December 1, 2009
Best Book of the Year
Some of you are so diligent in tracking what you’ve read over the course of the year. You keep lists – either online or in a nifty notebook – and you can look back and see what you’ve read for a particular period in time. I don’t do that. I probably should, but I don’t. So when I start thinking about what my favorite books of the year have been, I usually default to the ones I’m reading right now, if I like them.
Thus, this post is a bit hypocritical on my part, I suppose, because I’m not sure I can name my best book of the year. Yet, I would love to know yours. What have you read that has stuck with you? What gripped you so tightly that you couldn’t put it down? What changed your perspective just a bit?
If I was forced to pick, I would probably say that Dave Eggers’ What is the What is my favorite book of 2009. I listened to this text in the car, and I absolutely fell in love with the Valentino, the narrator. There was an honesty that spoke of his suffering and sorrow but still clung to hope. I found the book very inspiring and heartbreaking.
Of course, I still have one month left to find more favorites. I am reading Mahbod Seraji’s Rooftops of Tehran now. Maybe it will become my favorite soon. (By the way, Mr. Seraji will be joining our online discussion of this book. If you’re on Facebook, please join us. Otherwise, watch my blog for a review of the book next week.)
What are your “Best Books of 2009?” Share your picks this entire month, and on January 1st, I”ll give away 5 BookMooch points to a randomly selected commenter. Can’t wait to hear what you love.
– What is the What by Dave Eggers
Filed by Andi at 6:50 am under Book Recommendations, Uncategorized
7 Comments
This is a tough one. I think, on the whole, I would have to say that the best book I read was “2666.” It was the first thing I’d ever read by Bolano, and while it certainly wasn’t perfect, there were more than a few places in the novel where the writing just blew me away. Ranking the other novels I enjoyed this year will take some hard thinking, because I liked so many books for different reasons.
I’ve had What is the What on my shelves foreverrrrrrr. It’s scandalous, really. I know I’ll love it, but other things keep jumping up to the front of the line. I vow to read it near the beginning of 2010. Famous last words??? Perhaps. But I hope not.
I put The Help on my list of tops for the year. I think the three different narrators was extremely well done, and it was shocking to read about a time in US history that seems so distant…but really isn’t.
I called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer the best 2009 book I’ve read this year (so far, anyway).
My favorite for the year is a recent discovery. It’s “Normal People Don’t Live Like This,” by Dylan Landis. See http://dylanlandis.com for detail on the book. It’s another novel-in-stories, a la Olive Kitteridge, but I find the writing and characters so much more compelling.
p.s. Andi — sorry I haven’t continued to participate in the book club; my younger brother is very sick and a lot of things I was involved in have dropped by the wayside for awhile.
Take care,
Beth
I’ve read a lot of books this year (it’s part of my degree program), but the ones that have stuck with me would be these:
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln and Christopher Collier
Luna by Julie Ann Peters
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The only “new” in 2009 book that I read that I really liked was:
Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout
My local library has a nifty feature called Your Reading History, that if turned to “on” keeps track of what I have checked out. I delete any books that I don’t end up reading, so it is a pretty accurate list of what I’ve read, since I rarely buy books.
I think the only thing I’ve read from this year is the Best American Short Stories (I recommend “Yurt” by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum and “A Shadow Table” by Alice Fulton). A book I was recently introduced to, though, which I think came out in 2008, is Theodore Worozbyt’s Letters of Transit. It’s poetry. Prose poetry.