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Reader: Butch Perez, ethnographic filmmaker

Butch’s Top 10+

“Some novels that entertained me, some new, some old, in no particular order. There were others.”

1. Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism, both by Gilbert Hernandez. “Amazing characters living in a Mexican town called Palomar. Magic realism really works in graphic novels. From Fully Booked.”

2. Logicomix: An Epic Search for the Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis et al. “A fictional biography of Bertrand Russell in graphic novel form, by four Greeks. Amazon.”

3. By Night In Chile by Roberto Bolaño. “An early Bolaño that takes on the Latin American literary elite and the Opus Dei. Brilliant writing, also very funny. A gift bought in St. Mark’s in NYC.”

4. The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri by David Bajo. “A novel about novels. National Book Store.”

5. Fool by Christopher Moore. “The story of Pocket, King Lear’s jester. Powerbooks.”

6. Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers. “Powers, a favorite, takes on the science of happiness. Fully Booked.”

7. Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem. “Set in Manhattan in the near future, the funniest novel yet by Lethem, another favorite. It’s even funnier if you light up everytime a character does. Fully Booked.”

8. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, River of Gods by Ian McDonald. “An emerging sci-fi genre, futuristic novels set in the exotic Third World, Bangkok and India respectively. Amazon.”

9. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. “A retelling of the Faust and Pontius Pilate myths set in Moscow of the 30s. A new translation of a classic of modern Russian literature. Powerbooks.”

10. Fairyland by Paul McAuley, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Blood Music by Greg Bear. “Catching up with sci-fi classics. National Book Store.”

11. The Godfather of Kathmandu by John Burdett. “Finally, the fourth and last of the Detective Sonchai series will be released next month. Hope I get a Kindle for Christmas, so I’ll be able to read it on a flight from Bangkok to Kathmandu in the spring next year.”