bök, Eunoia

No, you didn't miss October. After a couple of false starts I realized it had been nearly three months since I'd read any prose fiction, so I promptly dropped all the comics and started Foucault's Pendulum, which I finished in November. I went back and finished one of the comics (Rolling Blackouts); I've yet to pick up the others. (I don't know if Ed Piskor has lost all interest in Hip Hop Family Tree, but I'm afraid I have.)

This year saw some real disappointments. I've written here before about how the Wild Cards relaunch rekindled my interest in the franchise, but Mississippi Roll pretty much killed my enthusiasm for it. The books have shifted from yearly or biennial releases focused around tightly plotted storylines to more-than-once-a-year anthologies rushing to capitalize on a market that's eager for anything with George R.R. Martin's name on it, and it shows. This one ended up in a little free library and I still feel slightly bad about that.

Black Leopard Red Wolf was released to much fanfare from reviewers who seemed to think that the novelty of an epic fantasy in an African setting was enough. But Marlon James doesn't do much else that's new with the fantasy conventions, and that--along with his inability or lack of inclination to look past the misogyny and racism of his characters--made this the biggest letdown of the year. I checked this one out of the library, and I'm glad; James is not an author whose work I will be supporting again.

Fortunately, I also read plenty of wonderful books. Red Plenty was the first novel I finished this year, and I began to worry that I wouldn't find another one as good. But it had some stiff competition from HHhH, Young Frances, Killing and Dying, Golden Hill, The Name of the Rose, The Hard Tomorrow, Is This How You See Me?, and Eunoia, which ended the year on a note almost as strong as the one that began it. Gotham Central, Panther's Quest, and Patricia Highsmith were all long overdue, and I'm glad I finally finished Pluto.

Among the books I reread, I began to appreciate Panther's Rage a lot more after teaching it for a class on diversity in superhero comics; Don McGregor and Billy Graham not only improved on their predecessors by leaps and bounds, they also surpassed many of their successors. The Winter Men and the 2013-2018 Astro City were pleasures to revisit, and the Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning Legion holds up really well. Crisis on Infinite Earths will always call out to my inner twelve-year-old, although I must admit that silencing that kid is the whole point of this exercise.

So yeah, there was some backsliding. Still, I didn't rejoin Marvel Unlimited or subscribe to DC Universe, and I found some great books. I'll let you know how 2020 turns out.


Marc Singer teaches English at Howard University in Washington, DC. He is the author of Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies and Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics.