What I read in 2011

Annnnnd it's time for me to post my annual reading list! As usual, most of these can be found over at my Goodreads page.

Fiela's Child -- Dalene Matthee
This is the story of a white child taken from the only mother he has ever known, an African woman who found him wandering in the forests of Knysna. He is then forced to live with a family of woodcutters who claim that he is their long-lost son. As the mother of a son, I found this really difficult (read: gut-wrenching) to read at times -- but ultimately I loved this book, and I enjoyed discussing it with my junior IB class.

Cannery Row -- John Steinbeck
In My Reading Life, Pat Conroy writes, "Here is all I ask of a book -- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word." Cannery Row is a book that does precisely that, in just over one hundred pages. This book is a gem. The day I started reading it, I scrawled in the margin next to chapter 2, "I never want to forget this passage exists." The next day I e-mailed that entire passage to a friend. I underlined, I reread. It's about as perfect as a book can get.

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children -- Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Really, really interesting -- I'd recommend this to parents, teachers, and anyone who works with kids (of any age). Incredibly easy reading, too.

Last Night in Twisted River -- John Irving
Okay, wow.

While A Widow for One Year still remains one of my favorite books of all time, I think this might be Irving's best novel yet (and I was incredibly impressed with Until I Find You). At times I wasn't sure this would receive more than a four-star rating, possibly because it took me quite awhile to get through, but this story quite literally left me breathless when I finished it.

One review called this "the John Irving novel of John Irving novels," which is dead-on. You can check off all the Irving-isms with rapid speed: the New England setting, bears, younger man (or boy)/older woman relationships, deadly and bizarre accidents, a focus on the writing process. Irving inserts himself into this novel pretty overtly in the character of Danny Angel, and while that's often a tricky thing for a writer to pull off, it worked really well here; it seemed to be Irving's own little reminder not to take ourselves too seriously.

I loved it for the same reasons I have loved his other novels, especially A Widow for One Year and Until I Find You; the storytelling is simply unstoppable in its power. Pat Conroy wrote in his latest reading memoir, "Here is all I ask of a book -- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word." Irving does exactly this. And Irving himself, more than once, has said that fiction needs to be bigger and better than real life -- that's why his plots are so unbelievably grand and bizarre and why they work so well. I found myself thinking about the characters and the story whenever I wasn't reading it; this book really lives. (Also, as a sidenote, Ketchum has joined the ranks of my all-time favorite fictional characters.)

Because I've read a solid handful of Irving novels and more than a handful of Irving interviews (I can't get enough of writers talking about writing, I suppose), I also know that his novels are born backwards; he thinks of the last sentence first. Now, knowing that from the beginning, I have to resist like hell the urge to read that last sentence too early. But I won't, because I refuse to deprive myself of the gift of arriving there, spent, my heart completely full of the entire spectrum of human experience and emotion. This book has it all.

The Solace of Open Spaces -- Gretel Ehrlich
This book made me ache, in a good way. And as a Montana girl, much of it resonated deeply. This is a short book, but I read it slowly, underlining, jotting notes in the margins, and lingering over Ehrlich's writing.

Girl Meets God: A Memoir -- Lauren F. Winner
A friend introduced me to Lauren Winner a couple of years ago by sending me the chapter on Ash Wednesday. Finally, this year, I decided to buy the book and read the entire thing. I started it after Christmas this year and read slowly, finishing it shortly before Ash Wednesday. It seemed like the right time to read it.

Girl Meets God is Winner's story of conversion: first to Orthodox Judaism, and then to Christianity. So much of what she writes resonated with me; despite the fact that I've never experienced this kind of conversion (I've been Lutheran my entire life), the ways in which she wrestles with her faith is deeply familiar. This is a book I couldn't just re-shelve after I finished it, because I know I'll return to it again and again.

