The Year's Best

Of the books you read in 2011, which ones make your personal “best books read in 2011” list?

Many lists of the best books of 2011 are being published now. I’m scanning them avidly and adding to my future-reading list. Once again, I read 52 books this year. So much for last year’s resolution to knit more and read a little bit less. Of the 52 that I read, 10 were non-fiction and 42 were fiction.

My 2011 favorites came primarily from non-fiction: Let’s Take the Long Way Home (memoir by Gail Caldwell), Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (on the Catholic Church by Garry Wills), and The Warmth of Other Suns (Black migration during Jim Crow by Isabel Wilkerson). My favorite fiction was the quirky Bangkok 8 by John Burdett.

Unfortunately, a whole bunch of the rest of the fiction comes under the heading of “hate to admit I spent time reading that.” They were guilty pleasures like the Sookie Stackhouse books, Janet Evanovich books, and a number of cheesy romance novels. I should probably resolve to raise the level of my literary intake, but my success rate with resolutions is abysmal.

Technology after 7 PM

So, I was trying to post and I accidentally signed on as another blog member and can't seem to delete one of me. After a certain time of day, I really need to stay away from computers.

But, what I wanted to say was that I, too, miss a nice book store. I drove Julie back to St. Paul this morning and remembered there was a nice book store on Grand Avenue but it was empty. I stopped in Woodbury where I thought there was a Barnes & Noble but it was a Borders so it was empty. And tonight I was wandering around BAM looking for some funny books for Sam for Christmas. The humor section was filled with books about bodily functions, red-necks, and zombies. I did find David Sedaris hidden below the Bull***t book.

I'm in the early weeks of Forensics (speech competitions, not crime) so I'm reading lots of short story collections. McSweeny's is very cool and Etgar Keret is quite a find. But not appropriate for high school kids. If anyone has an idea for an 8 to 12 minute funny (and PG rated) piece of prose, let me know. I did start listening to the Henrietta Lacks book while I was decorating the tree. Not the best choice to get into the spirit of the season, but interesting.

Devil Amongst the Lawyers

This is one of the books that I bought when I visited BAM!. It is by an author whose books I've read, but not for some time. Those earlier books involved a regular cast of characters who I grew to like.  Those books were:

• She Walks These Hills
• If I Ever Return Pretty Peggy-O
• The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter
• Ghost Riders

All of the stories of hers that I’ve read take place in Appalachia. This book deals with a crime that actually occurred in the late 1930s. The main theme of the book is the subjective nature of the media and how they can influence an event by how they write about it. While I think she has a good point, most of the characters in this book did not engage me like the other books I have read. She does present background on Nora Bonesteel – a regular character in the books, which I enjoyed . In this book, Nora is 10 years old or so and just starting to come to terms with having the “Sight.”

Devil Amonst the Lawyers by Sharyn McCrumb (2011, 336 pgs)

Tithe

I’m not sure how I found this book; it might have been in a search for feminist books for young readers. The main character, Kaye, is a gutsy, strong-minded, 16-year old. That probably qualified it. Tithe is a story about Faeries; Kaye comes to the realization that she is a pixie early in the story. She finds herself caught between the Seelie (good) and Unseelie (evil) Faerie courts. On the one hand she finds aspects of Unseelie seductive, on the other hand 16 years of human upbringing tell her it’s wrong. 

Holly Black gives fairly vivid descriptions of the Seelie and Unseelie courts, but they made me yearn for the more lush descriptions of Anne Rice. (Maybe it’s time for another of her books . . .)

This is young adult urban fantasy and I found it mildly engaging. As I reflected on the book, however, I realized that it is heavy with adoption themes: late discovery of her status, for one. As part of that discovery, she finds out that she is a changeling – a pixie left in place of a baby that the faeries stole. This explains why she doesn’t really relate to her human mother. She also doesn’t feel like she fits in well with her human friends. As the story ends, she decides to accept and keep both aspects of herself – faerie and human.

Tithe by Holly Black (2004, 336 pages)