The Annotated 2013 Reading List

Emma by Jane Austen Bevy of Books

 

 

 

Emma – Jane Austen  RR

I love that the year started with Jane Austen.

 

Jack of Kinrowan – Charles de Lint  RR

I read this because I was talking to my son about books – he recently started reading for pleasure at the ripe old age of 24. This was one of the few (non-school, non-Harry Potter) books he’d ever read.

Dreams Underfoot – Charles de Lint  RR

Debt: the first 5000 years – David Graeber NF

This is a mind-altering book. It’s not a finance book, it’s an anthropology book about the human process of money and how we’ve used debt or money or whatever to share goods and services between ourselves. Completely changed how I relate to things like economic news and saving money. I read this for a book club I was in briefly – it lasted 3 months after I joined, coincidence?

Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje  RR
Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card (audio)

I liked Ender’s Game, but I loved this sequel. Much more about communities of people rather than individuals.

Telegraph Avenue – Michael Chabon

New Chabon!  Does not disappoint. It was a great year for new books from some of my uber-favorite authors

The Last Colony – John Scalzi
Zoe’s Tale – John Scalzi
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou (audio) NF MM

Ms. Angelou’s first memoir. I liked the second one more, maybe because she’s my age rather than a young girl, as she is in this one. Still a great read.

Towers of Midnight – Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan RR
Memory of Light – Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan

Finally! The conclusion of the Wheel of Time. Did not disappoint, but I was sad to see it end.

My Life in France – Julia Child RR NF MM

This woman was living the life I’m looking for – traveling while working on something she was passionate about. Learning about herself while she learned about new places and new skills.

Kicking and Dreaming – Ann & Nancy Wilson NF

Their autobiography! Was wonderful, read more than half of it while sitting in the jury duty room in Portland.

Xenocide – Orson Scott Card (audio)

Also, good, but didn’t knock Speaker for the Dead out of first place.

Tapping the Dream Tree – Charles de Lint  RR
The Rules of Inheritance – Claire Bidwell Smith NF MM

Memoirs are my new thing – I blame Lidia Yuknavitch & Cheryl Strayed. This one is the story of an only child experiencing the loss of her mother as a young woman, and then her father a few years later.

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver Bevy of BooksFlight Behavior – Barbara Kingsolver
The Round House – Louise Erdrich

Seriously – new Kingsolver followed by new Erdrich – does NOT get any better. And these two are quite possibly the best that either has written. Incredible.

Fault of our Stars – John Green (audio)
Blue Desert – Charles Bowden RR NF

I had to re-read this because I was headed to Arizona with my sister. Just as powerful and well-written as I remember.

Z : A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald – Therese Anne Fowler

This book made me hate Ernest Hemingway, and colored my opinion of F. Scott Fitzgerald forever.  The fictionalized account of Zelda Fitzgerald’s life (based on the real facts, with the empty spaces extrapolated). Now I see things like Midnight in Paris (a great flick) and think NO!! She was robbed! I was sitting by the pool in Arizona and PISSED at the way she was treated.

Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott NF MM
Wizard Abroad – Diane Duane RR
So You Want to be a Wizard – Diane Duane RR
Deep Wizardry – Diane Duane RR
High Wizardry – Diane Duane RR
Wizard’s Holiday – Diane Duane RR
Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert RR NF MM
Children of the Mind – Orson Scott Card (audio)

Didn’t finish this one… just seemed to go on and on.

Reading Lolita in Tehran – Azar Nafisi NF MM
The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg (audio) NF

Another life-shaking book. How we develop habits, how we can substitute new ones for old ones. How data mining is allowing big business to use our habits to send business their way. Fascinating for anyone who likes psychology or wants to revamp their life.

Girlchild – Tupelo Hassman

This one read like a fantastic memoir. The writing was impressive.

Redshirts – John Scalzi (audio)

Redshirst by John Scalzi Bevy of Books

Every sci-fi geek seriously needs to read this. The ‘extras’ on a surprisingly-similar-to-the-Enterprise spaceship start to question why (for instance) the Captain goes on almost every away mission, but the only people who die are those wearing red shirts. Smart and funny.

Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal?  – Jeanette Winterson NF MM
Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell (audio) RR NF

Somehow, his analysis never gets boring.

Un Lun Dun – China Miéville RR
The Summer Prince – Alaya Dawn Johnson

The first book of hers I’ve read – powerful writing and fantastic feminist speculative fiction.