The Likeness -- Tana French
I read this in the same way I read In the Woods -- during every spare moment I could find. It was exactly the reading experience I needed this week: total escapism. It started a little more slowly than In the Woods, but once I was in, I was in. I really enjoyed the character development of Cassie this time around, and one thing I appreciate about Tana French is her ability to develop great characters in a mystery novel. I will say that I'm not wild about the Cassie/Sam pairing in this book -- that falls a little flat -- and the ending was perhaps a bit predictable, but overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

How to Breathe Underwater -- Julie Orringer
A fabulous book that made me remember why I enjoy short stories. I bought this book thinking it would be nice to have something to dip into a bit at a time for awhile, but the stories propelled me through the entire book. All were compelling. Common threads include sibling relationships, the breakdown of communication between parents and children, dying mothers, and the ways in which children can be especially savage towards one another. The last story absolutely chilled me, and I don't think I'll be forgetting any of them soon. I might even change my rating to five stars at some point, depending on how I feel after my thoughts have had a chance to settle.

The Polysyllabic Spree -- Nick Hornby
Entertaining little collection of Nick Hornby's columns for Believer magazine, in which he writes about books he buys vs. books he reads each month. (It made me feel a little better about buying more books than I can reasonably keep up with at times.) Quick and enjoyable. Also, it makes me want to read more Dickens.

Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx -- Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
This story follows Jessica and Coco, two women from the Bronx, from their teen years into their thirties (when Jessica becomes a grandmother). I was hooked from the first page and haven't stopped thinking about it all week. LeBlanc writes about a harsh reality I can't even begin to fathom, refusing to sugarcoat or sensationalize poverty, abuse, drugs, teen pregnancy, homelessness, and class injustice. She puts human faces on these issues, and I was reminded again why stories matter -- they remind us of our humanity. I wept at the last line. Pretty phenomenal book.

Wise Children -- Angela Carter
So there's some really great stuff in this book -- love the allusions, the unexpected magical realism, the drama. Some incredibly funny/profound/heartbreaking/sad/sharp stuff. At the same time, it felt like a chore to read and I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

The Devil's Highway: A True Story -- Luis Alberto Urrea
This book is completely chilling and it completely broke my heart. And at the end I was left wondering how much of our humanity we're willing to lose to the absurdities of politics and policy debate.

The Master -- Colm Tóibín
This is one of the best contemporary novels I have ever read -- truly a masterpiece. And I'm not even a fan of Henry James.

This book took me quite awhile to read for how long (rather, how not-long) it is -- just over 300 pages -- and is not for the casual reader. It's not at all a plot-driven novel, nor is it particularly linear. This is not a problem for me; I found it gorgeous and evocative and sort of swam through it for a few weeks, allowing myself to be swept through Henry James' life (as imagined by the author), drifting back and forth through time. It's beautiful and rather hauntingly sad. I also love the meditations on the writing life, on family, on relationships and the ways in which we find and lose each other, on death, on war, on art.

People have made the inevitable comparisons to Michael Cunningham's The Hours, although I couldn't put that one down and finished it in a single day. Reading The Master reminded me much more of reading To the Lighthouse, The English Patient, or even The Great Gatsby -- I underlined and annotated my way through the book, rereading sentences and trying to absorb as much as I could. It's both quiet and intense, hopeful and sad. And seriously brilliant.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America -- Barbara Ehrenreich
Okay, despite my mediocre rating, I still think people should read this book. I learned a lot, and I think it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves of our own privileges every now and then -- otherwise we forget how to check it.

That said, I found the author's tone kind of insufferable and self-congratulatory. Yes, we know, you are ACTUALLY undercover, not like THESE people, and you go to the gym and have a phD and are educated, please tell us some more.

It's a VERY fast read, though, and really still worthwhile. I just found myself annoyed enough by the author that I couldn't quite give it any more stars.

(Also: I hope that this book causes people to seriously rethink shopping at Walmart if they have the choice to shop somewhere else. But I'm a teacher, so that isn't anything new for me.)

