Top Books of 2006

As many of you know, I've been sending out an annual restrospective of the books I've read and what I've liked for the past few years. This year, I've been keeping a blog of the books I read and reviewing each one. Starting now, I'll be keeping the blog up to date (sort of) throughout the year, so you can always see what I've read recently and what I've thought of it.

Best Wishes for a great 2007. As always, please send along your recent favorites, either posted here or emailed to me.

This year was a strange one for me for books. I read a lot that I liked at the beginning, and many at the end, and very little between March and October that I liked. Nevertheless, here goes:

Best Book: Plainsong - Ken Haruf
Runner Up: All the Names - Jose Saramago

My other favorites, in the order read:
Family History - Dani Shapiro
Moo - Jane Smiley
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street - Hilary Mantel
Oh The Glory of it all - Sean Wilsey
More, Now, Again Elizabeth Wurtzl
A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian - Marina Lewycka
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji
Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreeland
Truth and Beauty - Ann Patchett
Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safron Foer
Lighthousekeeping - Jeanette Winterson
Queen of the South - Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Virgin of the Small Plains - Nancy Pickard
Long Walk to Freedom - Nelson Mandela
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
The Bookseller of Kabul - Asne Seierstad

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

This is a Norwegian journalist's depiction of her three-month stay with an Afghan family in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. She does not appear as a character in the story, but events in five or six family members' lives are followed. I thought it was a great window into a country we've heard so much about here in America. I would have liked to hear a little less about how poorly the women were treated and a little more about other issues facing Afghanistan today. However, as a female journalist living with the family, she clearly found the women's issues to be quite disturbing. In any case, recommended.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

This was a tidy and satisfying novel/novella. It was a shorter book, reminding me of When the Emperor was Divine and Lighthousekeeping. (Perfect after the Mandela volume.) This story followed two children of political prisoners during the Mao regime in China. During their re-education in rural China they meet many interesting townspeople and travel around the area. Banned books play a central role in the story as well, making it a must for bibliophiles like myself. Recommended.

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

This book was Nelson Mandela's autobiography. I really enjoyed it, although at times the 600+ pages was a bit daunting. His book does a great job of describing his personal development as an activist, while secondarily charting the politics going on around him. A child of the late 1970's, I was completely unfamiliar with his entire story and found it inspiring and him strangely humble. Recommended.

The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard

This was a book I definitely enjoyed and did not like putting down. The writing style was similar to Jodi Picoult's although the book fit better into the suspense-mystery genre. By interspersing the past and present, Pickard brings the reader up to speed on the past as the characters themselves are figuring out long-term secrets. The characters were people I rooted for or hated. While probably not a classic this book was certainly good enough to recommend.

Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McAll Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is one of those authors whose books I turn to when I am wandering aimlessly though the library unsure of what to pick. Usually I find his books to be clever and sweet, almost fables. This installment of the Ladies #1 Detective Agency series had the same characters with the same honest concerns, but the cases that Mme Ramotswe solved did not have that same fable feel to them that I love so much. I think I might try some of the other series he has written as a change.

Women and Desire; Beyond Wanting to be Wanted by Polly Young-Eisendrath

The author of this book is a Jungian psychologist so I found pieces of this book a little hard to swallow and too psychoanalytic for me. That aside, I found many of the observations in this book around compliance, latent desires, and desire for competence very familiar. Thought not as accesible to Knapp's Appetites (yes, I did read it again this year) it was worthwhile. Perhaps what I learned the most from the book was in the forward, where Young-Eisendreth explains her change from asking her female patiens, "What do YOU want," to "What do you WANT."

City of God by Paulo Lins

I have been looking forward to reading this book for literally 10 years. Recommended to me by Adriana in college, I kept looking for it in English. It was not translated until this year, after a movie was made from it. I guess I was expecting this description of life in a famous Brazilian slum to read like a Jonathan Kozol book (e.g., Amazing Grace). It was more of a non-linear dream-like description of the violence, drugs, and power struggles throughout three generations of the slum. Paulo Lins himself grew up in this environment, then embedded himself for ten years to write this book. A challenging read.

Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte

I bought this book several years ago from a sale table at Trident before a vacation but never got to it. Recently I plucked it off the shelf before a business trip because I didn't have time to get to the library. Good thing I did--I really enjoyed this story of the girlfriend of a drug-smuggler who is left to survive on her own in Mexico after his death. It reminded me a little of Count of Monte Cristo in that the book depicts her rise to power and plays on themes of revenge. I also respect the amount of research that Perez-Revente obviously must have put into the writing of the book. Recommended.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

This book was about a strange collection of people who meet each other on the roof of a building as they are all planning to commit suicide on New Years Eve. Told with Hornby's typical satirical voice and cartoonish situations, this book was quick-moving with crisp dialogue. I enjoyed this book but not as much as his other books. I am beginning to think that he is writing books to be screenplays.

