Top Five
I imagine many of my friends -- particularly my writer friends -- would be surprised to see much of what I've been reading. (It used to be all novels, essays, and literary memoirs. Life is funny.) Herewith, the most enjoyable books I read this year. Actually, I found it hard to find time to read this year, so my list of books read this year isn't a whole lot longer than my list of most enjoyable books read this year.
1. My Life So Far by Jane Fonda. Really? Yes, really. A beautifully written and impressively honest memoir by an intelligent, powerful, vulnerable, brave, insecure, deeply thoughtful woman. It was also a pleasure to see her return to Broadway last winter in 33 Variations, after an absence of more than 40 years. Her A-plus performance in a B play was what inspired me to read her book.
2. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. A start-to-finish "biography" of the five Best Picture nominations of 1967 (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Dr. Doolittle). Educational, hugely entertaining, and a trip into my own past, surprisingly enough: I loved Dr. Doolittle at age six, but apparently it's considered one of the biggest turkeys ever nominated for an Oscar. Finding out why was fascinating.
3. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina by David Hajdu. This one is cheating because I read it at the very end of last year, but since that was during my blogging hiatus and I was still thinking about it well into 2009, I'm giving myself a pass. It's truly a "lives and times" biography, making me wish I'd been around Greenwich Village in the early 1960s -- and making me feel I was.
4. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Brilliant -- and I use the word in both the American and British senses, as it's set in England and Scotland. It's the third mystery novel starring Jackson Brodie. He's really an equal member of an ensemble cast -- and the first fictional character I've ever met whose iPod playlist I'd enjoy as much as my own. Atkinson's Brodie books are about how random tragedy, sorrow, and life-altering mistakes lie around every corner, sparing no one. Cheerful, huh? I can't wait to read the next one.
5. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler. This is coming out in January -- I read an advance copy. It's not quite as good as Tyler's last novel, Digging to America, which is her best. In fact, I think it will end up one of her minor works. But that doesn't mean I didn't like it. As I've noted before, I've never encountered a contemporary novelist whose voice is so consistent in all of her books, starting with her first one more than 40 years ago.
Some other things I read:
Most bloated: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. There's a good 400-page novel about the Columbine massacre and the aftereffects of trauma in these 700 pages by an author whose previous two novels I loved (especially She's Come Undone). There's also a boring 300-page novel about a 19th-century female prison reformer. Really? Really.
Best book with a truly awful title (or most page-turning clunkily written book by a professional journalist who nevertheless did her homework): Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller. All three of them have made great music and the most amazingly bad choices in relationships. I ate it up.
Most disappointing edition of a reliable anthology: The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver. A page turner only in the sense that I kept turning pages because nothing held my interest -- except for one essay, which I read twice: "First" by Ryan Van Meter, a very touching gay-boy personal essay about young desire stifled.
Most overrated classic: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. It took me this long to finally read this collection from the '60s, but I've got to say: bright and smart surface, not much there beneath it. I think her spare, unforgiving style was a breath of bracing air back then, but these essays don't hold up well. I was surprised how dated and shallow they felt. A good example of writing that thinks it's deeper than it is. (I'm judging just this one book, not her whole oeuvre. I did like The Year of Magical Thinking very much and have even taught individual essays of hers.)
Oddest celebrity memoir: Daybreak by Joan Baez. A little-remembered chestnut (I got it at the Montgomery County Library used bookstore) written when she was still in her twenties and a megastar on the folk scene. In fact, she probably wouldn't even call it a memoir (there's virtually nothing in it about music). It's very well written and has a particularly refreshing chapter about her love for her mother and sister Mimi (see Positively Fourth Street above). I think there's also a chapter about Bob Dylan, couched in metaphor and coyness, but the fact that you can't quite be sure is part of the problem.
No Jane Fonda: Trust Your Heart by Judy Collins. I revere Judy Collins (just saw her in concert last Wednesday, and she's full of stories). This was interesting but more of a summary of a life than a memoir -- with a little too much about the country house and her comforting cups of home-brewed espresso. But she has written quite a few autobiographical books since then, and I'll probably give another a shot at some point.
