[As each year comes to a close, we ask our contributors to give us their picks of the best books that came out in the previous 12 months--and we let a few older ones slip in as honorable mentions. You can follow the entries through the rest of the year here, and check out the picks from 2009 and 2010 while you're at it.]
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My Picks for the Best Books of 2011
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The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco
I was pretty late to the Eco party; this is just my second of his novels. It is excellent. He is one of the smartest and most talented novelists alive right now, and this book really demonstrates that. He combs recent (anti-Semitic) European history for real-life characters and then uses them to help build his imperfect everyman, ultimately telling a more humanitarian story than you realize until the final pages. Read my review here.
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The Outlaw Album, by Daniel Woodrell
None of Woodrell’s stories are particularly great, but the consistent, harrowing tone he manages to conjure and maintain in this collection of semi-linked stories is quite a feat. Definitely an author worth a look for short story fans. Read my review here.
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Guadalajara, by Quim Monzó
This short collection of quirky post-modernist stories really took me by surprise. This Catalan has got some serious writing chops–reminded me quite a bit of Barthelme–and these stories can hang with the best of them. Read my review here.
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The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma
A time traveling steampunk romp with H.G. Wells front and center? This book just sounds awesome. In the end, it’s nothing like you think it’s going to be–and that’s in part why it’s such a great novel. Read my review here.
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Open-eyed Sneeze, by Jess Martin
Martin’s candor and wit mix together brilliantly in this satisfying little memoir. I’m not kidding when I say this is one of the, if not the, best self-published books I’ve ever read. Read my review here.
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Honorable Mentions
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Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
This 2010 novel is my favorite book of the last few years. It’s the perfect mix of smart and entertaining, and it turns out to have a lot to say. Think A Separate Peace meets The Goonies. It’s not a particularly difficult read, so most all readers will find something to like. Read my review here.
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1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
I’m not actually done with this book yet. So far it’s pretty good. Weird, but not in the way Murakami usually is. Still got six or seven hundred pages left, so I’ll save the verdict for now.
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]
Lightning Rods, by Helen DeWitt, reviewed by Scott Esposito (L.A. Review of Books)
Given the ludicrous premise at the core of this book, Glory Holes would have been a more accurate (if less appealing) title. It involves comic adventures based around corporate-sanctioned anonymous sex, and Esposito says the glory hole inventor’s intricate sexual fantasies provide the book’s “deepest look into a character’s soul.” With a premise this weird, Lightning Rods should either be awful or amazing, and given the rave reviews (cf. NYT and Millions) I might just be tempted to give it a try.
This bio sounds worth reading as much for the story of Vonnegut’s personal life, marked repeatedly by tragedy, as for the expected behind-the-scenes glimpses at famous novels. Buckley’s review is sharply written and enjoyable; his verdict is “diligent, readable but uneven.”
The Language Wars, by Henry Hitchings, reviewed by Barton Swaim (Wall Street Journal)
The Language Wars sounds full of historical anecdotes about linguists and lexicographers, from matters of taste (like why Americans don’t spell “labor” with a “u” ) to technical questions of usage (like whether “hysterical” should be used as a synonym for “hilarious”). In addition, Swaim discusses the conflicts between grammatical “prescriptivists” who eschew strict grammatical guidelines, and the rest of us who, as Swaim says, simply want “to know if using ‘impact’ as a verb will make [us] sound stupid.” Intriguing review, and a good book for word nerds. Also, Barton Swaim is an awesome name.
Parallel Stories, by Peter Nadas, reviewed by Benjamin Moser (New York Times)
Claims that a long novel is too labyrinthine must be taken seriously when they come from a reviewer who calls Proust “gossipy bubbliness.” It sounds like there’s a lot to like in Nadas’s epic new novel, but if, like me, you’re on the fence, this review might tip you back.
In brief: The guy who wrote The Invention of Hugo Cabret, now a Martin Scorsese movie, also wrote the eye-catching YA novel, Wonderstruck. Read more about him here. … Jonathan Lethem’s new collection of essays is worth a look. … Ghost Lightsdraws comparisons to both The Pale King and Heart of Darkness. … This review of Margaret Atwood’s latest weird book provides an excellent overview of Atwood’s struggle against the “science fiction” label. … This review of a historical novel about Vladimir Nabokov’s younger brother wants you to like the book, but I’m not convinced.
[As each year comes to a close, we ask our contributors to give us their picks of the best books that came out in the previous 12 months--and we let a few older ones slip in as honorable mentions. You can follow the entries through the rest of the year here, and check out the picks from 2009 and 2010 while you're at it.]
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Field Grey, by Philip Kerr.
The seventh volume in the noir series about Bernie Gunther, former Berlin police detective during the rise of Nazism, this novel finds Gunther returning to Germanyafter several post-war years in exile in South America and Cuba covered in the last two novels). In Field Grey Gunther is caught up in the morally ambiguous Cold War retribution between the Communists and the Fascists.
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The Buddha in the Attic, by Julie Otsuka.
