Booklog for Charlotte

Favorite Books for 2017

I have now dropped the designation of 10 favorite books for the year as I usually have a larger number. This year I chose 11 of the 50 books I read. Four on my favorites list were among the ten books by Australians. As always these are books that I read this year, not necessarily published in 2017. 

The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton. I found this audiobook so appealing that I returned to the beginning as soon as I finished it. It's poignant, thoughtful, inspiring. This beloved Australian author writes about his youth, his work in the environmental movement, and living in the gatehouse of Leap Castle in Ireland while writing Cloudstreet. 

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Every sentence counts in these short stories whose characters are immigrants; some tell of immigrants who have been in the U.S. for decades, some tell of the time when they were new to the country.  Each one drops you into a different world.

I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters. I concluded the plot is so magically odd that describing it in the usual terms misses the mark. It is the characters' intense and vibrant love for the oddest things (Chevy trucks, rock and roll music, smoking, and each other) that made me love it. 

The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay. One of my favorite books last year has Sydney at its center and three storylines that intertwine (The Floating Garden by Emma Ashmere). Once again one of my favorites falls into that same category. Lets see if that can happen again next year. This time the three stories are in different centuries:  one fictionalizes William Dawes, who arrived with the first fleet, one has the building of the Harbour Bridge at its center, and one tells the story of a man returning to the city from London after an absence of 10 years.

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes. The picture painted of the diminished life facing the aristocracy of England after the war tells us that this is caused by the rise in the fortunes of those who previously worked to care for the upper classes. This comes not as a polemic, but a lovely recounting of a day by a woman who is not especially troubled by her new situation and at day's end has an uplifting moment of revelation of her good fortune.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. It is rare for a book to be so successful in both an intimate story of individuals who come alive and a dramatic global theme. Two young people must leave their country when it is engulfed in civil war; they leave by a magical method which is both like dying and being reborn. While their complex tale is told in a dispassionate voice, you come to love them. A global theme could hardly be more timely and important than that of immigration.

Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane. You have to love a book with characters known as Auntie Boo and Auntie Bubby. The narrator tells that she only became aware that her life as an Aborigine was different from others when she went to school. She grew up in the care of her grandmother and the Aunties. It was Auntie Boo who reassured her that being different was a good thing by telling Epictetus's story that he wanted to be the purple thread, "that small part which is bright and makes everything else graceful and beautiful."

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose.  All the characters are connected, sometimes only tangentially, by a play. The author, actors, audience members, and the director each have a chapter devoted to their stories. Early on, I thought this was about a sorry group of individuals who are easily skewered, but a wonderful bigger picture emerges and we begin to feel a kinship with this odd collection of humanity.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. A book with a mix of historical snippets and fanciful fiction has remained my favorite for the year since I read it in April. It is the fellow residents of Willie Lincoln's graveyard that makes this a wonderful book for me. Three of them tell us the story, along with short quotes from books written at the time of the child's death. I am now more aware that the Buddhist concept of the Bardo speaks to the concept that turns up everywhere, this place between not being alive and a final resting place.

Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner. This book of essays is both moving and very funny; I found the 12-page recounting of Pride and Prejudice alone worth the price of the book. In writing about United 93, the movie about the 9/11 plane that passengers commandeered from the hijackers, she says, "why do stories matter so terribly to us, that we will offer ourselves up to, and later be grateful for, an experience that we know will fill us with grief and despair?"

NW by Zadie Smith. The four main characters grew up in a council estate in a part of London that one knows is not posh. They go in different directions and then intersect in intense ways; each character is drawn in a compelling way. The audiobook was wonderful for the sounds of their dialogue and the poetry that Zadie Smith lapses into. 

 

10 Favorite Books for 2016, Well, ok, it's 11

These are my favorites of the books I read in 2016. I read 50 books this year and 11 were by Australian writers. My initial list of favorites began with 17 titles and it was painful to reduce it to 11. 

