I guess I only
use this blog for best books lists now. Part of me misses blogging--it was
probably good for me to write something other than Facebook posts or work
emails--but then the rest of me remembers that I don't actually like writing
very much.
This was a good
year in reading, at least by count, even though I continued my New Yorker subscription
(and obsession). I read 115 books, many of those on buses and trains during our 4.5-week vacation in India and Nepal. I
hate to admit this, but the count is also high because many of those books I
read in India were--gasp!--romance novels. I don't typically read them, but for
a few days in India we were riding trains and buses in Rajasthan in 115-degree
weather and I was sick and surviving solely on orange-flavored rehydration salt
water and I desperately needed something to distract me from my misery but couldn't concentrate because of nausea, and,
well, Nora Roberts was there. I tore through nearly 15 of the romance novels my
mom had on our shared Kindle account, and was thoroughly sick of them by the
time we got back to more reasonable temperatures. I'm not sure I'll ever be
able to look at a Fabio cover again without feeling hot and uncomfortable. (And sorry, Fabio, not even in the way you'd expect.)
As usual, I
read more fiction than non-fiction, but once again I was surprised by how much
better I liked the non-fiction. I don't know for sure why that is, but here's
my speculation: I've been a fiction reader for so long that at this point I've
read most of the truly great novels out there, and plus I have a much higher
quality bar from my wide experience. I'm still newer to non-fiction so I get to
choose (and enjoy) the time-tested greats. This year the effect was probably
also exaggerated because for a while over the summer and early fall I
concentrated on my goal to read all the Booker Prize-winning novels (I only
have 8 out of 46 left). I continue to think Booker books are mostly pretentious
and unreadable (William Golding? Give me a break!), so the fact that they were
heavily represented in my fiction doesn't speak well for the category.
Anyway, on to
the lists. Top non-fiction is a pretty crowded field this year, so I added some
sub-category breakdowns to make sure some good books get mentioned.
Top 5 Novels
Schindler’s
List,
by Thomas Kenneally. I should take back all my Booker Prize criticism for this
one. It deserves to be a classic.
The Orphan
Master’s Son,
by Adam Johnson. I have no idea how accurate to North Korea this is--can
anyone?--but it had me hooked anyway.
A Short Stay in
Hell,
by Steven Peck. The premise sounds like a gimmick (and maybe it is), but it was
still genuinely thoughtful.
Telegraph
Avenue,
by Michael Chabon. This wasn't in the same league as, say, The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but I have to put it on the list just for
being set in my neighborhood. (Literally: the main characters lived about 1.5
miles away.) It was an odd (and awesome) experience to read a passage about the
MacArthur BART station while walking home from the MacArthur BART station.
The Fault in
Our Stars,
by John Green. I don't read much YA but this got such rave reviews that I
couldn't resist. I can point to plenty of flaws here but I was still touched; I
knew a book about teenagers with cancer was going to be sad, but I didn't know
exactly how much I was going to cry. (It was embarassing.)
Fiction
Honorable Mentions
Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn.
A twist! And what a twist; I can see why everyone on BART has been reading this one.
The Yellow
Birds,
by Kevin Powers. This was beautiful, and I'm happy to see literature start to
come out of the Iraq war, but it wasn't stayed with me the way I'd expect.
The Testament
of Mary,
by Colm Toibin. Maybe I'm terrible, but I enjoyed how bitter Mary was.
Top 10
Non-Fiction
I read of lot
of depressing history:
King Leopold's
Ghost,
by Adam Hochschild
The Rape of
Nanking,
by Iris Chang
Bury My Heart
At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown
And a lot of
feminist history:
Mother Nature:
Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species, by Sarah
Blaffer Hrdy
Century of
Struggle,
by Eleanor Flexner
And even some
depressing feminist history:
Unnatural
Selection,
by Mara Hvistendahl
Occasionally I branched out:
Thinking, Fast
and Slow,
by Daniel Kahnemann. This successfully explained the concept of
"regression to the mean" to me, a real achievement.
The Signal and the
Noise, by Nate Silver. This successfully
explained Bayesian statistics to me, another achievement.
The
Philosophical Baby, by Alison Gopnik. This had the most persuasive argument
about why to have children I've ever read. (It boils down to "they're a
great psych experiment," but that's more persuasive to me than
"they're cute.")
The Places In
Between,
by Rory Stewart. This was just the most British thing I've ever read, and I've
read a lot of P.G. Wodehouse. (Note: my parents know him, and apparently he
really is that British.)
And now, a
whole bunch of assorted categories--basically, books I'd want to mention under
"best non-fiction" if that list were 25 books instead of 10.
Best Memoirs
Bad Indians, by Deborah
Miranda. Poetic and eye-opening.
Wild, by Cheryl
Strayed. Okay, so this was the world's most incompetent backpacking trip
(bringing jeans!??!), and animal lovers should probably avoid this, but Strayed
is a really, really, really beautiful writer and managed to make me sympathize
with and then even admire her crazy, stupid persona. I also loved Tiny
Beautiful Things, so consider this a plug for both.
Funniest
How To Be a
Woman,
by Caitlin Moran. Look! I read funny feminist stuff as well as factual feminist
stuff and depressing feminist stuff. (And I'm not even including all the
radical feminist stuff on these lists; Germaine Greer's work hasn't aged very
well.)
Gulp, by Mary
Roach. Gotta include a Mary Roach on here. Maybe it's just that I've suffered
from digestive ailments, but I thought Gulp was one of her
funniest.
Sleepwalk With
Me,
by Mike Birbiglia. I think his stand-up is funnier, but I was still reading
nearly every other line out loud to Mike.
Mapheads, by Ken
Jennings. I'm easily amused by nerdiness, apparently.
Best Books By
Someone I Know
I don't usually
even have a category for this, not to mention three books in the category, but
2013 was an embarrassment of friend riches.
Lean In, by Sheryl
Sandberg
How Will You
Measure Your Life?, by Clayton Christensen
Elders, by Ryan
McIlvain
And finally, Most
Racist:
Empire of the
Summer Moon,
by S.C. Gwynne. This was really disappointing, since I had read some other
wonderful books about Native Americans this year, and this was a highly praised
Pulitzer Prize finalist, but despite the fascinating story I found it really
hard to stomach the author's attitude towards the Comanches, which appeared to
be lifted wholesale from the nineteenth-century white sources he was using. I'm
no expert on Native history or race relations, but it doesn't take an expert to
realize it's ignorant and racist to unironically describe Native Americans as
"low-barbarian" or "savage" or "dark-skinned
pariahs" or a "backward tribe of Stone Age hunters" or even to
call their languages "primitive." (He clearly doesn't know anything
about Native languages.) What's even more shocking is that the vast majority of
reviews--and, apparently, the Pulitzer Prize nomination committee--don't even
mention this.
