i'm a very very complex person

Happy New Year, friends! Oh, my year is off to a lovely start. I have come down with a cold, it's true, and I would prefer if I hadn't. But other than that it is lovely. I am settling in to my residency; I am working; I am walking in the woods in the afternoons; I am reading Virginia Woolf; I am watching bluebirds outside the window of my studio. I will have more thoughts to share about the residency soon, but for now it is time to talk about books.

So. here is the list of what I read during the past year. Links go to the post that contains the closest thing to a review of each book that I wrote; my orderly reviewing habits got away from me a bit towards the end of the year, so there are some books without links. Oh well. Some of them I still intend to write about; others will just have to be passed over. Books marked with a "Q" are those that I deem to be, in some way, queer:

1. Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet (Q)
2. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (Q)
3. The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (Q)
4. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
5. The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
6. As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann (Q)
7. Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf (Q)
8. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
9. Another Country by James Baldwin (Q)
10. The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín
11. Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
12. Am I Blue?, Marion Dane Bauer, ed. (Q)
13. H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
14. The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas
15. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
16. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
17. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
18. Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
19. The Gathering by Anne Enright
20. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
21. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
22. Now and Then by William Corlett (Q)
23. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
24. Lila by Marilynne Robinson
25. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
26. On the Edges of Vision by Helen McClory
27. The Women by T.C. Boyle
28. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
29. The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald
30. How Winter Began by Joy Castro
31. The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
32. Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford
33. Watchers at the Pond by Franklin Russell
34. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (Q-ish)
35. Sunstroke by Tessa Hadley
36. So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ
37. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
38. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff (Q-ish)

Look at how many Qs there are in the first part of the year, and how few in the second! That's interesting. This is also the third year in a row in which I didn't re-read any books--I'm glad I set myself a goal of doing a bit of re-reading to remind myself that it has real value. Books by women made up 55% of my reading this year, so that's nice and balanced. I only read four works of nonfiction; while that may not be balanced, it is quite typical for me.

Because I always find this a bit interesting, here is the list broken up by ( nationality of author. )

Books that will stay with me:

As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann: I had been searching for over a year for a book that would sweep me off my feet, and this was the one that did it. It is a flawed book, but it tells an all-consuming story. A muscular, immensely powerful, ferocious story. An indelible reading experience.

Another Country by James Baldwin: A big, messy, and stunningly ambitious book about race, sex, identity, and the way those things intersect and merge in New York in the late 1950s. It sprawls, and some parts of it are more successful than others, but it contains fearless metaphors and more than one scene that I know I won't forget.

Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris: This is the sequel to Harris's book The Southpaw, but it far surpasses it in quality. It's the best baseball book I've ever read. Harris touches on deep matters with a light hand, finds humor everywhere, and bundles it all up into a beautifully bittersweet package.

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald: I can't remember the last work of nonfiction that held my attention as effortlessly as this memoir. I love books that are in deep conversation with other books, as this one is with T.H. White's The Goshawk. Smart, thoughtful, and written in straightforwardly beautiful prose.

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. This book is a tour de force. On the surface it is about four siblings who survive Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, but it is about so much more than that: family, memory, poverty, community, and so many different forms of love.

Other titles that I recommend include Jacob's Room, The Testament of Mary, The Gathering, A Month in the Country, Lila, The Blue Flower, and Sunstroke.

Happy reading to all in the coming year!

Happy New Year, folks! As usual, I find myself with the typical backlog of New Year's posts waiting to be written: a book post, a post in which I think about goals and plans for the coming year, a post in which I tell you about the fascinating and strange museum that Ms. E and I visited on my birthday... But I'll start with the books.

This was a rather lackluster year for me in terms of reading. I'm not exactly sure why--I read plenty of books that I wanted to love, books I thought I would love, books by authors whose other works I've loved... And I admired quite a number of them, but very few ignited any sort of real passion in me. I also did not quite meet my goal for the year; I had decided that I wanted to read 33 books, and I only made it through 32 and a half. I considered putting on a push in these last few days in order to make the number, but decided against it. Trying to rush through a book under the pressure of a deadline (and a rather arbitrary one at that) rarely helps me get the most out of what I'm reading.

With no further ado, here's the list (links go to the post that contains the closest thing to a review of each book that I wrote):

1. Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer
2. The Cows by Lydia Davis
3. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
4. Life Times by Nadine Gordimer
5. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
6. Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry by Elizabeth McCracken
7. The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin (Re-read)
8. Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson
9. Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
10. Towards Another Summer by Janet Frame
11. Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston
12. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
13. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
14. Atonement by Ian McEwan
15. A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
16. Ransom by David Malouf
17. The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
18. The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
19. The Longest Journey by E.M. Forster
20. Bluets by Maggie Nelson
21. The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
22. The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (Re-read)
23. Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
24. The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín
25. Little Black Book of Stories by A.S. Byatt
26. When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
27. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
28. Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
29. The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
30. The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín
31. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
32. Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann (trans. Joachim Neugroschel)

It's very rare for me to read according to any sort of plan or program, so it's often a bit of a surprise to see the patterns that emerge when I put together this year-end reading list. Only two re-reads this year, for instance--I think I often have more than that. And so many short story collections! I wouldn't have said I was focusing on short stories specifically, yet they make up a large portion of the list. For my own interest, then, here is the list divided up a few different ways:

( By genre )

( By nationality of author )

My favorites this year:
Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter: With these three stories, Porter proves that the novella can be just as rich and powerful as the novel. Haunting and deeply felt explorations of memory, family history, and mortality. A wonderful book.