Cutting for Stone -- Abraham Verghese
I agree with my friend Melissa; I loved this book not necessarily because it's the most amazing book I'll ever read, but because I am in awe of what Verghese managed to do. This is an absolutely grand feat of storytelling. I'm reminded of what John Irving said once -- something along the lines of how fiction should be bigger and better than real life. Look, no one reads John Irving's novels and says, "Well, now, THAT wasn't very realistic." It's because his stories are jam-packed full of TRUTH, but they are absolutely fantastic. I wasn't remotely bothered by what some reviewers call "coincidence." The plot was SO well-drawn and so perfectly-paced, and I was completely willing to let go of the picky little side of my brain that said, "Well, that would never happen." Verghese managed all the elements of this complex plot quite beautifully, and I was completely absorbed from beginning to end.

It's an absolutely fantastic story, one that I think will stay with me. I loved the characters, who were compelling and real. It's probably not for the faint of heart -- there are some graphic descriptions of medical procedures, among other things -- but great fiction and great stories that manage to convey such passion and truth probably aren't for the faint of heart anyway.

Eating Animals -- Jonathan Safran Foer
This book pretty much turned us into instant vegetarians, although I really don't think that's the author's goal in writing it. An excerpt from my rather lengthy review (the whole of which can be found here): "So this book changed my life. I don't know that I'm going to be 100% vegetarian forever, and I don't know what this will look like for us long-term, but for now, all I know is that I cannot, in good conscience, be a direct supporter of factory farming. Will I still eat the meals lovingly prepared by our families? Possibly. Can I change our children's diets? Maybe not overnight. But I know that factory farming is something I don't want to endorse or support with my money. (And, like the author, I really believe that if everyone could experience what factory farming truly is, almost NO ONE would support it.) It may seem dramatic, but it calls my humanity into question.

For me, it comes down to this, I guess -- is the suffering of a cow, or a pig, or a fish the most important thing in the world? Probably not. But is it more important than my privileged craving for a hamburger? Bacon? A turkey sandwich? A plate of really wonderful sushi? That's the question I have to answer."

The Beet Queen -- Louise Erdrich
I'm glad I read Love Medicine first, because I think it allowed me to appreciate this book much more deeply than I would if I hadn't already fallen in love with Erdrich's writing and the world she has created -- and, as always, it is so evocative of familiar landscapes I've loved and places that have shaped me. (Reading a book like this, along with books like Love Medicine and The Last Report of the Miracle at Little No Horse make me understand why she is so often compared to Faulkner.) There is some really wonderful stuff in this novel. However, if you've never read Erdrich, I'm not sure I'd start with this one.

Faithful Place -- Tana French
Tana French has really hit her stride with this one. I thought In the Woods was pretty fantastic, even though it drove me insane, and while I enjoyed The Likeness it wasn't a book I thought about much after I finished. This one is my favorite so far, hands-down. I really loved Frank Mackey as a main character, in spite of (or perhaps because of) his rough edges and flaws. I also love the way French never really allows us to wholeheartedly trust her narrators, and the villain -- at least in this case -- is someone I couldn't quite bring myself to hate.

(Minus a point for making the villain a little too predictable. I wasn't remotely surprised.)

There's more sadness in this book than in the other two; it's heavier. The story is really about the dysfunctional Mackey family as much as it's about the actual mystery (so I can forgive the predictability, a little); that's what made it a layered, character-driven story instead of just a fun but formulaic murder mystery.

Overall, awesome.

There Are No Children Here -- Alex Kotlowitz
I couldn't stop thinking about this while I was reading it. It's in the same class as Random Family -- compelling, heartbreaking. Learned a lot. Am acutely aware that I am senselessly privileged.

I Love Yous Are For White People: A Memoir -- Lac Su
Compelling story that grabbed me in the beginning, but I don't feel it was executed particularly well. I can see some of my students really liking it, though, and I think it'd be a great addition to my classroom library; it just wasn't to my taste. (I did like the author's voice.)

When You Reach Me -- Rebecca Stead
A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite, favorite stories -- so I couldn't help but love this one, too. I've read so many comments from people who wish they could go back in time and give this book to their younger selves, and man, that is SO true -- fourth grade me would have loved this. I can't wait to give this to my own daughter someday, right on the heels of A Wrinkle in Time.

