Jul

4

Best of the Year So Far

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I made one of these lists last year and it was immensely helpful at the end of the year to remember the stuff I may have forgotten about at the beginning of the year.  This year I expect it to be even more helpful, since my soon-to-be-sleep-deprived brain will probably make the first 6 months of 2009 rather hazy.  While it’s been a pretty good 6 months, this was a surprisingly easy list to make.

Assassination Vacation/The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell.  I’ve always planned to get around to reading Sarah Vowell and I’m definitely glad I have.  In fact, I should probably reserve another now that I think about it.  While I really enjoyed the random trivia of AV, I think TWS actually takes it in head-to-head combat.  The more specific scope of the Puritans helps, as does Vowell’s ability to show how our misapprehensions about our country’s ideals continue to affect us.  (Also, I listened to TWS on audiobook, and Campbell Scott was one of the guest readers.  I like him.)

The Comedians by Graham Greene.  I really started the year well, with my first two books both making it on to my best-of list.  It should be no surprise that a Greene book makes my list, but I do have to say that it was quite an experience and possibly one of my favorite Greene books, even though it’s not considered one of his great works.  His dominant themes are definitely there and as ever the way he establishes a sense of place and character are impressive.  And, of course, a disaffected Brit gets to watch some foolhardy idealistic Americans make fools of themselves.

Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan.  Probably one of the most bizarre books I’ve ever read, and yet it worked very well.  In its multiple narratives, a sombrero falls from the sky and somehow manages to lead to a near-apocalypse.  I wrote originally that it’s very Vonnegut-esque, and it is, but there’s a lyricism to it that Vonnegut lacks.  Why isn’t this guy more popular?

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell.  This little piece of fluff is a bit out of place on this list, but it was one of the funniest and craziest books I’ve read in ages.  The book manages to be both amusing and appalling.  A medical resident whose former mix-ups with the mafia come back to haunt him sounds like movie material, but it’s so much more biting than that.

Transmission by Hari Kunzru.  I was introduced to Kunzru by the TOB, and particularly liked this earlier book.  It’s refreshing to get a different view of the Indian-American experience.  So many of our Indian-American authors have ivy league degrees and lovely New York brownstones, but Kunzru (who is actually a Brit) shows the more common side of what happens these days to an aspiring immigrant with computer skills.  While it may not sound interesting, it’s the book that convinced me Kunzru is a good writer, he just pulls you along for the crazy ride.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.  I admit I am still giving this book some time to grow on me.  It was served well by comparisons to other gothic-ish novels I read around the same time, none of which came close to this one.  While the story is familiar–an outsider watches the crumbling of a once-great family due to what may be supernatural influences–you can’t say Waters doesn’t tell it with style and skill.  I think my hesitation was due mostly to expectation.  After all, The Night Watch, Waters’ previous book, is probably one of my favorites of the last decade and I was expecting something similar.  But with these two most recent books she’s shown an amazing ability to move between genres and beyond the twisty plots she used so deftly in her first three novels.

Sag Harbor/ The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.  Whitehead is definitely the big winner of the year thus far.  I have already grown nostalgic for Sag Harbor, wishing I could read another book just like it instead of what I’m actually reading.  The fact that the book, a coming-of-age style novel set one summer among black vacationers, is obviously a work of nostalgia itself shows how thoroughly it permeated my brain despite the fact that I’ve never actually “summered” anywhere.  I also have to give props to The Intuitionist, which is thoughtful and incredibly stylish while creating an entire world in and of itself.  Both books show off Whitehead’s incredible flair with words.

The Dragon Man by Garry Disher.  I’ve just finished another Disher novel and still like him immensely.  Technically these are your typical crime novel, police procedural, thriller, call it what you will.  But Disher manages to combine multiple crimes and characters in his plots giving the small town in Australia a feeling of claustrophobia.  He also really makes characters and it was nice to see them again, still flawed and struggling, one book later.  Disher takes things most of these novels have that don’t work and makes them work by giving them a feeling of reality.  Even though his main character has one of those pasts that all detectives these days seem to have in books, it doesn’t get bogged down.

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher.  So I can’t say I’m the most appreciative or ideal reader of this book.  I wasn’t raised in Britain in the 70’s and 80’s, I’m not well acquainted with Thatcher-ism, I don’t have a good knowledge of the London vs. everywhere else classism of England, and I tend to dislike intergenerational family epics.  And yet I loved this book.  (Though I was annoyed at the book jacket for what I believe is misleading plot info.)  I practically devoured it despite the fact that it’s over 600 pages.  I wasn’t completely satisfied when it was over, though I credit this to the expectation created by the jacket that something big was coming and my own previously mentioned ignorance of the bigger picture in England.  Mostly that lack of satisfaction came because the book was over and I didn’t want it to be.  Many people have called this book very boring, which is one reason I put it off for a while, but I could barely put it down.

The New City by Stephen Amidon.  I will forgive Amidon for basically writing the same book twice.  I read Human Capital first, liked it okay, and then sought out The New City only to find that it was virtually the same thing.  TNC is set in the 70’s in a new subdivision and HC is set in the 2000’s in a swank suburb, but besides that many things are the same.  Except that TNC is much better.  It is always fun for me to realize part way through a book that we are approaching a tragedy of sheer Shakespearean proportions and that’s exactly what TNC was able to do that HC wasn’t.  (All of HC seemed too cleanly packaged to me, lacking the real muckiness of life.)  While all the characters moved forward towards their inevitable destruction, you were with them every step of the way.  I also found that the microcosm of local government is an ideal place for this kind of tragedy.  Based on my experience, it tends to be a place of big but fragile egos and a lot of striving and justifying.  TNC also managed to address the issues of race and class and idealism in a post-civil-rights country without feeling preachy about it, just letting the different characters mingle and stew.