favourite books of 2009

I'm late, but it's time for my annual year-end flurry of posts, starting with books. One of the many things I let fall by the wayside this year was listing all the books I read. Fortunately, the library keeps a record of everything I check out so I was able to reconstruct most of my list on goodreads. If you're really interested you can look at my ratings there.

I only read 100 books this year, although I may have forgotten a couple (I thought it was going to be less than 100 until I tried harder to remember ones I didn't get from the library). I thought I was going to have trouble finding 10-ish books to recommend, but it turns out I gave five stars to nine books, so that makes it easy. Two of them were non-fiction, which I haven't included in the past, so I've added a few 4-star books and I'll list the non-fiction separately.

1. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. I just read Generation A, by Douglas Coupland, who used to be one of my favourite authors and was sadly disappointed. Coupland really needs to avoid writing about science in any detail. Some of the stories were good, but the book didn't really work as a whole and the ending made me laugh out loud, it was so ludicrous. I bring this up because I was worried that Nick Hornby, another favourite, was going to disappoint me as well. A Long Way Down and Slam weren't at all great, and the premise of Juliet, Naked (a women starts emailing the reclusive musician her boyfriend is obsessed with) didn't sound promising. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that a return to the topic of obsessive fans was accompanied by a return to writing form. It deals with wasted lives and when to stop putting up with less than happiness.

2. The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan. I was mostly sick of precocious narrators this year, but this book was wonderful.

3. American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is a biography of a fictional version of Laura Bush. I thought it was going to be lame, from the description, but it wasn't at all. It's kind of snarky but I did come away from it with slightly more sympathy towards George Bush, enough to see how maybe he mightn't have had entirely evil motives all the time, at least.

4. Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz. This was probably the book I most enjoyed this year. The main character is an admissions officer at Princeton so I spent much of the book feeling inadequate compared to the prospective students and very glad I didn't have to go through the US college application process.

5. The End by Salvatore Scibona. The start of this book read kind of like short stories, which I don't tend to enjoy, but once the stories started coming together it was heartbreakingly great.

6. The Missing by Tim Gautraux. I read this book because of Mary's review at This Book is For You, so I'll just let you read that.

7. Oyster by Janette Turner Hospital. I was tossing up between this one and Orpheus Lost for this list, but that got a bit heavy-handed or something at the end. Oyster is a kind of eerie tale about an isolated country town and the nearby cult.

8. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. I've read a couple of Dan Chaon's earlier books and picked this one up because he's on my "well, I can't see anything that looks really great at the library, but at least I know this won't suck" list. I was pleasantly surprised to find this was a gripping book about identity.

9. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. I don't usually like mysteries or crime novels, but this was excellent. I also enjoyed Dark Places, but not quite as much.

10. The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer. I don't think this book was objectively that great, but I've been thinking a lot about careers and ambition and what makes life meaningful or worthwhile this year, so it resonated with me. Based on the Goodreads reviews, the fact that I don't have kids might have made it easier to enjoy the book, since the mothers seem to object to their fictional portrayal.

Non-fiction:
Normal at Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry's Quest to Manipulate Height by Christine Cosgrove and Susan Cohen.

More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave by Ruth Schwartz Cowan.

These two books made me angry at the world. The second made me especially angry at that Michael Pollan "women need to relearn the joy of slaving over a stove all day/night in order to save the world from obesity" article. I never got around to writing the post I was thinking of at the time because it's hard to be articulate when you just want to smack someone over the head with a copy of Cowan's book.

favourite books of 2008

I read 170.5 books this year (I haven't finished Madame Bovary yet, but I'm pretty sure it won't be one of my favourites), of which 32 were non-fiction.
I thought I might have trouble even coming up with a top ten list this year, since it felt like I hadn't read any really great books. Then I did that last post and realised there were several excellent ones I'd just forgotten to record until now. The good books did seem to come in batches this year. Here they are in approximate order (I kept shuffling around the top three, since I couldn't quite decide which I liked best):

10. Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski (#103)
9. Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda (#37)
8. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood (#168)
7. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson (#152)
6. Bookhunter by Jason Shiga (#38)
5. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (#170)
4. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu (#4)
3. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (#1)
2. What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (#33)
1. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (#165)

I didn't write many reviews this year so the title links go to goodreads.com. For the few I did write anything about (including ones for which I just added something now), I linked the number book it was for me, although in most cases I didn't say anything substantial.

It's interesting how my ratings at the time differ from my memory now. A friend recently complained that I'd recommended The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and I denied having done so, although I see now that I gave it 4 stars. I remember it being enjoyable but not quite recommendable. I also gave Out Stealing Horses 5 stars, but I didn't put it on this list because I don't remember really loving it. I'd probably be more likely to recommend other books, e.g. the last book I cut from the shortlist, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney, over some of these, but these are what I'm most glad to have read.

books #124-170 (2008)

I was sure I was on track to read 200 books this year, but I guess the past 5 weeks in which I only read 5 books messed it up.

124. The Boat by Nam Le ****

125. If Today be Sweet by Thrity Umrigar ***

126. When We Get There by Shauna Seliy ****

127. And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts ****1/2

128. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif ***1/2

129. Consequences by Penelope Lonely (audiobook) ***

130. Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott (audiobook) ***

131. The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry ***. The ending on this was just too unbelievable.

132. The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson ****

133. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (audiobook) ***

134. Personal Days by Ed Park ***. It wasn't bad, but if you're only going to read one book set in a soulless office and written in first person plural, read Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End instead. I wasn't expecting there to be two books like that. I bet Ed Park was annoyed when he heard about TWCttE.

135. Tolstoy Lied by Rachel Kadish ***1/2

136. The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard by Eddie Campbell and Dan Best ***

137. The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller ***

138. Then She Found Me by Elizabeth von Arnim (audiobook) ***. I don't think this is much like the movie.

139. Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson ***1/2. I thought this was a pretty good prequel. Most things matched up with the original book, although there were a couple of things I would have expected to have been mentioned in the original if they'd happened. I'd never actually thought about how horrible three sets of twins would have been to look after.

140. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery ****.

141. The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry ***1/2. This was fun.

142. The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney ****1/2

143. Sickened by Julie Gregory ***.

144. Get it Done When You're Depressed by Julie A. Fast **1/2.

145. This Charming Man by Marian Keyes ***.

146. Heart, You Bully, You Punk by Leah Hager Cohen ***1/2. I was expecting this to be better. I would have loved it if the ending hadn't been awful.

147. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo ****. I read this because of Flea's review, in which she described sobbing her way through it. I cried my eyes out, too.

148. Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum ****. This book made me think I should never have kids.

149. Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick ***. I was hoping for more advice on overcoming loneliness.

150. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill ***.

151. Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

152. When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson ****1/2. There were several violently shocking moments in this book that made me curse Kate Atkinson for making me read murder mysteries, but I still love her writing.

