It’s the time for best lists. I’ve had the good fortune to appear on two — Margaret Cannon, the Toronto Globe and Mail, Adam Wood, the Seattle Times. And Sarah Weinman chose Every Secret Thing as one of the books that defined the “aughts” in crime fiction. (Sarah’s list is meant to be provocative, but I like the fact that she picked my first stand-alone, which I also believe represents a significant shift in my writing, which happened to be concurrent with a significant shift in my life as well. And, yes, I believe the two are related.)
I was asked to pick my favorite book of the year by Salon. As it sometimes happens, I picked my most recent favorite, the book freshest in my mind: Jess Walter’s THE FINANCIAL LIVES OF POETS. No regrets, but I began thinking about other books I might have chosen:
In traditional format: THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU, Jonathan Troepper; BURY ME DEEP, Megan Abbott (read and blurbed by me in 2008, but it’s an ’09 title); JULIET NAKED, Nick Hornby.
On Kindle. (A note: I acquired a Kindle in spring ’09, largely in hopes of surviving a flight to Australia. At first, I found most of the books I read on the Kindle a little meh, solid B’s and B-pluses, and I began to wonder if the sameness of the text was harming the experience. But I think it had more to do with my buying habits: AT first, I bought books for the Kindle that I didn’t care about owning, but was too impatient to wait for at the library. Now, if I love a book, I resolve to track down a used copy, which seems fair enough.) DARK PLACES, Gillian Flynn. BLAME, Michelle Huvenen
On audio. I listen to an iPod wherever I walk and I walk quite a bit. I have a preference for memoirs read by the writers themselves. Sometimes, I even listen to books I’ve already read. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL, Anthony Bourdain, and AMERICAN ON PURPOSE, Craig Ferguson, fall into this category. Bourdain is my favorite memoirist/narrator to date; the book, good as it is, is enhanced by this reading. (Ferguson’s book is terrific, but I listened to it for the sheer pleasure of hearing his accent.) Roy Blount Jr. read an abridged version of FEET ON THE STREET and while I normally avoid abridged books, Blount’s voice makes it come alive. Steve Martin’s BORN STANDING UP was interesting because Martin’s reading seemed almost deliberately joyless, as if to reiterate: I am NOT a wild and crazy guy.” But it’s a wonderful artist’s memoir, tracing the development of his act/aesthetic. Special mention goes to Sarah Vowell, for ASSASSINATION VACATION and THE PARTLY CLOUDY PATRIOT. I was listening to her books when I suffered a carpal tunnel relapse in France and I was in too much pain to sleep for several nights. Her books helped me cope.
This list will probably grow over the next few days, as I consult all my shelves and little piles of books. I have found a lot of ’09 titles that I’m keen to read, but haven’t gotten around to yet. But I bought them! Sometimes in more than one format.
Happy to hear anyone’s best lists here, with one caveat: You cannot include anything I wrote on that list.
My most recent best read was “In a Perfect World” by Laura Kasische (a fellow Michigander who has an older stepdaughter and a son born to her later in life – which mirrors my life, but I swear I only found that out AFTER I fell in love with her book). Interestingly, I want a Kindle for Christmas…after much internal debate since I love the printed page (but the new releases are cheaper!), and don’t like to wait on library lists (full disclosure, I like to own �em for MY library). I had it figured out that I’d only order stuff I didn’t want to keep in print as well – or if I found I wanted it after reading, I’d get it in print, too. Here�s to – mediocre reading? The allure of instantly getting a book without waiting for shipping or scheduling a trip to the bookstore with my 19 month old was a pretty strong factor, as well. Who�s to say nothing good happens at 2:30 am.
There were so many good books this year and I had time to read/listen. Here are just some of them:
Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout: she’s my new heroine! I like that swetaer scene. Who hasn’t wanted to do something like that? Well, Olive not only thought about it, she did it!
Everything written by Karin Slaughter: I did her audio books and enjoyed every minute of them.
Them by Nathan McCall: race relations from different points of view, set in Atlanta (I used to live in Atlanta).
The Hemings of Monticello by Annete Gordon-Reed: while the subject remains controversial, there is so much social history in this book, insights that explain so much of what happened during the 1700s and early 1800s. James Hemings was a fascinating man and his relationship with Thomas Jefferson very complicated.
The English Major by Jim Harrison: I was ready to locate him on his travels and join him.
I’m So Happy For You by Lucinda Rosenfeld: chick lit for sure, but a great story on how jealousy plays into our friendships.
My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates: wow.
Lit by Mary Karr: what a life and I understood all those southern twists of phrase.
Little Bee by Chris Cleve: listen to the audio for the accent.
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth: his usual sex obsessions
Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven by Susan Gilman: a memoir of traveling China right as the country opened up for foreign travel. Being a true story kept me involved.