Panopticon blog – Franklin Habit NF

Okay, it’s not a book – but it’s hella long and I read every post. 892 posts going back to 2005. A knitting blog written by a gay man in Chicago – I don’t knit, nor am I a man, or gay – but it is wonderful. I always seem to find awesome blogs just as their taking off and the bloggers are too busy to post any longer.

Chronology of Water – Lidia Yuknavitch RR NF MM
The Scar – China Miéville RR
The Magician – Lev Grossman (audio) RR
Yes, Chef – Marcus Samuelsson NF MM
Without a Summer – Mary Robinette Kowal

Jane Austen + magic. Seriously.

Kraken – China Miéville RR
Finding Your Way in a Wild New World – Martha Beck NF
Zoo City – Lauren Beukes RR
Manhood for Amateur – Michael Chabon (audio) RR NF MM
Shades of Milk & Honey – Mary Robinette Kowal
Glamour in Glass – Mary Robinette Kowal
Sleight – Kristen Kaschock

Another book that sucked you into a world you wanted to move to. Sad, powerful, a little trippy.

Wonder Boys – Michael Chabon RR
The Big Meow – Diane Duane
Beatrice & Virgil – Yann Martel
Eliza’s Daughter – Joan Aiken
Broken for You – Stephanie Kallos

Oh, oh yeah. My friend at work recommended this one – not knowing I had a thing for mosaics. Really great novel about healing what is broken without hiding the scars.

The Human Division – John Scalzi
Cooked – Michael Pollan (audio) NF

More Pollan goodness.

Sense & Sensibility – Jane Austen RR
Fearless: One Woman One Kayak One Continent – Joe Glickman NF

Fearless by Joe Glickman Bevy of Books

Impressive story of a woman who circumnavigated the continent of Australia in a kayak. Alone. With almost no support team. And broke the record.

A Visit to Highbury – Joan Austen – Leigh
Persuasion – Jane Austen RR
Death Comes to Pemberley – PD James RR
Among Others – Jo Walton RR
The God Engines – John Scalzi

Possibly my favorite Scalzi. Most of his are good sci-fi, this one is more trippy and mess-with-your head. I like that.

Love Medicine – Louse Erdrich RR
Later Days in Highbury – Joan Austen-Leigh
A Wizard Alone – Diane Duane
Beet Queen – Louise Erdrich RR
Pilgrimage – Annie Leibovitz NF

Had to read this because of something Lidia Yuknavitch said on Facebook. A book of amazing photos and essays.

Last Report of Miracles at Little No Horse – Louise Erdrich RR
Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace NF

His reputation is not hyperbole, no one writes like this guy could.

My Foreign Cities – Elizabeth Scarboro NF
Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

I picked this up in a fowl mood and headed for bed – read half of it before I could put it down.

A Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

Hated it. Only finished it so I could say that with no equivocation. Didn’t like it one bit.

Idoru – William Gibson RR
All Tomorrow’s Parties – William Gibson RR
Graphic Canon pt 1 – Russ Kick
Dirt Work – Christine Byl NF MM

Memoir of a woman who worked for the Park Service in Glacier National Park in Montana (just down the road from my sister’s house) and Denali National Park in AK. Woman working in a man’s world and kicking ass.

Beautiful Ruins – Jess Walter (audio)
Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman

Ocean at the end of the Lane Neil Gaiman Bevy of BooksNEW GAIMAN. And possibly better than American Gods, though very different. Loved this muchly.

A Dance of Dragons – George RR Martin RR
Growing up Female in America: Ten Lives – Ed. Eve Merriam NF MM
The Beautiful Struggle – Ta-Nehisi Coates NF MM

Again a book where the language transports you into this man’s world. He’s a columnist at The Atlantic and knocks me out with his analysis and his writing.

The Dragon Reborn – Robert Jordan
Eye of the World – Robert Jordan
Knife of Dreams – Robert Jordan
Tower of Midnight – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan

Had this idea for a blog comparing the rampant sexism in the Song of Ice & Fire to the much more progressive Wheel of Time – got lost in the research and never finished it. Have three or four drafts somewhere that maybe I’ll get back to one day.

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

Another book I picked up and couldn’t put back down. Was really glad Bringing up the Bodies was waiting for me when I got home. Read this in Alaska while I was there in August.

The Shining Girls – Lauren Beukes

Trippy time-travel horror fiction. I liked Zoo City better, but this was a great read.

