Top Books of 2010

It is hard to believe that 2010 is almost over.  In February, Web and I went to Mexico to attend a wedding.  Shortly after returning, we brought home an adorable, friendly, happy cockapoo puppy ("Lucy") who has been a delight to add to our family.  Over the summer we went to Iceland, then in December celebrated our 10th year together.  I secured a new position at Dell that will start in February and Web continues at his job during the day and his MBA at night.

But enough about me - what about the books?  All in I read 48 books, 10 which were non-fiction, the rest of which were novels. I finally found a reliable book club with interesting people.  Throughout the year, I read a nice mix of new books and items that had been on my list for many years.  I have not moved to an e-reader, and have no plans to give up paper books anytime soon.

This year, I've included some narrative around my favorite reads, rather than just a list.  (Psst: if you like this format, check out The Millions Year in Reading series for some seriously well-thought out recommendations.)

Adding Lucy to our family has been life-changing.  Not growing up with pets other than a curmudgeonly bird, I had no idea what it was like to have another being around all the time.  She is so happy to be doing what we are doing, and so eager to explore and play and meet new people.  I was interested in reading about others' experiences with dogs to figure out what I was feeling about it.  The two novels I liked most were The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and The Art of Racing in the Rain.  Edgar Sawtelle was an intriguing story of a family who bred a very special type of dog, and the coming of age of their mute son.  Reading that was when I discovered that the training methods we were using had a long and universal history.  Similarly, the feelings I had about dogs shared a long history with many, many people - I remember being in a hotel room in Argentina several years ago and feeling very isolated and scared.  After talking to Web for several hours about different scary travel situations we'd been in, we crept downstairs for dinner, only to find a lively dining room full of happy people in a completely lovely and secure hotel.  That's how I felt about getting a dog - "oh, look at this whole universe I've been missing out on that's been going on around me all these years."  

The second dog novel, Racing in the Rain, was wonderful in that it told the story of an aging race car driver through the eyes of his dog.  It could have been corny or ill-contrived, but it was neither.  It felt like a rare glimpse inside of the inner life of a dog - kudos to Garth Stein for his execution of "voice" in this book.  I also loved reading about the rehabilitation of the dogs involved in Michael Vick's fighting ring in The Lost Dogs. Authored by a Sports Illustrated reporter, the book chronicled both the legal and the canine sides of the story. 

Lest you think I've "gone to the dogs" I'll move on from the canine theme.  I have finally found a book club that I like and many of my favorite books this year came from this group.  Some of the books from this group would probably have ended up on my night table anyway: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Little Bee, A Reliable Wife, and The Unit.  I caught Larsson fever just like everyone else and thought Dragon Tattoo was extremely engrossing, and a unique mix of corporate/financial intrigue, mystery, and interpersonal situations.  I have the second book in the series lined up for my next vacation.  Little Bee, while not as special as its mysterious jacket flap description would indicate, was a strong political statement wrapped up in an unusual story.  I adored A Reliable Wife - it was creepy and set in a dark, wintry, 19th century town where a man mail-orders a bride.  Both man and wife discover that the other has an ulterior motive in getting married.  The Unit, which I just finished, was thought-provoking and some of the best science fiction (or as Atwood likes to put it, speculative fiction) that I read all year. The Unit is a compound that childless adults are sent to once it is time for them to begin participating in medical experiments that mark the end of their useful time in society.

What's fun about being in a book club, however, is the books that I would not have otherwise read.  In this case, I really enjoyed two books in particular that others chose: Do They Know I'm Running, and The Book Thief.  Do They Know I'm Running is about a young man whose illegal immigrant uncle is deported to El Salvador, and he goes there to retrieve him and bring him back to the U.S.  The writing and plot was good enough that I was half way through before I realized it was a political statement (kind of like Little Bee).  I don't know why this book didn't get more attention this year.  The Book Thief was probably the most unusual book I read this year - and in some ways was my favorite.  For some reason it was published in the U.S. as a Young Adult book which is indicative only of the simplicity of the language used, not of the plot or the style.  Narrated by Death (yes, that Death), this book follows the story of a young girl sent to live with a foster family during WWII when her mother is arrested as a Communist.  See what I mean?  Not really YA.

As far as non-fiction this year, there's no discernible theme among my favorites.  As they See 'Em was a fun excursion into the world of baseball umpires.  I saved this book to read in April, which was a great choice - I loved reading a section and then seeing some of it in action during a televised game the next day.  I can't remember where I picked up A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, but that was a good read.  While reading it, I felt like I was touring Roman ruins and had a good tour guide who was bringing the antiquities to life for me.  The memoir I liked best this year was Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.  Janzen's depiction of her return to her childhood home after a failed marriage was both amusing and honest. 

I have a soft spot for dystopian novels (isn't that a phrase you see everywhere) and this years I read a few.  In addition to The Unit, I also enjoyed Stephen King's Under the Dome and Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood.  I could hardly put down Under the Dome while on vacation; it was the story of a small town that gets encased in a clear dome and the logistical and political complexities that ensue.  If I didn't work full-time I'd re-read this 1000-page tome with The Stand By Stephen King and develop some complex theories about the structure of Stephen King's works.  What I liked about Year of the Flood was that Atwood revisited a world she had created in a previous novel, Oryx and Crake.  I might suggest this was a "feminist retelling" of O+C, or just another set of stories from the same point in time, but either way it was as fun to read more about this world as it must have been for her to write it. 