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel: I know that a lot people were not in love with this book, but I was. I read it immediately after hearing Bechdel read from it and talk about it, and I'm sure that influenced my feelings about it, but the book gripped me and resonated with a lot of my own personal history. It's thorny and sort of messy and at least a little bit self-indulgent, but I loved wrestling with it.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray: Sprawling, ambitious, and definitely flawed. The ending was disappointing and Murray allowed it to drag on for way too long, but the first two thirds of this book were as fun, inventive, and devastating.

Death in Venice and Other Tales by Thomas Mann: I liked Mann's novellas better than his short stories, but the novellas alone are good enough to earn him a spot in the favorites list. "Death in Venice" is the famous one, and it certainly is brilliant, but my sentimental favorite was "Tonio Kröger."

Other titles that I recommend include Tree of Codes, Life Times, The Birthday of the World, The Waves, Ransom, The Fixer, and The Empty Family.

By far the worst books on this list are Winter's Tale (sloppy, incoherent, way too long, utter nonsense!) and A Fan's Notes (misogynistic, manipulative, unpleasant from start to finish). Stay away from those two!

Here's to lots of great reading in 2013, both for me and for all of you!

Now that 2010 is over, it's time for my annual summary of what I've read during the past year. This was the first year in quite a while that all of these books were my own choice--I had no assigned reading in my last semester of grad school, and certainly none since!

Here's the list (links go to my reviews of the books, or whatever I posted that most closely resembled a review):

1. Run by Ann Patchett
2. The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness by Paul Schneider
3. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
4. Potiki by Patricia Grace
5. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien
6. Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
7. Letter to a Child Never Born by Oriana Fallaci
8. Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima
9. The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
10. Maurice by E.M. Forster
11. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
12. Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
13. The All of It by Jeanette Haien
14. Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter
15. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
16. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
17. The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
18. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
19. Islanders by Ammiel Alcalay
20. Fort Da: a Report by Elisabeth Sheffield
21. In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

I'm a bit disappointed by how short the list is this year! I was reading a lot in the first half of the year, but got utterly bogged down once fall and winter arrived. Another surprise: this list is almost 100% novels! There's one non-fiction (the Paul Schneider), and that's it. No short story collections, no poetry.... I did read two novels-in-stories (Strout, Danticat), but those are close enough to novels that I don't think they add much variety.

These were my favorites:

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout: A collection of linked stories revolving around a complicated and sometimes unpleasant main character, this book is a resonant, carefully structured exploration of aging and change. Strout does an excellent job of writing from within Olive's anger and inarticulacy. Some of these stories really put me through the wringer.

Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame: This book is powerful and deeply personal, full of intense images that linger long after reading. At moments it feels almost as though Frame is allowing us to read something written in her own private language. A heartbreaking book.

Maurice by E.M Forster: Of all the books I read this year, this was the one that stole my heart. Oh, I loved this book! I can't remember the last time I was as emotionally invested in a book as I was in Maurice; I actually leapt up off the couch at a certain climactic moment!

Surfacing by Margaret Atwood: I read this book about being in an isolated cabin in the woods while I was in an isolated cabin in the woods, and I'm sure that synchronicity helped me enjoy the book, but I think it would be very good no matter where you read it. It begins as a conventional literary-thriller, but towards the end it changes into something darker, stranger, and denser. An interesting book for sure.

I found it a bit more difficult than usual to compile my year-end reading list this year. I'm usually very orderly about my reading--one book at a time, from start to finish--but that reading style isn't really compatible with having lots and lots of required reading for school. There were many books that I just skimmed or read in bits and pieces, and my careful record keeping sort of went out the window. So here, as best as I can reconstruct it, is a list of the books that I read in something close to their entirety in 2008:

( The List )

I'm disappointed in how few books I read "for pleasure" this year (some of the assigned reading was pleasurable, of course, but it's somehow not quite the same.) Only nos. 8-14 were my own choices. But it's always been very hard for me to do outside reading when I'm in school, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. I am surprised at how little fiction I read--only about one third of the titles on the list are novels, a shocking development when you consider the fact that my reading lists are usually at least 97% fiction. I did read a lot of short fiction that isn't represented here (mostly in The New Yorker, but from a few other places too), but it's still a much smaller amount of fiction than usual. I know that this is because I took two classes that required a lot of reading about pedagogy and one where the reading list was entirely autobiographies, but I'd really like to make sure I get back to reading more novels in 2009.