153. The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert ***

154. Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg ***1/2

155. Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen ***

156. Home by Marilynne Robinson ****1/2. Gilead from another character's perspective. I liked it a lot better.

157. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones ****. I wish I'd read more of her books when I was younger, but they're still great.

158. No Logo by Naomi Klein ***1/2

159. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (audiobook) ***1/2

160. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis ****. Someone (New Kid?) mentioned this as a comfort read and it was very enjoyable, so thanks!

161. Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield ****. I wasn't expecting this to be so sad, but it was very good.

162. Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher

163. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti ***1/2

164. When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (audiobook) ****. David Sedaris books are definitely ones that work as audiobooks.

165. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan ****1/2. Excellent book (although disturbing enough to make it hard to believe it's really a YA book) and excellent cover.

166. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin ***1/2.

167. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb ***. It kept me interested, but in that trainwreck way that makes me feel icky and is typical of Oprah's book club books.

168.The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood ****1/2

169. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier ***

170. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman ****1/2. This might be my new favourite Neil Gaiman book. I have to read The Jungle Book now.

books #104-122 (2008)

104. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas ***1/2. This was another of the New York Times' best books of last year, but I didn't like it as much as the others I read in January. I could see that it was well written, and I'd probably recommend it, but I felt like I just didn't really get it. The book club questions at the end really made me feel stupid. Usually they're things like "The main character was worried about money. Has there been a time in your life when you've worried about money?", but this time they could've been from a literature class.

105. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (audiobook) ****. I enjoyed this. The person reading it did a good job of giving everyone a different voice and she did a great range of English accents. Her Canadian was a bizarre cross between Irish and American, though.


106. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things by Carolyn Mackler ***. If only it were as easy to gain self-esteem in real life as it is in a YA novel.


107. Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn ***1/2. I think I actually liked the movie of this better than the book.


108. The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar ****.

109. Ellington Boulevard: a Novel in A-flat by Adam Langer ***1/2.

110. Bonk: the curious coupling of science and sex by Mary Roach ***. Just before I read this, I had a conversation with housemates where MRI studies of people having sex came up. They all thought it was bizarre and teased the housemate who brought the subject up for knowing about it, so I was kind of embarrassed to be reading it.


111. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga ****. This was good, and now nominated for the Booker prize.

112. Nowhere is a Place by Bernice L. McFadden (audiobook) ***1/2. I liked this a lot more than I was expecting to.

113. March by Geraldine Brooks (audiobook) ***. The author certainly capture the March parents' sanctimoniousness, despite giving them flaws.

114. The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg (audiobook) ***1/2. This was an interesting story, about a woman whose sister's revelations about her childhood force her to change the way she thinks about her family.


115. When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson ***.

116. That Night by Alice McDermott ***1/2.

117. Life by Gwyneth Jones ***. I wanted to like this book about a woman scientist struggling with sexist bosses and balancing work and family more than I did. It didn't help that the science didn't seem real.

118. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow ***. This was interesting, but I think he was mistaken in one of his first arguments, so I was sceptical from then on.

119. Fear and Other Uninvited Guests by Harriet Lerner ***.

120. Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan ****. I tend to find novels about Indian families too similar to enjoy any one particularly, but this was good. Maybe it helped that it was about an Indian family in Malaysia.

121. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ***. I thought the author of March got a major event in Little Women wrong, so I had to reread it, but it turns out I was mistaken. Although, honestly, what was supposed to be a major event was so downplayed that it seems reasonable that I conflated it with a similar, more dramatic event.


122. The Concubine by Norah Lofts. I read a review somewhere saying this was a much more accurate version than The Other Boleyn Girl. I probably didn't need to read another version of the story, but it's interesting to see the differences.

123. The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott ****. I almost forgot this one because I read it in a comic book store. It's another with no words that I kind of feel it's cheating to count. It was very interesting.

books #83-103 (2008)

I thought trying to read 200 books this year would take some effort, but I'm ahead of the required pace so far and I haven't even noticed reading more than usual.

83. The Next Thing on My List by Jill Smolinski **. I finally made it to the library, but with only 5 minutes before it closed and I lost my ability to pick anything interesting off the shelves under pressure. This was fairly bland chick lit, although it actually took almost half the book before I could tell which guy she was going to end up with. The list in the title is a list of things to do before turning 25, written by a woman who died in a car accident while the protagonist was driving. I've been thinking a bit about what I would put on a list of things I'd like to do before some milestone. If I actually come up with a list, I'll post it.

84. The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser ***. Luckily, this book was on hold for me, so I at least got one decent book to read. It was a little hard to follow, given that the chapters were named after days of the week and yet time jumped around all over the place.

85. McSweeney's 27

86. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

87. Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category ***

88. Such a Pretty Fat by Jen Lancaster *. I got this book (and the previous one) from a box on the footpath because I still haven't been to the library. It was kind of annoying from the first few pages and yet I kept reading. I'm not sure why, other than it was fairly quick to read and I didn't want to have wasted time reading half a book and not be able to count it. The footnotes that I think were supposed to be an amusing affectation were the most irritating part.

89. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote **. I didn't like the movie all that much, but I thought I'd see how it was changed (and this book was on our communal bookshelf). It was okay. I liked the last story best, but I didn't like the middle two much at all.

90. Goodbye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson ****. Very sweet, but kind of sad, too.

91. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe ***1/2
92. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Ahab by Gideon Defoe ***1/2. These were both fun. I was worried that they would be lame, despite all the positive reviews, especially since I'd given them as a gift, but they were good.

93. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka *. I could barely stay awake reading this. The title story was by far the best of them, but I really didn't care very much about anyone in any of the stories.

94. Play it As it Lays by Joan Didion ***. I read this whole book in a single trip to the gym, plus as long as it took to eat breakfast. I was hoping it would last until I got to lab, at least.

95. Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith ***1/2.

96. Bound by Sally Gunning ***.

97. Love and Other Near Death Experiences by Mil Millington **1/2. The author's website, Things I've Argued With My Girlfriend About, which is the reason he got his first book contract, can be quite amusing and there were similarly amusing bits in this book, too. Unfortunately, as a whole, the book isn't that great.

98. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri ****.

99. Keeping the House by Ellen Baker ***.

100. If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz ****1/2. I wasn't expecting that much of this book, but I really liked it.

101. How the Hula Girl Sings by Joe Meno ****. This was much more like The Boy Detective Fails than Hairstyles of the Damned, luckily. It was fairly depressing, but still kind of hopeful.

102. What We Lost by Dale Peck ****. I couldn't remember if I'd heard good or bad things about Dale Peck, but I'm glad I read this. The first part of the book was great. I didn't like the second part so much, because it took way too long to figure out how it related to the first, and there seemed to be a lot missing. It was still definitely worth reading, though.

