The Final Poetry Top 10 for 2011

Refusing Heaven, by Jack Gilbert

Song, by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Without: Poems, by Donald Hall

Hoodwinked, by David Hernandez

Deepstep Come Shining, by C. D. Wright

In No One's Land, by Paige Ackerson-Kiely

The Great Fires, by Jack Gilbert

A Village Life, by Louise Glück

Life on Mars, by Tracy K. Smith

Dearest Creature, by Amy Gerstler

Well, this took forever to get posted, again due to my a desire to say something about the list. Here's the short version: author jags (Gilbert, Glück), recommendations (Kelly, Hall, Smith, Gerstler), class reading (Ackerson-Kiely, Wright) and sheer good luck (David Hernandez, whom I discovered through the wonderful AGNI Online). I'm starting to understand better what most appeals to me, and also where my tastes are starting to stretch (at least a little).

Independent Booksellers + eBooks = Awesome

I got a Kindle a little over a year ago, and traded up to an iPad last month. Eight of the books that will be in my top ten for 2011 were read on an ereader. (Confession: I did make a second purchase of one, Leah Hager Cohen's The Grief of Others in hardcover because I loved it and wanted a version signed by the author. I see this kind of thing happening with some regularity in my ereading future).

I love that I can just slip my ereader into my purse instead of lugging one or, on vacation, many books around. I love that I don't have to find more space in my already overcrowded home for the books I cannot seem to stop buying, new year's resolutions about using the library notwithstanding. But I've also felt sad and a little ashamed that I am neglecting my several local independent bookstores.

No more! Last week I read in the Porter Square Books blog that many ereader users can buy some or all of their books from independent booksellers. Here's the full list, organized alphabetically. I haven't tried it out yet but intend to do so with my next purchase and will let you know how it goes!

The Final Top 10 for 2010

Fire to Fire, by Mark Doty

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender

The Ticking Is the Bomb, by Nick Flynn

The Art of Description by Mark Doty

Name All the Animals, by Alison Smith

A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver

The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück

Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey

All-American Poem, by Matthew Dickman

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, by Steve Almond

This has sat in my "drafts" folder for almost a year, waiting for me to come up with something else to say for it, and I'm giving up and moving on to 2011. 2010 was the year I started reading a lot of poetry, and I think for 2011 I will have separate lists for poetry and prose -- see the sidebar.

The Final Top 10 for 2009

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby
Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout
The Tenderness of Wolves, by Stef Penney
The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell
Art and Fear, by David Bayles and Ted Orland
The Suicide Index, by Joan Wickersham
Last Night at the Lobster, by Stewart O'Nan
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind
Abide With Me, by Elizabeth Strout
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

This was not a great reading year for me—which is not a slam on the fine titles above, but only an observation that I read substantially less this year than in years past. And I'm late posting this wrap up. We'll all survive, I'm sure.

I was saddened that this year's list features the last collection of Believer columns from Nick Hornby, though of course happy to have one last, highly satisfying helping.

This is the second year in a row that the Pulitzer prize-winner has appeared on my list. This one initiated an Elizabeth Strout bender of sorts—though it's always a little disappointing to discover a new author you love and find that he or she has written anything less than 30 books. But Strout's three are all lovely and worth your time.

And though I've written about it here before, I'll say again that Art and Fear is a book I'll be reading again and again. I hope you like it too.

John Webster, You Are No William Shakespeare

Last month I went to see the Actors' Shakespeare Project's The Duchess of Malfi. This was the company's first production of a play by someone other than Shakespeare—in this case John Webster—and I was looking forward to seeing it. And I loved everything except . . . the play. The performances were outstanding, the production gorgeous and highly stylized, the staging innovative (a long narrow corridor with the audience on either side) and psychologically appropriate to this claustrophobic revenge tragedy. Absolutely everything was up to the ASP's usual high standards of excellence, but I found myself counting up the bodies in the last act to figure out how many more people still had to die before we could go home.

I had never read any of Shakespeare's contemporaries in college and always assumed that part of the reason that Shakespeare was produced today and most of them are not (outside of academia) is that we have made such a cultural fetish out of Shakespeare. But The Duchess of Malfi is reputed to be one of the masterpieces of early seventeenth century English theater, so I'm revising my opinion and now think it's because Shakespeare is just better.

Compare these famous lines from from King Lear:

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport.

with the expression of a similar sentiment from the final act of The Duchess of Malfi:

We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.

These words are uttered by the only remotely complex character in the play as he is dying, and I'm sorry to say I had to resist the urge to laugh.

I went with my friend Kevin who, I think, liked the play better than I did but acknowledged that he devoted some mental energy to trying to imagine how seventeenth-century English audiences would have reacted to the play (his conclusion: the depraved and outrageous doings of those crazy Italians always made for a good night of theater). I say that if you have to attempt time travel to enjoy a play then it may not have aged all that well.

I'm clearly in the minority on this. The reviews of the play were uniformly positive—and I am glad because I love the Actors' Shakespeare Project (I'm a subscriber) and want them to do well. But I will not be running out to buy The Works of John Webster any time soon.

