Pie Not Included

Year-End Book Wrapup '08

2008-12-30T21:22:00.001-08:00

This is kind of the first time I've realized it's going to be 2009 in two days. Damn, ham. (And now I'm nostalgic, because I used to say "damn, ham" all the time. When did I stop? Why did I stop? WHERE HAS MY YOUTH GONE?!)

Well, I don't think I'm going to finish any of the books I'm reading (Georgiana, Infinite Jest, and The Lady Elizabeth) by midnight tomorrow, so I may as well do my book wrapup. (Also if I do finish any of them it will be Georgiana, which so far is pretty good, but not good enough to bump any of my top five off the list.) Last year’s is here.

This year I read 46 books, which is a downturn from last year, when I read 55, books, one of which was Finnegans Wake. Well, I taught two extra classes this year, plus I still have a full-time job and a blog. Still, I only read 6 book list books. Pathetic! This year 21 were by women (and 4 were by Stephenie Meyer; it was a sad year for women on my list) and 25 by men. And now, on to the top and bottom 5!

(First of all, I’m going to say that both I’m Not The New Me and Schuyler’s Monster are awesome, and both are written by people I love, and you should read them immediately. I’m going to disqualify them from this list, because I can’t possibly be expected to rank them, can I? No, I cannot. So with that said...)

Top five books of the year:

1. And Then We Came To The End, by Joshua Ferris
This is the book I fell in love with and went around all excited about this year, like Black Swan Green and I Capture The Castle last year. I strong-armed my book club into reading it, too. Nobody fell in love with it to the degree I did, but then again, not only did I love the humor and heart and narrative conceit, I also really related to the advertising agency setting.

2. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
My friend Stephanie, with whom I went to grad school, said this is one of her favorite books, which I should read before the movie came out and “ruined it.” I love, love, loved this book, but I could not possibly be looking forward to the movie more KATE AND LEO. KATE! LEO! It was also a partial inspiration for Mad Men, which was easily the best TV show of the year (speaking of advertising) and they do have a lot in common—beyond the time period, even. Fabulous book.

3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
I include this book here because I enjoyed the hell out of it, and have recommended it to several of my students who enjoyed The House on Mango Street. Funny, clever, lots of heart. I read several young adult books this year (and am 20,000 words into my own YA, let’s not forget) and this one was my favorite.

4. The Year of Living Biblically (by A.J. Jacobs)
A book that I think is deceptively accessible, but super thought-provoking and even better than The Know-It-All, which I also thoroughly enjoyed. I think his open-minded and open-hearted exploration of the Bible was refreshing, and made me think about religion in a way that I hadn’t for a long time. Definitely one I will teach in English 100 after it comes out in paperback.

5. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer
I had to include Twilight, not because it’s “good” (even though this first book is kind of not terrible) but because it brought me so much glee this year. As a proud LOLfan, Stephenie Meyer, I salute you.

I actually enjoyed a lot of books this year, some of which are more intellectual and “literary” than these (Junot Diaz or Evelyn Waugh, for instance) but these are the five books that stuck with me the most. (Mysterious Skin almost made it, but the movie is so vivid to me that it’s hard for me to remember the book as an independent entity. The book is also wonderful, though.)

The bottom five...

Again, it was hard for me to find five books I hated this year; right now I’ve got two that sucked, one that was a slog, one that was uneven, and one that was INCREDIBLY ENTERTANING but empirically shitty.

1. Ten Days in the Hills, by Jane Smiley
Sucked. I called it an “entertaining airplane read” but in hindsight, it was because I was trapped on that airplane. People having a lot of sex and arguing about the Iraq war, which I have heard enough about because I live in Berkeley and that is what we do there. Don’t bother.

2. Wishful Drinking, by Carrie Fisher
The latest addition to the list; could have been good, but was really very not. Too breezy by half, not as funny as it thinks it is, too conversational, lacking real heart or heft or emotion or even fun gossip. Very disappointing.