103. Stranger on a Train by Jenny Diski ****. I'm loving this so far. It's part-memoir, part-travel story about travelling around the US by train. The author is kind of socially awkward, but okay with it, so it's interesting to read about her interactions with people on the train.

books #48-82 (2008)

48. How to work the competition into the ground and have fun doing it : a proven program to raise your personal productivity by John T. Molloy ***. I read this because of this article about brainwashing yourself to be productive. It had some useful advice about training yourself to concentrate and focus longer. The author's style was pretty annoying, though, since he was constantly talking himself up.

49. Amy Unbounded: Belondweg Blossoming by Rachel Hartman ****. This was fun.

50. Lottery by Patricia Wood (audiobook) ***. I don't think this was a good choice for an audiobook. The main character is one IQ point over being retarded, so the narrator is reading with a slow, Forrest Gump-ish voice. The book is also full of annoying definitions of the kind that are meant to show how he sees through most people's artifices. It's not a terrible story, so I've still given it 3 stars, but I'm not enjoying it a huge amount. If I didn't need something to listen to while knitting/walking, I'm not sure I'd finish it. Now the main character is beating people at Scrabble, because he's spent years reading the dictionary... This is such a Mary-Sue book. How did it get nominated for the Orange prize?

51. The Year of Endless Sorrows by Adam Rapp ***. I didn't love this book. The blurb compared it to Douglas Coupland and Nick Hornby's work so I thought it would be at least slightly funny, but it was just depressing. The main character lived a pretty pitiful life on the bottom rungs of New York publishing, barely making ends meet, which was miserable enough, and then the book turned tragic.

52. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo ****. This was kind of a slow moving story about a man reflecting on his life spent in a small town. It was interesting, but the major theme, that people don't ever change, was kind of depressing.

53. The Contract With God Trilogy by Will Eisner ***. Apparently this was the first graphic novel ever.

54. Wishcraft: How to get what you really want by Barbara Sher

55. Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower edited by Cynthia Robbins-Roth

56. Proust and the Squid: the story and science of the reading brain by Maryanne Wolf ****. This was a pretty interesting book about how various parts of the brain that evolved for other tasks are used to learn to read. The most interesting part was about how different written languages use different parts of the brain, so people who are dyslexic in one language might not be in another.

56.5 The Alphabet Versus the Goddess by Leonard Shlain. I think this was an Amazon suggestion based on my looking at reviews of the previous book. It had a potentially interesting premise - that the development of written language was responsible for the rise of the patriarchy and loss of goddess worship (Anastasia, I thought of you while reading it). I only made it through half a chapter before being irritated with all the evolutionary psychology, though.

57. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote ***.

58. The Outcast by Sadie Jones ****. Now this one deserves to be on the Orange shortlist.

59. After Dark by Haruki Murakami ***. Perhaps it's the translation, but I wasn't all that impressed by Murakami's writing, despite all the wonderful things I've heard about it. Then again, I don't know anyone who's read it in Japanese, so maybe it's just me, or maybe this isn't his best work.

60. Grace by Elizabeth Nunez ****. I usually pick books to listen to that I don't think I'll really love, because I'd rather read than listen (it's hard to find the right balance between something I think I'll wish I'd read and something that isn't good enough to keep my interest). This one was surprisingly good, though. It did spoil Beloved for me, though.

61. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow ****. I got a free review copy of this. It's definitely a page turner. I almost missed my bus stop at least 3 times while reading it. There are a lot of technical descriptions of things like encryption, but they don't disrupt the story too much. It felt somewhat like a recruiting manual to get teenagers to care about civil liberties, but that's probably a good thing. I was going to quote the Neil Gaiman blurb on the cover, but I may as well link his whole review, which I think is a pretty accurate one. You can download the whole book for free under a creative commons licence.

62. The Folded World by Amity Gaige ***1/2.

63. Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman ***.

64. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely ***1/2. This was interesting. Read the NY Times review here.

65. I Could Do Anything if Only I Knew What it Was by Barbara Sher

66. Career Renewal: Tools for Scientists and Technical Professionals by Stephen Rosen and Celia Paul

67. I Don't Know What I Want but I Know It's Not This by Julie Jansen

68. Schuyler's Monster by Robert Rummel-Hudson ***. I already knew most of the content of this book because the author's blog was one of the first I started reading, but it was still an engaging story about a father dealing with a "broken" daughter.

69. The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman *. This was a frustrating book. The subtitle was tacked on by the publisher, apparently, so it's not really an argument against reading. The problem is that it's not really an argument for anything. The author just rambles about celebrity gossip, her childhood, author's private lives etc.

70. Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall ***.

71. The Theory of Clouds by Stéphane Audeguy **.

72. Beloved by Toni Morrison ***. I felt like a bad person for not loving this more. It was sad and moving and all, but I didn't really get why it's such a great book.

73. Leftovers by Laura Weiss ***.

74. Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar ***1/2. This was longer than it needed to be, and the ending left me suspicious that there would be a sequel, but how could you not love a book about an anxious, depressed, anorexic werewolf?

75. McSweeney's 25 ***

76. Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way

77. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah ***. Another book I felt like a bad person for not loving. Sure, it's an important topic and tragic, but as a book, it wasn't so great. The part that I really thought was missing was the process of rehabilitation, but one minute he was attacking the rehab centre staff and the next he was giving speeches about the plight of child soldiers.

78. McSweeney's 26

79 McSweeney's 24 (Can you tell I haven't been to the library in far too long and am finally getting around to reading books I own?)

80. Rhubarb by Craig Silvey (audiobook) **. I might've enjoyed this more if I'd been reading, rather than listening to it. There were large segments that were all sentence fragments that were hard to follow and I didn't really get how the main character went blind. The writing seemed a bit too full of adjectives, too. There were way too many references to rhubarb, too. You don't need every single major (or minor) event in the book to involve something for it to be an overarching symbol, you know? And I'm not even sure what its significance was supposed to be.

81. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman (audiobook) ***.

82. Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules Edited by David Sedaris **1/2. I was disappointed when I noticed the "edited" in there. I only really liked one of the stories, another 2 were okay and one I didn't like much at all (although the author's voice was kind of monotonous, which probably didn't help).

books #10-47 (2008)

If I wait until I feel like writing reviews, I'll never post this. Ratings will have to do.

If you're looking for recommendations, you should read Hunting and Gathering, What Was Lost and Bookhunter (and also maybe Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and Lost in Austen, and any other 4 star rated book; there are quite a few of them in here).

10. Beginner's Greek by James Collins ***. Chick lit by a guy. The only differences that made was that the main character was male, had higher self-esteem and a better career and there was less shopping. The last three things did help a little, admittedly.

11. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz ****.

12. Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton ***1/2.

13. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris ****. I'd heard good things about this, but I wasn't sure I'd like it when I realised it was written in first-person plural and was about working in an office. It was very good, though.

