My Literary Year In Review, 2009
I love reading, and I don't get to do it nearly as often as I'd like. (Between a full-time job and three freelancing gigs, I tend to run out of free time if I don't plan well.) Just putting this meager list together made me regret how much I didn't get done in 2009, and it strengthened my resolve to read more books in 2010 and beyond. In fact, if I hadn't been unemployed for a certain part of the year, I would've read even less. That's criminal.
Anyway, here's what I read this year. I omitted a couple minor titles I reread to kill time as I was boxing up my stuff and preparing to move from California to Texas, since I was only picking out excerpts from certain well-loved books (e.g., "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" from David Foster Wallace's collection of the same name, a hilarious and wonderful essay I could read every month). But I have included a couple of titles that I reread in full, and noted them accordingly. So with all that said, here's what I managed to read in 2009:
How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken (2008), Daniel Mendelsohn
This was one of those purely lucky finds. I was browsing through nonfiction when I came across this collection of essays and criticisms from Mendelsohn that have appeared in the New York Review of Books. He filters most of his criticism through a classical lens, analyzing modern takes on Greek myths and asking important questions about art, film, and theater. His essay on United 93, titled "September 11 at the Movies," is flat-out fantastic.
Black Hole (2005), Charles Burns
A wonderful graphic novel, collected from individual issues that were published over a decade. It uses the premise of a disease ("the bug") that inflicts victims with weird mutations as an examination of youth, longing, and the great and terrible things that are impossible to explain. Burns is amazing at telling a whole story by only showing small parts of it.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), Michael Chabon
Chabon is great at creating parallel universes, and this is no exception. It's a mystery set in a world with an alternate history in which a Jewish refugee camp was established in Alaska during World War II, and the story takes place in present day. Not his best work, but still worth reading.
Ender's Game (1985) (reread), Orson Scott Card
I grabbed this off the shelf in a fit of nostalgia in the spring. I read the same battered copy I've had for years, which I bought in the third grade at the school's book fair. It held up pretty well, and is still a fun and entertaining sci-fi story.
Speaker for the Dead (1986), Orson Scott Card
Almost daringly awful. Card's follow-up to Ender's Game was the first of several sequels and spin-offs set in the story's universe, but it's horribly plotted and choked throughout with unbelievably terrible dialogue. Halfway through, I found myself skimming, hoping things would get better but knowing that they probably wouldn't.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) (reread), Dave Eggers
I hadn't reread this since the first time I read it, in the summer of 2003. It was inspirational then, coming along at a time when I was just starting to convince myself I could eventually be a writer, and the story's just as moving now.
A People's History of the United States (2003 edition), Howard Zinn
Zinn's examination of American society is a powerful one. He delves into some of the lesser known moments of the past couple centuries, and makes a compelling and believable case that the country has been built on a pattern of degradation and manipulation.
The Time Traveler's Wife (2003), Audrey Niffenegger
I picked up the sci-fi romance in anticipation of seeing the movie, and though I never got around to the film, I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would. It's an interesting concept — boy meets girl, boy is unstuck in time, tragedy ensues — and Niffenegger pulls it off pretty well.
Consider the Lobster (2005) (reread), David Foster Wallace
Wallace is my favorite author, and I can always pull down his books and dip back into the fiction and essays with ease. This was his last collection of essays published before his suicide in 2008, an event that still breaks my heart to think about. The book is thoughtful, probing, funny, and committed to examining all the truth underneath everything.
The Swap (2007), Antony Moore
A solid little story that feels a little bloated as a small novel but still packs a punch when it wants to. Fun mystery, good jokes, and killer ending.
City of Thieves (2008), David Benioff
Benioff's phenomenal second novel is a moving, engaging story about war and love, and the worthwhile risks of friendship. I devoured it.
Columbine (2009), Dave Cullen
Cullen's exhaustively researched book is awesome for the way it meticulously re-creates the prelude, shooting, and aftermath of what would be the deadliest school shooting until the horror at Virginia Tech in 2007. Cullen reconstructs the 1999 killings and lays out a decade's worth of research, though much of what he knows was established just months after the event in the reporting he did for Salon. For a member of the generation directly affected by the shootings at Columbine High — I was 16 and finishing up my junior year — it's a powerful reminder of what it was like to watch it happen. It's a gripping book.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (2009), Wells Tower
Good grief, did I hate myself while reading this. Sure, Tower ties the group of bitter and unfriendly stories together on the last page of the last story, but I don't agree with his conclusions and I barely survived the journey to get there.
Zeitoun (2009), Dave Eggers
Eggers' nonfiction narrative about the persecution of a Syrian-American man in the days following Hurricane Katrina is gut-wrenching in its detail and jaw-dropping in the way he lays out the atrocities and incompetencies inflicted on a man by a paranoid government that placed a higher premium on caging its citizens than on helping its wounded. It deserves to be read.
