2008 Reading List

Well, Happy 2009, all. I thought I'd kick off the New Year with my annual Annotated Reading List.

Drinking: A Love Story -- Caroline Knapp
This is a book for anyone who has struggled with addiction, self-destruction, or maybe simply being human -- as well as for anyone who appreciates good, clear writing.

Woman at Point Zero -- Nawal El Sadaawi
I taught this book in junior IB for the first time last year, and it's one I refuse to give up for now, despite the complaints of a few "concerned" parents who only want their children to read "positive stories." The main character is a prostitute in a society where women are devalued, and the story is about her struggle for freedom and finding her voice. My students understood the importance of the book and its universality, and they were quite passionate about their right to read and discuss it. The best books are the ones that wake us up and shake us out of our comfort zones, and those are exactly the ones we need to teach.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I wouldn't recommend this book as an introduction to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even though it's very short (I read it easily in one sitting). I taught it in my junior IB class last year, and -- it's a tough book to teach, I realized. But I found it an immensely satisfying read, and I'd recommend it to anyone who liked One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera (both of which I love, although now that I think of it, I know many people who really like one and hate the other -- they're pretty different novels).

Bright Evening Star: Mystery of the Incarnation -- Madeleine L'Engle
My contemplative Lenten reading for 2008. I loved it the way I love everything else she's written, for many of the same reasons; she always finds me exactly when I need her.

I Am The Messenger -- Markus Zusak
I read this in Montana over my spring break last year. I absolutely loved The Book Thief, so I was looking forward to this one. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read it before I read The Book Thief, but the story was gripping and unique and left me wanting to do good things in the world, as cheesy as that sounds.

Love Medicine -- Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite writers, so I expected to love this; I don't know why I waited so long to read it. It didn't disappoint. I love the connectedness of her stories and the humanity of her characters. Her storytelling is raw and and true and she's the kind of writer who makes me want to write.

The Year of Magical Thinking -- Joan Didion
Brilliant and heartbreaking. Didion perfectly captures both the isolation and the universality of grief and loss. I know I'll read it again.

A Moveable Feast -- Ernest Hemingway
This is another book I've owned for years and never read. I'm not always a huge fan of Hemingway, but I also don't fall into the "You must love Faulkner or Hemingway but certainly not both" camp. Hemingway writes to the core, and I loved a lot of this collection of essays -- especially his descriptions of Paris, reflections of his friendship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and ruminations on his craft. This book also contains my very favorite line in everything I've read of Hemingway: "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."

The Secret History -- Donna Tartt
This reminded me a lot of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, although it was darker. I started this on a rainy afternoon at a coffee shop in Seattle, nursing a cold and sipping a London Fog and finished it just a few days later. I found myself completely wrapped up in the story, which is deliciously twisted. The writing is incredibly detailed, yet the story is fast-paced. I thought it was both a lot of fun and deeply unsettling -- a good combination.

The Penelopiad -- Margaret Atwood
A retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, in true Atwood fashion. Spare, haunting, sharp, and funny.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian -- Sherman Alexie
Completely fabulous. I would love to teach this someday, although I'm sure the righteous parents would be beating down my door (as they tend to do whenever their students are exposed to literature that mirrors reality -- in other words, literature to which they actually connect). This might be his best work so far (although I remain fiercely devoted to his poetry, which, in my opinion, doesn't get nearly enough attention).

Run -- Ann Patchett
I liked Bel Canto and I loved Truth and Beauty, Patchett's memoir of her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy -- that's maybe one of my favorite books. This fell somewhere in the middle. She explores "issues" of family ties that transcend blood, and while the story itself is compelling -- the entire structure of a family shifts dramatically one night after a car accident brings them together with another -- what really captivated me was her writing, which is absolutely clear and completely mesmerizing.

New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn -- Stephenie Meyer
These are all very, very bad...but still kind of fun. (Not enough fun for me to read them again, however.) I'll spare you my thoughts and point you in the direction of Cleolinda's plot summaries instead -- I do read those over and over again, because they're hilarious.

(Sidenote: I actually don't regret reading the books, because it's an interesting --and sometimes kind of terrifying -- window into insane popular culture, and my students are crazy about these books, but I just honestly don't know how in the world they managed to be published in the first place.)

Thirteen Reasons Why -- Jay Asher
This book grabbed me right away: Clay Jensen finds a mysterious package on his doorstep one afternoon; inside are cassette tapes recorded by a classmate who committed suicide two weeks earlier. She explains that there are thirteen reasons she ultimately decided to end her life, and Clay is one of them. I read almost the entire book in one sitting at Starbucks on the last day of school in June (which was really only a last morning of school, hence my window of free time). I wish more YA fiction like this had been available when I was an actual teenager, but I think I enjoy it just as much now.

Grace, Eventually -- Anne Lamott
Another collection of musings on faith from the author of Traveling Mercies and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. After awhile, her writing seems more or less the same (though maybe that's true of most writers if they cover the same subject), but I enjoyed this collection more than her others.

