Here's a little list of my favourite books of 2010. Some were published this year, some weren't, some I blogged about, some I didn't. A fascinating account of one of the first Aboriginal converts to Christianity and how he tried to reconcile two completely different ways of seeing the universe.
2. The Way Of The World - Nicolas Bouvier
Two Swiss guys travel from Paris to Afghanistan in the 1950's in an old Fiat. They make money along the way by writing newspaper articles and (I love this) organising art exhibitions.
3. The Rational Optimist - Matt Ridley
Funnily enough it turns out that we're not doomed after all.
4. Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine Saint Exupery
His plane crashes in the desert in the 1930's and because he's French he gets all existential about it. In a good way.
5. The Thin Red Line - James Jones
The classic story of infantry men on Guadalcanal.
6. Orchid Blue - Eoin McNamee
The crime writer's crime writer shows us all how it should be done by turning in his masterpiece. For some reason Australian customs kept this book in their office for four months but when it came it was more than worth the wait.
7. Sexual Personae - Camille Paglia
I had never read this before and I found it lying on a desk at the library and thought I'd flick through it. I can see how she would annoy some people (perhaps most people) but I found the book to be completely gripping. She says more outrageous things in the first twenty pages than most of us will say in our lives.
8. Through The Square Window - Sinead Morrissey
One of the new generation of Irish poets turns in her best collection yet. Morrissey is lyrical, funny and wise beyond her years.
9. Another Bullshit Night In Suck City - Nick Flynn
Flynn's compelling account of how he ran into his father while working in a Boston homeless shelter. Anybody who knows Boston will adore this book. (And if you don't you'll still like it).
10. Just Kids - Patti Smith
A beautifully written memoir about Patti Smith's childhood and her days with Bob Mapplethorpe gettaway driver...(sorry, a little Bottle Rocket humor there)...I mean Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer.
=10. Conquest of the Useless - Werner Herzog
I haven't actually read this book yet, but I'm putting it in my top 10 anyway because I'm getting tachyon signals from the future that when I do read it I am going to love it.
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Disappointments:
1. The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
The only reason I finished this book was because I was trapped in a plane for 8 hours. An unfunny, uninteresting, incompetent embarrassment. If I had been a publisher's reader I would have rejected this out of hand. It won the Booker Prize.
2. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen
I haven't quite finished it yet and although it is certainly not a bad novel it is a disappointment after the brilliance of The Corrections. It's hard work to be in the company of these characters and for me its lacking much of the emotional depth and humor of Franzen's previous work. The reviews have been stellar. Perhaps I'm missing something?
3. Life - Keith Richards
Everybody loves Keef, but I found this bio to be a tedious list of groupies, tours, chord changes and albums from a musical performer who was last relevant 37 years ago. Read Patti Smith's book instead. Please.
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Here's The New York Times's picks of the year. It's a pretty pedestrian bunch but I approve of the William Trevor and the Siddartha Mukherjee. And once again I am slightly baffled by Freedom.
31 comments:
Here's my own list for my favorites of the past year:
1. Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
2. Jeeves in the Morning, P.G. Wodehouse
3. Thank You, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse
4. The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Letham
5. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
6. Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson
7. Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Steyngart
8. Zero History, William Gibson
9. The Lady in the Lake, Raymond Chandler
10. Power of One, Bryce Courney
11. Boomsday Dead, Adrian McKinty
I'm nearly done reading Stoner by John Williams and this would need a spot on this list also if I'd finished it now.
Just Kids is flying out the door here. So for some reason is the unexpurgated autobiography of Mark Twain.I mean, its Mark Twain, but it's also a huge university press volume in tiny print.Keith Richards too, but I haven't heard the kind of wows I've heard for Just Kids.
I think the reviews on Freedom have been a bit mixed. And not particularly to be trusted as there is more than usual at stake for the reviewers. But I hope you read Josh's review here, just as an example of a positive review with no axe to grind and nothing to gain.
I like the look of the Patti Smith book, thats got to be full of good stuff.I am however going to give The Finkler Question a go despite your glowing review. Do you think one of the problems with the book could be that British Jewisness just isn't as interesting or funny as American?
Re The NYT list. I want to read Room but have this sneaking suspicion that I won't like it so I'm holding off until I can either get it from the library or maybe wait for the PB.
