Legal obligations: a best-of list.

Look it up.

It’s the law.

If you run a blog, the Google Cops, or whoever, make you create a year end best-of list.

They’ll revoke you’re blogging license if you don’t. There are stiff fines for failure. WWAATD is not made of money or pride, so a listing we will go.

Without further law skirting, Patrick Wensink’s 2011 year end salute.

My favorite books of 2011 (in mysterious orders only I understand)

Q by Evan Mandery (Harper)

Mandery did the impossible by not only making a time travel book that felt wholly logical, but also funny and heartbreaking. His previous book, First Contact, was good, but this was a powerful next step. Also, it was recently announced that the dude who made Pineapple Express is turning it into a movie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer (Artistically Declined)

Guys like Chad Kultgen receive a lot of applause for “Getting inside” the male psyche. But, in my brief exposure, they’re just getting inside the mind of douchebags. Tanzer conquers the idea by creating a quick little book that actually feels like a peek inside the thought process of responsible adult men. Guys you probably work with and have beers with and pass the stuffing to at holidays. Guys full of anxieties and second guessing and self deprecation. A powerfully fun book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wish You Were Me by Myriam Gurba (Future Tense)

Easily the funniest thing I read all year. The worst part about Wish is that there’s not more of it. Less than 50 pages worth of hilariously dark quips that would neatly fit into a raw-ass Twitter feed, it’s the only book that had me laughing out loud this year. Her micro pieces bumpered a few longer stories that were, on the whole, a thrill.

Favorite passage:

“Given that every ball sack holds so much potential human life, I don’t understand why people aren’t more eager to touch. People consistently approach pregnant women and tattooed people and without asking permission, lay hands. I want to be the first to cup a stranger’s balls and say, ‘Congratulations. I can feel them kicking.’”

Abbott Awaits by Chris Bachelder (Yellow Shoe Fiction)

Bachelder’s previous novel, U.S.! is on my list of all-time under-appreciated books. His follow up, Abbott, is far less crazed, but more bitingly true. Following one chapter for every day of a college professor’s summer break as he and his wife prepare for a second child’s arrival, each page shines with something funny and sad and honest.

(If you are thinking there is a connection between my love of Bachelder and Tanzer’s books about dudes growing up, you are correct. My first child was born this year. So sue me.)

 

 

 

 

Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910-2010 by Michael Kupperman (Fantagraphics Books)

Not really a graphic novel and not really a comic, Kupperman (author of the hilarious Tales Designed to Thrizzle series) chronicles the last hundred years of Twain’s life. You know, the part after he faked his own death. Twain hunts monsters, inspires Charles Schulz, goes to the moon, works as a grifter and more, in a Zelig-like life, punctuated by Kupperman’s drawings.

 

 

 

Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (Ecco)

A wild western about hired killers venturing through Woody Allen’s version of goldrush-era Pacific Northwest and California. I would blow this book a kiss if I could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books from 2011 burning a hole in my shelf

Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta (Scribner)

The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense by Tim Kinsella (Featherproof)

I will have my way with you both, be patient.

Music I liked