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.

Recommended Reading

I like book recommendations, particularly when the person doing the recommending feels strongly about the book. I also think that knowing a few books that mean a lot to someone is a good way to get a sense of who they are.

To that end, I've recently discovered two new sources of such recommendations. Over at the Penguin UK blog they've started a nice series called "Five in Mind" that seeks to let readers get to know the staff at Penguin UK by having them each give a list of five books. I've been enjoying that quite a lot.

Then there's also NPR's series "You Must Read This". I feel terribly guilty that I've fallen behind on almost all of my regular NPR podcasts, because I'm such a big fan of their programing. This is a great example. Authors are asked to tell us why we must read a certain book. I particularly liked Michael Chabon's, which I found very convincing. I also loved Charles Baxter's recommendation of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, which is one of my favorite books. You must read it.

Old Fashioned Novels

"I have a theory about Mr. Kates. He talks the way people talked before he was born, therefore he must read old-fashioned novels."
Phoebe Gunther, in The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout

That's always been one of those quotes that stuck with me. All of my life, but particularly as a teenager, others have commented on the way I speak. Whether it was the kid in my history class asking how long it had been since I came to NYC from the south, or the random people who have thought I was English. This despite the fact that I am a native New Yorker. They didn't ask me these things because I had the accent for one place or the other, but because I used words, and methods of speech that seemed unusual to them. The strange becomes the foreign. And I do speak differently than a lot of people. I use big words, often anachronistic ones, and I use old fashioned turns of phrase.

I have this on my mind because I recently learned about the Virginia Quarterly Review young reviewer contest. I was tempted by it, and I thought I might try to write up a quick review. This in spite of the fact that I don't really like book reviews. Then I ran into a snag. They require that the book have been published after January 1, 2008. I have finished 72 books so far this year, and I am currently reading four more. None of them meets that qualification.

Even so, I have been making an effort to bring myself more up-to-date with my reading choice. I've been reading Murakami, Chabon, Junot Diaz, and Ha Jin. All of whom have written fairly recently, but I've not read anything by them that qualifies. I'm handicapped by my dislike of carrying bulky hardbacks around. I prefer trades. I was excited about Yiddish Policeman's Union from the moment that I first learned about it, but I only read it this year, because I waited for it to come out in paperback.

Of course, I've also backslid into my comfort zone, I've read a bunch of Graham Greene, with G.K. Chesterton, John Buchan, and Isaac Bashevis Singer mixed in*. Not to mention reread a number of Rex Stout novels, including the one quoted above.

Realizing that I haven't even read anything that qualifies for this contest, I'm now determined to do so. The question is, what will I read?

This is made even more difficult by the further stipulation in the contest rules:

Please keep in mind the readership of VQR and the type of reviews we publish. We will be looking not only to see if the style of the writing will appeal to our readers but also whether the book reviewed will appeal.

So now I've skimmed the descriptions of the last few issues, this seems even tougher. I shall have to do some real bookstore browsing to come up with something good. Any recommendations?

*one of these things is not like the other...

Nerds are Cool!

This seems to be what the Pulitzer Committee is telling me. First, in 2001, a novel about comic book writers, among other things, and now, a novel about a Dominican nerd.

Now obviously, the first of those two should still have largely universal appeal. Unless you have trouble with the existence of comic books, are the depiction of homosexuals as normal people. The second though, has stunned me. I'm not done with it yet, but the references delve pretty far into the depths of nerdliness.

Junot Diaz may be the only Pulitzer Prize winner to be familiar with Champions. I have some serious nerd credentials and I had to recall conversations with people far nerdier than I in order to get all of his references. This has left me surprised that this book has achieved so much positive critical and monetary attention. Don't all of these dorky references alienate his audience?

I know that books about outsiders don't. Everyone feels alienated at some point in their lives, so we can all identify with alienated characters, but Oscar Wao isn't just alienated. He's a clear member of the nerdiest of nerds, I can picture him because I've met him, I've met dozens of him. People may like the alienated, but these same people had the things they mocked. A kid who ponders Dejah Thoris, plays Champions, and sulks in his room painting his D&D miniatures, hardly seems like someone most people can identify with.

I'm glad I'm wrong. Of course, readers of literature, even (or 'especially', depending on how you look at it) PULITZER PRIZE winning literature, are not most people, so it just means a larger small subset of humanity.

Anyway, everyone clearly has to go out there and read Edgar Rice Burroughs, play D&D, and watch Star Trek, because apparently it can win you a Pulitzer. Junot Diaz, thank you for showing that nerds can be cool!