Finally, I have read all of your books, Laura and listened to all of them that are also on audio.
OK – off the top of my head – and cheating a little (that is, great books that I may have read in ’08 as well as ’09, or whatever) -
The Looming Tower by Wright (can’t recall his first name); I loved that book; very educational about our al Qaeda enemy, and Sammy bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. In fact, one of the biggest nuggets I took away was the huge importance of the Egyptian Zawahiri; and the centrality of the Egyptian prisons to the birth of al Qaeda.
Assassin’s Gate by….the guy from the New Yorker; very enlightening about our war effort in Iraq. Also, Strongest Tribe by Bing West, but Assassin’s Gate is the better book.
Mellon by Carradine; fascinating book – and oddly enough it’s quite timely, given our late financial crash. Mellon over-stayed his welcome as Secretary of the Treasury, and the Great Depression came on his watch, and tarnished him badly (plus, FDR went after him relentlessly, but that’s another story). Plus – Mellon was almost as clueless about real women as Tiger Woods seems to be
Abraham Lincoln, A Life by Michael Burlingame; really, this counts for about 6 books, since the thing runs 1,600 pages (not counting endnotes). Full Disclosure: I’m only 1,100 pages through it – by my goodness, what a wonderful, wonderful book!
Giants by I don’t know who, a sort of parallel biographical outline of the rise of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; a quick read, and very good stuff. I learned in a footnote in that one that the slave driver that whipped Frederick Douglass, and who Douglass pounded on (a story in itself) owned a place on Maryland’s Eastern Shore called Mount Misery that is now owned by (drum roll)…… Donald Rumsfeld!
We’ll follow the rules and not mention the very very very best fiction books I read this year, except to say they were all by the same author, and two of them were signed!
I forgot to mention Big Machine by Victor Lavalle. It had me running for a highlighter because some of the sentences were just delicious (and I never mark up my books).
I love the recommendations popping up here!
Jackie, I have THEM on my TBR list and will definitely take the audio tip on Little Bee.
Well, in checking my faulty memory (and crowded bookshelf), I didn’t have a single 2009 book on my list!
Lawrence Wright’s great book was 2006 (I probably read it in ’07); Assassin’s Gate was written by George Packer and published in 2005 (is that possible??!); Strongest Tribe was published in 2008 (I probably got it for Christmas, ’08); David Cannadine wrote the Mellon book, which was published in 2006 (!); John Stauffer published Giants in 2008 (probably another Christmas ’08 book).
And what the hell, let’s add three more 2008 titles I really enjoyed – Allen Guelzo’s Lincoln & Douglas, about the 1858 Senatorial debates; James McPherson’s sublime Tried by War, about President Lincoln’s conduct of the war – which features my favorite picture of Lincoln on the cover (buttressing my belief that covers DO sell books) and which I got the author to sign in Galesburg, IL last year; and Jon Meacham’s superb 2008 book about Andy Jackson, American Lion (I think it won the Pulitzer this past year)
It looks like the only 2009 books that I loved the best are ones which we are proscribed from mentioning.
Oh, well! – call this list my faves of the oughts!
There are many but the one that leapt to my mind without me stopping to think at all was The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu.
Nick Hornby’s JULIET, NAKED is hands-down my book of the year. I laughed, I cried. Runner-up is a nonfiction book, which is rare for me (I tend to read 90% fiction): ANNIE’S GHOSTS by Steve Luxenberg.
That’s a surprise, Laura. The girl is sort of a next generation Tess in many ways.
Oops, and forgot That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo (a particular favorite) and Any Given Day by Dennis Lehane. Both on the Kindle.
Linda, based on what I’ve heard from my barometer and now Sue, I can’t get past that kind of writing. For me, poor writing is like bad food. Life’s too short for either. But Sue’s piece is really good; I’ll cut and paste her link here:
http://www.interbridge.com/weblog/2009/09/girl-with-altivec-velocity-engine.html
And I found this via Lee Goldberg’s blog, fyi.
Yes, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout was one of my faves too.
My other best books read this year:
Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris
Stoner, by John Williams
The Painter of Battles, by Arturo P�rez-Reverte
Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson
In the Woods, by Tana French
Old Filth, by Jane Gardam
The Friends of Meager Fortune, by David Adams Richards
Maps and Legends, by Michael Chabon
More detail about all on my blog
http://www.bmorrison.com/blog
My favorite from this year was The Shanghai Moon. I’d have to look at my reading list to be reminded what other books I liked a lot. Listened to The Girl with … before Bcon and I didn’t vote for it in any of the categories. If I had been reading, I probably wouldn’t have finished.
I am getting suggestions for books I haven’t even heard of, and that is rare in my life. Thank you, all.
THE CRYING TREE by Naseem Rahka is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I can’t tell enough people about this amazing debut.
Also GENERATION DEAD by Daniel Waters, a super teenage zombie book that is great social satire.