It's Kind of a Funny Story -- Nick Vizzini
I wanted to read this for quite awhile, but then I actually got pretty bored reading it. I might have liked it more 10 or 15 years ago.

Also, people really need to stop comparing this to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Kristin Lavransdatter -- Sigrid Undset
This is one of the best books I have ever read -- it's going on my Desert Island List. It took me through everything a human being can experience. It lived -- I thought about it all the time when I wasn't reading it. Read it if you love someone, if you've been loved. If you've loved a child, if a child has broken your heart. If you've been disappointed by someone, if you've disappointed someone. If you've stood up to someone, or had someone stand up to you. If you've had everything you wanted and lost it all, if you've ever had to start over. If you've been proud, if you've ever had to swallow your pride. This book broke my heart so many times, but it never left me in despair, and when I finished I thought immediately that it was maybe the most satisfying reading experience I've ever had. One of them, anyway.

Don't let the size intimidate you -- I read it in about three weeks because it was so easy to just get lost in the story, but it would also be a good book to curl up with all winter.

Anthropology of an American Girl -- Hilary Thayer Hamann
I don't really know how to write about or recommend this book. It wasn't at all what I expected, although I'm not sure what that was -- I thought it would be a quick vacation read, but it went so much deeper than that for me. It's the kind of book that makes me study writing, the way an author crafts a novel -- I read many passages more than once, underlining, jotting notes in the margin, and it's one I want to read again. I love it like I loved The Corrections, only more, because it resonated so deeply with me.

The Help -- Kathryn Stockett
So I was reluctant to read this, mostly because of the hype. Sometimes a book everyone loves is truly fantastic, and then sometimes you wind up reading Twilight or, I don't know, something by Nicholas Sparks, and you say things like, "Well that's time I'll never get back" and want to stick a pin through your eye. Also, when I read that some of the story is written in the voice of two black women living in the south in the 1960's and saw the picture of the author -- a smiling blonde woman -- I thought, yeah, surely I can find better. But everyone continued to tell me it was amazing, and then the movie trailer really made me want to read it because I want to see the movie, and then my mom happened to have a copy she said I could borrow.

It took me two days to read, but I think I could have read it in a sitting if I wouldn't have had, you know, children to raise and meals to eat and things. It hooked me from the very first page.

It really is a good story, and the characters are kind of fantastic, and Kathryn Stockett is a competent writer. I couldn't put the book down; I finished it late at night in a hotel room, hoping the light wouldn't wake my sleeping children. Three stars instead of four or five because it's not one of those books that makes me fall deeper in love with the English language, and despite the inevitable comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird, it's really not on the same level. Still, it's a worthy read.

Zeitoun -- Dave Eggers
If you are reading this update but you haven't read this book, please go get a copy yesterday. And then watch the documentary When the Levees Broke. Neither are easy to stomach, but both are so well-done and so important.

An American Childhood -- Annie Dillard
I just finished discussing this with my seniors. It absolutely delighted me. Dillard embodies what I want to be, as a writer -- someone who notices the world, who is present in her life, in all the little details.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -- Rebecca Skloot
Really interesting. Three stars simply because I didn't feel the narrative was particularly focused; I thought Skloot skimmed the surface of the family's history, and that's what I really wanted more of. Still, it raises so many interesting issues, and it's quite an accessible read without "talking down" to the reader.

Room -- Emma Donoghue
It took me about two weeks to read the first 30 or so pages. I think this says more about the beginning-of-the-school-year chaos than about the book itself.

I read the rest of the book in one day. From what I've read of others' reviews, this seems to be a pretty common approach.

It's really an astonishing feat of storytelling, this one. I wondered if I'd get tired of the narration from the five-year-old's point of view, but I didn't. Partly because I am the mother of a five-year-old, and it's clear to me that Donoghue has been one, too (and, in fact, I remember her writing somewhere about this and how she drew on it). It's truly original. (Sidenote: I don't mean "original" in the sense that this is an original story; maybe she was inspired by recent similar stories in the news, none of which I probably need to hash out here. This seemed to greatly bother some people. I say, so what? Great storytellers allow us to empathize, to enter others' experiences in a way we might not otherwise, and that's where the art is.)