3. The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene
Didn’t suck, but didn’t wow me, and was kind of a slog to get through. I wish I’d read more bad books this year. This would be way more fun!

4. Lives on the Boundary, by Mike Rose
You know, this wasn’t even bad, it was just boring, and boring to teach. We had boring class discussions and they bored me. I would explain why, but I’m too bored to write more sentences.

5. Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer
This either had to go on the list of the worst or the list of the best. I won’t spoil it for you, but here is where the Twilight saga, which is already completely ridiculous after books one through three, goes completely, hilariously, totally off the rails. And Renesmee is NOT A NAME.

So how about you? What were your top and bottom books of the year?

The Tales of Beedle the Bard (by J.K. Rowling)

2008-12-30T21:11:00.000-08:00

I did not get this for Christmas, but yesterday I went to a bookstore in the area (a very awesome independent bookstore I'd never been to before, incidentally) and read it while standing up in the children's section. This may be my last book of the year before my year-end book wrapup, unless I finish Infinite Jest in the next 24 hours. HA HA HA! I am on page six.

Anyway, it is a cute book of wizarding fairy tales, and more related to Harry Potter than I was expecting, with Dumbledore's commentary throughout, and the final story directly relating to the final book in the series. I didn't feel compelled to buy it or anything, but I enjoyed it. It made me miss The Potter, though. Oh, The Potter. You were so glorious.

The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)

2008-12-22T12:50:00.001-08:00

Read this on the flight to Utah; so fascinating. A ton of fascinating examples of the concept of the "tipping point" which I enjoyed as both a person who works in marketing and as a human person.

I especially enjoyed learning about the average size of "sympathy circles" (the number of people whose deaths would really devastate you), the whole thing about members of family units becoming instinctively responsible for various areas of knowledge (which explains why women, even in modern families, most often end up being responsible for children), and various other things that will ecome in really handy if I ever have a baby. Oh, and the concept of personalities being way more based in context than in intrinsic, black and white qualities.

I'm sure everyone already read this like six years ago, but it is honestly a fascinating and fast read that changed my perspective on the world just a tiny bit. Very glad I picked it up.

Wishful Drinking (by Carrie Fisher)

2008-12-18T19:36:00.000-08:00

I accidentally ordered this from Amazon (really not sure how that happened) and decided to read it before returning it, since I've enjoyed Carrie Fisher's novels. (I mean they aren't brilliant by any means, but they're decent.) I thought this book was a huge disappointment. It's basically a standup act in book form, with incredibly hokey and awful jokes, no real good celebrity anecdotes, no real emotional throughline or anything. (She is supposedly "finding herself" after electroshock therapy, which is compelling, but really it's just bad standup, written out.) Also many of the same (bad) jokes recur multiple times, and the intro is basically the same as chapter one--which, what's the points?

I've already started my "best and worst of 2008" list, but I think I'm going to have to bump something to make room for this. Completely not worth your time. Skim through it in Barnes and Noble or something.

But Enough About Me (by Jancee Dunn)

2008-11-30T21:50:00.000-08:00

A memoir by a writer for Rolling Stone, mostly filled with charming anecdotes about her endearingly quirky family and the celebrities she's interviewed over the years. Really fast, breezy, engaging, and fun. It would make a good stocking stuffer book, I think! I wish I had something more exciting to say about it, but I've taken some Benadryl and am falling asleep. It's really good, though.

Testing

2008-11-23T20:13:00.001-08:00

One two three... if this works, all I have to do is start reading books again!

The Year of Living Biblically (by A.J. Jacobs)

2008-10-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

I really loved this book. The author's voice is funny, charming and engaging, the premise is clever, and the topic is quite thought-provoking. I'm actually thinking about teaching this in a class next semester; it would be a good choice for a non-fiction book, the students would like it, and it would provoke some interesting class discussions. Now I have to go read Ecclesiastes! Thanks, A.J.!