This short, lyrical novel paints a picture of the Japanese “Picture Brides” of the early 20th century, girls who emigrated from Japan to the United States to marry other Japanese. The story goes up through the start of World War II and the internment camps to which the U.S. government sent Japanese-Americans.
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At Dock’s End: Poems of Lake Nebagamon, Volume Two, by L.D. Brodsky.
The second of three volumes of poems in which Brodsky, the modern day Thoreau, returns to his beloved lake inWisconsin to observe nature throughout its spring and summer changes.
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The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman.
An intriguing novel about two sisters at theend of the twentieth century during the high tech boom and culminating in the September 11,2001 attack. The story takes place in California and Boston. Along the way, Goodman involves themes of Jewish mysticism, antiquarian book collecting, food and love.
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The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides.
Set in the early 1980’s, this novel focuses on three characters just graduating from Brown University: Madeleine, an English major; Mitchell, aReligion major; and Leonard, a Biologist. Manic depression and spiritual searching are other key themes, along with love and relationships.
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Bullfighting, by Roddy Doyle.
Thirteen poignant short stories about middle age set mainly in Ireland. Doyle’s ear for dialogue and his witty observations make these tales about men reacting to dying, to diminished vigor and the prospect of the “empty nest” both wise and entertaining.
A whole gaggle of new ereaders hit the market this month, just in time for the holiday season. We’ve updated our ereader comparison for this new slate: find it here, and find out why we don’t believe the hype about the Nook Tablet, and why the Kobo Touch is our top choice for casual readers.
In other news, we’re taking off for the rest of the week for Thanksgiving. We’ll be back on our regular schedule next week, when we’ll kick off our third annual Best Books series.
[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here. PS, going to be a pretty quiet week at C4, but we've got a whole bunch of good stuff in the hopper for December. Enjoy your turkey.]
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The Maid, by Kimberly Cutter. Reviewed by Brunonia Berry (Washington Post).
Not sure about this one. Lines like this give me pause: “If I have any criticism of this book, it concerns the contemporary and conversational language Cutter uses.” Still, I’ve always thought of Joan of Arc as pretty badass and a great story, so even if Cutter’s Pucelle is more Leelee Sobieski than Ingrid Bergman, this book might be worth a look for history/biography fans.
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The Puppy Diaries, by Jill Abramson. Reviewed by Pat Morrison (Chicago Tribune).
I have absolutely zero interest in reading this book. In fact thinking about it kind of puts me in a crummy mood. I don’t hate puppies, but I also don’t want to read a smarmy, overly literary, Reader’s Digesty dog biography either. I think it’s pretty clear to most people this book only exists, at least at such ludicrous level of exposure, because of who the author is. Not to mention the fact that this is a book written about raising a puppy by someone who sends their dog to doggy daycare. I liked reading this review just to chuckle at how fast Morrison (who tips her weirdo dog-zealot hand right away with the cheesiest of opens) glosses over all that to gush about the book for no clear discernable reason other than that it’s about dogs. Woof.
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11/22/63, by Stephen King. Reviewed by David L. Ulin (Los Angeles Times).
I hardly ever read King, and I’ve certainly seen more of the movie adaptions of his books than read their inspirations. But for some reason, I’ve always liked him, and usually read about his new releases with interest, plan to read them on my next vacation, then forget to. (I really will get to the Dark Tower books someday.) This book features a plot you might not associate with the horror master. It’s an alternate history story focused on the assassination of JFK. If anything, King is creative, so I’d be interested to see what sort of double agent scenarios this book unfurls.
Bonus Book Trailer: Here’s a book that appears to just be drawings of naked children. And is it me or does that main mandolin bit sound an awful lot like like Tom Petty?
Love and Shame and Love centers around a Jewish male named Alexander Popper, simply “Popper” as he’s known to almost everyone—I hesitate to describe him more thoroughly, because the book covers nearly his entire life (as well as several other lives). Is it fair to call him a “writer,” or a “Democrat,” or even a “man,” when each of those descriptors will, at some point or other, fail to apply to him?
The first time we see Popper, he’s almost 13, nervously waiting to talk to a local judge in what we’re told is a kind of Bar Mitzvah. Five pages later, Popper’s at college, getting a degree in creative writing and falling in love with Kat, whom he’ll eventually marry. Soon the novel backs up a generation and follows Popper’s parents, Philip and Miriam, detailing how they fell in love and had kids and then, as the title implies, how their love fell apart.
Then it’s back another generation, to detail Popper’s grandparents, Seymour and Bernice, and how their marriage fared before and after WWII.
It takes nearly three hundred pages to get back to Popper and Kat’s life after college, and those pages are a jumble of time periods, perspectives, characters, and relationships, intercut with letters and drawings and epigraphs. Even though Orner’s an excellent writer, this technique has a tendency to underwhelm and confuse, at least for the first half of the novel. The characters are too briefly described, too obliquely set in the chronology of the Popper clan (and more often set along a timeline of Democratic politics, which doesn’t much help). It takes close reading or half the book’s length to sort out exactly who’s who, and whom each section focuses on, because those clues too are well-guarded.
