The year ahead: suggestions for reading in 2018

Still in the rear view mirror: lists of “best books of 2017.”

In early December, the New York Times published choices of its regular book reviewers. Dwight Garner, Jennifer Senior, and Parul Sehgal listed their top 10 books of the year. Janet Maslin, a frequent reviewer, weighed in, too.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/books/critics-favorite-books-2017.html?_r=0

The month before, editors of the New York Times Book Review came up with their list of the 10 best books of 2017. Some of their choices echoed those of the newspaper’s daily reviewers lists.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/books/review/10-best-books-2017.html

All of this end-of-year list-making made me wonder: what makes a book a “top” choice or a “best” book? It’s not sales figures; some of the books are little known. It is literary merit? A whopping good story? A unique setting? A fresh perspective on culture and politics?

Reviewing a book is subjective. I don’t know if professional reviewers have to justify their choices or adhere to specific criteria. Fortunately, ordinary readers (like me and my friends) just have to say that they liked or admired a particular book. So, in addition to noting professional reviewers’ recommendations, I offer suggestions from some of my reader friends, a pretty discerning lot. I pay attention to the books they favor. Books in the list below is  below are diverse and intriguing. As soon as the snow melts, I’m heading to the library to check out a few of them…

Joyce G. – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Helen  McC – Pachinko by Min Jin Lee; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Katherine B – Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; The Leavers by Lisa Ko

Nancy A – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Pat T— My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout; Paper Love by Sarah Wildman

Paulette W – The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham; Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Rachel B –  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline; A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Rob W – A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

Shannon P – Turtles All the Way Down by John Green; A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Steve S –Dry by Jane Harper

Susan P – In the Woods and Faithful Place by Tana French

Trip F – Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon; A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby

(Because of space constraints, I have not included readers’ comments on their choices.)

And if you need even more reading inspiration for the new year, here are links to recommendations from two men I greatly admire—leaders who make time for reading: former President Barack Obama and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. The two have something in common: they both love to read.  A few years ago, Obama said, "Reading is important. If you know how to read then the whole world opens up to you." Last year, Gates told The New York Times that reading, "is one of the chief ways that I learn, and has been since I was a kid."

Here, then, are their favorites reads.

Barack Obama:

The Power by Naomi Alderman
Grant by Ron Chernow
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond 
Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid 
Five-Carat Soul by James McBride 
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
*Bonus for hoops fans: Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano

Bill Gates: This list comes from Gates Notes, a blog that he publishes periodically https://www.gatesnotes.com  I have included his commentary because—well, because he is Bill Gates!

The Best We Could Do, by Thi Bui. This gorgeous graphic novel is a deeply personal memoir that explores what it means to be a parent and a refugee. The author’s family fled Vietnam in 1978. After giving birth to her own child, she decides to learn more about her parents’ experiences growing up in a country torn apart by foreign occupiers. 

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond. If you want a good understanding of how the issues that cause poverty are intertwined, you should read this book about the eviction crisis in Milwaukee. Desmond has written a brilliant portrait of Americans living in poverty. He gave me a better sense of what it is like to be poor in this country than anything else I have read.

Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens, by Eddie Izzard. Izzard’s personal story is fascinating: he survived a difficult childhood and worked relentlessly to overcome his lack of natural talent and become an international star. If you’re a huge fan of him like I am, you’ll love this book. His written voice is very similar to his stage voice, and I found myself laughing out loud several times while reading it. 

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Most of the books I’ve read and movies I’ve seen about the Vietnam War focused on the American perspective. Nguyen’s award-winning novel offers much-needed insight into what it was like to be Vietnamese and caught between both sides. Despite how dark it is, The Sympathizer is a gripping story about a double agent and the trouble he gets himself into. 

Energy and Civilization: A History, by Vaclav Smil. Smil is one of my favorite authors, and this is his masterpiece. He lays out how our need for energy has shaped human history—from the era of donkey-powered mills to today’s quest for renewable energy. It’s not the easiest book to read, but at the end you’ll feel smarter and better informed about how energy innovation alters the course of civilizations. 