Blackwater (2007), Jeremy Scahill
Scahill's indictment of Blackwater USA (now Xe Services LLC) is a worthy one, though he occasionally slips into a pissy and partisan rhetoric that dilutes the power of the facts at his disposal. Private contractors working for Blackwater in Iraq did some bad things during the war, and when Scahill focuses on the truth of these violations of justice and ethics, his book is a damning document that recounts the lengths people can go to when responsibility is no longer an issue.
Comments: 7
I read Randy Brown's comment, and though it's a passionate one, it feels more like blunt assertion instead of reasoned complaint. It's always important to examine motive, and the fact that Randy's son published another book, as well as the fact that Randy did indeed live through some of the events, give me pause. I think it's just as important to listen to what the survivors said but also to take many accounts together to assemble a wide-angle view.
I am curious, though. What parts of Cullen's book were inaccurate? Was it just his comment on Amazon that made you think Cullen's book was inaccurate? Randy's comment talks of "rewriting history," but that's often what happens when the truth of an event is finally brought to light. My heart breaks for Randy Brown and the other parents of the children who were wounded and killed in April 1999, but his "review" is hardly a balanced or effective one.
I just finished Columbine a few days ago. Any emotions the author attributed to the killers was gleamed from their journals and videos. I don't recall Eric expressing any regret. Any time the author speculates he clearly expresses that he he is speculating (which is not often). And Brown's main criticism is that Eric was a psychopath, a label that the author does not make lightly and provides ample evidence in support of that claim.
Randy Brown, his wife and son are portrayed very positively in the book. They are basically prophets that tried to prevent a disaster. I'm puzzled why they are so against this book. Cullen attacked the subject from all angles and provided endless sources, opinions, and points of view. Maybe I just answered my own question.
Wow. This is sad, but I haven't read most of these yet. Mostly due to similar time constraints and working through ARCs first. A good chunk of them have been on my "To Read" list for far too long.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has been a personal favorite for a while, though. The idea that our memories become tangible, almost fictitious entities subjected to bend and change to our will is simultaneously beautiful and frightening. Definitely the quintessential postmodernist memoir.
Oh yeah. And points for the John Stuart Mill quote on the sidebar there.
Anyways hope you don't mind me stopping by here. Found it on your Twitter. Been enjoying everything so far - you've got good taste in stuff, sir.
As someone who treasured Yiddish Policeman's Union and rereads AHWOSG at least once every two years, may I make a recommendation? It came recommended by Eggers himself and it's Travel Writing, a novel by Peter Ferry. If you haven't read it already -- it's been out for about a year and a half.
Another if-you-haven't-already recommendation is Chabon's The Final Solution. A nice slim book, since you're busy. It's a gem.
@Meredith: Thanks for stopping by. And Mill knew what he was talking about. The girl who got fired before you arrived -- in whose chair and at whose desk I'm sitting -- was the kind of raving nutbar that made me sad.
@J.K.: Thanks for the recommendation. I''ll check out the Ferry book. I have indeed read The Final Solution, and I enjoyed it.
Thanks for adding the qualifier "that made me sad," because "raving nutbar" pretty much covers everyone in the office. And I mean that in the most thank-Cthulhu-I'm-working-with-cool-people-I-actually-relate-to way possible, of course.
All the same, though, that sounds like an interesting story. Can you elaborate on it sometime? I guess it piques my curiosity because a lot of her stuff is still on the laptop they gave me and I'm trying to piece together fragments of a stranger. Why? Because I was writing about real estate and needed something else to think about.
Mill may not have been from the US, but he understood "The American Way" probably better than most of her citizens do today. I know plenty of intelligent conservatives who believe what they believe because they look over all facets of the issues and then make an educated choice. And I know plenty of liberals who just blindly follow everything Obama says without actually consulting all the research.
Even if I disagree with the former ideologically, I actually have more respect for them than the latter simply because they took the time to understand why they believed what they believed instead of just allowing themselves to be spoonfed a belief system.
Dan,
In regards to your review of "Columbine": I too thought it a great, well-researched book when I first read it. But after reading other books on the same subject I don't think as highly of the book as I first did. That's because according to other books and reviewers of Cullen's "Columbine" his book isn't as accurate as Cullen would have you to believe. In fact, one reviewer in particular says that Cullen's "Columbine" is filled with errors and he all but calls it a 'work of fiction'.
That reviewer is Randy Brown. Brown's son Brooks was a friend and classmate of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and Brown has spent as much time and probably even more than Cullen researching the events surrounding that day at Columbine High School. So I consider his opinion on that subject to be a valuable one. If you haven't already I urge you to read Brown's negative, 1-star review of "Columbine" at this link: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3AJEK6T7746K6/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Also, if you haven't read it then I would urge you to read "Comprehending Columbine" by Ralph Larkin. It takes what I consider to be a more accurate and better-researched look at the events at Columbine High School.
Jan 2, 2010 7:53 PM