Jan

5

Best Books of 2009

Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I have decided to organize my list a little differently this year.  Usually I separate by publication date or genre with rankings, but this year I’m just going to have a loose list with different books grouped together for one reason or another.

Mysteries & Thrillers

The two that stick out the most were Black Water Rising by Attica Locke and Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan.  I read them around the same time, and I don’t know that they have much in common (the second is a nice spin on noir, the first is best compared to early Grisham) but they both were some of the best I’ve read in ages.  And amazingly both are first novels.  I really look forward to seeing more.

I am not much of a series reader, but I did find a new series I loved.  Garry Disher, an Australian writer, writes some of the best straightforward procedurals I’ve ever written.  Beginning with The Dragon Man, I also read Kittyhawk Down and Chain of Evidence, the only ones my library has copies of.  You actually feel like you’re seeing real police work in these books, which is one of the reasons I love them so much.  The cops in the books are good and bad, have distinctive characteristics that continue from one book to another.  There is just something about Disher’s books that feels so different from the American police books which feel this constant need to be big and over-the-top, to be lazy with accuracy and real-life detail, instead focusing on brutality and shock-value.

My other favorites of the year were a new author and a well-established one.  Josh Bazell’s Beat the Reaper was insane, and I mean that as a compliment.  I usually avoid books with mob themes, they tend to be overly complicated and annoying.  But Bazell’s former-mobster-turned-med-student was great.  It had the most unexpected highs and lows, and for a genre that tends to just repeat the same stories over and over, that’s a great compliment.

Laura Lippman is one of the US’s best mystery writers and her new book, Life Sentences, was a little different.  I’m not even sure if it technically falls into this genre, because the real mystery here is the reconciliation of your own memories with those of others.  Lippman’s heroine wrote a book drawing on her own past and is surprised to find all those old friends see it as terribly inaccurate.  Her journey through her own past is one of the more mature things Lippman has written, relying not so much on plot twists as strong characters.

Post-Victorian Doorstops

I am particularly fond of late Victorian novels.  They seem concerned with bigger ideas than their overly melodramatic Victorian predecessors.  I’m not sure that The Forsyte Saga is technically late Victorian, I think it may have been written too late, but it shares much of the same spirit.  There’s a preoccupation with property and the deterioration of class boundaries and a confusion as to what it all means.  It may not have the style of a mid- to late-20th century novel, the style we now consider normal, but I liked the mix of old and new.

The Children’s Book is set in early 20th century Britain even though it was published this year.  A. S. Byatt may have a bit too much of the pre-Victorian novelist’s desire to ramble on about things the reader is not particularly interested in, but I’ll forgive her.  I also forgive the book’s considerable flaws because it had me more riveted for more days in a row than any book I can think of this year.

Nonfiction

I read some nonfiction this year, believe it or not.  And I must say I did very well for myself.  Nearly all of it was worthy of the end of the year list.

The first that must be mentioned is Volume 2 of Norman Sherry’s Life of Graham Greene.  I have yet to read Volume 3 (that thing is impossible to track down even though it’s the most recent), but it will be very hard to outshine the second volume and all its excitement.  Talk about a life that has everything.  In the same kitchen-sink category is the gangster tome Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough, which teaches you a lot about how federal law enforcement got started.  It also reminds you that criminals are a lot smarter these days, even if they’re not as famous as someone like Pretty Boy Floyd.

Also in the crime genre was And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi.  I got it on purpose because I wanted to duplicate the experience of reading Helter Skelter, also by Bugliosi, and the greatest true crime book ever.  It wasn’t as good, but Bugliosi does a lot with the story and it has its share of crazy twists and turns.  It’s interesting to see him now on the side of the defense.

I read two Sarah Vowell books this year and I feel bad for not reading them earlier.  I started the year with Assassination Vacation, but I really think I preferred The Wordy Shipmates.  Mostly, I found the latter to really give you food for thought instead of just a bunch of interesting but little-known trivia.  Our puritan background continues to shape the way we think of ourselves as a country and Vowell really opens you up to the history and the legacy.

Gothic Novels

I went on a rather length gothic kick this year, though the books were surprisingly varied in tone and style.  Two that stuck out were The Seance by John Harwood, which I thought was a good throwback, and The Observations by Jane Harris, which was narrated by a cheeky servant girl who adds some pep.