The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra. Whenever I read my post about this book again, I am flooded with respect for this writer and with memories of the searing artistry of this book. Though it is a book of short stories, I think of it as a novel as the characters are connected. While the stories are sometimes too grim to bear and the ironies too impossible, the characters are drawn with love and tenderness. 

The Secret Son by Jenny Ackland. I was impressed that the author could link the iconic Australian outlaw Ned Kelly (1854-1880) to a defining moment for Australia in the 20th century: the loss of so many Australian soldiers at Gallipoli. Along the way, she introduces the (fictional) son of Ned Kelly, life in a Turkish village after the Gallipoli campaign, and in contemporary times, a young man of Turkish descent who grew up in Melbourne. The unfolding of the connections among the characters is magical.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey. When a woman becomes bedridden with a mysterious illness, her friend brings her a snail in a terra-cotta pot with violets planted in it. Her initial irritation at having responsibility for another creature is replaced by hours of interest in the activities of the snail, who ventured out at night to explore and took square bites from any paper left nearby. The wit, light touch, and beautiful writing of this non-fiction book by Elizabeth Tova Bailey made this a delightful read. The book is a reminder that fascinating creatures, including humans, are all around us. We just need to look closely.

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene. When we first meet Major Skobie, a policeman in an outpost in Sierra Leone, we understand he is a man of great moral rectitude, who treats everyone with respect and fairness. He is a character we feel great respect for, so it is with dismay that we follow his descent from one bad moral compromise to the next. I listened to the audiobook read by Michael Kitchen and was sad when it was over. 

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Though we can probably agree that Steve Jobs is not especially likable, he is a fascinating character, clearly drawn by Walter Isaacson. He made such a positive impact on the world of computers, making them so much more user friendly, creating devices we had no idea we would love so much. But best of all was the story of the creative work of Xerox PARC that the parent company required them to divulge to Jobs. His excitement about those creations and Xerox's inability to capitalize on them tells us a great story about a large corporation's shortcomings and an individual's ability to be visionary.

We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. The author writes convincingly about the importance of respect for beings who are not human. This is the fictional story of a family that takes in a chimp as a member of the family a month after the narrator is born. This occurred in a number of experimental settings over the years and it almost never works out well for the chimp. The writing is beautiful: the narrator's brother was "stropping his stories into knives" to convey his anger to his parents. The tone is conversational and light at times and a gripping narrative at other times. 

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. Undine Sprague is relentlessly unpleasant: she is blind to the needs of others when those needs conflict with her own desires. In her wake she leaves a string of broke and broken men. You do have to admire her determination in the pursuit of those desires and sometimes she spends months or years in exile to achieve her goals.  Wharton offers a full-throated defense of Undine, and by extension all women through a minor character. Women are excluded from the business of life by "the custom of the country," so of course they pursue their own goals.

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O'Farrell. The central story of this book is that of Claudette:  when she was an extremely well-known actress, she dropped from sight, moving to a remote house in Ireland. The story is told from multiple points of view so that various characters have their moment to present themselves (or be presented). The chapters may be long or short and the time varies from the mid-80s to 2016 and the locations include Ireland, New York, California and more. I was captivated by each in turn, but must mention the lovable teenage "California Girl" Phoebe. The intensity and beauty of this book required an occasional little break for me. 

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin. It was wild to relive that bizarre story and those strange times, especially as Mr. Booklog and I listened together while driving to Iowa. When we took breaks from listening, we marveled at what we remembered, as well as what we either hadn't known or had forgotten. This book makes my top ten list for its success in putting me into this very different time.

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. The narrator's story of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn is beautiful despite the drugs, sexual predation, teen pregnancy, and more observed by this motherless girl. She has adults who know how to care for her, a loving father and brother, and three teenage friends who take care of each other (until they don't). We know from the outset that though Brooklyn felt like "a stone in her throat," she leaves for a life unimaginable to that little girl. The beauty was enhanced by the reader, Robin Miles.

