Top Books of 2005

Family and Friends,

Happy New Year! I hope you are all enjoying ringing in 2006 so far.

2005 was a busy year for me; I continued working on my Master's and started a new job. I also read 46 books. As you may know, it is my custom at New Year's to send the list of my favorite books out as recommendations. This year I am asking for something in return: Please please please send me a recommendation of a book that you read this year and liked--you can see how many recommendations I take from people, they are credited below.

Some notes on the list: First, I was recently talking to some friends about whether I like historical fiction. I said "no" and sneered a bit, but when I look at the list, a decent number of these are set in specific historical epochs. Even more than historical fiction, I note that I enjoyed several fictional books this year that were set in different countries. I hope you enjoy this theme if you end up reading these books. Second, what I struggled with the most in my reading this year was endings. I found very few books that had a satisfactory ending, and I would posit that it is one of the major problems facing authors today. If you send me a recommendation that has a good ending, you get a gold star.

Without further ado....The List.


This year's top three books were the The God of Small Things, Too Many Men, and Everything is Illuminated, in no particular order. GoST and EiI are both books that deal with storytelling and language, while EiI and TMM are both stories about searching for a main character's roots in Eastern Europe. However, despite these similar themes, these books are significantly different in both style and storyline. I qualify them all as "read-at-red-lights" great.

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy - Recommended over the years by Laura B., Emily, and Parth.
This is a book that was recommended to me over and over, but I could never really get into it. This summer I took it on vacation and forced myself to try it again because it was recommended to me again. Obviously, I am glad I did. It is set in India in the late 1960's, and follows a set of fraternal twins and their family and covers various things that befall them. What is most interesting about the book is the use of language. Words are made up and words are capitalized in a way that plays with language and forces the reader to become part of the characters' world. Give it a few chapters if you are turned off by this at first.

Too Many Men - Lily Brett - Recommended by Jenne
Sometimes I think I should just hang out at Jenne's house and go through her bookshelf. I think I basically did that this year, and this was a great, great, pick. This tells the story of a woman who takes her aging father to Poland in an effort to find their history, much of which was destroyed during the Holocaust. The characters are vibrant and likeable (or hate-able) and there are some scenes that just won't leave my memory, ever.

Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan Safran Foer
This one was recently made into a movie that I haven't seen. An American goes to the Ukraine to find a women who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. This is interspersed with a second storyline, that of a book the American is writing about the village his grandfather grew up in. The best part of the book is the translator/tour guide whose English is just good enough to be dangerous. It's a laugh-out-loud funny book and a serious journey at the same time.

****After the top three, the following books were very enjoyable and definitely recommended.

Imagining Argentina - Lawrence Thornton
I read this in Argentina which may have something to do with why I liked it so much, but it combined magical realism (a common literature style in South America characterized by everyday people in fantasy-like circumstances) and the historical backdrop of the disappearances of the 1970's during the military rule.

Louisa - Simone Zelitch - Recommended by Jenne
Hungarian woman and her gentile daughter-in-law immigrate to Palestine in 1945. Really interesting cultural situations, great characters.

Island Walkers - John Bemrose
Family on an island and their conflicts with a labor union at the local factory and the beautiful new girl who starts at the town school. Nice side-trips into all the characters' lives, even if their stories aren't necessary for the plot.

Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld - Recommended by Jo
Named one of the New York Times' top books of 2005 (also), this follows the life of a midwestern girl who goes to a fancy northeastern prep school. While the plot was not exceptional, her voice is very clear and at times heartbreaking.

Pompeii - Robert Harris - Recommended by Christie
Historical fiction about the last few days before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvious. The ending is predictable (it blows) but the story and the characters are pretty good. For you scientists out there you will find some good descriptions of how aquaducts are built and the science behind the eruption.

Ahab's Wife - Sena Naslund - seen in Jenne's bookcase
I will fess up immediately to never having read Moby Dick. That said, I enjoyed this story of the woman who became Captain Ahab's wife, largely because of the adventures she has on her own. Plenty of discussion of religion and local politics and a few famous people make appearances towards the end, right when it's becoming a bit tedious as a story. Literature fans will enjoy this one. Take it on vacation, it's 700 pages long.

Wicked - Gregory McGuire - Recommended by Laura R., and Meredith W.
This is a pretty well known book that I somehow had not yet read about the Wicked Witch of the West from Oz, told from her side of the story. A bit long at times, but overall a good read...lots of good political and social commentary, just like the original Oz.

Lovers of Algeria - Anouar Benmalek
A familiar star-crossed lovers story set in Algeria. Maybe I was enchanted by the setting or the fairy-tale nature of the story, but it was an enjoyable read.

Change of Climate - Hillary Mantel - Perhaps recommended by Susan K.?
This is the story of a married pair of retired missionaries in modern-day England and flashes back to their time in Botswana. (See Don't Let's Go to the Dogs, as a nice nonfiction companion book to this.) The story tackles some difficult themes and reads almost too quickly to appreciate the writing.

Unless - Carol Shields
I was a little skeptical about the premise of this book - that a bright college student would drop out of school and start panhandling - but ended up really enjoying it. Told from her mother's point of view, this book ends up being about a lot of things, like feminism and family dynamics and responsibility. I enjoyed reading it, but didn't think it was a great book when I finished. Six months later it is still in my head, so it makes the list.