The best of the lot should be no surprise to anyone who’s keeping up with end-of-the-year lists.  I was probably too hard on The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters when I first read it.  I have read everything she’s written and The Night Watch has just secured its place as one of my favorite novels ever.  She had a lot to live up to and I had expectations.  The Little Stranger is excellent, but totally unlike anything she’s done before.  The longer I let it settle the more I realize how amazing it is and I’m looking forward to reading it again to enjoy it more fully.

Craziness

I always like a book that throws you for a loop and two of my very favorites this year did just that.  Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan was absolutely nutty, reminiscent of Vonnegut mostly because there’s no one else even remotely close to compare him to.  There is something lovely about reading something so absolutely different.  I would like to read more Brautigan, and I’m honestly wondering why I’d never heard of him until now, especially with all the love for Vonnegut these days.

It is difficult to choose just one book to be a favorite, but if I had to I would probably pick The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, which was so joyous and nasty and fun that I was always excited to start reading it again.  I think it helped that it was not at all what I expected to get from Updike, or any late 20th century famous old white guy writer, for that matter.

Life is Melodrama (Or TNC)

These next two books go strangely well together, like sweet and sour.  Both The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher and The New City by Stephen Amidon have the same abbreviation (TNC) but seemingly little else in common at first glance.  But when you look longer they actually go well together.  Both are period pieces, in fact, they’re set at about the same time, though Hensher follows his characters through later years and Amidon contains his time period.  While they’re set in different countries, they both have a similar feeling: they’re exploring a time period, they’re finding the melodrama in the everyday.  Both feel as though they’re building to something big.  Amidon sees it through to a crazy climax, Hensher’s climax never appears and is the book’s major flaw.  But both are fabulous to read, for sure.

Keep it Simple

Sometimes all you want is lovely writing about the everyday and these three books qualify.  Sag Harbor was one of the very high highlights of the year, with Colson Whitehead moving away from his high-concept novels, into the nostalgic summer-coming-of-age genre.  But he does it so smoothly and beautifully, still bringing in his characteristic themes and knack for language that I hope he does it more often.

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth was the only book of stories I read this year, in large part because she wrote them.  She gives just what you’d expect if you’ve read Interpreter of Maladies.  Lovely, simple stories about family and culture.

Stewart O’Nan’s new book Songs for the Missing is one I didn’t hurry up for.  I like him as a writer but wasn’t sure I wanted the subject matter.  But he made it work.  The plot isn’t of the everyday–a family copes with the sudden disappearance of their teenage daughter–but the book itself is.  Her disappearance starts things off and then the book follows the family as it tries to figure out how to function day-to-day.  I still can’t decide if O’Nan’s hesitancy to have the family dwell on wondering what could have happened is a bad or good thing.  It could have dragged the book down, but I often found myself wondering how they weren’t playing out every horrific scenario all the time.  I think I’m content with his decision, I’m certainly happy with the book.

Classics in The West Indies

It’s probably a little shameful that it took me so long to read Wide Sargasso Sea, I’ve known of it since high school, but I think it’s good every now and then to stumble upon the kind of book that would be great classroom fodder so you can have a nice long think.  This is certainly one of them.

Set in Haiti,  I was a big fan of Graham Greene’s The Comedians, the only book of his I read this year.  Conceptually, it’s probably most similar to The Quiet American, following a Brit into a politically dangerous country where he makes a strange home and watches everything fall apart around him.  There’s a lot to chew on here, too (it would make an interesting double-feature with Junot Diaz’s Oscar Wao, with the Haitian and Dominican stories feeling oddly similar) and I think people put too much into Greene sometimes.  I don’t think a set of American characters is supposed to represent America completely, just as Pyle doesn’t in TQA.  But it certainly does give him a chance to poke a bit of fun.

The Remainder: Honorable Mentions

Transmission by Hari Kunzru.  One of the best internet-age novels yet.

The Dead Father’s Club by Matt Haig.  An interesting YA play on Hamlet.

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.  My 2nd favorite Whitehead novel, set in a bizarre world of elevators.


Comments

Name (required)

Email (required)

Website

Speak your mind