I'm not that familiar with Eoin McNamee. I'll have to look into him.
Speedskater
I've read 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 9 on your list and I approve. I'm intrigued by the William Gibson. The last one I read by him was Pattern Recognition.
Have you seen Man on Wire? If you like 1, you'll like the doc.
Seana
Just Kids is great. She writes with real elegance.
I'll read Josh's review when I'm completely done. I've only skimmed the reviews to get a vague sense of what they thought, there still might be spoilers in the last fifty pages.
Frankie
No British Jewishness is just as funny and witty. (Stephen Fry, Alexi Sayle, Neil Gaiman etc.) Even Howard Jacobson can be funny. Reading the Finkler Question is like listening to your great Aunt Maude trying to remeber that wonderful joke she heard at the Rotary Club dinner back in 1978.
Brian
Check out Eoin, I think you'll dig him.
I'm going to read that cancer book on the NYT list. It sounds fascinating if a little grisly.
Seana
As further proof that I am way too dogmatic: in the same New Yorker issue that has a well written review of the Keith Richards biography (as opposed to the gush by Liz Phair in the New York Times) there is an excellent article by one of my bete noirs, Malcolm Gladwell, about "who saved GM" He is really very astute in that piece and its worth checking out.
Blue Orchid is high on my TBR list
Nick Flynn's (based on the great title & where I live) has just been added.
Thanks for the heads up on the Keith Richards entry.
I have really been wanting to read "Sh*t My Dad Says". Has anyone else read it? If so, how was it?
Sean
If you're in Mass, esp S Mass Flynn will really hit home.
Sean, I've had a look, and though I think it was probably funnier in the tweet form, it's pretty good in the "my parent is an eccentric and I have lived to tell the tale" vein. A little of that goes a long way, though.
Adrian, I don't get how that's dogmatic. I'm actually glad you're finding some interesting articles, as I was reading it at the register today and finding it pretty good, except those dratted customers kept coming up so that in the end I read nothing.But there was an interesting article on the social usefulness of Wall Street, and another on the political economist Raj Patel who has been chosen as a kind of new messiah in one cult group that looked worth reading.
I kind of wonder what would have happened if you had called the book the Boomsday Dead. It's catchy.
Adian, I'm 30 mins north of Boston right near Lowell, where Marky Mark / Christian Bale's new movie "The Fighter" is based and is premiering tonight. Def going to read that novel,thanks fot the tip.
Seana- Thanks for the info, It has got a lot of hype and the way it ended up getting published is kind of cool.
Now I am going to watch 'The Killer Inside Me" which just hit Showtime. Curious as to what I will think, as i loved the book and read many blog posts about the fim version.
>>>Speedskater
I've read 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 9 on your list and I approve. I'm intrigued by the William Gibson. The last one I read by him was Pattern Recognition.
Have you seen Man on Wire? If you like 1, you'll like the doc.
Yes, I did see Man on Wire. I'd seen it, and liked it a lot, before I even knew of the McCann book.
Gibson's Spook Country and Zero History are really part of a trilogy with Pattern Recognition. I liked all of those books, but esp. liked Zero History.
Calling one of our gracious and erudite host's books "Boomsday Dead" carries his irrational optimism a bit too far.
======================
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It wasn't my coinage. And I suppose it depends by what you're trying to convery with 'boom'.
Sean
Oh I know Lowell very well. I used to live in Newburyport.
You what's an interesting book that nobody's reads? Thoreau's Journey Down The Merrimack.
Speedskater
Ahh, a trilogy eh? I'll probably get those when they're out in pbk.
I cant really explain why but I LOVED Man on Wire.
Seana, Peter,
About once a month I Google myself to see if there's any really nasty reviews (or positive ones) out there that I can comment on. Always on page 2 a review comes up of a book I wrote called The Bloomsbury Dead, which I find pretty funny. I guess its the story of Virginia Woolf's mad poisoner years.
Adrian:
Yes, Gibson's last three books are considered a trilogy if for no other reason than the appearance of the Hubertus Bigend character in all three books.
That Bloomsday/Bloomsbury mix-up is pretty good. Joyce probably would have enjoyed it; Woolf probably wouldn't.