The Floating Garden by Emma Ashmere. I do love a book that has Sydney as a character. This one has three storylines: A young girl arrives in the city at the turn of the century, is taken in and exploited by spiritualists; twenty years later, this same character is losing her home and neighborhood as the harbor bridge is being built; and the third, a woman escaping her abusive rich husband lands in that neighborhood. Each story is strong and appealing and adds to each other and the whole.

10 Favorite Books for 2015

These are my my favorites of the books I read in 2015. I read a total of 48 books in 2015 and seven were by Australian authors.

No. 4 Imperial Lane by Jonathan Weisman. This is the first novel for this political reporter for the New York Times, but you cannot tell it is a debut work. There are multiple plot lines and multiple settings in time and place, none of which was the present. The characters inhabit Margaret Thatcher's Britain, Portugal, and Guinea in the early 1970s. Wikipedia is your friend while you read this because some characters are historical figures. I loved the complexity of the plot, the unique characters, and the appealing resolution.

Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. These four novels were addictive; I could hardly stop reading. Someone said the author writes like an angry Jane Austen and I found that an apt description. The soap opera that was the lives of the two women at the center of these books reflected the place and times they lived in. They were born in an impoverished neighborhood of Naples in 1944; the changes of fortune and social mores that occurred over their lifetime is well-told in these books.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. The author tells the story of the air war during World War II using the younger sibling of a character who first appeared in Life After Life. Though she venerates the British pilots, she makes the point that they were being fed into the maw of war that was just as deadly as the trenches of World War I. She did this while creating characters I continue to cherish. 

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I listened to this as an audiobook, then read bits of it in print. The self-talk of the characters as they go through a single day made an ideal audiobook, as the characters muse about their current lives and the distant past. These thoughts  are mingled seamlessly with dialogue between characters and the author's narrative. The author's indictment of the doctors treating the mentally ill was especially poignant, given Woolf's suicide.

One Life:  My Mother's Story by Kate Grenville. One of my favorite Australian writers told the story of her mother's life, a woman who was exceptional, but not a public figure. She was born in 1912 and her life tells the story of Australia in the 20th century. Several times she set out to write about her family and her life, and though it was not completed, it gave the author material for this book. At times I had to remind myself I was reading non-fiction. That's a well-written family history.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. A book that includes historical figures of interest among the characters, has a gripping, multi-generational plot, and that engenders interest in scientific topics you didn't know you could enjoy is a terrific book. The plot wound its way from a voyage with Captain Cook to plant collecting for Kew Botanical Garden to the rich of Philadelphia where the main character is finally born. Eventually it's off to Tahiti and finally the main character lands in a great horticultural garden in Holland. 

Time Present and Time Past by Deirdre Madden. It's the lovely characters in the Buckley family and their connections to each other that makes this one of my favorites for the year. The central figure is Fintan, the father, a placid fellow who does love his lunch and wants to stop time to remember happy moments with his family. 

Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe. The story is told by Lizzie, the wise 9-year old who, along with her sister, tries to "herd our mother into happiness." Things eventually improve and the mother gives what is perhaps my favorite bit of advice for the year. When Lizzie was crying and couldn't say why, her mother explains the weight she feels is the pig. "The pig arrives when one's feeling fed up. He arrives in the morning and pins you to the bed." When asked why, she explains "To make you think, to make you cry, and make you see. And when he visits, he's just trying to help. You must make him welcome and he'll soon be gone."

Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban. It's surprising that a person who has so little interest in boating would have this book in the exclusive company of Charlotte's Top Ten Books of the Year, but it's here, nevertheless. Jonathan Raban had the opportunity to make a solo boat trip between Seattle where he lived to Juneau. While the challenges of the boat are a major focus, his reflections on the area he passes through and the dramatic turns of his own life were memorable.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. My favorite book of the year explores what people do in extreme circumstances, in this case the Japanese prisoners of war being worked to death building a railway in Burma. The leader of the prisoners, Dorrigo Evans acts heroically to protect them as much as possible, but rejects that idea of heroism, believing he was trapped by the needs of the prisoners to act as he did. The horrific head of the labor camp and his superior are humanized, as they share their love for Basho's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North." Another key aspect of the book is the story of lost love of Dorrigo and revelations that come 20 years after the war. 

