Recommended Books of 2011!
Aug. 2nd, 2012 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elanor_xYes, 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 20th 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 1st 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.
6. Robert Goolrick "A Reliable Wife". I loved his writing style. Some back covers reveal too much, so here is the one that's just right:
COUNTRY BUSINESSMAN
SEEKS RELIABLE WIFE.
COMPELLED BY PRACTICAL REASONS
REPLY BY LETTER.
Rural Wisconsin, 1907. In the bitter cold Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement. But when Catherine steps off the train she's not the "simple honest" woman Ralph is expecting. For she is motivated by greed. But what Catherine has not counted on is that Ralph might have plans of his own for his new wife…
"High drama evolving out of avarice and lust" GUARDIAN
Just noticed, the idea sounds so modern: many give ads on dating sites, hell-knows-who answers. ;)
7. The book of living verse: English and American poetry from the thirteenth century to the present day / edited by Louis Untermeyer
I liked many of his poetry choices, which is pleasantly surprising. But I just started to read poetry in English. A little. People, who live in US or love poetry, will recognize many poems.
8. "Mao's Last Dancer" Li Cunxin. Li's autobiography "recounts his journey from a young, impoverished village boy destined to labor in the fields to a world-famous professional dancer". [wiki] I was interested in the descriptions of life of poor peasants & at the Beijing Dance Academy in the Communist China.
9. W. Somerset Maugham "Liza of Lambeth". Maugham's first novel (1897). Full text here.
A lively, sociable young woman, Lisa is adored my all in the neighborhood, but when she starts an affair with a married man she falls from grace in the eyes of those around. Her actions finally have consequences she cannot control. The reader gets an interesting insight into the everyday lives of working class Londoners at the turn of the century. [wiki]
The description may sound dry, but the novel is anything but. I read the Russian translation, but, even there, enjoyed the language and the style, which, with the plot, take one for a great ride.
10. "The Good Earth" Pearl S. Buck. From wiki: Published in 1931 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932, this novel of family life in a Chinese village before World War II helped prepare Americans of the 1930s to consider Chinese as allies in the coming war with Japan.
MORE GOOD BOOKS
11. Irene Nemirovsky "The Dogs and the Wolves" is one of her few books with Jewish protagonists. I didn't really like the novel, but think it was a matter of personal taste alone.
12. Kate Morton "The Forgotten Garden". Morton was "eager to play with 19th-century gothic conventions" in this novel of unveiling family secrets. See my review here to find out more. If you're in a mood for an easy read, it's a good novel, light without being "yellow".
13. Doorways to poetry / by Louis Untermeyer in consultation with Bertha Evans Ward and Ruth M. Stauffer. A very readable Basic Introduction to Poetry kind of book.
14. "Alex & Me" – How a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence and formed a deep bond in the process – by Irene M. Pepperberg
15. Not So Deep as a Well: collected poems / Dorothy Parker. Her poems are witty, with a mournful, cynical (under)current. I enjoyed them as light satire, even if the cynicism was at times too overflowing.
However, her short stories seem much better. Have only read 3 so far, but "Big Blonde" was outstanding in showing the life of a dependent on men woman. The best I ever read.
16. Terry Pratchett "Jonny and the Dead". Jonny & his friends befriend the dead of the local cemetery and work to prevent the council from destroying it. If you like Pratchett's style & humor. I enjoyed this light read.
17. The complete poems / Christina Rossetti (Penguin classics( I read but a small part of them, only secular poems about love.
18. Edvard Radzinsky "Stalin: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives". If you're interested in the topic, check this famous Russian historian and "the author of more than 40 popular history books" [wiki].
19. Bill Bryson "At Home: A Short History of Private Life" "journeys about the house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has figured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture." [amazon]
I hardly remember any facts from it, but it was entertaining to read. Though my favorite Bryson's book remains "A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail". If, like me, you wondered what woods are like, but didn't have an opportunity to find out for yourself, the latter is great.
20. Åsne Seierstad "The Bookseller of Kabul" "After living for three months with the Kabul bookseller Sultan Khan in the spring of 2002, Norwegian journalist Seierstad penned this astounding portrait of a nation recovering from war, undergoing political flux and mired in misogyny and poverty." [amazon]
From Amazon Review: "Sultan Khan is suing her for something like defamation of character. I'm sure he thought she would extol his virtues [and he would emerge looking like a benevolent god]; instead, she wrote honestly of the fiercely patriarchal Afghanistan/Muslim traditional family structure that keeps his tyranny intact and subjugates all women, regardless of their educational level or social status.
