Yes, it's time for the big 'ole book post! I said it last year and I say it again... grab a drink, sit down, and get comfortable... this is a post that has been a year in the making!
While I didn't reach my goal of 12,345 pages, I still got pretty darn close with these 32 books:
By The Numbers:
32 - Number of Books Read
12,038 - Total Pages
78% / 22% - Fiction vs. Non-Fiction (Last year: 78% Fiction)
56% / 44% - Male vs. Female Authors (Last year: 73% Male)
65% / 16% / 19% - Paperback vs. Hardcover vs. Kindle (Last year 84% Paperback)
3 (9%) - Books Read For A 2nd Time (The Color Purple, Amsterdam, Diary of Anne Frank)
2 (4 books) - Authors Read More Than One Book: Alexander McCall Smith (2), Ian McEwan (2)
66% / 34% - Never Read This Author Before vs. Authors I Have Read Before
2 - Authors Who You Might Be Surprised Are Women (Lionel Shriver & Curtis Sittenfeld)
(FYI, any of the book links below will go to my "review" of it)
Unlike last year, I didn't think this was a particularly outstanding reading year. That said, it was still very good. I would like to think I am fairly picky about the books I pick to read, so there were only a few true clunkers in the bunch - but not too much that truly blew me out of the proverbial water.
Non-Fiction Notables - Since I read only 7 non-fiction books (which I think is still pretty good), it won't take too much time/effort to give each of them at least a brief mention. That said, 4 of the 7 I do not really consider "notable," granted for different reasons: disappointingly dry given such rich material (Rome 1960), good / funny / entertaining but the literary equivalent of a potato chip (Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death), more "truthy" that I am not even sure it qualifies as non-fiction?? (Heartbreaking Worth of Staggering Genius)... or since the vast majority of what I read is contemporary, it's really hard to compare in an apples/oranges scenario (The Diary of Anne Frank).
So, my only true other non-fiction notable is Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope. It was pretty much the standard "I'm running for President" tome, but the difference is he won and in these challenging times he somehow makes the title of the book ring true (well given the particular day, hour, or minute).
Non-Fiction Runner-Up - Snark if you will, but this year's runner-up was a no-brainer (and don't think I didn't consider it for my top pick of the year): Tina Brown's The Diana Chronicles. I know, I know... what could possibly be said in yet another book about the Princess and the fairy tale that went so badly awry?!? Well, Brown has created the Diana book by bringing together and more importantly, sorting out, all those many books, stories, accounts leaving the reader with a fascinating, complex, and often contradictory (one can be both manipulator and a victim?!) portrayal of the People's Princess.
Non-Fiction Book of the Year - J. Maarten Troost's Lost On Planet China did something that I could not do after returning from our amazing trip to Beijing... even begin to successfully explain - as Troost dubs in the subtitle of this book - "the world's most mystifying nation." I have read Troost's previous two books (about life in the fairly non-civilized parts of the South Pacific), but he takes it to a whole other level in this very funny and very informative book. A shout-out to my reading buddy Joanna who led me to this book far quicker than I would have otherwise... and btw, the book also top her own year-end best list.
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Fiction Notables - Unlike the non-fiction category, I won't list all the fiction books I read (it will just seem that way), but I still feel the need to highlight all the stand-outs.
First up, are two books that were re-reads... so I think that disqualifies them for awards, but they were still amongst the best of the year: Alice Walker's The Color Purple and my warm-up to actually going to Amsterdam even though only a very small portion of the book takes place there, Ian McEwan's perhaps not so aptly titled, Amsterdam. Speaking of McEwan and pretty much thinking he can do no wrong, his Atonement also deserves a shout-out .
I did not read it at the very best time (during/post-Beijing)... coupled with not being the biggest fan of the short story genre... but my love for Jhumpa Lahiri (particularly after naming her novel The Namesake on of my top picks last year) made it hard to quibble with her literary debut (and Pulitzer Prize winner), Interpreter of Maladies.
Next, are two book that only make my "also ran" list despite landing on many "real" year-end/best-of lists. First, is a word-of-mouth bestselling debut that only become more of the literary behemoth when Oprah picked it for her book club: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. For me, its parts were greater than the whole and ultimately I thought tried a little too hard to be "great"... and there were a few little plot quibbles. The other was Curtis Sittenfeld's American Wife, a kinda sorta fictional/imagined take on the soon to be former First Lady Laura Bush. If it didn't follow the Bush saga so closely... and only diverging when it needed to be more entertaining or titillating... I would have given the book more credit. A very good, well-written book, but I had to knock it on originality.