14. The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling ****.

15. The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall ***1/2.

16. Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster ****1/2. This was so fun! My first time through I was imprisoned for killing Mr Elton. There was quite a lot of death in this book, actually.

17. Beige by Cecil Castellucci ***1/2.

18. Skylight Confessions by Alice Hoffman ***1/2.

19. Behind the Moon by Hsu-Ming Teo ***1/2.

20. What You Have Left by Will Allison ***1/2.

21. Mathematicians in Love by Rudy Rucker ***.

22. Three Junes by Julia Glass ***1/2. Surely there are reasons for men to be infertile aside from mumps at age 12, but that's the only one I've ever seen in a book.

23. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer ***1/2.

24. Strawberry Fields by Marina Lewycka ***1/2.

25. Straight Man by Richard Russo ***1/2.

26. Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking by Aoibheann Sweeney ****.

27. Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander ****.

28. Stuck in the Middle edited by Ariel Schrag ***.

29. Echo Maker by Richard Powers ***1/2.

30. The Secret Language of Sleep by Evany Thomas ***1/2. This was cute. I liked the online test to determine your sleeping position, too, and it seemed pretty accurate:

Find your own pose!

31. An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks ***.

32. Away by Amy Bloom ****.

33. What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn ****1/2. (review added 12/31/08). This is the book that has stuck with me most this year. The first section, about a young girl who wants to be a reporter, reminded me of Harriet the Spy, but it's definitely a much more grown-up and nuanced book. I say I don't like mysteries, but this was a wonderful one.

34. Charity Girl by Michael Lowenthal ***.

35. An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke ****.

36. The Archivist by Martha Cooley ****.

37. Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda *****. I'm not sure why I loved this book, especially after someone I recommended it to complained about the ending and the way the main character needed rescuing by others. I did love it, though. I still need to see the movie.

38. Bookhunter by Jason Shiga *****. A graphic novel that's like CSI or for book nerds. Here's the Making Light review that made me want to read it.

39. The Opposite of Love by Julie Buxbaum *.

40.The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory ***.

41. The 60-second Procrastinator by Jeffrey P. Davidson ***.

42. How to Write A Lot by Paul J. Silvia ***.

43. Digging to America by Anne Tyler ***.

44. Say When by Elizabeth Berg (audiobook) ***.

45. Blue Shoes by Anne Lamott (audiobook) ***.

46. Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar ***.

47. The Pesthouse by Jim Crace ***1/2.

books #1-9 (2008)

1. The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle *****. This book restored my faith in my love of reading. If I describe it, it will sound like just another coming of age story, but it was wonderful. The part of growing up that it really captured was learning that everyone's actions affect other people, sometimes with disastrous consequences, but even people who are closely connected with you also have stories that are entirely independent.

2. Like You'd Understand Anyway by Jim Shepard ****. I'd resisted reading this for a while, because it's short stories, and I'm still wary of those, despite having 2 of my year's best books be collections last year. I didn't love all the stories (too much historical war fiction for me), but some of them were wonderful stories about the conflict between what you want to do, what you should do and what you actually do.

3. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson ****1/2. This dealt with some of the same themes as The God of Animals, although it was a very different setting (post-World War Two Norway, rather than current-day Texas). I almost didn't read this one because I thought it might be too much of a boy book, but it was excellent. I forgot to copy down several passages that I wish I'd saved for my quotes collection. So far all the books I've read this year have been very good, which is probably because I requested them after reading various "best of 2007" lists.

4. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu ****. I just read some of the reviews on goodreads for some inspiration and the first disliked the book because the main character (who came to the US from Ethiopia as a refugee) was mopey and his life was falling apart. Supposedly that only makes him fit to be a minor character, but I thought it made him a great tragic hero.

5. The Time it Takes to Fall by Margaret Lazarus Dean ****. This wasn't on a year's best list; I just picked it up because it has a cool cover. It was another great coming-of-age book. This time the protagonist is a NASA-obsessed girl dealing with her father losing his job and her mother moving out, as well as making the right friends and not getting picked on for being too smart.

6. The Border of Truth by Victoria Redel ****. Another lucky library find. It's about a woman trying to figure out why her father won't tell her how he escaped the holocaust and made it to the US, as well as the story itself. Letters her father wrote are interspersed with her story, so you know more than she does.

7. Two or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison ****. I wasn't sure what to rate this book. I'm not sure how much I liked it, even though it was powerfully written. It's a memoir that was originally a performance piece, telling the story of the author's family, including poverty and abuse.

8. Mendel's Daughter by Martin Lemelman ****. This is the beautifully illustrated story of the author's mother's life in Poland before, during and after the holocaust. It was excellent, but I think I need to read something happier soon.

9. Slam by Nick Hornby ***1/2. It was a better than A Long Way Down, and it is a YA book, but it's not as good as his other novels. I really don't like it when narrators say stuff like "oh, I guess I didn't introduce myself properly" and I didn't like the fantasy element much. To give you an idea of how little confidence I had in Nick Hornby as an author, when the narrator woke up one day late in the book, I got annoyed because I thought it might all have been a dream. I've made it sound awful, but it was actually a quite good story about a teenage boy who gets his (by the time he finds out, ex-)girlfriend pregnant. I thought it seemed like a pretty realistic and unromanticised portrayal.

favourite books of 2007

I read slightly more books than last year, but I don't think I loved any of them quite as much as the ones I loved last year. I wonder if not being depressed makes a difference. Most of my favourite books last year were about highly disturbed people and I liked them so much because I could identify with them. I don't think I read so many books about disturbed people this year, or at least not the right kind of disturbed people.

Maybe the difference is in context, too. I did most of my reading this year on the elliptical machine at the gym, rather than hiding in my room, desperate for something to distract me from how miserable I felt. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to read away from the gym, so I can properly appreciate what I'm reading. At least this year I would have less trouble recommending some of these books to people I don't know well.

I thought about trying to just recommend my single favourite book of the year, but I still think one book can't suit everyone (I think Day was the best book I read, but I'm not sure everyone would like it), so I've listed the 9 10 (I just finished the 10th yesterday) books I loved most and think you should read. I could have included Emma or Pride and Prejudice, but do I really need to tell anyone to read Jane Austen? I did just sort them into approximate order, which I had thought I couldn't do.

10. Anthropology by Dan Rhodes (#26)
9. Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall (#84)
8. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (#111)
7. Robot Dreams by Sara Varon (#100)
6. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (#63)
5. The Secret History by Donna Tartt (#121)
4. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July (#65)
3. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville (#35)
2. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (#128)
1. Day by A.L. Kennedy (#59)

Thanks to Jeremy, for posting a link to the website for No One Belongs Here More Than You, Katie and wolfa for for posting about/recommending The Thirteenth Tale and Kermit for The Last Samurai.

