Top 10 of 2008

I've decided to list, with a brief explanation, my personal top 10 books of 2008. These are books that I read in 2008, but they could have been published at any time. I list them in the order that I read them, from first to last, this doesn't imply that one was better than another.

Donald Hall's Father's Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport [Mostly Baseball]
This book really surprised me, more poets should write about sports. His essays on baseball, and his own life were really wonderful. If you enjoy professional sports, you will find in these essays someone who really understands their appeal, and if you don't enjoy professional sports, this may help you to understand why others do. I liked this so much that I went out and read one of his poetry collections too, which was excellent.

Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers translated by Richard Pevear
I've been a Dumas fan since I first read a translation of The Three Musketeers in Elementary school and I've read a number of his other books since. This was by far the best translation I've read of his work.

Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
I think this made a lot of people's lists for 2008, and absolutely worthy of the Pulitzer. I was a bit of a nerd in High School and College myself, which may have helped me get some of the nerdier references. Some people have complained that all of the Spanish that Diaz mixes in makes it hard to follow, but I wasn't bothered by it, though I did look up the odd word. The story is heartbreaking and powerful. I also love interesting narrators, and Yunior is excellent.

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union
I'd wanted to read this from the moment that I first heard of it. I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and I'm also a big fan of hard boiled detective fiction like Chandler and Hammett (more Hammett). Chabon's creation of a believable Jewish state in Alaska was an impressive achievement, and I enjoyed exploring that world, the strange, apocalyptic plot was also exciting and poignant.

Hugh Nissenson's The Days of Awe
I have had to read this since I saw it on a bookstore shelf. Nissenson lives in the neighborhood where I grew up, and as a result this book about Upper West Siders in the lead up to, and then following September 11th, was very poignant for me. I really liked his writing style, and the combination of religion, secularism, and mythology that pervades the lives of the characters.

Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States 1492-Present
To say that I loved this book would be overstating it, but it was one of the more important books that I read this year. I particularly valued the sheer depth of material covered. This book is an excellent accompaniment to any study of American history as Zinn provides a perspective that is often missing. While I am a big fan of non-traditional uses of Graphic storytelling, Zinn's comic book A People's History of American Empire is not an effective substitute for this book, though it can be a fun gloss.


George Simenon's The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
This is partly to symbolize my discovery of Simenon in 2008. He has quickly become one of my favorite authors, and I read a half dozen of his books. This is one of what Simenon referred to as his romans durs, which are deeply psychological novels. The cold detachment with which he shows one man's transition from bored upstanding middle class business man to wanted murderer is spectacularly effective.

A.M. Homes' This Book Will Save Your Life
This book didn't save my life, but I really enjoyed it. The story of a man slowly rediscovering his own life was a lot of fun. Richard Novak seemed to be almost as unfamiliar with his life as the reader, and as a result, we discovered it with him.


Mark Kurlansky's 1968: The Year That Rocked the World
When I read Kurlansky, he's virtually guaranteed to end up on my year end best list. This is the most political and contemporary book of his that I've read, and I loved it. He has the excellent ability to explain history in a readable and memorable fashion. I can't help but feel that this book colored my appreciation of Zinn, leaving me to wish that he wrote a little bit more like Kurlansky. Of course, Kurlansky covered one year, and Zinn covered over 500, so it's a bit of an apples and oranges situation.

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger
Somehow this year I read the two major literary prize winning books of 2008, between this and Diaz. It's hard to put my finger on exactly why, but it feels right that they both won their awards in the same year. I like untrustworthy first person narrators, and quirky narrators, and Balram Halwai is both. His story of his life is compelling and his view of India is very different from others that I have seen.

A Game of Pain

It's often said that baseball is a game more about losing than winning. This certainly seems to be true for me, as a Mets fan. Of course, even a good hitter gets out more often than they get a hit, and that's what the saying is really about.

Paper Cuts, at the NY Times, had a post not long ago about sports writing where they quoted George Plimpton's saying that 'the smaller the ball, the better the book.' Now as was pointed out in the comments, this could lead to pinball or marbles being the best sports books, and that's not true. So really it's an implied progression from basketball to football to baseball to golf. The only one of these sports I follow is baseball, though I also follow World Cup soccer(or Football if you live anywhere besides North America).

Now, I don't hold with hard and fast rules, but I think that there is something to baseball writing. Of course, I've only read one book devoted to baseball, Donald Hall's Father's Playing Catch with Sons, but I deeply loved it. The pain and loss so typically associated with baseball lends itself well to writing. Everyone knows Casey at the Bat. There's something very literary about the moment it describes, and it happens all the time. I would say that a 'Casey' strikes out in almost every single game. Sometimes it matters more than others.

Of course, as for sports books, I also read and really enjoyed Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, also a book about the bad times in sports as much as the good. So far, I much prefer his nonfiction.

Both books are also about being fans of the game more than they are about the sport. If baseball is a game of pain, it certainly seems that soccer can make a bid, I think all sports can. For every year that your team wins it all, there are a lot more where they don't, even if you're a Yankees fan. And true fans pride themselves more for their loyalty in the bad times than for enjoying the good times. Fair weather fan is not considered a complement.

It makes sense. The true experience includes the pain. If you're not there for that, then you can't truly understand the thrill of victory. I know that ten years from now I will still be talking about last season, and probably wear it like a badge of honor. Because I was there, and I always watched through to the last pitch.

Being a sports fan is also a lot like reading. In the end, we don't hit the home runs or pitch the strike outs anymore than we have a picnic in the ruins of a fortress with the Rochelois attacking. But we feel like we're there. The authors and the athletes share these experiences with us. Most fans begin to develop a special, entirely fictional relationship with their favorite players. Similarly, readers often do the same with their favorite characters, and sometimes their favorite authors too. D'Artagnan and Jose Reyes both feel like friends to me, but I've never met either of them.

Still, if you're a sports fan, even a little bit, there's a book out there for you, and probably a blog, and I recommend both. Then you can combine your love of the sport with your love of reading, and enrich both.