These next two, I also had some slight hesitations with, but they edged even closer to literary nirvana than either Sawtelle and Wife: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Wao was one of the most original and fresh-voiced novels I have read in some time, but I did fade out in a few spots and, like Sawtelle, I felt signs of it trying to be "hip." I loved, loved, loved Guernsey, but for a story told by a dozen+ people the fact that they didn't "sound" different was something I couldn't overlook in this annual review. That said, this is one of those books that I would unequivocally recommend to pretty much anyone... a charming, engaging, and fascinating look at a part of WWII history that I certainly was not aware of before this book.
And now the cruelest cut of all in the Olympics and here my year-end fiction list, the 4th place finish. This year, that "honor" goes to The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. While I have owned Chabon's Kavalier & Clay for many (many, many!) years without reading it, in fairly typical fashion I skipped ahead and bought his newest release. Now, I have to find the time to go back and finally read that one! Yiddish was a mind-boggling and intriguing alternate-history mystery where Alaska is the home to millions of relocated European Jews saved from the Holocaust (with Israel never coming into existence). The noir-ish tale with a cast of interesting characters (and I read this way before most of us ever heard of the Palins!) reminded me of a Coen Brothers film (think Fargo) and whattya know, the Academy Award winning duo is on tap to bring this one to the big screen.
Fiction Second Runner-Up - It's always hard to compare decades old (or even older!) books with the more contemporary stuff I tend to read, but Richard Yates' vision of a darker side of suburbia, embodied in the quite troubled marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, in Revolutionary Road has haunted me since reading it over the summer. While I knew about the movie while reading the book, thankfully it was well before I had too many visuals of Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet from the just released film version. Whle critically hailed when it was originally published in 1961, the work now has an extra layer now as a 1950s period piece. While I haven't watched the TV series Mad Men, from what little I have read, heard, seen this book had that sort of feel to it (and it was confirmed in a recent Time article that made the same connection). Warning: this book is not for when you are feeling depressed or down... well, then again, maybe it is... you might just feel better about pretty much anything going on in your life when your are through with this one!
Fiction First Runner-Up - I am a little surprised I read this one. It seemed a bit too chick-lit for even me and while I am more than willing to suspend belief, I have my limits there as well. But having seen this book on the bestseller shelf pretty much any and every time I went into a bookstore, I finally gave in and read The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger... and while it did end up being a chick-litty romance beyond all possible imagination, I was totally swept up in this tale of the time-jumping Henry and his soul mate Clare as the meet-up at different times/ages. What should be as confusing as all heck, and what some might accuse of being gimmicky, I found to be incredibly well-crafted and very un-put-downable (according to my records, I read it at nearly a 50 page pace/day over 11 days).
Fiction Book of the Year - If you weren't pleased with that selection, I doubt this one will be any improvement as there is also a alternate time continuum/must suspend belief aspect to it. Imagine how your life would be different if you just did just one thing differently. Meet Irina McGovern, an ex-pat American in London. who is encouraged by her long time beau to continue their annual tradition of having dinner with Ramsey, the ex-husband of a family friend. Dinner, a few drinks, new-found chemistry, and a trip back to his place leads to the moment where Irina must choose to kiss or not to kiss Ramsey? What does she do? Well, both! In Lionel Shriver's The Post Birthday World, the reader, in alternating chapters, follows Irina's life based on each of those moments. Sometimes these life's trajectories are quite similar, other times dramatically different. Again, this will seem gimmicky but like my runner-up, I just found it to be very well and cleverly constructed work. While not the longest book I read this year, it is kind of interesting that it took me the longest to finish - 24 days at just over 20 pages a day (which meant a serious hit to the reading challenge goal of averaging about 34 pages/day)... so I don't know if I was savoring it or that it was just a bit thick (it was quite detailed, so it's probably a bit of both!). Also of note this was Entertainment Weekly's top fiction book of 2007, and while I hate to be a copy-cat that's where it ends up on my list as well!
Hope you enjoyed this year's re-cap and while I would love to say that I hope it inspired you to read some of these books, I am always a bit wary. We all come from different places, experiences, heck even moods which makes reading such a personal and unique experience. So, I should just say that I hope it inspires you to read something and even better yet share it with others as well!
And if this wasn't (gasp!) enough, here are my previous best/year-end book round-ups:
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