10 Favorite Books for in 2014

These are books I've read in 2014, not necessarily published this year. I read 47 books this year, of which 16 were by Australian authors.

 The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis.  A successful and revered Israeli government minister flees with his young mistress when their affair is uncovered. They return to Russia where each grew up and land by chance in the household of the man who betrayed him to the KGB 40 years before, resulting in 13 years in a gulag. The betrayer has a miserable life, had only bad choices at the time of the betrayal, and pointed out the betrayed now is rich and has a young mistress. The humanity of all, betrayer and betrayed is lovingly explored.

Lila by Marilynn Robinson. This is the beautifully written story of the young wife of the preacher of Gilead.  Despite the misery of her youth, she is able to come to appreciate the elderly preacher and he finds her questions about religious matters to be ones he thinks about and has few answers for.  Made me want to read Gilead again. Nate Silver notes this was on more "best" lists than any other novel, so I'm in step here.

Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. Nora is a recent widow who moves about her life as if she is walking under water. She is isolated and can hardly bear the presence of those who want to help her.  Over time she returns to life and learns to make her way in the world. The story is set in the late 60s and 70s and refers to the moon landing and the beginning of The Troubles in Ireland. You come to love the various characters, like the woman who appears at first to be proper and think herself better than others and ends getting good and drunk in the pub with everyone else.

The Children Act by Ian McEwan. The main character is Fiona, a 59-year-old judge in a family court who makes life and death decisions about children. Several wrenching situations are described, along with her decisions. I found the intelligence and reason she brought to bear to be reassuring, as if rationality can be found in all situations. Just at the time she has one of her most difficult cases, her husband becomes restive in their marriage. I saw this one on someone's "worst" list, but I loved it.

Someone by Alice McDermott. Through the life of Marie, the author tells a story of the Irish in Brooklyn beginning in the 1920s.  Throughout the telling of Marie’s story, you know the unsurprising arc of her life. It’s the kindly but clear-eyed vision of the elderly ladies who visit her employer’s mother, it’s the revelations she has about her own life when she experiences great disappointment that leads her to see others have those disappointments too, and it’s the understanding that it was not saintliness that made her brother leave the priesthood. These are the aspects of Marie’s life that bring Marie and her community to life.

Eyrie by Tim Winton.  As always with Tim Winton’s books, the story is king. The main character is a well-known environmentalist who has imploded in the last year.  A public rant has ended his career, his marriage has ended, and his health is impaired by an unidentified malady.  He becomes involved with a woman his father had rescued as a child who is now a grandmother caring for the son of her drug addicted daughter. He struggles to repeat his father’s rescue.  At the same time he copes with the corrosive effects of the mining boom on society that is drunk on the boom times.

The Langton Quartet By Martin Boyd. I’m counting these four (The Cardboard Crown, A Difficult Young Man, Outbreak of Love, and When Blackbirds Sing as one book as it is hard to separate them and I loved them all. The impetus for the story of the Langton family was to create a fictional account of Boyd’s own family. He had served in Britain during World War I and had published a novel that was successful there. Several years after the war he returned to Australia, planning to revive the family’s fortunes. He discovered his grandmother’s 50-volume diary and wrote these novels using her diaries, his recollections, and memories of elderly family members. The narrator, Guy Langton, tells the stories conversationally and with great wit.

The Railwayman's Wife by Ashley Hay. A beautifully crafted book set in a small Australian town near Sydney after World War II, this book tells of the recovery from the tragic death of the railwayman, Mac Lachlan. His life is recreated in flashbacks as his wife and daughter learn to cope with his death. Three friends band together with his wife Ani in their sadness about Mac as well as the horrors of war. For all its sadness, it is a tender and sweet story.