King Rat – China Miéville

Early Mieville. Didn’t like it, didn’t finish it. Or maybe I was just in a hurry to get to Bringing up the Bodies.

Bringing Up the Bodies – Hilary Mantel

Just as compelling as Wolf Hall.

The Shelter Cycle – Peter Rich

An interesting little book about two kids who grew up in a weird cult and their very different experiences as adults after it falls apart.

Memory of Light – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan

Gathering Storm – Brandon Sanderson/ Robert Jordan

Population 485 – Michael Perry NF MM RR
Truck: A Love Story – Michael Perry NF MM RR

This is the first book of Perry’s I read, and I fell in love. He came to Powell’s, signed my books and he was great. He’s the perfect blend of the blue-collar people I come from and the high-falutin’ lit people I call my own.

Warbreaker – Brandon Sanderson

As the writer who did such a good job of finishing Robert Jordan’s masterpiece, I wanted to check out his own stuff. Loved this book a lot.

Coop: A Family, a Farm, and the Pursuit of One Good EggMichael Perry NF MM RR
Tracks – Louise Erdrich RR
Bingo Palace – Louise Erdrich RR
Dial H for Hero – China Miéville
Pattern Recognition – William Gibson RR
Spook County – William Gibson RR
Drowned Cities – Paolo Bacigalupi
A Year in the World Bevy of Books
A Year in the World – Frances Mayes NF MM

This book might be the reason I quit my job and run away. She spends a month in different countries – a small-boat guided tour of Greek islands, Portugal, Spain, Fez, more I can’t remember. She has a thing for tile & mosaics like I do, and she likes to experience her locations through food. Want.

The Rice Room – Ben Fong-Torres NF

The autobiography (not really a memoir) of the editor of Rolling Stone. I mostly picked it up because he’s portrayed in the movie Almost Famous and I loved his name. The story of a second-generation Chinese immigrant made good (with lots of info on San Francisco in the 60s and 70s).

Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan RR NF
Thud – Terry Pratchett RR
Yiddish Policeman’s Union – Michael Chabon RR
Benediction – Kent Haruf
Persuasion – Jane Austen RR
Sandition & Other Stories – Jane Austen

My last unread Austen. And now there is no more.

Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker RR
Grass – Sheri  S. Tepper
Vicious – Victoria Schwab
Singer From the Sea – Sheri  S. Tepper
Tales of the City – Armistead Maupin
The Water Rising – Sheri  S. Tepper
David & Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell NF

New Gladwell! Not my favorite, but still all kinds of interesting things to think on.

Gate to Women’s Country – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Companions – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood RR
Serenity comic series – Joss Whedon
Little Country – Charles de Lint RR
Beauty – Sheri  S. Tepper
The Memory Palace – Mira Bartok NF MM

Another gut-wrenching and powerful memoir a la Yuknavitch and Strayed. A woman who must hide from her bi-polar mother to protect herself.

Up Against It – MJ Locke
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway

Because I’d never read it. Got more than halfway through before I started liking it, turned out to be a pretty good book. Still have issues with him.

Mythago Wood – Robert Holdstock

Picked it up because William Gibson recommended it on Twitter. Liked it a lot.

Diving into the Wreck – Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Paint it Black – Janet Fitch

I bought this for $4 at least five years ago (based on loving White Oleander). Don’t know what took me so long to read it, but it was great.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay – Michael Chabon RR
Fuzzy Nation – John Scalzi
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronté RR

Was jonesing for Austen but read them all recently, so I went with Bronte.

Uglies – Scott Westerfeld

I was at my sister’s in Montana and didn’t like any of the books I’d brought with me, so I was trolling the house for something to read and my niece handed me this. I stayed up until 2am on Christmas night finishing it in one go. YA post-apocalyptic fiction. Just finished book four, Extras, last night.

Tough Customer – Sandra Brown
Rise & Shine – Anne Quindlen
Moxyland – Lauren  Beukes

139 books
RR – re-read  47
NF – Non-fiction 32
MM – Memoir 18
Audio – 12

a random reading weekend

Ouch! I knew it had been awhile since I’d posted, but I didn’t realize it had been a month. I wrote a review for BookBrowse, and I went on vacation, and apparently did everything but hang out here for the last month. But I certainly did a lot of reading.

But today… I want to talk about random reading.