The Final Top 10 For 2008

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz
Home, by Marilynne Robinson
The Courage Muscle, by Monique Doyle Spencer
The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion
The Death of Vishnu, by Manil Suri
I See You Everywhere, by Julia Glass
Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar
Lavinia, by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Age of Shiva, by Manil Suri
The Time of Our Singing, by Richard Powers

2008 was a year of old friends. Novels from Ursula Le Guin, Marilynne Robinson, and Julia Glass (whose reading at Porter Square Books I attended) are as close as you can get to a lock on the top ten for me. I had also previously read Joan Didion and was familiar with Monique Doyle Spencer through her very funny essays in the Boston Globe.

2008 was also a year of friends-of-friends: two of the books on the list were recommendations from other readers that I would have never picked up on my own. Memoirs of Hadrian was recommended by Michelle on a round-the-table-what-are-you-reading discussion on the first night of a class. It fit in very well with my current fascination with all-things-Roman in anticipation of a Rome vacation this year. (And, though it's not a book, if you, too, are fascinated by all-things-Roman, let me recommend Garret Fagan's History of Ancient Rome course from The Teaching Company—Ben and I both loved it). And, thanks to a recommendation from Don, I finally finished a Richard Powers book, after starting at least three of them previously. Powers is one of those massively brainy authors whose work I always feel I should love but which instead tends to leave me feeling battered by the author's big brain. The Time of Our Singing was different.

Finally, 2008 was a year of a of new friends. I bought The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao after seeing Junot Díaz's interview with Stephen Colbert, in which he came across as modest and smart and geeky and completely adorable. It's not the sort of book I'm usually inclined to read, but it blew me away and, although my list is unordered, I will confess here that it was my favorite book of the year. Read it. I found Manil Suri, math professor and novelist(!), through the serendipity of the "New Fiction" shelf at my local library. The first two books of his projected trilogy are on this list, and I suspect the third one would be as well if it were published. Maybe next year.

Tattered Cover

Any visit to my parents in the Denver area must always include at least one trip to the Tattered Cover Book Store. I got some book money as a Christmas gift from the dog and the cat (don't ask), so it was our first stop on the 26th.

The Tattered Cover is one of the legendary indie bookstores. Founded in 1971, it has three locations in the Denver area. The 16th Street location, where we went, covers three enormous floors and includes a space for author events, a cafe, and a magazine section that boasts the largest collection of literary magazines I have seen anywhere, ever. There's no discernable organizational principle to the layout, and all the signs are hand-written in faded ink. I always have to ask in order to find anything I'm looking for, but that's actually one of the great pleasures of this place: the staff are knowledgeable and enthusiastic and will not only tell me where a book is located but will take me over to the relevant section and find it for me. There are semi-ratty chairs and tables all over the store, dogs are more than welcome, and the whole place is like a big, shabby, disorganized Church of Reading. I love it.

Above all, however, I love the Tattered Cover for its commitment to freedom of expression. In 2000 the store resisted, on First Amendment grounds, a search warrant for a customer's purchase records. The customer was suspected of illegally making methamphetamine and the police were trying to connect him with books they found on manufacturing the drug. The case went all the way to the Colorado Supreme Court and was ultimately decided in the bookstore's favor. At the customer's request, the store later revealed that the book in question was a volume on Japanese calligraphy.

That's right: your phone company will sell you out in a heartbeat, but your local independent bookseller will go to the state Supreme Court to protect your privacy. More reason to love them, were any needed.

So we went on Friday, with me hemming and hawing the entire way about how I already had a lot of books I needed to read and had gotten several more that I was dying to read from various relatives for Christmas, and, really, I couldn't actually think of anything I wanted to read that I didn't already have. I would probably go in and then leave empty-handed.

I picked up: Last Night at the Lobster because I read an interview with Stewart O'Nan and it sounded interesting; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle because I missed when it came out in paperback this spring; The Wordy Shipmates because I adore Sarah Vowell and will buy anything she writes; Old Friend from Far Away because I am constitutionally incapable of resisting how-to books on memoir; and Unstuck ($4.98 in the bargain bin) because, okay, the truth is that I am constitutionally incapable of resisting any writing advice book.

I also got his beautiful blank notebook:


I'm not ordinarily a fan of fancy-shmancy blank notebooks—my college-rule cardboard-covered notebooks exert much less pressure to write Deathless Prose. But this looked so good it was practically edible, and we're coming up on the new year and fresh beginnings, so I decided to try something new. About which, more later.

My "On My Bookshelf" list has gone from worrisome to completely-out-of-control, but hopefully I've also improved my bookstore-related karma enough to end the year in the black.

In Which I Realize What a Bad Person I Am for Patronizing a Chain Bookseller

"Hi," I said, walking up to the employee at the desk on the second floor in the literary nonfiction section of the big chain bookstore out by the mall. "Do you have the new Best American Essays?"

"Is that, like ... a book?"

Yes, my good man, it is exactly like a book. In fact, it is a book! Even though it is National Sarcasm Awareness Month (and thanks to the fabulous Miss Conduct for the notice!), I keep this observation to myself. I really want that ... book thingy.

"Yes, it's a series that's published annually. I think this year it will be Best American Essays 2008."