I suppose what I meant to say was why do they refer to Howard Jacobson in reviews as the British Roth? He then comes back with Jewish Jane Austen etc. You then expect a certain humour. Whereas Stephen Fry is just Stephen Fry, he isnt defined by being Jewish, that comes way down the list on who he is. Then the funny, lovely man that Fry is comes naturally and aviods cliches about Jewishness. Im not sure I make any sense.
Frankie
No I see what you're saying. Fry's book's arent exactly about exploring what it means to be a Jew but many of Roth's are and The Finkler Question certainly is.
There is no comparison however between, say, Portnoy's Complaint and TFQ, because Portnoy is funny, acute, interesting and outrageous. TFQ is a crashing bore.
I've got the Patti Smith book waiting for me to finish my courses.
My list for new reads this year:
1. Gawain and the Green Knight (Simon Armitage translation)
2. Blood's a Rover - James Ellroy
3. Gallows Lane - Brian McGilloway
4. The Little Stranger- Sarah Waters
5. The Twelve - Stuart Neville
6. Flight from Deathrow - Harry Hill
7. Valley of the Dolls -Jacqueline Susann
8. Thames - Peter Ackroyd
9. Six Easy Pieces - Richard Feynman
10. Liver - Will Self
It was a lot easier than I thought to prepare this list but then I've read a lot of fluff this year
Rob
Let me see now, I've read 2,3,4,5 and 9. I'd certainly endorse Brian McG, Stuart Nev and Sarah Waters. I was disappointed with Blood's A Rover. I'd admire your pluck picking Jacqueline Susann.
of course it reminds me of this.
I dont remember much about the Feynmann. I think it was Surely You're Joking Mr Feynmann when he tells the hilarious story about Einstein and Kurt Godel (I think) showing up for a poxy little graduate school presentation he was giving at Princeton.
I'd defend Valley of the Dolls to the hilt; I was surprised at how well written it was and also how bleak.
The edition I read had a foreword by Julie Burchill where she gives away the entire plot. I didn't think she could annoy me more, but she never fails.
Rob
Well I havent read it but I'm not about to contradict Spock.
Me, I just love looking at peoples' lists for books because I am too unoriginal and not inquisitive to make my own.
Sheiler
But lists are so much fun.
Sheiler:
I use Librarything.com to keep track of what I've read. I do rate the books, and so it was really easy to go back an compile my list for 2010.
This week's Friday's Forgotten Book at the Rap Sheet is a choice by author Kris Nelscott: P. D. James' AN UNSUITABLE JOB FOR A WOMAN. Reading her take on it reminds us of how much better the world is for women, and indeed for all of us in that regard.
Which brings me to Carmille Paglia's SEXUAL PERSONAE, a book I probably wouldn't have even looked at had it not been for Adrian McKinty's mention of it here in his top ten best reads of the past year. Here is her opening gambit:
"In the beginning was nature. The background from which and against which our ideas of God were formed, nature remains the supreme moral problem. We cannot hope to understand sex and gender until we clarify our attitude toward nature. Sex is the subset to nature. Sex is the natural in man.'
"Society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature's power. Without society, we would be storm-tossed on the barbarous sea that is nature. Society is a system of inherited forms reducing our humiliating passivity to nature. We may alter these forms, slowly or suddenly, but no change in society will change nature. Human beings are not nature's favorites. We are merely one of a multitude of species upon which nature indiscriminately exerts its force. Nature has a master agenda we can only dimly know."
So far, so good. But then:
"Feminists grossly oversimplify the problem of sex when they reduce it to a matter of social convention: readjust society, eliminate sexual inequality, purify sex roles, and happiness and harmony will reign. . .This book takes the point of view of Sade, the most unread major writer in western literature."
The author says that, like Sade, she sees no source of beauty in nature, only lust and violence. Her interpretations follow that line.
I found it flawed. She underestimates the power of love and often seems to deny its very existence. She overestimates the power of sex, and gives no credence to the idea that human spirituality might sometimes spring from the unconscious mind instead of always only being illusionary and conscious rationalization.
Moreover, she thinks the motive behind the fear/desire in human nature is sex, and thinks that psychology supports her in this view. She is off her mark. It is the fear of death that is sublimated and reappears in other forms. It is the flight from nothingness that drives mankind, not suppressed sexual desre for fathers and mothers.
This volume runs over 700 pages. A lot that is good, but also a world of inferences from false premises.
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