Fat Kid Rules the World (by K.L. Going)

2008-09-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

A YA novel recommended in my workshop, where we read the opening scene, which is the main character on a subway platform, contemplating suicide. (We were talking about ways to establish character. Yep, that'll do it.) I loved the way the main character's fat was a throughline of the whole story--for instance, being the source of his crippling insecurity, which in turn drives the plot forward. But it isn't your typical "fat kid loses weight, gets the girl" type of story either. Instead, the fat kid meets up with a very skinny kid, a punk rock guitar player who wants to form a band with him. Not what I was expecting, but I found myself really rooting for Troy, and really not wanting it to end.

A Prayer for Owen Meany (by John Irving)

2008-09-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Got totally absorbed in this book and finished it with tears in my eyes, although it is not nearly as "sentimental" as I'd feared--at least not in a bathetic way. I loved Owen as a character and the story kept me interested to find out what would happen to him.

Minor criticism time. I got tired of the narrator going on and on about Reaganite politics. (I know that was the point, that Americans get bored by stuff like Iran-Contra, but god I was bored.) I was way more interested in learning about his arrested sexual development, which Irving maddeningly does not confront. I get that the book is essentially an antiwar nove, but I enjoyed it more on the story level and less on the "message" level. But this is a minor criticism because it really isn't particularly didactic or messagey.

Here were my two big questions when it was over, regarding the concept of Owen as "God's instrument": 1. What was the higher purpose (or the effect, rather) of Tabitha getting killed with the baseball? Was it just to reveal Johnny's father to him? If so, that seemed not to have much of an effect, in the end. 2. Isn't that an awful lot of trouble for God to go to, just to save a group of kids, when he could just have had the psychopath get run over by a bus or something? I've talked about this book with a couple of people and there are interesting things to be said regarding the idea of fate, God's role in the world, and that sort of thing. But those were the questions I was left trying to answer.

At any rate, it's been years since I've read Irving, and I'm glad I picked this one up. Engrossing and very captivating.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (by Sherman Alexie)

2008-08-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

Absolutely and utterly charming. We talked about it in my YA novel-writing workshop and it's wonderful: funny, heartwarming. I think Melissa and Eliza both said how great it was; they did not lie.

The Road (by Cormac McCarthy)

2008-08-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

My Twitter about this was: "Just finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and feel as if I've put my heart through a sieve. Good god."

I read this because Entertainment Weekly put it #1 on the list of best books of the past twenty-five years. Although that list was jacked up (I'm looking at you DAVE EGGERS) it made me brave enough to read a book that I knew was about a father and a son in a postapocalyptic world. Its spare, deceptively simple style reminded me of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, and of poetry. A beautiful, haunting book. I recommend it.

Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at least to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence. (Page 274)

I, Claudius (by Robert Graves)

2008-08-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been reading this book forever. Not sure why it took me so long; the distractions of the end of the semester, I suppose. Multiple people got very excited upon hearing that I was reading this; they all mentioned the miniseries, too. Plus it's on numerous lists of great books (which was of course my motivation for picking it up in the first place).

I enjoyed it, but was slightly underwhelmed after all the hype. It's quite good, certainly; I want to read the next volume, and I kept thinking back to the time I've spent in Rome, and wanting to go back and revisit all the imperial ruins. And of course before that, to know what the real history of the times was. It's very good. I'm just not totally won over and I'm not sure why.

Breaking Dawn (by Stephenie Meyer)

2008-08-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

Basically this.

Mysterious Skin (by Scott Heim)

2008-07-13T10:18:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie when it came out, and it's just astonishing. One of those incredibly powerful, beautiful films that will disturb you and stay with you. The novel is just as good, and in fact, has one of the most amazing last lines ever. I recommend both very highly, although they do tackle subjects such as child abuse and male rape, very graphically, so not for the faint of heart.

Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction (by Sue Townsend)

2008-07-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

I think this is the last book in the Adrian Mole series, and it was a really funny and poignant one one. Adrian gets deeper and deeper in debt, does a series of incredibly stupid things, yet somehow clings to a shred of the reader's sympathy. There's a whole lot of stuff in here about the Iraq war but it's handled for the most part amusingly, until the inevitable happens at the end. A fun read.

New Moon and Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer

2008-07-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am continuing to devour (ha, ha) the Sweet Valley Vampire books. They model terrible behavior to teenage girls, and I kind of think each one should come with an essay by some feminist critic so that these teenage girls and their insane mothers (the "Twilight Moms" or whatever) can figure out that stalking is not sexy and that the vampire dude is emotionally abusive and that you can live just fine without a boy to love you. And yet I LOVE READING THESE THINGS. The second one is so emo, it's hilarious. The love triangle is really dumb because there's no contest at all, and it's a really stretch to make it seem like Team Jacob has a chance. Wait, you have no idea what I'm talking about at all, do you? Nevermind. Save yourselves!

Twilight (by Stephenie Meyer)

2008-06-19T20:39:00.001-07:00

Yeah, you knew it would happen. In this case you can blame Jenfu for coming to Vegas and innocently passing her copy along to me so I could enjoy the cheesy, breezy, Sweet Valley Vampire fun. A really fun and compelling read---I'd heard (I think in Entertainment Weeky) Meyer described as "not a great writer, but a great storyteller." I actually don't even think she's all that bad as a writer; I kind of love the way she describes so much minutia. The sexy vampire plot is the perfect angsty, fantasy, forbidden love story for a teenage girl, and even though I'm not a teenager anymore... I mean, I watched the new NKOTB "Summertime" video. I'm not immune you know. Also, it's kind of hot. I will admit I found the sexy vampires kind of hot. Sorry, everyone. Did I meantion I read Finnegans Wake?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (by Junot Diaz)

2008-06-02T13:13:00.001-07:00

Read this for book club number two, although we didn't talk about the book so much at the meeting. I loved reading it, though. It won the Pulitzer for fiction in 2008 and I can see why; it's energetic, inventive, unique, and feels "important" because of its exploration of the Dominican Republic and the Dominican diaspora. (I hadn't known much about Dominican history, and the likeable characters, especially Oscar, and the humor and the style, especially the Spanish/Spanglish sprinkled throughout, were the spoonfuls of sugar that helped all that fascinating history go down. I didn't even know who Trujillo was. Thanks, Junot Diaz.) To sum up: highly recommended both as an important work of literature and as a moving tragicomedy.

The Haunting of Hill House (by Shirley Jackson)

2008-05-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

Scaaaaaaary. Loved the (unreliable, of course) narrator, loved the details, loved everything. God, Jackson is such an amazing writer... what else is there to say? I mean, here, just read the first two sentences.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

SO GOOD.

Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years (by Sue Townsend)

2008-05-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

I don't think Adrian ever drinks a cappuccino in this book! Anyway, Adrian is the male answer to Bridget Jones, although this book doesn't have as clear of a story arc as the Bridget books seem to. Ian bought this to read on the plane on our last trip, and I snagged it once he was done. I find Adrian endearing enough to want to keep reading the series, but the number of loose ends in each book is disconcerting!

The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (by Tom Farley, Jr. and Tanner Colby)

2008-05-14T12:27:00.000-07:00

I love insider SNL books (I want a sequel to Live in New York so bad) and I really enjoyed this, sad thought it was. It's personal recollections of many people who knew Chris Farley (including the real Matt Foley!) and gives lots of background, for good and bad, about why his life turned out the way it did. Ultimately, he emerges as a very sympathetic figure, but at the same time it didn't seem in any way whitewashed.

I did wonder why Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider, among others, weren't in it. And there really weren't a lot of women represented--his mother and sister were interviewed, but neither of their interviews made it. It very much reads as a male point of view, but since SNL really was a boys' club when Farley was there, it makes a certain sense. Anyway, loved reading this; if you're into SNL at all, pick it up.

