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In 2009: Many Syllables, Many Sparks

I’m lucky to have two great book clubs in my life that prompt me to read a couple of novels every month.  (Even though I love to read, I get busy and brainfried and often find myself diving for a DVD before a book at the end of a long day.  So I’m grateful for a happy accountability to book club discussions.)  I find equal pleasure in Good Books and airy treasures that remind me why I fell in love with reading in the first place.  It’s so good, this reading.  So in the the spirit of all the (slightly obnoxious but addictive) year-end listmaking, I thought I would make a few notes about what I loved reading this year.

Without a doubt, the best new(ish) book I read this year was Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen.  It’s rather an understatement to say that I was impressed and moved by this novel, which is a meditation on time, identity and love, all wrapped up in meteorology, and written by a woman of about my age.  (And that summary doesn’t really do justice to the novel.  Please just read it.)  I experienced a similar intellectual reaction to I am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett.  These two books practically had me hopping around my apartment with hooray to talk about them.

I added a bunch of novels to my “I Can’t Believe It’s Taken Me So Long To Read This Incredible Thing” list: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon; Watership Down by Richard Adams (okay, so it doesn’t quite qualify as “incredible,” but it did make me think big thoughts about rabbits,  John Hurt, and Bunnies & Burrows all Spring); and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  I was especially taken with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, not just because it’s one of the best coming-of-age stories I’ve ever read, but also because I live in Williamsburg and it was delightful to re-imagine my familiar blocks in Smith’s turn-of-the-century story.

In the  sci-fi universe, I finally got around to reading Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which made me give a cosmic, jovial punch in the arm to hard science fiction.  I normally steer clear of you, classic hard sci-fi, but this novel was a surprisingly charming and humane representative.  It was a year of re-reading in sci-fi, too.  I took a second look at Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, appreciating all the more how it anticipated so much of our modern social media world, and I spent a few good days re-visiting The Female Man by Joanna Russ.  I read and wrote about The Female Man in my teens, and finishing the book for the first time was the moment when I decided (even though I’d been deciding all along) that I was a feminist (in fact, that I had to be a feminist).  Reading it twenty years later, it’s not quite as revolutionary, but it has become more revelatory for me.  In the new weird universe, Brian Francis Slattery’s Liberation killed me with awesome both times I read it this year.

I spent a fair bit of time with short stories this year, too.  Belle Boggs’ “Homecoming“ was a stand-out among contemporary selections.  Shirley Jackson’s “The Summer People” is a rad, economical little story that reminded me 1.) of why I should never stay on in a vacation town after Labor Day, and 2.) why Shirley Jackson does creepyawesome like no other author.  And I think that E. M. Forster’s 1909 story “The Machine Stops“ actually flabbergasted me with its vision about the role of technology in the future (despite its dystopian-as-all-heck outlook, it’s fairly spot-on in a lot of ways about the way we are living our lives right now).

And (of course, of course) there are more!  But I’m really interested in what you’ve read this past year, and what you think I should be reading in the next.

Please comment or drop me a line with some suggestions, dear readers!

Oh, and I’ve included a bonus book club PowerPoint presentation after the jump, too, if you’re interested… ok

Book Report: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (with Bonus Lovecraft!)

The Book: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1965)

The Goods: Generally credited as the origin of the true crime genre, In Cold Blood is a Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel detailing the grisly 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, as well as Capote’s study of the two killers.

The Report: Despite the face that we’re living in an age awash with all things true crime, book club was impressed with In Cold Blood, and found the experience of reading it chilling and a little creepy.  Nonetheless, many of us found it impossible to discuss this novel without discussing how it was written: Capote’s methods, his interpretation of the events, and his relationship to the real-life killers. ok

Book Report: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

The Book: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2009)

The Goods: Half the Sky is both an investigation into women’s oppression worldwide and a moving call to action to economically and socially empower women in developing countries – not just because it’s the morally correct thing to do, but also because the authors believe that it’s the most effective way to fight poverty and extremism.  To make their case, Pulitzer-Prize winning authors Kristof and WuDunn focus on three major issues facing women around the world — forced prostitution and sex trafficking, gender violence, and maternal mortality — blending grim reportage and ample statistics with individual stories of women who are triumphing over their circumstances and making real change for their families and communities.  The authors also observe and report on the pros and cons of varied international development/aid strategies and argue that grassroots, ground-up activism and support is the most effective way to fuel change. ok

A Girl & Her Kindle: A True Story of Book Borrowing, Buying, and Loving

I’m a Kindle owner. Most of the novels I read these days are in electronic format. My brain likes e-books, as does my back and my budget.

I’ve taken my Kindle to book clubs, answered questions about it on the subway, and found myself in countless conversations about the aesthetic and economic implications of the growing e-reader market. I’ve stopped being surprised at how passionate people are about their reading preferences, their fears about the digital future, and their suspicions about the pleasures of reading electronic ink. I think these are exciting conversations to have, and in the course of talking so much about e-books, I  realized that even though I’ve always been a book lover, I stopped being a book buyer a long time ago.  What’s more, I’ve realized that I have a much more enjoyable relationship with e-books now than I’ve had with real books for years. ok

Book Report: I am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

The Book: I am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett (2009)

The Goods: I am Not Sidney Poitier is – blarg – a bit hard to blurb. It’s the story of a young man named Not Sidney Poitier who looks, in fact, an awful lot like Sidney Poitier, and his coming-of-age, which the author (Percival Everett, not to be confused with the novel’s character Percival Everett, who turns up throughout the story along with a hilarious fictional version of Ted Turner) casts as an intertextual adventure through Sidney Poitier films. (Did the best I could, briefly.)

The Report: Book club really enjoyed I am Not Sidney Poitier. We found it nearly impossible, though, to talk about the novel without moving the conversation into more theoretical territory: what postmodern narratives can or can’t achieve; why our approaches to the book may have created very different types of enjoyment (some readers felt that this was an enjoyable, thoughtful text that ultimately didn’t move them while others – okay, really just ME — felt greatly moved by the identity crisis at the heart of the novel AND how that may have been informed by our relationship to literature/film in general); and how literature constructs identity and race. But we did also talk about THE book! ok