The Bookseller of Kabul reads more like good New Journalism. It's not great literature; it's great reportage. But it gives a voice to the women in the extended Family (meant in the broadest sense of the word), a voice that speaks for millions of women in the Middle East, a voice that must be heard."
21. Ayaan Hirsi Ali "Infidel"(my life) - coming-of-age memoir.
What I liked about this & the previous books is, as I bolded above, reportage aspect, learning more about women's life in other cultures.
From Amazon Review: Ali is the Somali-born member of the Dutch parliament who faced death threats after collaborating on a film about domestic violence against Muslim women with controversial director Theo van Gogh (who was himself assassinated). Even before then, her attacks on Islamic culture as "brutal, bigoted, [and] fixated on controlling women" had generated much controversy. In this suspenseful account of her life and her internal struggle with her Muslim faith, she discusses how these views were shaped by her experiences amid the political chaos of Somalia and other African nations... While in transit to her husband in Canada, she decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands, where she marveled at the polite policemen and government bureaucrats. Ali is up-front about having lied about her background in order to obtain her citizenship, which led to further controversy in early 2006, when an immigration official sought to deport her and triggered the collapse of the Dutch coalition government.
MORE BOOKS
22. "The Painted Lady" Maeve Haran I enjoyed this light historical novel about Frances Stuart, a prominent member of the court of Charles 2 of England, whose face was used as a model for Britannia on medals & coins. She even appeared on the fifty pence piece in 2006! britannia tells her interesting life story here.
23. Terry Pratchett "Snuff". I read it as "candy", without thinking, and it was fine for me, but this reviewer convincingly analyzed the novel to explain her disappointment.
24. "The Commoner" John Schwartz. I almost completely forgot this book, so can't recommend it, but if you enjoy reading about royal families, this likely is a book for you. From NYT Sunday Book Review:
Queen Elizabeth II does not give interviews and neither do the emperor and empress of Japan. The true story on which the novel is based is well known. In 1957, the Japanese crown prince, Akihito, met a beautiful young woman, Michiko Shoda, on a tennis court. She became the first commoner to marry into the imperial family. Despised by her mother-in-law as an upstart and interloper, Michiko eventually succumbed to a depression so intense that she temporarily lost the ability to speak. A generation later, her eldest son, Prince Naruhito, also fell in love with a commoner — again with dreadful results.
Out of this heart-wrenching history, Schwartz has woven a delicate, elegiac tale, intensely moving and utterly convincing. He has imaginatively reconstructed the private story while remaining largely true to the scant details that have been reported to the public.
25. Stephen King "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon". A psychological horror novel. A girl gets lost in the woods, with only a Walkman and the baseball game featuring her favorite player, Tom Gordon, to keep her company.
26. Stephen King "Full Dark No Stars" (Read only "Big Driver" & "Fair Extension"). If you like King, this is his new book of 4 novellas, "all dealing with the theme of retribution" [wiki].
27. "Songs of Love & Death" All-Original Tales of Star-Crossed Love – Edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
I was very excited by the idea of the book – a collection of fantasy & SF stories of star-crossed love. However, most stories disappointed me. The favorites were Neil Gaiman "The Thing About Cassandra", M.L. Hanover "Hurt Me" and Peter S. Beagle "Kaskia". Beagle was called the "most successful writer of lyrical and evocative modern fantasy since Bradbury", and, based on 1 story, I thought the praise was quite just.
28. "100 Pages Blanches" Cyril Massarotto. Quite good light read.
29. "Tails from the Bark Side" (True Stories from the Family Dog Files) by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson.
Reporting of funny incidents from a job of a dog trainer, where owners often provide the best laughs. I wouldn't pay money for this book, but since it was in library and I was in mood.
30. Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin "Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time" about constructing more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. However, currently reading Amazon reviews, I saw it's based on lies & pity I read it at all. F.e. this review:
This book has been revealed to have invented stories, including the first story about K2. 60 minutes recently had a damning expose that Greg's stories are fabricated and his charity is used to enrich himself. Google 'Three cups of tea 60 minutes' to see the episode. As someone who works in Afghanistan and puts his butt on the line there, I find this reprehensible. The publisher needs to issue refunds to people who bought this book.