Sometimes you pick up a great book, and you can’t put it down. You read it every second you can – sitting at stop lights, while the guy pumps your gas (yay, Oregon!), waiting for your song to download. You stay up until 4am – with your eyes crossing and the words blurring on the page – even though you have a 9am meeting in which you must be dazzling. I love those books.

But sometimes – and not necessarily because the book isn’t fabulous – you don’t hunker down like that. For example, my random reading this weekend.

I am reading The Lonely Polygamist by Barry Udall. I’m also reading The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford (which I’d left at home while on vacation). In addition, I’ve started Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky (purchased in N Hampshire and started on the plane home). And I started A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, but I’m not sure I’m going to finish. I think those are the only books I’m currently reading.

Now, I often have a non-fiction book (or in this case, two) that I’m reading that doesn’t fulfill my need for narrative, so I have a fiction book I’m reading at the same time. I rarely have two novels I’m reading at the same time – in this case,  Jamaica wasn’t holding my attention, so I picked up Polygamist, which is a great book so far (halfway).

However, the internet has added a whole new dimension to my random reading. And twitter really feeds my desire for interesting things to read. Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Amanda F. Palmer and Bitch magazine all post links to interesting things to read that I most likely would never have seen. Gaiman & Palmer have fascinating blogs, as does Lisa Snellings (fantastic artist), Michael Perry, Judy Krueger (about books), and the writers at The Box Car Kids (a laid-off mother of four, blogging to keep her sanity), Feministing (check the awesome logo) and Bitch Ph.D. (no relation).

As a result, my Sunday looked something like this:

sleep in
make tea
read Polygamist for 45 minutes (outside in the sun)
get hot & hungry, make lunch
check facebook/twitter while waiting for lunch to cook
find interesting link on twitter, click and read (stuff about library love, and Gaiman winning the Carnegie Award for The Graveyard Book)
wander over to page w/Gaiman’s blog (always open) and read another month’s worth of posts (currently in 2005 somewhere)
write in journal
pick up Polygamist again, read for 1.5 hours
vacuum, wash dishes and prep produce before it goes bad
twitter again w/cool links (watched a video with Katie Couric interviewing Gloria Steinem)
more Gaiman blog
watch movie (was going to watch The Lives of Other, ended up with Iron Man)
read Child That Books Built for 1.5 hours before bed

Some days, that kind of jumping around would make me crazy. But this weekend it was just what the doctor ordered (if there was a doctor smart enough to prescribe fiction and blogs).  I was happy all day long.

Even with the vacuuming.

(now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go catch up at Bitch Ph.D…)

travel/love/life envy

I woke up worrying about how to pay the rent when I’m going to be gone (and therefore miss out on my primary job) for most of the pay period before July’s rent paycheck shows up.  But then my phone rang – before I was even out of bed – with someone saying they’d basically volunteered me for a part-time gig and did I want it before she committed me irrevocably? Sometimes I forget – The Universe provides.

I’ve been reading a lot of things lately that feature people traveling and doing the thing that they love.  People that get to travel because of the thing that they love.  People that found the thing they love by traveling, or found that they love to travel because of the thing they love. And they found the person that they love because of the thing they love, or vice versa. Or something like that. Sometimes they get a bit jumbled up in my head – so Julia is speaking in a gothic English accent about the proper way to bake French bread while driving an old pickup full of manure. Oh yeah, and they’re all writers – though writing is far from the only thing they do.

I want a life like that. To do the thing(s) that I love, and have that become the center of my life, and to find someone to love who wants to inhabit my life filled with that thing that I love and traveling.

I am only nominally making money by writing right now, but I do have a bit of a chaotic work existence, with a bunch of small avenues where revenue comes in the way that these (lucky!) folks have – in form, though definitely not in scale.  It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

Step 2: more writing.

Vehicular and Authorial Romance

I am a car nut. Specifically, a muscle car nut.  I hung out w/car nuts in high school and they brainwashed me into believing that late 60s muscle cars were the only cool cars that existed. 70s were ok, (and closer to our price range), but the coolest guys had the 60s muscle and raced it on the strip. The man I married got noticed because he drove a 60s muscle car. Because of him (among others), I have been exposed to other beautiful vehicles, and the joys and pains involved in restoring old iron to street-worthy condition. So when a new-favorite author writes a book about his love for an old truck that he’s in the process of restoring… well, that’s just a book with my name on it, isn’t it?