Parched by Heather King

This book was not what I expected. Unlike many other memoirs about addiction, King focuses on an honest description of the addiction, rather than of the recovery. It was amazing to read the degree to which a middle-class woman was living in complete dregs and not even noticing because of the addiction. I would have liked to hear about how she achieved sobriety.

Plainsong by Ken Haruf

This book came to my attention because Lisa O. thought that I had recommended it to her. Well, thank you to whomever started the chain of recommendations because this was a wonderful book. The story was about a handful of main characters in a simple town and how their lives intertwine over time. I am saving the sequel for a special occasion, but it is hard not to run out and buy it right away. Recommended.

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

I was not a huge fan of Secret Life of Bees but I decided to try this book anyway because everyone else really liked Secret Life and maybe it was just the subject matter that turned me off to that book. Turns out that I did like the Mermaid Chair more. It still played with ideas of a woman deity but to a lesser extent. The description of the interactions between the characters were compelling and the unlikely or fantasy aspects of the book were reasonably believable. I appreciated how well-developed the main character was.

Secret Girl by Molly Bruce Jacobs

In the epilogue of this book, Jacobs makes reference to a devastating family tragedy that occurs after the book was finished, and after Googling her story about losing her son to hyenas during an African safari. Since then. it has been difficult to separate that story from the one she tells in her book. The book is about her sister who has hydrocephalus and is sent to live in an institution. Molly is not told about her sister until their teen years, and it is several years after that before she decides to meet her sister. Jacobs both critiques her parents and the mental health system while telling the story of her adult relationship with her sister.

Digging to America by AnneTyler

I don’t always relate to Anne Tyler’s books but this one about adoption was very accessible. Maybe this is because I’ve been reading her books for fifteen years and am now getting closer to the ages of her main characters. In any case, this story followed two very different families who each adopt a child from Korea. One family is Iranian-American and the other is WASPy American and the friendship between the families that arises is one that brings questions of identity and American pride into focus.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

This book the autobiography of a man who worked for a Haliburton-esque consulting/construction company in the 1980s. He tells his story of brokering famous deals in the Middle East and Central America. I think that calling this a "Confession" is accurate, as it is hard to believe anything in the book other than that the author feels guilty. His stories seem exaggerated and the danger he expresses being in seems like paranoia. A must-read for conspiracy theorists, this book is skippable by anyone who is looking for a real description of the United States' economic responsibility within world events. Gold star to anyone who recommends a good alternative that covers the same material.

My Latest Grievence by Elinor Lipman

I usually find Elinor Lipman's books to be clever and kind of fun. I did not really think that this book was either but I finished reading it to the end because I was curious about the characters. This story follows a young woman growing up as the daughter of incredibly rational parents who are dorm-parents on a college campus. She is shocked to find out that her father was formerly married and even more curious when his ex-wife moves to the college.

Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson

This was a special, unusual book recommended to me by Jenne. The story is about a young woman who becomes apprenticed to a lighthousekeeper, someone who takes care of a lighthouse. Part of the job of a lighthousekeeper is to tell stories for the sailors who visit the lighthouse so the young woman hears the stories told by the older keeper. As the story progresses the characters in the main storyline and the story-within-a-story both get more interesting. The young lighthousekeeper ultimately begins to weave her own by the end of the book. Recommended.

Man of my Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld

After Prep, I had high hopes for this next book by Sittenfeld. Unfortunately, this one was not as enjoyable or hearbreaking as her former novel. The plot was about a young woman from a divorced home who struggled with finding love and “the man of [her] dreams.” However, the story ended up being more whiny than anything and devoid of any of the social commentary or true feelings that made Prep such a great book.

Before you Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian

I always find Bohjalian’s books to have great settings and surprisingly complex characters in complex situations. This was no exception. This is the story of a family with typical internal struggles whose younger generation makes a mistake with a gun that has loud repercussions. Also addressing issues of animal rights and media-related ethics, this book met my expectations, although not as good as some of his real classics like Midwives or Trans-sister Radio.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safron Foer

If you liked Everything is Illuminated, then you can stop reading this blog and go get Foster’s second book. If you did not like EiI (yes, I know many of you did not like this as one of last year’s top picks), then this book is a second chance to try Foer without the linguistic challenge of a Russian narrator. This book is set right after 9/11 and follows a 9-year-old’s quest to figure out some things he finds in his deceased father’s effects. In the same style of Foer’s earlier work, this book uses multiple narrators, answering machine messages, unlikely friends, and letters to tell an unusual story. Recommended to me by Jenne. Reccommended to you by me.

Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind

Having entered Brown the same year as the subject of this book, I must admit to having an affinity for the depictions of freshman year experiences. Even trying to take an objective eye to this book I couldn’t help but like this story of an inner city student succeeding at an Ivy League school. While it seemed at times that Cedric was treated unfairly easily by professors, my liberal sensitivities were awakened by the difference in privilege that I arrived at Brown with compared to Cedric. At the least, the book definitely profiled an individual’s success over his background and raises some good questions about affirmative action.