He types it in on the computer, with Ben and me looking over his shoulder.

"Yep, it's in stock," he says. "It's downstairs by the main information desk."

I sigh audibly for his benefit (I am a jerk) and head down the escalator. How can you not have at least a copy or two of Best American Essays in your essay section? I realize I am about to support, though my patronage, both this bizarre shelving scheme and the hiring of employees who have to think about whether something called Best American Essays is a book. I feel even worse because I heard this volume was available though the email newsletter of an independent bookstore that I love, but that is also a good 40 minutes from my house. I am a jerk, and lazy, and a bad, unreflective consumer.

Two take-aways:

1. Best American Essays 2008 (yes, I did buy it) totally rocks, about which more soon.
   
   
2. Find and patronize your local independent bookstore. Do it even when it's inconvenient and more expensive. The aggravation (and guilt) you save may be your own.

The Final Top 10 For 2007

Safekeeping, by Abigail Thomas
A Three Dog Life, by Abigail Thomas
Here If You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup
Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, by Nick Hornby
The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", by Beverly Daniel Tatum
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Stones of Florence, by Mary McCarthy
(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, by Steve Almond

2007 was, as is often the case for me, a year of author jags: Abigail Thomas and Nick Hornby both had multiple books in the top ten. There's a fuller discussion of Thomas's work here, but let me take a moment to sing the praises of Nick Hornby. Both titles on my list are collections of his book reviews for The Believer. I would love Hornby forever on the basis of his appreciation of Marilynn Robinson alone, but in addition to that he is everything one could want in a reviewer: opinionated, funny, forthright about his prejudices, willing to be pleased, and, above all, firmly on the reader's side. He talks about books the way your best-read friends do—as if he has discovered something he knows you'll love and can't wait to tell you about it.

Style and Substance

Whenever I go to the library, I browse the "New Nonfiction" section. Lately I have been reading extensively in memoir and creative nonfiction. But unlike fiction, where a browse through the stacks results in all kinds of happy connections -- authors I've never heard of, books I'd never otherwise find -- nonfiction is more "destination" reading. I go, locate a specific book by its call number, pull it from the shelf, and leave. Occasionally I'll find an interesting book nearby, but this is generally more the case with, say, books on travel in Italy than with memoir, where the adjacent books have no more in common than the alphabetization of the subject's last name. The "New Nonfiction" section opens up again the possibility for literary serendipity, albeit on a smaller and time-delimited scale, since I'll find only books published in the last few months.

An so on a recent troll through my library's single case of new nonfiction Abigail Thomas's brilliant memoir, A Three Dog Life, caught my eye. I confess that I picked it up because there was a dog on the cover. I read a few pages and that was enough to propel me at a run to the checkout desk. I got the book home, devoured it in a day, and immediately requested her previous book, Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, via interlibrary loan. I have since bought copies of both books for myself. Both are in my current Top 10 for 2007, and I guarantee that they will still be there at the end of the year.

Thomas is the rare writer with a style that is vividly distinctive and yet somehow does not call attention to itself. The chapters are short -- often a couple of pages or less -- and the prose is generally spare, almost telegraphic in places. While you cannot read her books without noticing her style, there is nothing flashy or affected about it; it is entirely in service to the work.

"Don't spell everything out," the instructor of my first memoir class told us. "Let the reader do some of the heavy lifting." Thomas's writing is the first where I can see how that collaboration actually works. I think of her technique as "bell ringing." Thomas touches on a topic or emotion that resonates in the reader's mind and then moves on. Later, she circles back and touches on the same topic again, but with a slightly different emphasis or point of view, like a bell rung at a pitch that harmonizes with the first occurrence. The result is something greater than what is on the page: a work of art that is not so much the book itself as the multi-layered effects it creates in the reader. And as a reader, it is exhilarating to feel oneself an active partner in this act of creation with the author.

Thomas's web site contains a wonderful section called Getting Started that gives me inspiration and new ideas every time I visit. Today it's this: "Sometimes it’s what you’re not saying that gives a piece its shape."

The Final Top 10 for 2006

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, by Daniel Mendelsohn

The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis

The Whole World Over, by Julia Glass

March, by Geraldine Brooks

How It Feels to Be Adopted, by Jill Krementz

The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost

All Hallows' Eve, by Charles Williams

The Final Top 10 for 2005

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson

The Brothers K, by David James Duncan

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

The Lost Daughters of China, by Karin Evans

Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell

Dream Season, by Bob Cowser, Jr.

Home Land, by Sam Lipsyte

Something Rising (Light and Swift), by Haven Kimmel

The Final Top 10 for 2004

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss

Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde

A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Reexamined As a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations, by Cintra Wilson

The Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macaulay

The Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean Greer

Robert E. Lee, by Roy Blount, Jr.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel, by Susanna Clarke

The Final Top 10 for 2003

The Lantern-Bearers and Other Essays, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

Three Junes, by Julia Glass

Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem

The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold

Stuffed: Growing Up in a Restaurant Family, by Patricia Volk

Why I'm Like This: True Stories, by Cynthia Kaplan

Extra Virgin, by Annie Hawes

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon