Book-Book (Read It)

My 2011 Reading Roundup

Favorite reads: (because I can never pick just one!)

The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass - Wonderful characters.
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachmann - Again, wonderful characters.
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai -  A great little kid and an appealing, tart authorial voice.
The Passage by Justin Cronin - Great story with suspense and heart.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - Lovely, sweet, dear, charming love story.
Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross - Intriguing construction.  Not sweet or charming!

Worst book:

The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert. This so-called horror novel is embarrassingly bad, just wincingly awful.  It reads like a first-time self-published author, although Herbert is a veteran and has written decent ghost stories in the past.

Most disappointing: The School of Night by Louis Bayard.  I've enjoyed each of his historical suspense books until this one, set partially in contemporary times, which seemed dumbed-down for the masses.

What I learned: It is worthwhile to revisit classics that you hated as a youngster. I'm so glad I steeled myself to re-reading Of Human Bondage, because this "boring" book has jumped into my Top Ten Books Ever.  On the other hand, I hate Henry James as much as I ever did, and that was good to learn, too.

Total books read: 52, which is a lot for me.

Genre breakdown:

Classic - 13
Fantasy - 1
Historical Fiction - 2
Horror - 4
Humorous - 1
Mainstream/Literary Fiction - 19
Mystery - 6
Nonfiction - 3
Suspense - 3

Book Review: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Okay, so I'm the last person on the planet to read The Corrections. The next time I do my "dysfunctional family" book display for the holiday season, this one is going front and center!  It is similar in tone and structure to Freedom, but perhaps a bit more arch and much more darkly humorous.  A third of the way through, I was put off by the whiff of "look at me!" in the prose and by what I detected as Franzen's judgmental attitude toward his characters - never a good strategy for an artist - but as I read on, either the writing changed or I changed, and I grew to like the book a great deal.  As in Freedom, Franzen presents his characters' personal difficulties on an expansive canvas of 21st century American life. The three Lambert children mess up their lives in interesting ways.  Their mother Enid aggressively ignores the calamities surrounding her and tries to promote a Hallmark vision of family that she surely knows is false.  The patriarch Alfred has stored up a lifetime of big mistakes and big sacrifices, but is felled not by the forces within his character, but by the undiscerning hand of fate in the form of disease.

I'm still digesting the book, but, in the mood to be audacious, I'll say that The Corrections has the clear-eyed social dissection of Middlemarch, mixed with the occasional low-brow comedy and heart-breaking pathos of Dickens.  So all in all, a pretty good read.

Book Review: The Submission by Amy Waldman

Amy Waldman's debut novel about a Muslim architect whose design is chosen for New York's 9-11 memorial is tailor-made for book discussion groups, but it's more subtle than a didactic "issue" novel. In brief, the (blind) selection of a Muslim's design causes a political and cultural firestorm, and while some of the players are predictable, others are presented with interesting complexity.  The politicians and journalists are mostly odious, and provide some of the black comic relief.  The architect, Mo Kahn, is secular, apolitical, ambitious and depending on your view, either principled or stubborn.  His counterpoint is Claire Burwell, a 9-11 widow on the memorial jury, whose early defense of Kahn and his design falters when the media trumpets an Islamist conspiracy theory pretty much out of wholecloth.

With a good balance of sociological observation and close depiction of characters' emotions, it's an involving story with an important theme. It's making my best of 2011 list, for sure.