Everyone I knew seemed to be reading Sarah's Key and The Help, neither of which disappointed me.  Sarah's Key was a novel about a young girl's experience during the Holocaust and a modern-day journalist's quest to find out what happened in that little girl's town.  A couple of images and stories in that book really stuck with me.  A true book-lover who recommended Sarah's Key to me passed away this year and I will remember her respect for that book.  The Help, probably second only to Dragon Tattoo in popularity in my informal poll, was a great historical novel too.  It was about the relationships between several women and their maids ("The Help") in 1960's Mississippi.  While seemingly long in pages, the voice and plot made the book go by quickly.

I didn't see any common themes in the final three books I enjoyed this year until I listed them all together.  Turns out, they each explore an imperfect marriage, though in vastly different settings.  Weight of Heaven is about a couple who move to India after losing their young son in an accident.  Not unexpectedly, a change of scenery doesn't solve any of their problems, although the depiction of ex-pats in a developing country and the related ethical challenges was excellently depicted.  In A Country called Home, a young couple choose a life in rural Idaho in the 1960's.  The story of their surviving in that environment, as well as that of their daughter's life in the next generation, are beautifully written in this book.  I'd consider this another "sleeper" book that should have gotten far more press than it did.  Just last week I finished Shadow Tag, about a woman whose marriage is falling apart and  who begins to keep two diaries when she discovers her husband is reading one of them.  Not nearly as epistolary as I expected, this book is a significant anatomy of a broken relationship.

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And that concludes my descriptions of the best books I read this year.  Below is a link to my review of each of the books mentioned here.  I hope you will comment below on your favorite books from this year too - and what you thought of these.

I look forward to a 2011 filled with a new set of books that engross, transport, teach, and delight me...and  wish the same to each of you.

Sheryl

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle  
The Art of Racing in the Rain
The Lost Dogs
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Little Bee
A Reliable Wife 
The Unit
Do They Know I'm Running
The Book Thief
As they See 'Em
A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome
Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
Under the Dome  
Year of the Flood
Sarah's Key  
The Help
Weight of Heaven
A Country called Home
Shadow Tag

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Many people recommended this book to me, most memorably Ruth in Florida and Ellen at my company holiday party. It seemed to be a darling of book clubs and the fiction table at Barnes and Noble. I found it to be familiar in some ways but unique in others - overall, I really enjoyed it.

It used to be that having two alternating character narrate a story between two time periods was unique in construction. Now it seems to be a fashionable way to write. I can see the appeal; it can serve as a contrast and as a way to keep the audience's attention. This book followed that format and while I didn't find it tired, I did find it familiar.

One of the stories is about Sarah, a young girl whose family is taken in a deportation of Jews from Paris by French policemen during 1942. The other story is about Julia, a modern-day news reporter who is covering the 60th anniversary of this event. While Sarah's narration ends about two-thirds of the way through the book, Julia follows several stories related to the deportation, one of which intertwines with her own family's history.

The scenes where Sarah is in captivity are heartbreaking but not as graphic as other Holocaust novels I've read. Not to say that her experiences aren't devastating - they are - but de Rosnay's depiction of Sarah's despair is subtle and through 9-year-old eyes, without the knowledge we have of what actually happened to deported Jews in the Holocaust. I thought this book was really well-written and well-thought out. Both Sarah and Julia's characters were carefully developed characters and I couldn't wait to read more about each of their stories.

I also enjoyed reading this story after finishing Little Bee, because they both shared the theme of a middle-aged woman forming a relationship with a younger girl who had been through horrible trauma. It was interesting to compare with Five Quarters of the Orange as well, since that focused on German occupation in a small French town during WWII.

Definitely recommended.

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum

This book was excellent.

I've read a lot of Holocaust literature, starting in junior high school both as part of my Hebrew School curriculum as well as on my own.  I remember novels like When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit and Number the Stars, as well as memoirs by Frank, Frankl, and Weisel, among many others.  At some point as an adult I (guiltily) felt a little overwhelmed by how much about it I had read and stopped choosing these books. But in recent years I got a lot out of books like Sarah's Key and The Book Thief. 

When Terry recommended this a one of her top 11 books - ever- I bought it.  It had sat on my shelf until last week. And, wow - t was one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time.  It was heartbreaking and emotional and not a book I will forget for a long time.

As the book jacket explains, Trudy is a college professor who has grown up in Minnesota after surviving WWII in Germany as a child.  Her only knowledge of her father is a photo her mother Anna keeps hidden of the two of them with a man in a Nazi uniform.  I kind of thought that I could figure out what the story was going to be about, but in fact I was reasonably off-base.

Indeed some of the book takes place in Germany during the war, and the reader learns how Anna comes to have a relationship with a Nazi. But the circumstances are not what I expected.  The balance of the book, told in alternating chapters, takes place in current times, where Trudy is trying to understand her past through a research project.  She knows that she does not know the entire story...but Anna won't talk about it and Trudy has grown up knowing it is a missing piece of her history.

Part of what made this book so compelling was that the narration was unflinching.  Blum never used a metaphor, or ended a scene leaving the reader to imagine an atrocity.  It was also compelling because the characters were really good.  Neither Anna nor Trudy was expressive, but they were both characters I rooted for. 

Definitely recommended.