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland. It was a real treat to live through the creation of this beloved painting by way of this novel.  The painting (shown here) is at the Phillips Collection in Washington. One of its great charms is that the models were an interesting group in their own right, especially the fellow in the middle with the tall hat, Charles Ephrussi, who figures in the much loved book The Hare with Amber Eyes.

A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz. As I predicted when I read it in February, this memoir by a well-known Israeli novelist is my favorite for the year. It mixes the dramatic story of his family, the tragedies of Jewish life in the 20th century, and precise, beautiful and sometimes light-hearted descriptions. His family moved from Russia to Israel in the late 1930s. His account of the creation of Israel is wrenching but matched by his revelations about his family. 

10 Favorite Books from 2013: Oops, it's 11

Another year of wonderful books, requiring some painful choices to create this list. It's noteworthy that of the eleven books, four are Australian, the same number as last year. 

 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. The author, a young man from Washington, DC, has written a complex and emotionally satisfying book set in Chechnya. The story occurs in 2004, but ranges back to the first Chechen war to flesh out the characters. It's a rare author who can use humor to effectively enable you to read the most wrenching tales and keep going. 

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. The "Groundhog Day" aspect of the storytelling enables the writer to explore many ways events could unfold. Set in England beginning in 1910, the narrative doubles back over events in the main character's life so she is either in a different role or something intervenes to change the outcome. The tone is "Upperclass British Charm," very appealing to me but not everyone.

The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman. It turns out this wonderful book is a prequel to the better-known Mason's Retreat. Both center on an estate in eastern Maryland granted to the original Mr. Mason, a Catholic emigrant who fled England in the 1650s. The Retreat is at times a malevalent being, the site of slaves cruelly sold before the Civil War, a failed crop of tens of thousands of peach trees, a failed dairy that made a break-through in sanitation but didn't keep up, and unspeakable racial repercussions from the slave past. The characters were full-realized and appealing. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. In the course of this novel, the Nigerian characters encounter racism in American and Britain, as well as a hard life in Nigeria. Despite the difficulties they face, they are a successful and appealing lot and their stories are told with a light touch.  The book succeeds both in exploring the nuances of racial identity, as well as creating vital and interesting characters whose lives we come to care about.

Am I Black Enough for You by Anita Heiss.I read about this memoir in an Australian literature blog. Perhaps the most telling thing to say about Anita Heiss is that she is hard to describe in a single sentence. Her mother is an Aborigine, her father an Austrian; she completed a Ph.D. and has published books about Aboriginal literature and she writes popular fiction for urban women called by some choc-lit. She is a much-traveled, hard working woman who makes intense friendships and loves having lunch with her many friends. She loves dressing well, thinks about losing weight, and wrote a book called Avoiding Mr. Right.

The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. The author has written four cookbooks, writes a blog, and his tweets brighten my days. He moved to Paris some years ago and this is the "foibles of the strange foreigners' ways" book. He makes the differences of Parisians funny and is equally funny about his ability to cope with these differences. He has an unassuming, almost boyish tone that I find endlessly endearing. He seems like someone it would be great fun to have a few drinks with, in fact, that's how it felt each time I sat down to read a few chapters in this book.

Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson.  This charming book cheered me considerably as I recovered from a nasty cold early in the spring. The main character looks back on her life when she returned to Queensland which she escaped first to Sydney and later to London. She describes the joys of her life in Sydney, remembers her dear friends in London fondly, and realizes she described the husband she left behind in an unfair way just to amuse her friends.

Australia Felix by Henry Handel Richardson, pseudonym.  This is the first book of the great trilogy by Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson written from 1917 to 1929. The story is drawn from the lives of her parents and is set in Ballarat, the site of a gold rush in 1851 that drew gold seekers from all over the world in the thousands. I love it for its wonderful language and the characters who come alive with their conflicting idiocyncracies. Looking forward to the next two. 