****If you're still not quenched, or if you're curious, these were pretty good too.

Robber Bride and Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye recommended by Mom. Margaret and I have some issues with her endings. I love reading her books but I always get to the end and find myself disappointed. If you're looking for a good ride, though, these are good choices of hers--Robber Bride about a set of women all victimized by a "friend" who is an adulterer and Cat's Eye about a haunting bully from the main character's childhood. Similarly, Jodi Picoult tends to write a great story with an afterschool special ending... Keeping Faith was one of the ones of hers I liked despite this problem, about a little girl who starts to talk to God.

Goldberry Long's Juniper Tree Burning was a great journey story. (I've characterized a couple books as journey stories. I don't know if this is really a genre, but when I read Huck Finn in high school I think it was designated as such.) While a bit unwieldy in the middle, the story is good, the changing of narration style is intriguing, and the character is complex enough to be interesting.

I don't usually include what I consider to be airport reading in this list, but Dennis Lehane's (Mystic River) Shutter Island, recommended by Jes, was notably good. Neat story about US Marshalls sent to a psychiatric hospital in the Boston Harbor Islands to investigate an escaped patient. This story had some great twists and the writing was appropriately suspenseful.

If you like Chris Bohjalain (Midwives, Trans-sister Radio), try Water Witches. It's an older book of his and less mature than his more popular books. However, the story of women who can divine where water is flowing underground, mingled with an environmental conflict storyline, makes for a good story. If you haven't read him before, then don't consider this representative of his best work.

I tried The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett, recommended by Jo. It was a pretty good page-turner about a woman who leaves her husband and finds herself work at a home for unwed mothers. Not a masterpiece like Patchett's Bel Canto (last year's list), but still a good read.

For those of you who are writers or teach English, check out Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; I picked it up at a Barnes and Nobles as a "Staff Recommends" book. This book takes the reader through six different stories that are nested within each other like Matreshka dolls. While I didn't think the transitions were smooth, and I'm still trying to understand the theme tying them all together, the writing is so different in each of the six stories that it is a true display of voice that is worth the read.

The Alchemist by Paul Coehlo, recommended to me by Dave N., was a neat fable about following one's dreams. You may find it to be inspiring or at least a nice read. It's short enough to demand relatively little from you. Some of the imagery is very memorable.

The Right Thing to Do by Josephine Hendin is somewhere between A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and My Big Fat Greek Wedding as far as plot. At the heart, it is a father-daughter old world-new world, insulated-independence story about Italian immigrants. It's not a funny book, but it describes a relationship with intense detail and great imagery.

Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor was recommended to me by Meredith A. It's a story of a man who returns to his family home in Memphis to deal with his elderly sisters and father. The story explores the circumstances surrounding the family's landing in Memphis to begin with, and how the patriarch of the family influenced their experiences so strongly.

Several people recommended Birth of Venus by Sarah Dumont to me, most notably Jo. This was one of those books I was statistically likely to enjoy, according to Amazon.com 's software, and one that Barnes and Noble put near several other books I liked. I found this story of a woman growing up in 15th century Florence relatively interesting but slightly boring at times. Probably a great read if you are going to Italy, otherwise it's fine.

For Love by Sue Miller was a story about a married couple and their circle of friends and adultary. Like Jane Hamilton, Sue Miller is a staple for me every so often when I'm at the library and can't find anything that looks good. She does not disappoint.

Jennifer Egan's Look at Me has stuck in my head. It's about a model who gets in a car accident and loses her beautiful looks. As she struggles to find a new identity as a person, she also figures out some strange details surrounding her accident. There's a second main character who shares the model's first name (Charlotte) who struggles with identity in a different way. Overall, a good social commentary, albeit proven by some absurd plot turns towards the end of the story. If you've read this far down, pop this one higher on your list...it was good.

Carol Goodman's Lake of Dead Languages was a spooky story about a woman who returns to her alma mater boarding school to teach and begins to see female students' lives mimic her own tragic time at the school.

****And if you're looking for non-fiction, I'd recommend these:

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America - Thomas Frank
The premise of this book is basically that many communities in the midwest are making political choices that are not in their best social or economic interests, and it seeks to figure out what is causing this dissonance. He does an eerily good job of characterizing the liberal northeasterners which encouraged me to trust his characterizations of the rest of the country. What I liked about this book was not its politics as much as its addressing the issues of polarization and divide facing us today.

The Working Poor - David Shipler
I liked this account of America's poverty problem mostly because Shipler admittedly roots for the people he writes about, so I liked them too. I was surprised at how many people live just a paycheck or two away from the street, and saddened by the discussions of problems with healthcare. While he didn't do a great job of summarizing anything, his problem statement is sound, and his liberalism was reasonably calm, letting the stories make his point without too much soapboxing.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight - Alexandra Fuller - recommended by Christie
This is the memoir of a woman growing up in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe with an incredibly prejudiced and alcoholic mother. This is not Lincroft, NJ. Much of this book is hard to take as non-fiction, but the challenge of doing so is definitely rewarding.

Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sachs - recommended by Matt E
Sachs' anecdotes of his psychiatric patients who have unusual disorders is a good read, particularly if you are reading something else and need a short break now and then. Individually, most of the stories are interesting, and together they portray an unusual human condition that most of us don't see.

Happy Reading in 2006!!

Love, Sheryl