While I read the book quickly and appreciated the author's obvious skill, I had a hard time reading it, probably because in many ways it did hit close to home since my own child is the same age as the narrator. Totally gut-wrenching stuff. Still, it was a brave book to write, and Donoghue pulled it off very well.

Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America -- Helen Thorpe
I have a hard time articulating my thoughts on the issue of immigration -- most of the time the debate just seems so ugly and mean-spirited, and I pretty much think it shows the worst of our humanity. This book brings you right to the heart of it and reminds you that it's about actual people, and that nothing is simple.

I have students facing the same issues as these girls, so this is something very near and dear to my heart. This book broke my heart and made me very, very angry, but it also has this beautiful thread of hope running through it. Very powerful, very poignant.

The Tiger's Wife -- Téa Obreht
I chose the wrong time to read this, in the midst of too many other projects, so it took me far too long to finish. But what a feast. This book is superb, and I am in awe of its young author's capabilities.

The Bluest Eye -- Toni Morrison
I first read this book the summer I was nineteen; I reread it because I'm teaching it in my senior class.

Toni Morrison is a 5-star writer, and this is 5-star writing, no question. But it's hard to say, "I loved this book." Because it is a powerful book written in beautiful language, but it is painful and devastating in its beauty. Morrison herself says this is "a terrible story about things one would rather not know anything about." And she is right -- but it is precisely such stories that cause us to look at our own humanity and all its terrible, beautiful, layered complexity. She doesn't shy away from the horrors people inflict upon each other, and she doesn't excuse the perpetrators -- not remotely. But she makes us try to understand them a little, and that's...a difficult thing to stomach sometimes.

It's not a beautiful story, but it is a beautiful book.

The Submission -- Amy Waldman
The premise of this book is so interesting: a jury votes on a memorial for the victims of the 9/11 attacks. All entries are anonymous, and after a winner is selected, the world learns that the design was submitted by an American Muslim.

Unfortunately, what I thought would be such a compelling book didn't really get any more interesting than the book jacket. The story raised all the issues one would expect; really, you could go ahead and have the book club discussion just based on the book jacket alone. The characters never came to life for me, and the writing reminded me of Tom Perotta's The Abstinence Teacher -- flat and full of caricatures. I actually considered abandoning this about a hundred pages in -- life is short and full of too many wonderful books -- but it read quickly and isn't a long book, so I stuck it out. And the second half was actually much better than the first, with a fairly good ending, but nowhere did it live up to my expectations after reading so many reviews about what a beautifully-written novel this is.

Blue Nights -- Joan Didion
What can I say about this other than it's Joan Didion, and I would happily read her grocery lists. Much like The Year of Magical Thinking, I know I'll be coming back to this one. Didion is an author you read, savor, and reread.

Columbine -- Dave Cullen
This book kind of took over my life for a couple of days. Like so many people my age, I remember the Columbine shootings quite vividly; I was a sophomore in college, taking my first education classes, and obviously we had a lot of discussion surrounding this topic.

Reading this book twelve years after the fact was a really interesting experience. I filter everything through the lens of motherhood now, of course, and I find myself reacting very differently than I probably did as a twenty-year-old. I remember taping news clippings in my journal back in college, and I'm almost afraid to look at what I wrote -- was I as hasty as the general public to vilify the parents, for example? (Probably not, since my focus was more on what it must have been like as a teacher or a student at the school.)

Anyway. This book seems to be a pretty solid work of journalism, devoid of the media's sensationalistic reporting that shaped the public's perception of this tragedy even long after many of the rumors surrounding it had been debunked. In short: everything we think we know about Columbine is pretty much false, and in our collective desperation to find an immediate cause or someone to blame, we created a pretty powerful mythology.

Columbine is fascinating, horrifying, disturbing, unsettling -- everything one would expect. At the same time, it's highly readable, and even though I have a weaker stomach for such things these days, I couldn't put it down.