Finding Jasper by Lynne Leonhardt. The effects of three far away wars in the past century on Australians is a thread of this book: Jasper's father never recovered from the trenches of World War I, Jasper was killed at the very end of the Second World War and the boyfriend of Jasper's daughter is affected by Vietnam. Two quintessential Australian characters are Jasper's mother, ever-cheerful despite her considerable troubles and Attie, his sister, who chooses the rough farm life and expresses the joy and beauty of the countryside. 

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler. My favorite for the year, this book is the story of a Jewish family in Canada after World War II. It begins with a wedding of a bride who just arrived from Europe; she is impersonating a woman whose identity card she had stolen after the woman died. The card enabled her to escape the horror that Europe was at the time, but she could not recover from the loss of her own identity. The richly drawn characters make this an appealing book.

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal The author recounts his family history by tracing the ownership of a collection of netsuke (small Japanese carvings) that was given to him by his great uncle. The collection was originally purchased by Charles Ephrussi, the fellow in the black top hat in Renoir's painting Luncheon of the Boating Party. They left Charles' palace in Paris for a palace on the Ringstrasse in Vienna where they narrowly escaped being taken (as everything else of value was) by the Nazis. This is a wonderful story, well told.

10 Favorite Books for 2012, but if you count them, you'll see 12

It had to be 12, so you know this was a very good year.  And I regret not including Etgar Keret's book.

Montana, 1948 by Larry Watson.  The author makes the time and place come alive with a magical intensity. The narrator, now in his 50s, tells the story of events which occurred when he was 12 involving anguishing decisions his father made that were heroic.  His father was a deliberate, conflicted hero, not an instinctive one.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.  This beautifully plotted book has luscious descriptions of what you could do with money in Manhattan in the 1930s.  In fact the descriptions were were so lovely they reminded me of a very good martini with 2 big olives or perhaps a sidecar made with fresh lemon in a glass rimmed with sugar. 

My Brother Jack by George Johnston.  Here's what I loved best about this quintessential Australian book: there is the coming of age story, the complicated relationship of brothers, the revelation of a different world (Melbourne in the 1920s and 1930s), the masterful storytelling, the appreciation of beauty in the most unusual places.  Perhaps the best part for me was the author's ability to look at himself and his life critically and write about it with blazing honesty.  Or perhaps I most loved the fondness he showed as he brought to life an era in Melbourne that had ended.   

Fly Away Peter by David Malouf.  An excruciatingly beautiful account of the experience of an Australian who dies during World War I.  While I try to avoid the most painful books, this one is worth the anguish.

The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje.  When he was 11, Ondaatje traveled on his own from Ceylon to England by ship, just as the narrator of this book did.  Otherwise the book is fiction, according to Ondaatje.  The narrator is looking back on the adventures of this trip as an adult, the ricocheting around the ship with two other boys his age also traveling alone and meeting the interesting adults assigned to the cat's table, the least desirable table on board.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. The concepts describing the basis for our actions seems pretty clear and fundamental, but the ideas in this book keep cropping up in my thoughts.  The stories of how Target changes our habits and how Paul O'Neil changed a company by addressing worker safety are powerful.

 The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard. Captain James Cook was sent to record the 1769 Transit of Venus, that rare moment when Venus is between the earth and the sun and shows up as a tiny dot on the sun.  This beautiful book gives us three key individuals and near the end of the book, tells us facts which dramatically alter the positions of each relative to the others.  

Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul by John M. Barry.  The tension between Americans' belief in freedom of religion and our fondness for the tight-knit loving community of believers can be traced to the ideas articulated by Roger Williams.  Though his Puritanism was as strong as anyone's could be, he created a colony where individuals were free to believe as they chose.  

Bringing Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel.  She has managed to remake the image of Thomas Cromwell from the evil toady for Henry VIII portrayed in film to the man trying to impose the modern state in the midst of the murderous royal families of England.  There are countless gems in her writing; I like this reference to an issue of our day when she has Cromwell muse

But chivalry's day is over.  One day soon moss will grow in the tilt yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys.

