Recommended Books of 2011!

Yes, I know it's closer to the 2012's end. Anyway, this is the 4th year of my Books of the Year lists.

Ever pitied the time wasted on not good enough books? After many books will appear a short explanation why it is or isn't recommended and its' topic. Hope you'll discover at least one good book. Feel free to ask questions about any of them and I would appreciate to hear your opinions and recommendations too!

The Best Books of Prose & Verse

TOP 10.

1. Bernard Shaw "Mrs. Warren's Profession" & "Saint Joan" (reread the latter). Undoubtedly, those 2 are the best books of the year. I loved their main heroines, the true strong women. Don't want to spoil, so will say no more, except that the plays make one see what a Classic feels like.  

2. Betty Smith "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (reread). My favorite female bildungsroman (or coming-of-age story), but not only. The book focuses not only on Francie & her brother, but also on their entire Irish-American family. F.e., a big part is dedicated to the parents' story and to Aunt Sissy. It lets us see the life in Brooklyn in the beginning of the 20^th century and addresses issues of poverty, gender roles, idealism vs. pragmatism, love and much, much more. Despite rereading it, I again experienced this very rare feeling of literally not being able to put the novel down.  I just checked and "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a largely autobiographical work. May be, this partly explains the magic.

 3. Irene Nemirovsky "All Our Worldly Goods" is my favorite Nemirovsky's novel about two families in France between 1910 and 1940. The review you can read in the 1^st comment to this post both partly explains the attraction and made me think of the horrifying, yet not unusual in Jewish history, context. (From here)

4. View with a grain of sand: selected poems / Wisawa Szymborska ; translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. Even if you usually don't like poetry, at least, give it a try and read the post I wrote on her death with poems' excerpts and 2 songs. There are several poetry translations of her work, and, after reading them on Internet, I see the above 2 translators as superior to other attempts. In poetry, a translation can make it or break it, so be warned. ;)  

5. "Let Me In" John Ajvide Lindquist. Just after complaining of never seeing truly dark, adult, looking into damaged psyches fantasy, I found Lindqvist's novel. Eli is a vampire, but don't let this frighten you. This book is completely different from "Twilight", Ann Rice's vampire novels or "Dracula". I wrote about my reading of it here and would be very interested to hear others' impressions.   

( For More Good Books )