The lack of variety in my list makes it difficult to do my usual awards show format, with different categories and all the rest, so instead I'll just name a few of the best books of the year.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson: This book is beautiful and quiet, perfectly suited to the dark and the cold. I suppose it's no wonder that I liked it, since it hits on a couple of my big themes: aging and memory and family history.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein: I had never read a full-length work by Gertrude Stein before this one, and I was intimidated going into it, but I ended up really liking the book. Stein creates a vivid depiction of her and Alice's life in Paris. I was surprised by how funny the book was, and also by the way it forms a sort of slyly moving portrait of their long life together.

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy: I loved McCarthy's voice in her autobiography: erudite, clever, curious, matter-of-fact, and thoughtful. This book also served as my inspiration for an essay on family history and place that I've been working on for a while now.

Cruddy by Lynda Barry: It's difficult to hold a book that I only finished two days ago up against books that have had months to settle in my mind, so perhaps I'll change my mind on this at some point, but I was really into this book. It is a glimpse into a dark, violent, sexualized childhood and its aftermath that was totally engrossing. I kept finding myself in bed at night saying "One more chapter. Okay, now just one more chapter..." I haven't written a proper post about this book, but I'm planning to do it very soon.

The two worst books of the year were The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta and The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The Perrotta was absolutely flaccid and boring, and The Mistress of Spices was nothing but cheap exoticism and non-credible romance. To be avoided!

Now that the year is officially over, I offer my third annual list of the best stuff I read during the year. I don't take publication date into account; anything that I read for the first time in 2006 is eligible. Links lead back to my primary post about each book.

( First things first: the list of contenders )

Best short story collection: I only read one collection of stories this year. What's up with that? That one collection was Close Range by Annie Proulx, so that's the winner by default. It's good enough to win for real, though, so it's kind of shame that there was no competition.

Best short story: This is tough. I really liked "The Mud Below" from Close Range. I also really liked "Bohemians" by George Saunders, although I have a vague feeling that I may have read it a year or two ago... At the very least it gets an honorable mention.

Best nonfiction: I read three whole nonfiction books this year! That's a lot for me. The best one was Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett.

Best young adult novel: Without a doubt, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.

Best graphic novel: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. This is also the only graphic novel I've ever read. Yeah, ever. I'm not very hip. But I really liked it and I'd like to read more graphic novels, so that's a start, right? (Also, there's no link because I haven't posted about this book yet. I've got some catching up to do, and I should get to it in the next day or two.)

Best title: Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl. Not a very good book, but I really like that title.

Worst novel: At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott. God, did I hate that book. So, so boring. The runner-up for this prize is The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle--it wasn't nearly as bad as At Weddings and Wakes, but it was a big disappointment because I know Boyle can do so much better. I really disliked The World According to Garp too, but I think that was more about me than about the book.

Best novel: Oh, this is also so hard to choose. The contenders this year are Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. How can I choose? Reading in the Dark was so powerful, and its images stayed with me for so long after I read it. And The Awakening--I identified so strongly with Edna, and loved the book so much more than I thought I would. And then there's Gilead, which comforted me at a time when I needed it most.... Forget it. I can't pick this year. It'll just have to be a three way tie.

Now that 2004 is over, I thought I'd put together a list of the best things I've read this year. I'm not taking into account when any of these books were published, just when I read them. Also, only books that I read for the first time during '04 are eligible. Links lead back to my original posts about each of the books.

Without further ado, the first category:

Best short story collection: I didn't read many story collections this year, but the two best entries in this category are definitely Trust Me by John Updike and The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. LeGuin. It's hard to decide between those two, but I've gotta go with The Birthday of the World

Best short story: I read too many wonderful stories to possibly choose only one. The best ones were "Elsie by Starlight" by John Updike, "Paradises Lost" and "Unchosen Love" by Ursula K. LeGuin, and Alice Munro's story trio of "Chance", "Soon", and "Silence".

Best non-fiction: This is actually a competition this year, since for the first time in ages, I read more than one non-fiction book in a year! How To Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen is the clear winner.

Best young adult novel: Summerland by Michael Chabon. No question about it.

Worst novel: By far the most disappointing book I read this year was Pigs In Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver. Also nominated in this category were Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison, and The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.

Best novel: There are three books nominated in this category: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (you may not want to follow this link if you haven't read the book--I stupidly give away the best scene in the book!), The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, and The Centaur by John Updike. Oh, how can I possibly choose between these three? I can't. It's just going to have to be a three-way tie.

And now (drumroll, please) the biggest award of all...

Author of the year! And the winner is...Michael Chabon! Without a doubt, my heart belonged to Michael Chabon in 2004. I read more books of his than of any other author this year. He gave me some of the best baseball writing I've ever read, two beautifully excruciating first kiss scenes, prose that was consistently vivacious and inventive, and a character with whom I fell head over heels in love.