Books I Read In 2008

[hotlavamonster]

NB: This is a) chronological, b) honest (as in, I didn't remove any embarrassing choices), and c) inclusive of books I read for the first time, in their entirety. The Golden Notebook has about 3 bookmarks in it. The collected stories of both Hemingway and Welty get picked up and put down every couple weeks. Bolded choices are highly recommended.

Comments

[jilpie]

I am LOVING all this John McPhee.

This spring/summer I embarked on a mission to read all of Vonnegut's stuff; I am maybe 10 books in and had to stop for a while because I was really burning out. Cat's Cradle and Bluebeard were both keepers, though.

I read about 15 plays for my 21st Century Drama class; August: Osage County and a play called Tale of 2Cities were my favorites.

I read East of Eden and M Butterfly early this year for my AP Lit class and loved them.

I read a children's book called The Search for Delicious that was incredible and I will certainly read it to my children.

I read the two John Hodgman fake-knowledge books which were both slightly self-indulgent but ultimately really funny.

Are you on Goodreads? It seems right up your alley.

[hotlavamonster]

I'm really shocked that I didn't come to McPhee earlier. I lovelovelove his work and am trying to collect all the books, a few at a time.

How did you decide to read through Vonnegut? I'm thinking I might do that with McPhee but I think I'd have to cheat and not include all the geography books.

I haven't tried Goodreads... do you like it?

[jilpie]

I read McPhee's excerpts in my creative writing class junior year - the only full-length of his I've read is The Pine Barrens but I plan to read everything he's ever written at some point. When I visited Princeton I was giddy just knowing that I was on the same campus as him.

In typical fashion, I embarked on my Vonnegut challenge because of a boy I liked - he loved Vonnegut and borrowing books resulted in easy conversation. I ended up reading others, though, just depending on what my library had.

Goodreads is useless in any social sense, in my opinion, but I love it because it makes it easy for me to keep track of what I've read and what I thought of it. I am definitely pro.

[hotlavamonster]

I know! Every time I cross the Jersey line I feel I am in the Land of McPhee. I think you might like to glance at the Reader first and sort of get a feel for what the writing is like in the books-- I think a difficulty in his work is that you can read the description and be like "oh. Um, it's about a guy who played college basketball?", but experiencing a little can really guide you to reading the really good ones. Coming Into the Country is such a great example of the McPhee style, and I was reading it during election season which made the whole discussion of bizarro Alaskans that much funnier. I believe Uncommon Carriers is his latest-- just published a few years ago!-- and it was so incredible to absolutely love the book and realize he has been this good for FORTY YEARS.

I haven't read Vonnegut beyond the big ones, but think I should. It's sort of far out from what I normally read and I think it would actually help me with all the students I interview!

[donttouchmyhat]

I'm sure you get to way more books each year than I do, so I'm at a loss to recommend anything. Though I'd love to hear how you came to give Eggers another try; is there any reason to try reading him again?

I was apparently on a D.F.Wallace binge this year, even before his demise. I re-read all the collections, both novels and even that infinity book.

[hotlavamonster]

Let's keep this between you & me... haven't read IJ. But I have it! I think the problem is that I started reading it in bed and the weight of the book on my arms tired me.

I would recommend this particular Eggers because (for me) it actually achieved something great: I forgot he'd written it. I think he achieves the voice very well, and it's consistent. I didn't have quite the reaction many did, but I can admit that he really succeeded at what he wanted to do. It was enough to make me stop hating him for 5 minutes.

[pdanielson]

We only read one of the same books this year (Then We Came to the End). It had a few moments, but I wasn't really that impressed overall. There have been entirely too many hyped books lately with the exact same theme of "disaffected apathy because modern life sucks and I'm rebelling but not really because I'm lazy and trying to do something positive makes me vulnerable to being criticized by assholes like myself," and it seems like 20- and 30-something authors can't write anything else these days.

Recommendations of books I've enjoyed recently in no particular order:

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

[hotlavamonster]

I felt the same way about Then We Came to the End, but the one thing I did admire about it was his attempt at using the collective "we" pronoun in the narration. In the end, I think that it still ended up reading as narrated by, like, Joshua Ferris, but at least it was a stretch and it was something I hadn't seen before.

I've really wanted to read Ghost Map! Ghastlymess and Troy mentioned it to me a long time ago and it's been in the back of my mind. I just picked up 2666 a couple days ago and I'm really excited to start it. Good call on the Twain, too.

[hotlavamonster]

Oh goodness. Are there any you're particularly curious about? I think it might take me a couple hours or days to say something about each. But I'm glad you want to know!

I think the entire time I was at Bennington I basically only read books for class. Fortunately we're all hippy-dippy so that meant a lot of novels and interesting theory, and no textbooks.

Did you read the Klein? I would actually be really interested to hear your thoughts on her interpretation of Friedmanism, since I was coming into the book fairly cold and you have a lot of knowledge and opinion on that topic. But I can imagine that it could be infuriating for you to read through the whole thing.

[hotlavamonster]

My memory of the Wolff is a little hazy (I think I read it in February?) but I thought it was such a perfect little crystal of a book. I read some reviews that interpreted it as a kind of criticism of plagiarism, some stuff about character and lies, et cetera, but for me the message hitting home was about people who feel their lives are small, and how literature makes them feel big. I adore that idea. The set pieces were great, too. Oh Ayn Rand.

Muhajababes is an example of marketing trickery, and it worked on me. I was expecting her to really treat young Muslim women, but I think the book turned out as more of a hodgepodge of her experiences with the intersection of Islam and modern Middle Eastern youth culture. I think it broadened my knowledge, but in a way that felt very anecdotal and perhaps not super useful

[darius731]

I read the first 1,000 pages of the Norton (aka, the first chapter) over various lonely nights in Lora del Rio; I also became super obsessed with Katherine Mansfield, whom I highly recommend.

I want to know about The Overachievers, and when we can kill Zadie Smith and wear her beautiful, biracial, literary-prodigy skin!

[hotlavamonster]

I should really pick up some Mansfield. I fear our in-jokes would multiply exponentially.

Maybe I should read some of her other work, but I was really expecting a bit more of Ms. Smith. That book is like 400 pages long and I read it in one day of air travel. It's like a sitcom.

The Overachievers I think I borrowed from Kissy...? I like that it's written to follow actual students, and there is some character development there. But I couldn't shake the fact that her argument is so specific to a kind of upper-middle-class white northeastern existence. She does insert a few sort of "control" conversations with different students elsewhere, but I think that the book is not able to really act as a representation of a true national trend. It is, however, interesting to follow the particular high schoolers in the book and get a sense of how much they seem to be pushing themselves without external pressure from adults (seems strange), and how utterly depressing and ill-informed their ideas about college are. Alexandra Robbins attended the

[darius731]

Hee hee! Don't you love the recent rash of titles and subtitles that promise to let us into "secret lives," to reveal the "secret history"? I'm totes on that wagon when I publish yr blogz/online social networking information as Hidden from History: An Electronic Miscellany of S. McAbee!

I've only read White Teeth, and that was a bit disappointing because it goes on for ages and ages and then has this abrupt, half-ass conclusion; when questioned about this by an interviewer, she was like, "Yeah, I was typing in a really loud room and just really wanted to finish!" UGH.