The Cut
The Cut
These are all books I’ve read since January 1st 2017 that I thought were good, but not good enough to make the top 100, and others that I didn’t like for whatever reason. I’m not a reviewer – just a curator. Either a book gets my stamp of approval – meaning I enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to anyone – or it doesn’t.
Okay, enough talk, get reading bitches!
Key: (F)=Fiction (NF)=Non Fiction (C)=Classic (OW)=On Writing (P)=Philosophy/Self Help
Currently Reading
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (C)
Where Nightmares Come From – (various) (OW)
The Original Grimm’s Fairy Tales (F)
Reality is Broken – Jane McGonigal (P)
Made The Cut
The 5 People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom (F)
NOS4R2 – Joe Hill (F)
The Nightrunners – Joe Landsdale (F)
Influence – Robert Cialdini (P)
Cemetary Dance Magazine 69 (F)
Dune – Frank Herbert (F)
Discipline Equals Freedom – Jocko Willink (P)
Writing Down the Bones – Natalie Goldberg (OW)
12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos – Jordan Peterson (P)
Musashi – Eiji Yoshikawa (F)
Writing Tools – Roy Clark (OW)
How to Stop Worrying and Live – Dale Carnegie (P)
How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie (P)
Midnight Echo #11 (F)
Junky – William S. Burroughs (F)
Midnight Sun – Ramsey Campbell (F)
Ancestor – Scott Sigler (F)
I was Blind but now I see – James Altucher (P)
How to Win Friends and Influence People (P)
The Martian – Andy Weir (F)
Panzram – Journal of Murder (NF)
Angel’s Game – Carlos Ruiz Zafon (F)
Watcher in the Shadows – Carlos Ruiz Zafon (F)
Nocturnal – Scott Sigler (F)
Madam Bovary – Gustave Flaubert (C)
Bird By Bird – Ann Lamott (OW)
Permutation City – Greg Egan (F)
The Uses of Enchantment – Bruno Bettleheim (OW)
Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Ransom Riggs (F)
The View from the Cheap Seats – Neil Gaiman (OW)
The Passage – Justin Cronin (F)
The Warrior Ethos – Steven Pressfield (OW)
The Knowledge – Steven Pressfield (F)
Letters to Lucilius – Seneca (P)
Killing Rommel – Steven Pressfield (F)
Mothertongue – Bill Bryson (NF)
Wild – Cheryl Strayed (P)
Trigger Warning – Neil Gaiman (F)
Extreme Ownership – Jocko Willink (P)
A Brief Guide to William Shakespeare – Peter Ackroyd (NF)
Danse Macabre – Stephen King (NF)
Watership Down – Richard Adams (C)
If This is a Man – Primo Levi (P)
Night Music – John Connolly (F)
The Writing Life – Annie Dillard (OW)
Homo Deus – Yuval Noah Harari (NF)
Did Not Make The Cut
My most common reasons for disliking a book are, in no order: 1. Shit writing 2. Not my thing 3. Irritating characters 4. Long winded/wordy 5. Pretentious 6. Boring 7. It was mediocre/neutral 8. I lost interest due to my own short attention span 9. Any combination of the above. I should also mention that a lot of famous classic books considered to be works of genius do not make the cut. This is because, while I might appreciate the value and brilliance of these books and believe them to be great, I did not necessarily enjoy reading them. A lot of classical literature is not easy or enjoyable to read just because of the style of the writing. Since my ‘Cut’ is all about my personal reading pleasure, I can’t include them.
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky (C)
Don Quixote – Miguel Cervantes (C)
The Pilo Family Circus – Will Elliot (F)
Darkness, Tell Us – Richard Laymon (F)
The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli (C)
The Vikings – Robert Wernicke (NF)
101 Great Lives – Patrick Pringle (NF)
The Wicked Boy – Kate Summerscale (NF)
The Iliad – Homer (C)
Dubliners – James Joyce (C)
The Widow – Fiona Barton (F)
