Best Reads of 2012
I finished roughly a book a week this year. Below the cut are some of my favorites.
An Uncertain Place
Fantastic. Commissaire Adamsberg is back in all his glory. This fast-paced mystery starts off with seventeen feet being found outside Highgate Cemetary in London and the action travels all the way to Serbia. This story is full of the usual Vargas eccentricities, but it never reads as twee or overwrought. Adamsberg's unique approach to solving crime - "cloud-shoveling" - leads him along a twisty path, as he faces danger, conspiracies, and a centuries old grudge
Those who are big fans of Danglard may be disappointed as he features much less in this story, but he does get a love interest...
In the Garden of Beasts
A meticulously researched, harrowing account of the early years of Hitler's reign in Germany. Told through the letters, diaries and memoirs of US Ambassador William Dodd, who served 1933-37, and his family - particularly his daughter, Martha - this book tracks the hopeful American family's gradual disillusionment and eventual disgust with the Third Reich.
The book mainly focuses on the first year of Dodd's ambassadorship, 1933-34, culminating in a recounting of the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, in which hundreds of "enemies" of the Third Reich were murdered. It focuses quite keenly on the personal life of the Dodds and their acquaintances. Though Ambassador Dodd was from the beginning skeptical and concerned about the Third Reich, his daughter Martha was initially swept away by the Nazi pageantry and engaged in a number of affairs with Nazi officials, including Rudolf Diels, the head of the Gestapo. There will be times in the reading of this book when you will want to shake Martha.
I really enjoyed In the Garden of Beasts, and appreciated the amazing amount of research and fantastic detail woven throughout the book.
Seize the Day
Wilhelm is searching for reassurance and finding none. Unemployed, living in a hotel, despised by his father and his wife, he spends a day reflecting on his decisions, obsessing over his actions and the actions of others, and desperately searching for someone to save him. He puts his faith in a swindler and loses the rest of his money; his father refuses to help him; his wife won't even talk to him. I found myself alternately frustrated at the absurdities in Wilhelm's behavior and deeply empathetic with his precarious position in life. Read while I was feeling particularly vulnerable, so I think it's why it resonated so strongly.
Oryx and Crake
'Oryx and Crake' is an unsettling imagining of a dystopian future North America. While I really, really enjoyed this book, I couldn't help but think that certain aspects, in the last 100 pages or so, were just Atwood's head first rush to end the book quickly. I could have easily read another 50-100 pages on Snowman's interactions with the newcomers, but Atwood chose instead to leave us with a lady or the tiger ending. Still, I loved this book. I love how weird and sad it was, and how weirdly, sadly funny it was.
And probably my favorite book read this year:
Shot in the Heart
It's hard to think of just the right words to describe this book, especially as Gilmore, the author, does such a fantastic job of relating the tragedy of his family into such beautiful words. It's a harrowing, saddening read, but so masterfully told that I was completely sucked into the lives - and ultimately, the demise - of the main characters of this memoir. I confidently recommend this book to everyone.
An Uncertain Place
Fantastic. Commissaire Adamsberg is back in all his glory. This fast-paced mystery starts off with seventeen feet being found outside Highgate Cemetary in London and the action travels all the way to Serbia. This story is full of the usual Vargas eccentricities, but it never reads as twee or overwrought. Adamsberg's unique approach to solving crime - "cloud-shoveling" - leads him along a twisty path, as he faces danger, conspiracies, and a centuries old grudge
Those who are big fans of Danglard may be disappointed as he features much less in this story, but he does get a love interest...
In the Garden of Beasts
A meticulously researched, harrowing account of the early years of Hitler's reign in Germany. Told through the letters, diaries and memoirs of US Ambassador William Dodd, who served 1933-37, and his family - particularly his daughter, Martha - this book tracks the hopeful American family's gradual disillusionment and eventual disgust with the Third Reich.
The book mainly focuses on the first year of Dodd's ambassadorship, 1933-34, culminating in a recounting of the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, in which hundreds of "enemies" of the Third Reich were murdered. It focuses quite keenly on the personal life of the Dodds and their acquaintances. Though Ambassador Dodd was from the beginning skeptical and concerned about the Third Reich, his daughter Martha was initially swept away by the Nazi pageantry and engaged in a number of affairs with Nazi officials, including Rudolf Diels, the head of the Gestapo. There will be times in the reading of this book when you will want to shake Martha.
I really enjoyed In the Garden of Beasts, and appreciated the amazing amount of research and fantastic detail woven throughout the book.
Seize the Day
Wilhelm is searching for reassurance and finding none. Unemployed, living in a hotel, despised by his father and his wife, he spends a day reflecting on his decisions, obsessing over his actions and the actions of others, and desperately searching for someone to save him. He puts his faith in a swindler and loses the rest of his money; his father refuses to help him; his wife won't even talk to him. I found myself alternately frustrated at the absurdities in Wilhelm's behavior and deeply empathetic with his precarious position in life. Read while I was feeling particularly vulnerable, so I think it's why it resonated so strongly.
Oryx and Crake
'Oryx and Crake' is an unsettling imagining of a dystopian future North America. While I really, really enjoyed this book, I couldn't help but think that certain aspects, in the last 100 pages or so, were just Atwood's head first rush to end the book quickly. I could have easily read another 50-100 pages on Snowman's interactions with the newcomers, but Atwood chose instead to leave us with a lady or the tiger ending. Still, I loved this book. I love how weird and sad it was, and how weirdly, sadly funny it was.
And probably my favorite book read this year:
Shot in the Heart
It's hard to think of just the right words to describe this book, especially as Gilmore, the author, does such a fantastic job of relating the tragedy of his family into such beautiful words. It's a harrowing, saddening read, but so masterfully told that I was completely sucked into the lives - and ultimately, the demise - of the main characters of this memoir. I confidently recommend this book to everyone.