Best books of 2010

The New York Times recently named the 10 best books of 2010. Here's the list.
Fiction:
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
Room by Emma Donoghue
Selected Stories by William Trevor
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Nonfiction:
Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans
Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Finishing the Hat by Stephen Sondheim
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

More books to consider

Here are a couple more titles for our "maybe" list:
Cleopatra: A Life (has been getting great reviews)
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. This is a collection of short stories, and the author is a master of this genre. We haven't read a short story collection in a very long time.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

I'm looking forward to our discussion. I'd love to talk about whether or not this should be considered a feminist book, whether someone who does not have children can authentically represent the mother experience, whether a child can really be evil from birth, how effective the writer's language is in telling the story. Your questions?

Follow up on our meeting

I'm still embarrassed about getting last night's location wrong!
Thanks for hosting a wonderful meeting Helen--it's going to be hard for anyone to top the sushi in a boat (not that we are into the competition thing!).
Here's a list of suggested books for the remainder of the year:

The Black Swan
One Thousand White Women (hmmmm--another book with One Thousand in the title--a theme ala Amy's bee thing?)
Packing for Mars
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Born to Run
Peeping Culture

I don't know anything about these, so if someone wants to pipe in with a summary, please do!

On another note, I mentioned that Vancouver is hosting a readers and writers event--here's the link to the website. Looks pretty cool. http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/

Our 2010-2011 List

Wonderful meeting on Tuesday. Our reading list to date is at left. I love the passion everyone brings to the nominating process. I'm looking forward to reading everything on the list, as well as some of the others that were nominated.

Books that got at least three votes, but didn't quite make it on the reading list include: Born to Run, Lacuna, The Corrections, and Freedom.

Eat, Pray, Love

I finally broke down and read this book--I've been avoiding jumping on the Liz Gilbert bandwagon. I succumbed when I realized I would want to see the movie, out next week I think. The book is almost always better than the movie, right? In this case, I don't think that bodes well for the movie.

Ivan Doig reading

Ivan Doig, author of the Whistling Season, which we read a couple of years ago, has a new book out called "Work Song." Haven't read it yet, but I'm putting it on my list. He's going to do readings at a number of local bookstores. As a fan of Whistling Season, I'd love to hear him. He's going to be at the Third Place Books at Lake Forest Park at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 29. Other appearances include July 7 at the U Village Barnes and Noble; July 10 at Elliott Bay, and July 29 at Parkplace Books in Kirkland. There are others, but these look like the most convenient. They were all listed in Sunday's Seattle Times.

Summer books

Be sure to put August 17 on your calendar for our summer meeting, location, menu, etc. TBD.
I hope everyone is enjoying some great summer reading (one thing about our lousy weather--it does encourage curling up with a good book). I'm starting a list of books I've recently enjoyed. Send me your new faves so I can include them too.

Does Elegance of the Hedgehog translate into a movie?

What do you think? Is there good movie potential in this book? Five of us went to see Hedgehog, as the movie has been titled.

I'm definitely not speaking for the group--please weigh in with your own opinion. I give it a thumbs up, but do wonder how it would resonate for anyone who hasn't read the book.

Of the characters, I especially loved Paloma who--instead of writing her thoughts as she did in the book--spoke them as she videotaped her family members and others in the building. Smart decision by the director. I loved the way she spoke in hushed tones, and was always pushing her glasses up on her head,tangling them in her hair.

Kakuro was spot-on, and Renee appropriately cranky and then later transformed by a haircut, new dress and the attention of someone who actually sees her.

The translation of Renee's position, from "concierge" to "janitor" seemed a little harsh, but maybe it makes the point better for American audiences. Concierge has a charming sound to it; janitor--well, not so much.

If you liked or loved this book, I think seeing the movie will further enhance your pleasure. As we talked about it afterward at Toulouse Petite (a fun and lively restaurant--where Janet's lovely daughter stopped to chat with us, and then sent over dessert, on the house), I wondered what other books have successfully been turned into movies. So often, the movie is a disappointment--the book is almost always better. My vote at the moment goes to Revolutionary Road which was in theaters over the 2008 holidays. Yes, the story doesn't have a happy ending, but it had a lot of emotional depth. And I thought the movie faithfully and beautifully translated the book. Other favorites?

More books to consider

Here are books (with descriptions) that have been suggested for our May/June meetings.


1) The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer
Beautiful writing full of surprises. I couldn't believe lightening could strike twice since I adored Max Tivoli, but this was completely novel and very memorable.

2)A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
A passionate page-turner that made me ignore my entire family to read it. It was over too fast. I have been raving about this one for awhile and am thrilled it's just hitting some bestseller lists...well-deserved!

3) This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Hilarious! And yet poignant. His descriptions of this dysfunctional family are so dead-on, they seem like they must be true and not fiction. You will laugh out loud and be completely touched at the same time

4) American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
I hesitated on this one even after hearing her speak at The Kidney Foundation Luncheon and I really wasn't wowed by PREP. I finally grabbed the paperback and surprised myself not only by really liking it but thinking it was well-written to boot. Forget the back-story and just enjoy.
Oh hell...let's do one more for good luck....