Ten Days In The Hills (by Jane Smiley)

2008-05-05T19:56:00.000-07:00

I was chatting with Ian about this book and it came up that John Updike had reviewed it. Ian claims that Updike called it a "fuckfest" but he may have been paraphrasing. Still, it's basically a fuckfest, with a bunch of rich celebrities and privileged people having a lot of sex and feeling sort of guilty and talking about the war in Iraq. If this sounds exciting to you, let me know and I'll send it to you. It was definitely an entertaining airplane read, I'll give it that. (Also, I found the Zoe character to be unrealistic. She is portrayed as a black actress who has all these white leading men in the olden timey days of Hollywood. When Denzel and Julia didn't so much as kiss in The Pelican Brief? I don't think so.)

Strip City (by Lily Burana)

2008-04-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

I believe it was on the advice of Wendy that I decided to read this one after not being wild about Diablo Cody's stripper book. I definitely enjoyed it more, although it's still not the perfect stripper book. (It's still not as good of a read as Jenna Jameson's How To Make Love Like A Porn Star.) Is it the author's navel-gazing ambivalence? The distracting use of verb tenses? Not enough nitty gritty details? Maybe. Still, a fun stripper book and certainly better than Cody's. Plus, I couldn't put it down, so Burana must have done something right!

Snow (by Orhan Pamuk)

2008-04-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

I read this for our recently resuscitated book group, and it resulted in a really great conversation. Some of us hated it, some of us loved it, some of us couldn't get through it--but it seemed like we all had something to say about it. I personally liked it a lot--the complexity of it (politics plus poetry plus femininity plus identity) and the postmodern elements of the narrative.

It seemed like the more you know about modern Turkey, the more you liked the book--at least in our group. I don't know a lot about Turkish history, don't get me wrong, but I was in Istanbul in 2000 and our tour guide talked a lot about Ataturk, and was at pains to emphasize the "Westernized" and progressive nature of the Islamic culture there. She emphasized it so much, it seemed like she was glossing over something--and this book seems to peek a little bit into the complex issues that make up modern Turkey.

God, this makes it sound boring. I think the story (full of murder, love, betrayal and intrigue... and poetry)is as suspenseful and well told. It is definitely not a boring, dry book. And yet I don't think it's for everyone. So... there you go. Read this in a book group!

Then We Came To The End (by Joshua Ferris)

2008-04-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

As good as you've heard. Really, this book is fantastic. It's like the perfect storm of a novel--stylistically interesting, funny, relevant, perfectly pitched, totally inventive and original. One of those books that's so good, it's exciting. (Like Black Swan Green.) It's even set in an ad agency, which is where I spend my days. If you and I share any overlap in taste at all, go read it.

And then I came to the end (ho, ho) and got to the best part--Ferris's list of favorite books. Seriously, I almost died. Not only is Pale Fire on there but seriously, EVERY SINGLE BOOK ON THAT LIST, if I read it, I loved it. The list includes Pale Fire, We Have Always Lived In the Castle, Slaughterhouse-Five, Mrs. Dalloway, White Noise, and Catch-22 (this book really reminded me of Catch-22. I was going to write this review and say that TWCTTE was like Catch-22 minus the war, plus advertising, but it turns out, all the critics have already pointed this out). Humor (especially black humor), quirkyness, and unreliable narrators seem to be the throughlines there. I certainly do enjoy all of those things.

The only book on Ferris's list that I didn't love was The Ambassadors, and honestly, given Ferris's endorsement and the fact that I otherwise adore Henry James, I'm totally willing to give it another shot. (I have a feeling Ferris studied in in grad school, because I do remember reading that it has a perfectly symmetrical structure, or somthing like that--if I investigated that, maybe I'd appreciate it more.) Anyway, that's how much I liked his book--and I am totally going to read every single book he recommends that I haven't already read.

To sum up: read this book. I won't spoil it for you. Go read it.