I just read Cee's reading year post and am now feeling all competitive and wanting to read 200 books next year, too. I have been doing a fair bit of knitting recently, which kept me from reading on the way to and from lab, so I could read more if I tried.

books #112-128

112. Hush Little Baby by Katherine Davies ****. I actually picked this up thinking it was by Kathryn Davis and was disappointed to discover my mistake. I ended up liking the book a lot, though. It reminded me a bit of Astonishing Splashes of Colour, which I also liked a lot.

113. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen ****. The other people in my book club thought Fanny was boring and pathetic for being so timid, which made me feel like a loser for identifying with her more than the more talkative characters.

114. The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland ***. I got close to disliking Douglas Coupland with JPod, and this didn't make me like him much more, even though I think it was better than JPod. At least this book didn't have pages on end of numbers. It was told with notes and letters, though, which was a little annoying, especially when I didn't see why the characters would be so involved as to write to each other to begin with.

115. Ask Again Later by Jill A. Davis **. I can't even remember this book much. It was fairly formulaic and bland.

116. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laura Viera Rigler **. I don't even know why I kept reading this. If you liked Austenland, you might like it, though.

117. The Gift of Nothing by Patrick McDonnell ****. This was very cute and sweet. Go read it in a bookstore; it'll only take you a few minutes and it will make you smile.

118. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud ****. This was a very interesting book. I'd never really thought about how comics work as a medium. I think I tend to read them too fast and focus on the words, but I'll appreciate them more now maybe.

119. You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem ***1/2. I've been meaning to read some of Jonathan Lethem's books, but I think I picked the wrong one. I liked this, but I wanted to like it more than I did. It was upbeat and quirky and entertaining, but not very substantial.

120. Outrageous Fortune by Tim Scott **. This is the kind of book I would have eagerly picked up when I was 14 or so, right after I started reading Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Like their work, it's supposed to be funny SF/fantasy. Unfortunately, this isn't that good (not that I even think Terry Pratchett is that good lately) or at all funny. I shouldn't have bothered finishing it.

121. The Secret History by Donna Tartt ****1/2. I really liked The Little Friend so I'd been meaning to read this for ages. It was great. Kind of disturbing and horrifying, but still great.

122. The Arrival by Shaun Tan ****. A man leaves behind his wife and daughter to immigrate to a country where they speak a different language. It has no words, except for made up symbols for the foreign language, but the illustrations beautifully convey the strangeness of the new place and the difficulties in finding food and work and somewhere to live.

123. Shyness: how normal behaviour became a sickness by Christopher Lane ***. The arguments for how pharmaceutical companies are marketing diseases in order to sell drugs and the descriptions of the haphazard and biased way the DSM listing of psychiatric disorders was created were interesting. The descriptions of how drugs are pushed on people for ordinary shyness didn't match my experiences though, as someone who's been diagnosed with social anxiety, but never offered drugs for it. He seemed anti-cognitive/behavioural therapy, too, which made me think he was biased in favour of psychoanalysis, rather than being impartial.

124. Unpublished manuscript by a fellow book club member ***. I didn't read it when another member sent it to me, because I read the first line and wasn't sure I'd like it enough to be able to say anything about it. The author just got positive feedback from a publisher, though, so I figured it would be safe. It's fine, although it has too many similes for my taste and I don't actually like it enough to say anything about it. Maybe I would've been less critical of the style if I didn't know the author, because I can't help hearing her say the words as I read it, and some things that are fine in books sound pretentious when spoken aloud.

125. The Underachiever's Manifesto by Ray Bennett ****. I think I've always been too lazy to have had a problem with perfectionism, but it was still a nice reminder that adequacy is good enough.

126. Emma by Jane Austen ****1/2. This might be my favourite Jane Austen so far, although it's hard to beat Pride and Prejudice. I liked that it wasn't entirely about the heroine's marriage prospects, and the ending wasn't crammed into a couple of pages.

127. The Gathering by Anne Enright ****. I liked this book at the beginning, but it didn't get really good until the second half. It's on plenty of "best of 2007" lists.

128. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt *****. Kermit sent me this for the gift exchange meme and I loved it. It's not about samurai, in case you were worried (my housemate just listened to me raving about it, thinking I was talking about the Tom Cruise movie and had lost all taste in books). It's about a single mother and her genius son and his search for his (or a) father, and about how to live and what's really important in life.
The author has a blog, which seems just as full of interesting things as the book.

books #101-111 (2007)

I'm starting again at 101, because I haven't read much further in Mysteries of Udolpho and, as I've been told, life is too short to persevere with boring books. I was thinking I wouldn't read as many books this year as last, but I'm not far off already.

101. Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres ***1/2. I think there were parts of this book that I wanted to comment on, but I've already returned it to the library... I did find it very interesting, anyway.

102. Austenland by Shannon Hale *. I foolishly took a 5 hour bus trip with only this to read. As soon as the main character mentioned that she hadn't drawn or painted in years, since graphic design was a much more sensible job, I realised my mistake. I used to be able to enjoy chick lit, but I guess I shouldn't try anymore. I'm wondering if this should put me off the Jane Austen choose-your-own-adventure book I saw recently, too.

103. Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham ****1/2. I don't often buy books at the moment, but I needed something for the return bus trip, since I'd finished Austenland well before the first one finished. I'm glad I got this one. If I described it, it wouldn't sound that good (it follows several generations of a family, where the father worked his way up from a non-English speaking labourer to rich developer), but it was great.

104. The Bestiary by Nicholas Christopher ***1/2. I enjoyed this book about the search for an ancient book depicting the animals that didn't make it onto the ark. The search benefited from several (possibly too many) lucky breaks (of course, there wouldn't have been a story otherwise), but the relationships between the main character and his family and friends made for interesting reading, too.

105. Best American Science Writing 2000 edited by Jesse Cohen ***1/2. I read a blog post about the latest edition of this series, which is what I thought I put on hold, but apparently not. This was interesting, anyway.

106. La Perdida by Jessica Abel ****. I liked that the main character in this graphic novel didn't have some big epiphany and find herself by living in Mexico for a year, although in some ways she was annoyingly naive.

107. Tell Me Everything by Sarah Salway ***1/2. Neil Gaiman mentioned reading this a while ago, so I read her first book (did I somehow not list it? I can't find it now). I've started questioning his judgement, given a couple of books written by friends of his that I didn't like at all, but this was good. The main character starts out homeless and alone and tries to sort out her life. Again, I liked that she changed without it being overly dramatic, and again she was annoyingly naive.

108. The Best Place to Be by Lesley Dormen ****. I wasn't sure I was going to relate to this much, since the main character is a baby boomer, but I liked it. It's a novel of linked stories from different stages in her life, as she figures out family and other relationships.

109. Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies ***. The painful family relationships were interesting in this book, about a man who returns home after his father, who he blames for his brother's death years before, has a stroke. The resolution was way too neat, though.

110. The Devil, The Lovers and Me by Kimberlee Auerbach ***1/2. I read this because I enjoyed the author's edition of book notes at Largehearted Boy. It was better than I was expecting, still.

111. How to Be Good by Nick Hornby ****1/2. This might be my favourite Nick Hornby book, although it's not as funny as some of his others (although it still is funny in places). I recommended this to someone recently and realised I wanted to reread it, so I got it today, when I was stuck without a book for the gym. It's about a woman whose husband starts trying to put into practice all his (and her) liberal beliefs about helping the homeless and so on, rather than just talking about the problems and occasionally donating money. He becomes impossible to live with, but how can you complain about someone who is just trying to do good and help people, without seeming selfish? I like that it grapples with what it means to be a good person, without offering any easy answers.

books #92-101(2007)

92. The Beautiful Miscellaneous by Dominic Smith ***1/2. Nathan's father is a physics genius who is determined to find Nathan's special gift, even though Nathan himself is fairly sure he doesn't have one. After a car accident that leaves him in a coma, he finally gains a talent (synaesthesia); even though it's not one that can be obviously exploited, his father keeps trying. Nathan is more concerned with figuring out how to deal with his father's expectations and live a normal life, so in that sense it's more of a traditional coming of age story. I liked the characters and their relationships, despite the father being an absent-minded, possibly Asperger's stereotype.

93. Hello, I Must Be Going by Christie Hodgen ***1/2. Although this book follows the whole family in the aftermath of the father's suicide, this book mainly focusses on the daughter, Frankie. It's a sad story, but was well handled and has funny moments, too. I could relate to the way she coped by withdrawing and refusing to talk to her therapist and her feelings of responsibility for her little brother, even though our family dysfunctions were very different.

94. Half Life by Shelley Jackson ***1/2. This book is set in an alternate history where nuclear testing has caused an increase in conjoined twins (known as "twofers"), specifically those with two heads but one set of arms and legs. The central character, Nora, has a twin, Blanche, who's been asleep for 15 years. The story of their childhood, when Blanche was awake, and various pieces of information about twins, twofer rights activist literature etc are interspersed with Nora's current life, where she's struggling with wanting to be rid of Blanche and become her own person. It was a very interesting book.

95. Gold by Dan Rhodes ***1/2. I really like Dan Rhodes. This was a fairly light, and light-hearted, book about a woman who goes on holiday to the same small seaside town every year and the village inhabitants she gets to know by hanging out at the pub. Not a whole lot happens in the book, but it's entertaining. It does have a tragic streak, though.

96. Housekeeping vs the Dirt by Nick Hornby ****. I loved Nick Hornby's last collection of book essays from The Believer and this was just as good. I'll have to put a bunch of books on hold at the library based on his reviews (even though I didn't love David Copperfield as much as he did).
97. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert ***1/2. I didn't realise this was by the same author as a novel I'd read a few years ago and enjoyed (Stern Men), until I picked it up at the library. I think I liked the novel better, although this was enjoyable and there were parts that were interesting. Other parts were slightly irritating, though; maybe I'm just too cynical about traditional herbal medicine and mysticism.

98. The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant ***. As usual, this story collection was a mixed bag. The stories were all interesting and varied in structure and style, at least.

99. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen ***1/2. I think I enjoyed this more than the last time I read it. The rants about how worthwhile and respectable novels are were a bit out of place and the ending was way too rushed, but it was funny.

100. Robot Dreams by Sara Varon ****1/2. This was adorable and sweet and heartbreakingly sad. I read it standing up in Barnes & Noble and then I wasn't sure if I should count it, since it has no words. I think I might want to include it on my year's-best recommendation list, though, so I'm including it.

101. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. I haven't rated this, since I'm still working on it (slowly). So far, I'm not enjoying it that much. All the characters are a bit Mary Sue-ish (one of them just became euphoric after giving all his money to a poor farmer). Obviously, I'm reading it because Catherine loved it so much in Northanger Abbey. If the skeletons and mysterious veils and murdered/locked-in-the-attic wives don't show up in the next 50 pages, though, I might give up on it.

books #71- 91 (2007)

These are all out of order because I'm reconstructing the list from my library records, having completely forgotten about tracking books as I read them, despite my early enthusiasm for GoodReads.


71. Inglorious by Johanna Kavenna ***1/2. I quite liked this book, which is about a woman whose husband leaves her after she's quit her job, but I spent most of the book irritated at her aimless drifting and willingness to impose on her friends. There was obviously some deeper psychological issue preventing her from taking control of her life, so you'd think I'd be more sympathetic, but apparently not.


72. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon ****. I think I liked this as much as I did because it reminded me of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, although it's nowhere near as good. I don't even like mysteries at all, usually, but I did enjoy this one.

73. Look at Me by Jennifer Egan ***. This started out seeming like it could be interesting, but it got too outlandish by the end.

74. Y: The Last Man #2: Cycles by Brian K Vaughan ***1/2. Maybe I should lump all of the series together as one book. This was interesting enough to keep me reading, but I'm still not wildly enthusiastic about it.

75. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes ****. I think I might have liked the movie better, but I liked them both a lot.

76. Spook Country by William Gibson ***1/2. I really loved Pattern Recognition, so I was hoping this would be equally good, even though I didn't love Neuromancer. Sadly, it's not. It was still interesting, but I didn't care about the characters so much. It seemed much more just about the cool ideas (and the ideas for the artwork were very cool) than Pattern Recognition.

77. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro ****. This book was so sad.

78. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd ****. I wasn't expecting to like this book so much. Chip Kidd is better known for his book covers and design work, so it was interesting to read the graphic design teacher in the novel critiquing his students' work. The actual story was good, too.

79. Original Bliss by A.L. Kennedy ****1/2. This book sounds depressing, and it kind of is, but A.L. Kennedy writes deeply flawed, but real, characters so well, and it does have a satisfying conclusion.

80. Shut the Door by Amanda Marquit **1/2. This was written when the author was 16 and, while it was interesting, you can kind of tell. A family basically disintegrates over the course of the father's 10 day business trip. If the drama had been spread over a longer time period, it might have been more believable.

81. So Much for my Happy Ending by Kyra Davis **. This could have been an interesting book, but it wasn't, so I'm going to spoil it. It was about a woman whose husband's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. He's eventually diagnosed as bipolar, but instead of showing how they dealt with his illness, he just became cartoonishly evil so she'd be justified in dumping him and going off with the hot musician.