A Baker’s Dozen: a list of books I’ve read and admired in 2017

This year felt a little short on books I felt passionate about—you know, the books you want to insist that your friends read. Still, there were some pleasures, including nonfiction (NF), memoir (M), and several delightful re-reads (R). So this is my list.

·      Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

·      Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (M)

·      The Code Girls by Liza Mundy (NF)

·      The Door by Magda Szabo

·      Draft No.4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee (NF)

·      Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

·      A Hidden Wholeness: Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer (NF)

·      How It All Began by Penelope Lively (R)

·      The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories by Penelope Lively

·       The Senator’s Children by Nicholas Montemarano

·      Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies by Ann Hornaday (NF)

·      The Trespasser by Tana French

·      Thomas Jefferson Dreams of Sally Hemings: A Novel by Stephen O’Connor

Up next: recommendations from reader friends--and Barack Obama's book list for 2017!

A writer writes

She’s already thinking about her next novel, the 84-year-old Penelope Lively recently told a New York Times interviewer.

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t writing,” she said. “I’d feel very restless. I know if I start something new, I may never finish it, but it’s what you do. A writer writes.”

And, boy, can she write. Prolific and critically praised, Lively has published 24 novels and short story collections, 24 children’s books, and several books of nonfiction. She captured the Booker Prize in 1987 for Moon Tiger and won the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature (the equivalent of our Newbery award). With such an impressive body of work, the British author could be forgiven if she decided to give it a rest.

But no. The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories appeared in May and shows Lively at the top of her game.

The title story shows off Lively’s imaginative daring. Set in 79 AD, the tale is told in the voice of the purple swamp hen, Porphyrio porphyrio, an inhabitant of a fabulous tiled garden in Pompeii. In the mild climate, the wealthy householder and his friends liked to be outdoors, and the swamp hen saw it all, heard it all: “fornication, incest, rape, child abuse, grievous bodily harm.” As the swamp hen recounts scenes of Bacchanalian excess and cruelty, a volcanic eruption changes everything. The swamp hen calls to its mate to flee. And they flew “Far, far. Away from the mountain until there was no more falling stuff, and that terrible black cloud was distant…(We found)… a good marshy place, where there was no garden, no fountain…but water, reeds, the kind of habitat appropriate to Porphyrio porphryrio.”

After this exotic beginning, the following 14 stories focus on contemporary, middle-class English people.  But don’t expect warm and cozy tales. Lively gives us sharply observed portraits of women and men in moments that reveal their vanity, venality, or humanity. Or, usually, all three. And sly wit is a constant.

Several stories explore couples grappling with the fraying bonds of love and constancy. “The Third Wife” shows Lively’s penchant for dark humor. A husband with a pattern of disappearing on his wives—usually with a substantial amount of their money—gets his comeuppance in a most satisfactory way, as wife # 3 beats him at his own game.

In “The Row,” the humor is gentler as the wife, post-argument, summons her memories of all the men she could have chosen. The wife muses, “The world is full of men—men of every size, shape, persuasion, clever men, funny men, charming, potentially devoted men…Several of the men she had missed out on gleamed at her, almost perceptible—a smile of invitation, conspiratorial glances….All those…any of those.. And she had him.” However, through the morning, her reflections subtly shift to an appreciation of him, his kindnesses, their shared memories.

Lively shows a deft touch in portraying older people, especially women. Two stories show that “old dears” are in perfect possession of their wit and observational acuity. In “Old as the Hills,” two rivals in their 80s pretend to make nice over lunch, but soon spar over the recently buried Hugh, husband, at different times, to both Jane and Celia. “Forty-two years ago, you helped yourself to my husband,” Jane accuses Celia. “Absolutely. I can’t deny that,” Celia responds. This has been a long time coming, Jane muses. “Forty-two years. I have plenty to say. So has she. We get down to it. At last—“

And get down to it they do. But as the restaurant empties and people pass their table with an indulgent glance, Jane imagines them seeing two elderly ladies happily chatting about old times.