Eventually, though, a rich picture of the Popper clan emerges, and by the end, each tiny moment reveals an intimate, and often heartbreaking glimpse into the core of a life.
Goliath closes the YA trilogy Westerfeld opened barely two years ago with Leviathan (if you want to get caught up, you can read my review of Leviathanhere, and my review of the middle book, Behemoth, here). Like its predecessors, Goliath is a fun adventure set in a creative alternate history, where World War One is a fierce battle between the steampunk Clankers (Germany and friends) and the Darwinists (headed by Britain) whose army consists of giant biological weapons created by genetically modifying lifeforms–the titular Leviathan being an armored airship supported by a flying whale.
Deryn, the girl posing as a midshipman in the British Air Navy, and Alek, the Hapsberg prince hoping to find a means of peace, continue their adventure right where things left off. There’s plenty of spectacle in this book, and even more historical figures make their way onto the pages (Nikola Tesla, William Randolph Hearst, Pancho Villa, and others). … Continue reading »
[On occasion some of the spam we get is too good not to share. So this column is where we do just that. Follow it here.]
Every once and a while it’s fun to go through our spam trap and read all the ridiculous stuff. It’s mostly robo-Chinese, but occasionally there’s a pretty good one. Here are my ten favorite from this fall. (Try reading them out loud like poems.)
Fall 2011 Spam Slam
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The main way DeLillo makes my “brain ache,” as Poole says, is with his ranging inconsistency. White Noise is a scintillating novel, but End Zone is entirely forgettable, and Cosmopolis is “underrated,” as Poole calls it, for a reason: it’s not great. It’s not terrible, but it’s not great. I’ve still never finished Underworld because its masterful 70-page prologue leads to a non-sequitur first chapter so utterly boring that I’ve never successfully forded it. But, when DeLillo’s good, he’s one of the very best writers out there. This new book collects 9 stories from the man’s 30-year career, so there’s plenty of opportunity to cherry-pick. Poole ably details DeLillo’s strengths as a writer, and strongly recommends the book.
This review concerns a pair of recently translated Russian crime novels that feature a writer and the penguin he adopts. The reviewer (perhaps in an attempt to use the PhD in Soviet Literature that he insists that you know that he has) carefully positions it in the pantheon of all Russian literature, cross-referencing by ideology and setting. This might be overkill, but once Olcott gets around to discussing the content of these two novels, he gives some sharp analysis. The books themselves don’t sound like ordinary crime novels; if that’s a plus for you, check out the review.
This World War I history is “not so much a book about what happened, [Englund] explains, as ‘a book about what it was like.’ It’s about ‘feelings, impressions, experiences and moods.’” In other words, it chronicles the Great War from the intimate perspectives of specially chosen individuals—roughly 20 of them. They face a war whose spread outpaces public information about it, and so it’s impossible to know such crucial details as whose side the cannons in the distance are on, and whether to run or rejoice. All in all, it sounds like quite a fascinating piece of nonfiction.
Shockaholic, by Carrie Fisher, reviewed by Peter Conrad (Guardian)
This does not sound like a good book. But the review is an interesting (if not always intelligent) discussion of a fading celebrity trying to hang onto the last pieces of a career. As the title implies, Princess Leia has turned to exploiting whatever secrets and shocks her life has left, as underwhelming as they are. It’s an intriguing case study, even if the book itself sounds unbearable.
In brief: Sean highlighted Joan Didion’s Blue Nights last week. I’ve heard some good things about it, but this review by John Banville has some veiled critiques, and this review in the Guardian has some real teeth. … Not entirely sure what to make of Jonathan Lethem’s new essay collection, but from the tidbits provided in this review, I’m not all that excited. … A survey of National Book Awards finalists. … Errol Morris interviews Stephen King.
What Alan Catlin, the Schenectady bartender/poet has done for the seamier side of the drinking trade, Mather Schneider, in He Took a Cab, has now done for the taxi business in Tucson–but it could be anywhere where cabs are hailed and hacks are stiffed for a tip. Where Catlin showed us, with great sympathy and understanding, the habitués of bars, Schneider gives us an inkling into the lives of not just his autobiographical cab driver-persona, but also the fares he drives to and from the airport, to bars, to doctor appointments, to fast food restaurants, to john appointments, and elsewhere. And as often happens in cabs, people reveal themselves in a word, phrase, or gesture; and Schneider reveals himself as well.
These poems give us a slice of the harder side of life, the other side of the tracks, the places we’ve either never seen, except to drive through to someplace more picturesque, or the places we’ve been all too glad to escape from. I confess I feel a particularly affectionate affinity for Schneider’s cabbie persona and his fares, since I drove a cab more years ago than I care to think about. But that disclaimer aside, this is a strong collection, maybe not for the weak of stomach, but a much needed look at what Fred Neil called in his great song of the same title, “The Other Side of This Life.” … Continue reading »
The Outlaw Album, by Daniel Woodrell
The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma
Open-eyed Sneeze, by Jess Martin
1Q84, by Haruki Murakami