82. Everything I Need to Know About Being a Girl I Learned From Judy Blume edited by Jennifer O'Connell ***. My mum used to flick through any Judy Blume book I borrowed from the library, making sure it wasn't the sex one, before I was allowed to take it home. I ended up reading Forever standing in the book section of a department store while she was shopping elsewhere, instead. I remember being disappointed at how un-exciting the experience was, given all the fuss about it being banned from my school library. I used to read Judy Blume books, hoping to learn some secrets about being a girl, but unlike the authors of the essays in this book, I usually just ended up feeling more out of touch with girls my age. I definitely didn't understand Margaret - why would she want to go through puberty?

83. People I Wanted to Be by Gina Ochsner ***. There were some great moments in some of these stories, but I don't think I was completely satisfied by any of them.

84. Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall ****1/2. I picked up this book because of the pretty rainbow-coloured text on the spine and the fact that colour was spelled correctly. It turned out to be an excellent book, so maybe I'll rely more on cover art in future, since I don't tend to do that well at choosing books based on the blurb.

85. You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett ***. Apparently, I got over my hatred of short stories enough to pick up at least one collection every time I went to the library. I think I might have to go back to only reading ones that have exceptional reviews, though. It's not that they were bad, and I shouldn't be picking on this book in particular; some of its stories were very good. It's just that I find mediocre short stories more unsatisfying than mediocre novels.

86. How You Can Be More Interesting by Edward de Bono *. This book was painfully boring.

87. The Better of McSweeney's ***1/2. There are some very good stories, and I enjoyed the copyright information, but I was wondering how some of them made it into a "better of" collection, unless the rest were very bad.

88. Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists ***1/2. Some of the lists are definitely worth 5 stars, but then some of them probably only rate 1 or 2, so it balances out.

89. Light by M. John Harrison ***1/2. I started this with very low expectations, which I think was a good thing. I would've been disappointed if I had been expecting it to live up to the blurbs on the cover. I got more interested towards the end, when it got easier to see past the futuristic SF stuff to the characters' stories.


90. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen ****1/2. I'm reading this for a book club. It's been fun to discuss. I keep imagining the characters in their BBC series incarnations, which isn't a bad thing, but I wonder how I would've seen them if I'd read the book before then (I've read it before now, but only after seeing the series).

91. The Moon by Night by Madeleine L'Engle ****. This isn't my favourite L'Engle book, but it's the only one I own in this country, so I'm reading it. As I read, I've been wondering how much I would like it if I read it for the first time now; probably not a lot. Still, for all her outdated notions and preachiness, she captures a certain awkwardness that I still identify with wonderfully.

books #60-70 (2007)

60. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling ***1/2. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but after thinking about and discussing it more, I'm less satisfied. I still like the ending, though.

61. When to Walk by Rebecca Gowers ****. I was a little worried that this was going to be one of those chick-lit-ish books about divorce, but I was quickly reassured by the main character's interpretation of her husband's reasons for leaving her, i.e. that she was an autistic vampire. I heart characters lacking in social skills!

62. Electricity by Ray Robinson ****. I kept alternating between liking and disliking the main character of this book, and the book along with her, but in the end I thought it was a good book. She has epilepsy due to her mother throwing her (either against a wall or down the stairs) as a child. The story is more about her finding her own way in life, making friends and reconnecting with her brothers again, though.

63. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield *****. I loved this book. Thank you, Katie! There were lots of interesting and surprising plot twists, but I also thought the characters were great. An elderly author invites a fairly reclusive bookseller, amateur biographer, to finally write her true story, after she's spent all her life making up stories when interviewed about her life.

64. Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Petersen ***. This only gets so many stars because of the illustrations, which are gorgeous (see below). The chapters seemed way too short and inconsequential and the problems too easily overcome, which is more surprising given that each chapter was originally a free-standing issue in a series.

65. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July ****1/2. This was just as good as I was hoping after seeing "Me and You and Everyone We Know". Beautifully poignant stories about awkward and eccentric people longing for connection.

66. You Remind Me of Me by Dan Chaon ****. This was a fairly depressing story about a disconnected family, all of whom end up with lives far from what they wanted. It was very good, but the way the story jumped between characters and back and forth in time was a little confusing.

67. Corrections to My Memoirs by Michael Kun ***1/2. Some of these stories were great, but the fake publisher's notes between chapters and the silly, gimmicky subset of stories put me off a bit.

68. Black Hole by Charles Burns ***. This was a highly recommended graphic novel, and it was engaging and interesting for the most part, but then it just kind of petered out, or at least my interest did... It's about a weird sexually-transmitted disease that causes teenagers to develop various monstrous deformities, so it was pretty creepy.

69. The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver ****. When I started reading this book, I thought it was going to be boring, but I got drawn in. It's kind of a Sliding Doors kind of book, with a single introductory chapter leading up to the point where the effectively married main character is tempted to kiss another man, followed by alternating chapters chronicling how her life develops depending on whether or not she gave into temptation.

70. The Secret River by Kate Grenville ****. I haven't finished this one yet, but I'm rating it anyway. I don't like it as much as "The Idea of Perfection", but that's largely because I'm not quite so interested in historical fiction. It's about a man who grows up poor in London and is transported, along with his wife and child, to Australia for stealing a load of wood. He gets the chance to start his own farm, but his success has to come at the expense of the aboriginal people who were there first. I guess I'm also not enjoying it so much because that aspect of Australian history is sickening, which isn't really the book's fault. (I just finished it and upgraded its rating, because it really is a good book, even if the subject matter wasn't fun)

books #30 - 59 (2007)

I'm doing so badly at this. I think this is only the third book post for the year. To save you scrolling through the whole list, I've put the highlights at the top, since there seemed to be quite a lot of books I found fairly average. I wrote most of the descriptions too long after finishing them to come up with anything useful, sorry. I'm not even entirely confident in my star rating for some of them...

34. How to Read an Unwritten Language by Phillip Graham ****1/2. This was lovely, with quirky and sympathetic characters.

35. The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville ****1/2. This was a beautifully written romance about two fairly socially awkward people. It was more about them individually, and the way they each coped with moving to a small country town where everyone knows, and is interested in, everything that happens. There was a third, mostly unconnected person whose story was included, too, but it all fit together.

47. Indelible Acts by A.L. Kennedy ****1/2. Heartbreakingly beautiful stories about longing.

49. Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson ****1/2. I think I've run out of ways to say "beautifully written", but it is. The story of the orphaned Silver, who becomes an apprentice lighthousekeeper, is interspersed with stories of previous lighthousekeepers and town inhabitants.

56. Family and Other Accidents by Shari Goldhagen ****1/2. I picked this book off the shelf without a recommendation and it was actually good! That hasn't happened in a while. It's about two brothers and told alternately from each of their perspectives as they grow up (or not), starting from when their mother dies and the elder brother moves home to take care of the younger.

59. Day by A.L. Kennedy *****. This is the best book I've read this year. It's about an air force gunner in World War II, covering his experiences during the war and afterwards as he tries to adjust back to civilian life. The plot description doesn't sound like anything special, but it really is a wonderfully written and moving book. I kind of want to read it again, already. Read a proper review here.

