> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Best Books of 2013 - URL: https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/blog/2013/12/26/the-best-books-of-2013/ - Published: 2013-12-26T16:42:00.000Z - Updated: 2019-11-09T17:24:58.000Z - Description: A selection of the best books I read in 2013, including the best books I wish I had read years ago, the best book about Claude Lévi-Strauss and the most disappointing books. - Author: Ivar Hagendoorn - Tags: Blog, Literature, Non-Fiction ### Best Fiction Jaume Cabré: Confessions Mikhail Shishkin: The Light and the Dark Karl Ove Knausgaard: My Struggle. Second Book Confessions by Jaume Cabré is one of the few novels that I know in which the experimental style is functional, although this doesn't become clear until chapter 33 if I remember correctly. It's one of the best novels of the 21st century. The same goes for The Light and the Dark by Mikhail Shishkin. It is a tribute to the imagination. ### Best Book I Wish I Had Read Years Ago Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian Both Under the Volcano and Blood Meridian are amazing reads. ### Best Non-Fiction Charles C. Mann: 1493\. Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Emile Simpson: War From the Ground Up Occasionally I pick up a book that lies outside my field of interest. War From the Ground Up is such a book. I learned a lot from reading it. Todays wars are different from medieval and 20th century wars and require a different analytical toolkit. Emile Simpson served in Afghanistan and can speak with authority about the theory and practice of war. ### Best Economics Joe Studwell: How Asia Works How Asia Works is an excellent book. It should be on the recommended if not the required reading list of every course in macroeconomics. ### Most Disturbing Laurence Smith: [The New North. The World in 2050](https://www.ivarhagendoorn.com/blog/2013/02/03/laurence-smith-the-new-north-the-world-in-2050/) ### Best Book About Claude Lévi-Strauss Patrick Wilcken: Claude Lévi-Strauss. The Poet in the Laboratory After finishing The Poet In the Laboratory one question haunted me for weeks: what happened to the monkey that held on to Lévi-Strauss' boots for weeks as he travelled through the Amazon rainforest? ### Most Disappointing David Mitchell: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet Alice Munro: Runaway Hans Fallada: Jeder stirbt für sich allein I enjoyed reading Too Much Happiness so I picked up another short story collection by Alice Munro. Perhaps I should have let more time pass in between reading, because read in succession the stories appear to follow the same template and feature the same kind of characters. I find it hard to criticize Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Alone in Berlin), because of the true story upon which it is based. I read somewhere that Fallada finished the novel in little more than four weeks and that shows in the writing.