I tried Jess Walters’ Financial Lives of Poets and it depressed me so much I had to stop. Beautifully written, but depressing.
This is where my bad memory hampered me. I LOVED Steve’s book, which was as much about his intrepid reporting as it was about the emotional journey.
And I think JULIET is Hornby’s best book, ever, which is saying quite a lot.
I loved Big Machine. Victor LaValle cracked me up and creeped me out at the same time. Chastity headache. That is funny!
I’m also surprised about the Girl Who … books.
I’m in the camp of those who enjoyed them.
On the other hand, I thought that Annie’s Ghost was an almost great book. Great concept, great research, etc. but it dragged and was repetious. A stronger edit might have turned it from a pretty good book to a great one. Just MHO. Nonetheless, it’s still worth reading.
Diane,
I know Steve, so I’m biased in his favor. That said, as a former reporter, part of the thrill for me was following his trail. I’m not sure all readers would feel the same way, but I lived vicariously through what he did.
Karen, I think POETS ends on a (subdued, earned) hopeful note, if not a wildly optimistic one. I might not have been able to read if I didn’t have a lot of distance from the newspaper world and I literally wept over the sections in which he described the “life of kings.”
Other great Aughts nonfiction….Fiasco by Thomas Ricks, Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill (that probably isn’t spelled right, but I’m lazy), Generation Kill by Evan Wright, and one I just finished and LOVED was Monkey Girl, by Edward Humes. I second Looming Tower as a good read.
Been on a bit of a science jag, so honorable mention goes to Bill Bryson for A Short History of Almost Everything (I almost understood quantum theory).
Getting some great ideas for fiction from this group. Thanks. Will second Olive Kittridge as worthwhile.
Olive Kitteridge was also one of my favorites; I read it earlier this year, while on book tour. Inevitably, I’m also a Gen-Kill fan.
But here’s a nice moment of serendipity — Sue T., who organized a book club I joined back in the early ’90s (pretty well ahead of the curve) also has a great post on her blog about the translation of “The Girl Who . . . ” books, which I have resolved NOT to read because someone whose taste is a good barometer for me couldn’t get into them.
Kelly, I do know Lizzie, who sometimes post here, but I feel comfortable in saying that no one can make LIzzie do anything.
However, she’s been writing for the Daily Beast and the Woman Up blog at PoliticsDaily.com if you want a good Lizzie hit. I especially liked her piece on the recent books by Foer and Chabon, although I am more kindly inclined to the Chabon than she is.
Oooh, thank you.
The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, both by Suzanne Collins and Graceling and Fire, both by Kristin Cashore were phenomenal. (I read like a 14-year-old this year. Stellar.)
Some of the regular fiction I read and loved:
Juliet, Naked (I love Nick Hornby, and I wish he released a book every year…but this one was worth the wait).
The School of Essential Ingredients (Erica Bauermeister; reminded me of early Maeve Binchy, back when I loved her books).
Handle with Care (Jodi Picoult).
Local author I am apparently prohibited from mentioning. Still, this stand-alone is possibly my favorite yet. I got it signed in Arizona.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I know everyone loved this.
Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick–I love books about books, and she’s fantastic. Don’t you know her? Can you make her write more?
The Amateurs by Marcus Sakey.
Hardball by Sara Paretsky.
The Scarecrow and 9 Dragons by Michael Connelly.
Under the Dome by Stephen King.
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton.
As an unabashed Larsson fan who absolutely agrees that the writing can be clunky (and the translation snafus certainly don’t help – Steve Murray is an excellent translator, but there was trickery afoot in the line editing, to understate) I think the main reason the Millenium Trilogy has sold in the millions is exactly the same reason Stephen King’s books have sold in the multi-millions: characters that, despite being of “stock” variety, you care about because it is patently obvious how much the writer cares about them.
In other words: both guys love, love, love to write, and it shows, even through clunky translations, expository infodumps, and propensity towards cliche. Also, catharsis: the trial scene in book #3 is one of the most pure experience of outrage turning into redemption I’ve read in a long while.
My favorite reads/listens of the past year:
FRACTURED, Karin Slaughter
THE BONE GARDEN, Tess Gerritsen
BORN STANDING UP, Steve Martin (on CD and read by the author with occasional banjo flourishes)
My favorite 2009 books:
Love and Summer by William Trevor – extraordinary writing about love, choice, and tragedy.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman – The book may have come out in 2008 but it won The Newbery Medal in 2009.
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese – a stunning historical novel set in Ethiopia and Queens about family, love, and medicine.
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa – a simple but moving story about a housekeeper who comes to work/care for a man that can remember no more than what has happened in the last 18 minutes.
A book I forgot: Snow Angels, Stuart O’Nan.
I just bought the Yoko Ogawa book on my Kindle, then realized I already own it.