On my list for 2010: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni, Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back by Reynolds Price, Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period by Michelle Mercer, and The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.
1. My Life So Far by Jane Fonda. Really? Yes, really. A beautifully written and impressively honest memoir by an intelligent, powerful, vulnerable, brave, insecure, deeply thoughtful woman. It was also a pleasure to see her return to Broadway last winter in 33 Variations, after an absence of more than 40 years. Her A-plus performance in a B play was what inspired me to read her book.
2. Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris. A start-to-finish "biography" of the five Best Picture nominations of 1967 (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and Dr. Doolittle). Educational, hugely entertaining, and a trip into my own past, surprisingly enough: I loved Dr. Doolittle at age six, but apparently it's considered one of the biggest turkeys ever nominated for an Oscar. Finding out why was fascinating.
3. Positively Fourth Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina by David Hajdu. This one is cheating because I read it at the very end of last year, but since that was during my blogging hiatus and I was still thinking about it well into 2009, I'm giving myself a pass. It's truly a "lives and times" biography, making me wish I'd been around Greenwich Village in the early 1960s -- and making me feel I was.
4. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Brilliant -- and I use the word in both the American and British senses, as it's set in England and Scotland. It's the third mystery novel starring Jackson Brodie. He's really an equal member of an ensemble cast -- and the first fictional character I've ever met whose iPod playlist I'd enjoy as much as my own. Atkinson's Brodie books are about how random tragedy, sorrow, and life-altering mistakes lie around every corner, sparing no one. Cheerful, huh? I can't wait to read the next one.
5. Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler. This is coming out in January -- I read an advance copy. It's not quite as good as Tyler's last novel, Digging to America, which is her best. In fact, I think it will end up one of her minor works. But that doesn't mean I didn't like it. As I've noted before, I've never encountered a contemporary novelist whose voice is so consistent in all of her books, starting with her first one more than 40 years ago.
Some other things I read:
Most bloated: The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. There's a good 400-page novel about the Columbine massacre and the aftereffects of trauma in these 700 pages by an author whose previous two novels I loved (especially She's Come Undone). There's also a boring 300-page novel about a 19th-century female prison reformer. Really? Really.
Best book with a truly awful title (or most page-turning clunkily written book by a professional journalist who nevertheless did her homework): Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller. All three of them have made great music and the most amazingly bad choices in relationships. I ate it up.
Most disappointing edition of a reliable anthology: The Best American Essays 2009, edited by Mary Oliver. A page turner only in the sense that I kept turning pages because nothing held my interest -- except for one essay, which I read twice: "First" by Ryan Van Meter, a very touching gay-boy personal essay about young desire stifled.
Most overrated classic: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. It took me this long to finally read this collection from the '60s, but I've got to say: bright and smart surface, not much there beneath it. I think her spare, unforgiving style was a breath of bracing air back then, but these essays don't hold up well. I was surprised how dated and shallow they felt. A good example of writing that thinks it's deeper than it is. (I'm judging just this one book, not her whole oeuvre. I did like The Year of Magical Thinking very much and have even taught individual essays of hers.)
Oddest celebrity memoir: Daybreak by Joan Baez. A little-remembered chestnut (I got it at the Montgomery County Library used bookstore) written when she was still in her twenties and a megastar on the folk scene. In fact, she probably wouldn't even call it a memoir (there's virtually nothing in it about music). It's very well written and has a particularly refreshing chapter about her love for her mother and sister Mimi (see Positively Fourth Street above). I think there's also a chapter about Bob Dylan, couched in metaphor and coyness, but the fact that you can't quite be sure is part of the problem.
No Jane Fonda: Trust Your Heart by Judy Collins. I revere Judy Collins (just saw her in concert last Wednesday, and she's full of stories). This was interesting but more of a summary of a life than a memoir -- with a little too much about the country house and her comforting cups of home-brewed espresso. But she has written quite a few autobiographical books since then, and I'll probably give another a shot at some point.
On my list for 2010: Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater by Frank Bruni, Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back by Reynolds Price, Will You Take Me As I Am: Joni Mitchell's Blue Period by Michelle Mercer, and The Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.
posted by Billy at 12:31 AM
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