Sword and Blossom:  a British Officer's Enduring Love for a Japanese Woman by Peter Pagnamento and Momoko Williams. It was hard to remember that these two dramatic lives actually happened.  The British officer wrote 800 letters over the course of 40 years to a Japanese woman he met when he was sent to Japan in 1904. The authors both let the letters speak and filled in the background of Japan and Britain at the time.  

Autumn Laing by Alex Miller.  A novel based on the lives of an actual literary group in Melbourne from the 1930s to the 1950s is told from the point of view of one of the central figures of the group.  Autumn is the fictional name for Sunday Reed who had a tempetuous relationship with the well-known artist Sidney Nolan.

Possession by A.S.Byatt.  This 1990 Man Booker Prize winner creates the world of two Victorian poets, their friends and loved ones, their poetry, and the dramatic story of their connection.  The secrets of their romance were uncovered for us by a disparate group of scholars with competing interests who each have a piece of the puzzle. My favorite for the year. 

10 Favorite Books from 2011

These are books I read in 2011, not necessarily published this year.  What a great year of books this was for me.

An Object of Beauty.  Steve Martin's second novel, a well-crafted book with a fun setting (the art market at the Sotheby level), and intriguing characters.   The central figure is Lacey who never hesitates to do whatever it takes to further her career.

Wolf Hall.  Perhaps my favorite book of the year.  Hilary Mantel's book about Thomas Cromwell (ancestor of Oliver) makes him a smart appealing advisor of Henry VIII, while Thomas More's willingness to die for the Pope looks like misplaced loyalty. 

Cello Suites.  Eric Siblin fell in love with the wonderful Bach cello suites and wrote his first book.  He considered the suites from all angles, writing about Bach and his family, Pablo Casals, who made them known to modern audiences, and of course the music itself.

River Town and Oracle Bones. Well, maybe it's cheating to count these as a single book, but Peter Hessler's first book River Town flows naturally into Oracle Bones.  The first describes his two years of teaching English in China and the second, his time in Beijing and his growing knowledge of people there. 

Seven Types of Ambiguity.  Seven narrators tell the story of a particular event, their own background stories, and the consequences of this event on their lives.  I loved each narrators' story, but most of all I loved that Elliot Perlman's story never let me down as often happens by the end of a book.  Maybe this is my Number 2 book of the year.

Decartes' Bones.  Russell Shorto tackles that endlessly fascinating topic, the conflict between faith and reason.  He begins with the premise that Descartes put us on the path toward modern thinking, and then wends his way through the Enlightenment and French Revolution.  Getting to the heart of the matter, he reminds us that our efforts to follow reason has many times taken us down wildly mistaken paths in science and understanding our place in the world.  I found this to be one of the most exciting books I have read in years.

Caleb's Crossing.  Geraldine Brooks has done it again.  She started with one unadorned fact, that a Native American graduated from Harvard in 1665, and spun a complex and satisfying story.  The characters are appealingly complicated and the historical setting is an interesting one.

Remembering Babylon.  David Malouf's lyrical book about a 13 year old boy who was cast ashore in Australia by a shipwreck in the 1840s has universal themes, but is the quintessential book of Australia.  In my top five for the year.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  The title of David Mitchell's book refers to a proverb meaning rapid change, and the fortunes of the clerk in the Dutch East Indies Company in the early 1800s does fluctuate.  The story comes to us from three points of view, Jacob's life and nasty interactions with his fellow Dutchmen on the island where they are confined off Nagasaki, the stunningly  unpleasant interactions of the Japanese of Nagasaki, and the captain of a British ship off the coast that plans to take over the Dutch trading position.  I found it an intense and satisfying story.

Blood Bones and Butter.  Gabrielle Hamilton's book works perfectly as fiction; the story of her childhood, the abandonment by her parents, her messy teenage and young adult years to her eventual creation of a highly regarded restaurant in New York is masterful.  I was left wondering about the next phase in the story, but then she hasn't finished living it yet.   The backdrop of the food industry in many of its forms was fascinating.