5)The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliot
The only non-fiction book here (and I read a lot of nonfiction!) I picked it up at a Rumpus event in December and became totally immersed in the intertwining of Elliot's personal life and his local trial coverage. BTW-if you run Adderall through spellcheck, one of the options is "Derail" and that seemed apropos somehow. I finished it quickly but found myself thinking about it for awhile.

6. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
That Abraham Verghese is a doctor and a writer is already established; the miracle of this novel is how organically the two are entwined. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here. The medical detail is stunning, but it never overwhelms the humane and narrative aspects of this moving and ambitious novel. This is a first-person narration where the first-person voice appears to disappear, but never entirely; only in the beginning are we aware that the voice addressing us is speaking from the womb! And what terrific characters--even the most minor players are given a full history. There is also a sense of great foreboding; by the midpoint of the story, one dreads what will further befall these characters. The foreshadowing is present in the chapter titles, too--‘The School of Suffering’ not least among them! Cutting for Stone is a remarkable achievement.- Review by John Irving

Let the Classics Discussion Begin

With our February book scheduled to be a classic, we need to get some discussion going over which one to read. Abby has suggested using page count as a filter--which given time constraints--is a good one. So far, here are the classics on our list. I've pulled descriptions and page counts from Amazon

Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather 138 pages:

The novel is based on the lives of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy and his vicar Father Joseph Machebeut and is considered emblematic of the author's moral and spiritual concerns. Death Comes for the Archbishop traces the friendship and adventures of Bishop Jean Latour and vicar Father Joseph Vaillant as they organize the new Roman Catholic diocese of New Mexico. Latour is patrician, intellectual, introverted; Vaillant, practical, outgoing, sanguine. Friends since their childhood in France, the clerics triumph over corrupt Spanish priests, natural adversity, and the indifference of the Hopi and Navajo to establish their church and build a cathedral in the wilderness. The novel, essentially a study of character, explores Latour's inner conflicts and his relationship with the land, which through the author's powerful description becomes an imposing character in its own right.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 366 pages:
Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Love in a Cold Climate: Nancy Mitford, 249 pages:
In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, the story of coldly beautiful Polly Hampton and her aristocratic parents is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of the language.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 320 pages:
On The Road, the most famous of Jack Kerouac's works, is not only the soul of the Beat movement and literature, but one of the most important novels of the century. Like nearly all of Kerouac's writing, On The Road is thinly fictionalized autobiography, filled with a cast made of Kerouac's real life friends, lovers, and fellow travelers. Narrated by Sal Paradise, one of Kerouac's alter-egos, On the Road is a cross-country bohemian odyssey that not only influenced writing in the years since its 1957 publication but penetrated into the deepest levels of American thought and culture.

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons, 256 pages:
A hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy’s earthy, melodramatic novels, the deliriously entertaining Cold Comfort Farm is "very probably the funniest book ever written" (The Sunday Times). (book was written in the 1930s)

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde, 272 pages:
Since its first publication in 1890, Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, has remained the subject of critical controversy. Acclaimed by some as an instructive moral tale, it has been denounced by others for its implicit immorality. After having his portrait painted, Dorian Gray is captivated by his own beauty. Tempted by his world-weary friend, decadent friend Lord Henry Wotton, he wished to stay young forever and pledges his very soul to keep his good looks. As Dorian's slide into crime and cruelty progresses, he stays magically youthful, while his beautiful portrait changes, revealing the hideous corruption of moral decay. Set in fin-de-siécle London, the novel traces a path from the studio of painter Basil Howard to the opium dens of the East End.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 102 pages
A classic (newer than what we may be thinking, but classic nonetheless). A woman abandons her husband and children to search for love and self understanding.

A Day in the Life of Ivan D,by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Eric Bogosian, 208 pages
Solzhenitsyn's first book, this economical, relentless novel is one of the most forceful artistic indictments of political oppression in the Stalin-era Soviet Union. The simply told story of a typical, grueling day of the titular character's life in a labor camp in Siberia, is a modern classic of Russian literature and quickly cemented Solzhenitsyn's international reputation upon publication in 1962.

War & Peace, 1296 pages
Anna Karanenina, 846 pages
The Brothers Karamazov, 1072 pages

Sometimes a Great Notion, Ken Kesey, 736 pages
The Stamper family are loggers, rough, hard men and women who care for no ones opinion but their own. They are fighting the union, the neighbours, the town, their whole world. Their motto of "never give an inch" was the title of the film of the book. Into the strike-breaking start of the book comes the dope-smoking, college educated half brother, the prodigal son. His arrival triggers a tidal wave of events that spiral gradually out of control until everything that has been permanent before is now threatened.

The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane, 80 pages
Although never having seen battle Stephen Crane vividly depicts the grueling intensity of the American Civil War. The story revolves around Henry Fleming, a member of the 304th regiment of the Union Army. At the start of the novel Henry is eager to show his patriotism in battle but when faced with the savagery of death he flees the frontline. Throughout the novel Henry struggles with his courage in the face of the horror of war. "The Red Badge of Courage" is a classic modern depiction of the psychological turmoil of war from the perspective of an ordinary soldier.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 464 pages

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte, 400 pages

Walden, Henry David Thoreau, 186 pages

The Prince by Nicole Machiavelli,108 pages
About about a trestise giving the absolute ruler practical advice on ways to maintain a strong central government.