30. The Wild Trees by Richard Preston **. This could've been interesting. It's about people who climb giant redwood trees so there are plenty of death-defying stunts and quests to find the tallest trees in the world. Unfortunately, the writing style sucks all the interest out of the content... It's all "Steve loved trees. He decided to study the trees. He enrolled in graduate school. As a little girl, Marie also loved trees. One day she decided to study trees, too." The author is clearly trying hard to make it into a narrative, but that just makes it worse. I really don't care what the tree guy ate for breakfast, or what colour eyes everyone has. The linked review is very favourable, thought, so maybe you shouldn't listen to me.

31. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson ***1/2. This was a kind of creepy book. I would've liked it better if it were even more creepy, though.

32. Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler ***. I got this book for a housemate because he liked The Jane Austen Book Club and after reading it, he accused me of trying to convert him to SF fandom. I'm not sure it even is SF, though. It could be, or there could be realistic interpretations of everything.

33. What is the What by Dave Eggers ****. I feel like I should have something more interesting to say about it, but I'm writing this months after reading it, so I don't. It was a good book.

36. Complications by Atul Gawande ***1/2. This was a very interesting book. I liked his writing style, too. It was far more engaging than the stupid tree book. Isn't this author bio a bit sickening, though? "Atul Gawande, a 2006 MacArthur fellow, is a general surgeon at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a staff writer for the New Yorker, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and a frequent contributor to The New England Journal of Medicine. Gawande lives with his wife and three children in Newton, Massachusetts." The fact that his kids are named Hunter, Walker and Hattie does lose him points, though.


37. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky ***1/2. This kid didn't really seem like a wallflower to me. He had friends, even if they were weird. Still, I could identify with his loneliness and awkwardness.


38. Which Brings Me to You by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott ***1/2. This was a nice, mostly light-hearted book. (That was where I stopped writing months ago; I don't think I have anything to add.)


39. Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill **1/2. I picked this book up because I thought the title and cover were cute. I should've paid more attention to the blurb on the back, because it was pretty depressing in a not-especially-redemptive way. It's about a 12/13-year-old girl who lives with her heroin-addicted father, or in foster care, or with a pimp, when he can't/won't take care of her. The notes from the author said she was trying to capture the way children accept the world at face value, which I think she did, but there were times when Baby's voice seemed to shift to that of an adult reflecting back on her past.


40. Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen **. I thought I'd read another book by this author, or I would've rejected it as too chick-lit-ish. Or is there a name for the category of books about sisters/friends where one is far more successful than the other and the less successful one learns that she is better than she thinks and the other is not as perfect as she seems? The description referred to the main character's sister (millionaire star of morning TV) making some catastrophic mistake on air that affected her and her sister's lives. Unfortunately, the drama turned out to fairly boring; even the parts where people were in danger weren't actually dramatic. Far too much of the book focussed on the sister's privileged life and how perfect her son was. I was surprised that the main character was 43 and in a solid relationship already, but then she did talk about how her boyfriend didn't want kids and then get pregnant and have him change his mind, which is presumably the equivalent of falling in love with the best friend for the next demographic up. The book was just bland. At least it was a good palate-cleanser after reading about drug addicts and child prostitution...


41. The Translator by Leila Aboulela **1/2. I think this book was too understated for me, which I should've guessed, since J.M. Coetzee praises its "restraint" on the cover. It seemed like the observant muslim and Islamic studies professor merely had a few conversations before she was in love and assuming he loved her enough to convert so they could get married. The ending seemed similarly unsignalled to me, too, except in its predictability. I think it would've been more interesting if more of the story had focussed on their love developing, rather than her life in Khartoum. It was also weird reading this book after What is the What, given that they were both set, at least partially, in Sudan at around the same time. Everyone in this book had homes with electricity and running water, even if they was prone to outages, and there was no mention of war at all.


The last string of sub-3-star books are a result of browsing the library shelves rather than basing my choices on reviews or recommendations. Clearly I need help.


42. The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay ***. This could've been a really good book, about a lonely girl finding her own way in life, but it was just okay.


43. Y: The Last Man #1: Unmanned by Brian Vaughan ***. I'd heard really great things about this series. I'll probably keep reading for a bit, at least, but it was just okay, too.


44. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai ***. I wasn't really that enamoured of this book, either. It was fine, but nothing special. This is the point where I really started to feel like I'd lost my appreciation for reading.


45. Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs (audiobook) ***. I got this when I realised that I was only listening to movies while I was knitting, since I had to keep looking at the pattern. I wouldn't have bothered reading it as a book, probably, but it was entertaining enough.


46. Lucky You by Carl Hiaasen ***1/2. I read this on the plane on the way home. It was a good aeroplane read, I think.


48. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (audiobook) ***1/2. I listened to this while knitting, again, and while jogging, since I couldn't carry a book with me. I liked it better than The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I think.


50. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell ****. I didn't realise there had been so many presidential assassinations or attempts. This was a very entertaining American history lesson.


51. Pick Up Stick City by Steven H. Semken **1/2. This was a kind of interesting story about a recluse who tries to restore a ghost town, but I just didn't care that much.

52. Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks ***. The author bet a friend he could hitchhike round Ireland, carrying a (mini) fridge. I've read a couple of his other books before, where he's made similarly ridiculous bets and this wasn't as good. Or maybe you can only read one before they all seem the same. His task seemed way too easy, thanks to the radio publicity he got, and the descriptions of people helping him out and spending all night at the pub weren't interesting or unique enough to make up for the lack of drama, even if they did take the fridge surfing.

53. The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley ***1/2. This is another chronicle of a strange and possibly pointless experience. The author decided to say yes to anyone who asked her out for a year. There are some amusingly weird experiences, but I got a bit sick of her writing style. She seemed to be trying too hard to come up with amusing turns of phrase. Plus, I had trouble taking her worries about being alone for the rest of her life seriously, given that she was like 20 and had no shortage of dates.

54. Ticket to Ride by Sarah Darmody ***1/2. This book had some of the same show-off-y tone as The Year of Yes, but it was entertaining. This author won the Greencard lottery and then, when she couldn't decide whether she actually wanted to stay in the US forever, she took a trip around the US by greyhound bus. Even though it was more about the buses and herself, it made me want to travel and see more of the US. Maybe I should enter the Greencard lottery, too...

55. The Long Chalkboard and Other Stories by Jenny Allen ***1/2. I picked this up because it was illustrated by Jules Feiffer. The stories were good, as well as the illustrations.

57. Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan ****. To begin with, I didn't have too much sympathy for the priest in this book, who neglected his parish to hang out with teenagers, but I ended up feeling more understanding. And it was well-written.

58. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke ***1/2. Fairy stories from the same world as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but not quite as good as that book.