Pauline, the 86-year-old protagonist in “A License to Kill,” realizes that her caretaker Cally also thinks of her as an “old dear” as they go about their shopping routine. As they pause for a tea break, Cally comments, “I expect you were a teacher, Pauline, weren’t you?”

Pauline replies mildly, “No, dear, I was a spy.”

Well, that shuts down the conversation! But only briefly. “A license to kill?” asks Cally, recalibrating her view of the old lady.

Pauline thinks, “Like onions…A person is. Layers. And you haven’t a clue. You just look at the top. An old person ls just an old person, you think.”

As a complaining customer causes the check-out line to back up, Pauline thinks of her training days with MI5 and MI6: “You learned how to strangle a person with the bare hands. I think I am about to exercise the skill for only the second time.”

Almost every story captures a moment that reveals, or at least hints at, a deeper, broader tale. All are a pleasure to savor, offering wit and observation that feel absolutely true.

Mea culpa--and a correction

I got my authors mixed up and incorrectly noted that Michael Stevenson wrote Evicted. He did not. The correct author is Matthew Desmond. Apologies.

https://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483967963&sr=1-1&keywords=evicted

Reading for a winter's day

I don’t know what the weather’s like in your part of the country, but here in central North Carolina, it’s gloomy and bitterly cold. Up to a foot of snow was predicted; what we got instead was sleet and treacherously icy roads. Our governor, Roy Cooper, exhorted us to keep off the roads, and stay home. He could have added the welcome advice (and it would have been novel, too, coming from a politician) to stay home with a good book.

No complaints from me: I have a stack of TBR books—plus enough coffee to get me through the next day or so. For the next “weather event,” though, I’m planning to stock up on one or more books from “best of 2016” lists. In particular, I am happily highlighting several books recommended in “The Year in Reading,” the December 25 issue of The New York Times Book Review. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/19/books/review/25year-in-reading.html

Forty seven “avid  readers” contributed. They are a diverse lot: writers, politicians, scientists, historians, song writers, artists, actors, humorists. I’m hanging on to my print version of that issue for future reference. I was pleased to see some of my favorite books among those listed by writers I admire, such as Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See  (Mary Oliver). As important, I came away with a list to explore in 2017: Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (Ann Patchett, among others): Sara Baum’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Anne Tyler) and  M.J. Carter’s The Strangler Vine ( Michael Lewis), to name just a few.

I developed my own list of favorites for 2016 and included it in my Christmas cards this year (see below). I also invited friends to share books they read and liked in the past year. Here’s their response:

q  Barbara D: News of the World by Paulette Jiles; A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles; Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture by J. P Vance

q  Carol B: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates; Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by  Bryan Stevenson

q  Dan and Sue M: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture by J.P. Vance; Healing the Heart of Democracy by Parker J. Palmer

q  Dean F: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley; All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage; Hunters in the Dark by Lawrence Osborne

q  Katherine B: The Boys in the Boat by Daniel Brown

q  Marjorie W: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

q  Mary Ann F: Some Luck by Jane Smiley; Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick; My Weeds by Sara Stein

q  Nancy A: All the Living by C.E. Morgan

q  Pat T: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Michael Stevenson

q  Paula B: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Rachel B:  Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

q  Ruffin B: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

q  Ruth G: Our Souls At Night by Kent Haruf

q  Shannon R: Dimestore by Lee Smith; Commonwealth by Ann Patchett; The Voice at the Back Door by Elizabeth Spencer

q  Steve S: Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep by Michael Schulman

And here’s  my 2016 Book List: A Baker’s Dozen

q  Victoria the Queen by Julia Baird

q  Moonglow by Michael Chabon

q  LaRose by Louise Erdrich

q  The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

q  The Past by Tess Hadley

q  March (graphic trilogy) by John Lewis

q  H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

q  Nutshell by Ian McEwan

q  A Great Reckoning by Louise Penney

q  Pax by Sara Pennypacker

q  Dig by John Preston

q  SwingTime by Zadie Smith

q  Collected Stories of Peter Taylor