True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall -- Mark Salzman
This book is an account of Salman's year of teaching writing to kids who have become hardened criminals, convicted of the most brutal crimes. This is no Freedom Writer's Diary; the stories aren't sentimentalized, and they don't always have happy endings, but the subjects are real and they are human. It's hard to feel hopeful after finishing this book, but it's also hard not to feel more compassionate.

The Night Watch -- Sarah Waters
I had a hard time starting this one last year, and its reviews were lukewarm -- it's a definite departure from Fingersmith (which I raced through, breathlessly, nearly five years ago) and her other two novels, apparently. But I tried again this summer and deeply, deeply loved it, possibly even more than Fingersmith. I found both the characters and the structure of the novel completely intriguing, and I thought this book showed more quiet depth than her earlier writing.

The Abstinence Teacher -- Tom Perotta
I wanted to like this. Matt and I watched and appreciated Little Children, which is based on another of Perotta's novels, and I'd heard so much glowing praise that I decided to swing by the library for this one. I'm glad it was a library book and not one I bought, because I just didn't enjoy the writing -- it felt flat and cartoonish.

Laughing Without an Accent -- Firoozeh Dumas
Another memoir from the author of Funny in Farsi. I read it quickly and laughed a lot, and I think I enjoyed it more than her first book.

Flight -- Sherman Alexie
The premise of this novel rests on a Native American teenager about to commit a horrible act of violence when he is suddenly shot back in time, where he "travels" through several violent moments in history, becoming a different person each time. It's a punch in the gut, like all of Alexie's writing, and I read it quickly and enjoyed it, but it's not nearly of the same caliber as his other fiction (except maybe Indian Killer, which wasn't my favorite either).

Midaq Alley -- Naguib Mahfouz
I'm going to teach this soon as a complement to Woman at Point Zero. The setting is similar, and the story also deals with impoverished classes in Cairo, but the storytelling is entirely different. It reads almost like a soap opera in which no character is wholly admirable or contemptible; ultimately, it offers a "slice of life" -- of humanity -- that transcends time and geography.

Paper Towns -- John Green
This wasn't unlike Looking for Alaska and it was just as good. Highly recommended.

This Boy's Life -- Tobias Wolff
I read this because we'd considered adding it to the sophomore pre-IB curriculum this fall. Ultimately, we ran out of time, but I enjoyed reading Wolff's memoir anyway. (I loved Old School a few years ago. That's still my favorite of his, but this is still a great story.)

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Mark Twain (reread)
I read this again because I taught it in junior IB. And I loved it -- partly because my kids had such fabulous discussions. It's a touchy book to teach these days, but I am extremely privileged to have a group of thoughtful, respectful kids who can go into dangerous territory and talk about tough issues. It was particularly timely, because Time ran a feature on "The Dangerous Mind of Mark Twain" this summer. We discussed his views on racism, his influence on politics, and the ways in which his writing is still so piercingly relevent.

The Woman in White -- Wilkie Collins
I've owned this book for years, and I decided that 2008 would be the year I actually read it. It was fantastic. It was the perfect dreary fall novel, and I finished it right around Halloween. It's considered one of the first "mystery thrillers" and I'll tell you, once I got used to the prose (it's been awhile since I've exercised my brain on some good old Victorian lit) I could not put it down. It's hefty, but I promise it's worth it, and I actually read it pretty quickly. You have to love Victorian lit; you can always count on someone escaping from a madhouse, or a case of mistaken identities, or some very very very bad villains, or perhaps some blood coming out of a wall somewhere (so said one of my favorite professors in college). And of course it goes without saying that there is lots and lots of fog.

The Discomfort Zone -- Jonathan Franzen
I wanted to love this collection of essays because The Corrections is one of my favorite books. It was okay.

The Toughest Indian in the World -- Sherman Alexie
I bought this collection of short stories when I listened to him speak in October, just so I could have another book for him to sign. I thought I would enjoy them, but I didn't know I'd love them as much as I did -- this might be one of my favorites from him. Truly. (Sidenote: After he signed my book, I totally got my picture taken with him, and you should be very, very jealous. I'm grinning like an idiot, but I don't care.)

The Westing Game -- Ellen Raskin (reread)
Kyanne and I bought this at the same time one night while we were indulging in some childhood nostalgia. I love it just as much now as I did when I was ten years old. Maybe more.

Let it Snow -- Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle
I do love John Green, so I had to read this, although it's been awhile since I've read this kind of cute little teen romance (please don't mention Twilight, because I'm not sure what that was about). It was cute and light and about what I expected. But I was definitely ready for John Updike when I was through.

Rabbit at Rest -- John Updike
I started the Rabbit novels in December of 2005 and have read them each Christmas since. They're not particularly cheerful holiday reading, but I love them fiercely anyway. Each one is better than the last, so Rabbit at Rest was a satisfying finish. Now I need to pick up the collection of stories that includes "Rabbit Remembered."

I've already set the bar for 2009 pretty high with Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson -- it may have joined the ranks of my favorite books. I know, I have a lot of those, but it cracked my heart wide open.