As a librarian people often ask me, “What are you reading?” I usually tell them that my tastes range wide. I don’t typically read popular fiction, and tend to lean heavily toward nonfiction. Since its the end of the year, here’s the list of books I’ve read and movies I’ve watched in 2013. At the bottom of the list are my top five for each category, including a list of my favorite amputee related books and movies.
1. Midnight Rising, Tony Horwitz
2. The World Atlas of Beer, Tim Webb and Stephen Beaumont
3. History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage
4. The Eagle and the Raven, James Michener
5. Fly Guy Presents: Sharks, Tedd Arnold
6. The Men’s Club, Leonard Michaels
7. Blog Inc.: Blogging for Passion, Profit, and to Create Community,
Joy Deangdeelert Cho, Meg Mateo Ilasco, and Grace Bonney
8. 999 Tadpoles, Ken Kimura and Yasunari Murakami
9. Winter’s Tail: How One Little Dolphin Learned to Swim Again, Craig Hatkoff,
Juliana Hatkoff and Isabella Hatkoff
10. What Teachers Make, Taylor Mali
11. Franklin and Winston: An intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, Jon Meacham
12. Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters, Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment
13. Capturing Camelot, Stanley Tretick’s Iconic Images of the Kennedys, Kitty Kelly
14. Same Sun Here, Silas House and Neela Vaswani
15. Start and Run a Creative Services Business, Susan Kirkland
16. Wise Men, Stuart Nadler
17. Come on Rain, Karen Hesse and Jon J. Muth
18. The Falling Raindrop, Neil Johnson and Joel Chin
19. Did a Dinosaur Drink this Water, Robert E. Wells
20. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce and Joe Bluhm
21. This Moose Belongs to Me, Oliver Jeffers
22. St. Patrick’s Day, Gail Gibbons
23. Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer
24. Maggie McNair has Sugar Bugs in There, Sheila Booth-Alberstadt
25. Catherine the Great, Robert Massie
26. ABCs of Baseball, Peter Golenbock and Dan Andreasen
27. The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Alexandra Fuller
28. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. Different Seasons, “The Body”
“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” Stephen King
30. Carrie, Stephen King
31. Fairhope in the Roaring 20s, Cathy Donelson
32. Bossy Pants, Tina Fey
33. Between East and West, Anne Applebaum
34. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman
35. The World’s Strongest Librarian, Josh Hanagarne
36. Isaac’s Storm, Erik Larson
37. Dubliners, James Joyce
38 The Big House, George Howe Colt
39. The Day the Crayons Quit, Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers
40. Men on Strike: Why Men are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream-and Why it Matters, Helen Smith
41. Blogging for Dummies, Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley
42. The Odyssey, Homer (Robert Fagles Translation)
43. The Iliad, Homer (Robert Fagles Translation)
44. Best Foot Forward, Ingo Arndt
45. The Matchbox Diary, Paul Fleischman and Bagram Ibatoulline
46. Wumbers, Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld
47. The Lump of Coal, Lemony Snicket and Brett Helquist
48. The Alabama Night Before Christmas, E. J. Sullivan and Ernie Eldredge
49. The Killers, Ernest Hemingway
50. The Spirit of Fairhope, Dean Mosher and Megrez Mosher
51. To The Nines, Janet Evanovich
Movies
1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. Fistful of Dollars
3. For a Few Dollars More
4. Beasts of the Southern Wild
5. Argo
6. Lords of Dogtown
7. Rust and Bone
8. 42
9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
10. Night of the Hunter
11. The Great Gatsby
12. Gangster Squad
13. Pixar Animated Shorts
14. Silver Linings Playbook
15. Hemingway and Gellhorn
16. Carrie
17. Quincy M. E.
18. One Crazy Summer
19. Despicable Me
20. Back to School
21. The Way Way Back
22. Feasting on Asphalt
23. Love Song for Bobby Long
24. Zombieland
25. Moon
26. Louis C. K.
27. Better Off Dead
28. Cinderella Man
29. The Paperboy
30. Boardwalk Empire Seasons 2 and 3
31. The Raven
32. Fenway Park 100 Years
33. Monsters U
34. The Heat
35. Better Off Dead
36. Cinderella Man
37. The Paperboy
38. Searching for Sugar Man
39. Good Ol’ Freda Fairhope Film Festival
40. Ginger and Rosa “FFF”
50. (Notes on) Biology “FFF”
51. Chasing Mavericks
52. World War Z
53. Memento
54. Robot and Frank
55. The Words
56. Point Break
57. The Killers
58. American Hustle
59. King’s Row
Top Five Movies
American Hustle
King’s Row
Silver Linings Playbook
The Way Way Back
Argo
Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man
Animated: (Notes On) Biology
Top Five Books
The Odyssey
What Teachers Make
Men on Strike
Legend of Colton Bryant
The Great Gatsby
Picture Book: The Day the Crayons Quit
Top Five with Amputee Characters
King’s Row
Rust and Bone
Same Sun Here
The Eagle and The Raven
Winter’s Tail
Stump The Librarian 
A great book with a one-legged man as the main character is the dark, comedic, surreal, brilliant novel by Flann O’Brien (which is one of the many pseudonyms used by Irish writer Brian O’Nolan), _The Third Policeman_. The book was written in 1940 or so, but published posthumously in 1967. During O’Nolan’s life and still today he is considered one of the three greatest Irish modern and/or post modern authors along with James Joyce (who was both friend to and fan of O’Nolan) and Samuel Beckett. They all wrote when literature was shifting from modernism to postmodernism, and at least O’Nolan and James wrote in both styles (I’m no expert on this, but I’ve heard Joyce’s Ulysses was the greatest modernist novel and His Finnegans Wake was the greatest postmodernist).
Anyway, this strange novel (in which the lead character is not the only amputee – indeed, another one-legged man tells him that all one-legged men are in league with one another!) is too hard to summarize, partially because of all the surreal aspects, and also because there is a spoiler, was laugh out loud funny even when getting a little dark (nothing gory) or when it got bewildering. Actually, the bewildering parts (the strange “scientific” explanations by a Dr. DeSelby, which usually appear in footnotes, footnotes that parody academic argumentation, or the odd happenings that everyone but the main character seem to take as ordinary – people turning into bicycles, for instance) were often the most amusing. O’Brien had the gift of gab, and had a mastery over language (two languages, in fact – he spoke and wrote fluently in both English and Irish), it is a thrill just to see him spin a yarn. This book got a huge boost in popularity (to say the least) when the TV show with a cult following, “Lost,” briefly showed a character grabbing a copy of the book in a five second long scene. “Lost” fans, ever eager to track down clues to the show, swamped the tiny publisher for copies. TV can work for books!
Sorry for rambling, but as you and I are in league, I’m sure you will understand… 😉