Truck: A Love Story is a year in the life of Michael Perry. A rather eventful year, in which he commits to restoring his old International pickup truck, growing a garden, and (unexpectedly) to a woman he wants to marry. It’s also the year that his book (I think Population 485, but could have been Coop) hits the big time and he must travel to support it through radio interviews and book-signings.

The reason I like Perry so much is this: he’s a master at observing ordinary life and finding something extraordinary to say about it. He’s not the first, or the greatest, or the most famous writer to make a living doing this – he’s just my most recent discovery in this area. Also, his humility: he’s conscious of the fact that he is indeed no one special, and his life is not all that special either. Except that it is his life, and therefore special to him.  What he writes about is not terribly significant in the details, only in his awareness of it – how one lives it with purpose and joy, appreciating the miracle of waking up and finding someone or something to love. Even if all we have is Mom and an old pickup.

Gives me hope to read of men with humility, sensitivity, wit, and a thing for old trucks. And did I mention, a musician as well? Because I would like all of those things in one package, thank you.

Population: fantastic

I have lately become a fan of memoirs – recently popularized by writers such as Augusten Burroughs and David SedarisBarbara Kingsolver wrote a kind of garden memoir in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I loved, and Rebecca Walker wrote a powerful childhood memoir titled Black White Jewish.  So I have been paying more attention to this kind of book, and when I heard about Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time, I put in on hold at the library. (I try not to buy every book that looks half-way interesting, keeps me from running out of gas money every week).  I have know a few people who are volunteer fire and rescue folk – and most of them live in small towns – so I thought a writer’s view of the experience might be interesting.  And since the blurb says he had recently moved back to his hometown before joining its volunteer crew, there seemed to be all kinds of potential for great story-telling.  And this book did indeed deliver.

Being a person prone to introspection, the memoir genre allows me to watch others ruminate about their own thoughts and reactions to the events in their lives.  Not all memoirs are created equal, of course, and different lives result in very different books.  Population: 485 is less navel-gazing that the average memoir, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  Michael Perry is from Wisconsin and spent some time ‘cowboying’ in Wyoming (says the blurb on the book), so this is not the story of an urban man and his neuroses, but a small-town boy returning to that small town after seeing the world – and happy to be doing so.

Perry does a great job of connecting himself and the folks around him to the landscape – in a way that resonates on a very basic level – and reminds me of my own trips back to the small town I grew up in.  When he goes running, he relives the myriad events of his childhood that occurred on each particular street and corner, overlaid by the fire and rescue calls of adulthood.  So one street may be where he received a scar as a young, rough-playing boy, the next a house where he wasn’t able to save an elderly man after a heart attack.  Each is treated with vivid detail and adept delicacy.  These are not the essays of a hero in his own mind, but a man humbled by the trust placed in him by his community.  And someone who knows that laughing at your own screw-ups is the only way to keep your sanity when life throws you a curve.

As I hurry to finish this book before I need to return it to the library (thinking phrases like ‘the writing isn’t great but is good, author really gives you a sense of what the experience of fire and rescue is like for him’), I had almost decide that it was a decent book but nothing outstanding.  But that was before it made me cry, and then made me bawl like a baby.  I’m sure it won’t have that effect on everyone.  But Perry clearly understand grief and has the chops to make you feel it if you have any inclination towards visceral empathy.

When he describes the quiet grief of a man – a stranger to him – who has lost a child, I teared up.  I have a child, and Perry’s gentle descriptions were heartbreaking without a hint of being over-wrought.  But it was the passages regarding the loss of his young sister-in-law that make it impossible for me to see the words on the page (both his as I read and these as I attempt to write them).

My sister lost her husband to a drunk-driving accident 3 and ½ years ago, and the picture this man paints – of a husband who responds to an accident scene where his new wife has been hit, how his mother is there performing CPR as his brother blows air into his own wife’s injured lungs, how they are surrounded by the friends and family who make up the volunteer crew, and later the professionals arrive and pronounce her dead there on the soil they both spent their lives on – these are some of the most heart-breaking and emotionally charged sentences I’ve ever read. I admit, my situation makes them more personal to me, but this is a book that brings life – and death – remarkably up close and personal.

I would not characterize this book as a tear-jerker (though it made me cry) or a comic story (though it made me laugh).  This book does what the best stories – whether so-called non-fiction or the truly fictitious – do so well, put all the experiences of one life into words that allow us to recognize our own. I wouldn’t call him a favorite author after only one book, but I will certainly be checking out his other books to see if they measure up to this one.