VIDEO: Helene Wecker & Andrew Sean Greer in conversation

Quickly, before my Best of 2013 Week is over, I wanted to share something very cool I've been hanging on to since the fall.

Yes, I know that everyone is sick of me promoting Helene Wecker's debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, and Andrew Sean Greer's latest, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells.  I can't help it.  They were my two favorite novels of the 225 I read last year. 

And by a staggering coincidence, the two of them were teamed up for a Litquake event last October at San Francisco's Contemporary Jewish Museum.  The video quality is mediocre, but the conversation between these two is fascinating, substantive, and completely charming!  I'm so happy to share it with you.

Top 10 Books of 2013

Happy New Year, readers!  It's a fresh year, so I'm making a resolution to get back on the blogging bandwagon.  So, what can I tell you about 2013? Well, I read 225 books in total. Yes,

that's a record. Yes, that's ridiculous.  I will be sharing the full list in my next post, for those who are curious.  I can tell you that roughly 158 of them were published in 2013, 42 of them were debut novels, 20 were re-reads, 18 were YA titles, 14 were non-fiction, 14 were trashy underwater fiction, and 9 were short story collections. But who's counting.

Again roughly, my star rankings were as follows: (1) one star, (8) two stars, (36) three stars, (92) four stars, and (87) five stars. (I'm aware that's one short. One book was not rated.)  It was a superlative reading year, obviously. Here, for the purposes of this discussion are my top ten books of the year.  The first two are tied for first place, the rest are in completely random order.  In the cases that I've written a review, I've linked it here.  Other's will hopefully appear on the blog in the weeks to come.



1. The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells - Andrew Sean Greer

1. The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker

Tenth of December - George Saunders

The Interestings - Meg Wolitzer

Maddaddam - Margaret Atwood

The Serpent of Venice - Christopher Moore

& Sons - David Gilbert

The People in the Trees - Hanya Yanagihara

The Circle - Dave Eggers

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra


A few additional notes... I generally try to pick books published in the year ended for my top 10

list. I made an exception for Christopher Moore's The Serpent of Venice, which will be released on April 22, 2014. It's as good as anything he's ever written. And I thought I was bad last year, with three Bay Area authors making my top 10 list. This year there are five Bay Area writers! I'm sorry, we just have some wicked talented people in this part of the world.  It's also worth noting that three of the above are debut novels.  Wow.

Winnowing a list of 225 books down to just 10 is pretty awful. I flat out loved all the books above. I loved the 10 honorable mentions below almost as much, and they might have just as easily made the top 10 list were the competition not so brutal.


The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

The Son - Philipp Meyer

Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell

The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage - Ann Patchett

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

Night Film - Marisha Pessl

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards - Kristopher Jansma


Tell me, readers, what were your favorite books this year?  Truly, I'd love to know!

Top 10 Books of 2012

 

Let me take this opportunity to offer a belated "Happy New Year!" to my tens of followers. I hope that 2013 is off to a good start for all.

Yes, I have been a bad blogger again. Life has been challenging. Blogging is time-consuming. And that's all I'm going to say about that. I thank you all for sticking with me, and I'll try to do better moving forward. That's what new year's resolutions are for, right?

One of my favorite things about the end of the old year and the beginning of the new one are all the top 10 lists. I have participated by posting a top 10 lists of my favorite books each year. This year was among the very hardest to narrow down due to the sheer number of books I read in 2012. In the end, these were my choices. It is my habit and tradition to only rank my #1 book. All others are listed in the order in which they were read.

1. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

In One Person by John Irving

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rivka Brunt

*****

I have to tell you, I have spent the past several days crafting a fantastic blog post. I wrote a paragraph or more on why each book was selected. It had live links to the books, the authors, video I shot, and lots of cover art. I saved it dozens of times along the way, and I was almost finished. It would have been posted tonight. And then it just... disappeared. And only the tinest bit of it was recoverable. I don't know why. I'm fairly sick about it. And I don't have the energy to recreate the effort. So, I'm afraid all you get this year is a list. :-(

Suffice it to say, I cannot recommend these 10 books highly enough.

In brighter news, my next post will list all 202 books I read in 2012.

Susan's Top 10 Books of 2011

Now, in a normal year, paring down a top 10 list is a torturous process for me.  This year, it was just ridiculous.  Oddly enough, in some ways, having to be so ruthless with the cuts made it easier.  What I've compiled below is a very idiosyncratic list.  I'll tell you right now, from an objective viewpoint, these are not necessarily the best books I read this year.  There were a lot of highly acclaimed novels that I read and loved that surely deserve to be on this list more.  A few examples:

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides was the 11th book on my short list.  I thought it was fantastic.  But it didn't effect me as strongly as some of theses others that I did choose. 

And I wrote a review of The Art of Fielding, the acclaimed novel by Chad Harbach, the other night.  I read the book months ago, but reflecting on the book in order to finally write the review, I realized more than ever how much I'd enjoyed reading it, and what an accomplished debut it is.

And I read Haruki Murakami's massive and impressive 1Q84 this year!  And I enjoyed it so much!  The language, especially, was just unbelievable.  I still want to carry the tome around and make people listen to me read from it.  But truthfully...  It was just a little too much work to make my top 10 list.

So, what did make the cut?  And how did I choose?  Well, simply put, these are the books that I felt that I had the strongest response to.  Perhaps I can explain that a little better in the notes that accompany each pick.  What you'll notice is that about half of these books are on every mainstream reviewers' list, and about half of them are on no one's.  That seems like a good balance to me.  But the single most interesting thing about this collection of titles?  Seven of the ten are debut novels.  Me and the NYT, we're simpatico, yo.  (And we are.  Three of their five fiction picks overlap my own.)

As is my tradition, only the #1 pick is ranked.  The rest are in no particular order.  And without stalling any further, here are my top ten books of 2011:

1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - I started hearing the buzz about this book months and months before it was published.  Months before the galley was in my hands.  And I believed it.  I passed it on, forcing other reviewing friends to read the title before I'd ever picked it up myself.  But when I finally did, wow.  Magic.  I've known that this would be my top pick of the year since I was about midway through the book, and when I've tried to explain how I feel about this book, I tell people, "This book didn't entertain me; it made me happier to be alive."  It's true.  You can tell me that it needed more character development, or that debut novelist Morgenstern is still learning her craft, but I don't care.  What an imagination!  What beauty!  It made me happier to be alive.  And that's not just rare in books, it's rare in almost everything.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline - Okay, this is the pick on my list that I'm most uncomfortable with, so I may as well get this over with first.  It's arguably insane to list this book rather than Eugenides, Harbach, Murakami, or any number of other serious literary novelists I read this year.  This debut is not a brilliant literary work.  But it is probably the most out and out fun I've had reading any book in years.  It's an homage to my formative years, and it was just a nostalgic blast!  Shoot me; I think reading should be fun.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes - Okay, I'm regaining a semblance of literary street cred with this pick of this year's Man Booker Prize winner.  It will be no surprise that this novella is beautifully written, but what really elevated it above other major literary works I read this year was that kick in the stomach that the novella's end evinced.  Wow.  I did not see that coming.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell - I didn't love this debut novel when I started reading it.  It's told in three parts, and I had a fairly mixed reaction to part one.  It wasn't what I expected.  It was a lot sadder, for starters.  But things picked up a lot in part two.  By part three, you couldn't have pried the book from my hands.  by the end, I was won over completely by this quirky story full of humor and pathos.  It is truly unlike anything I've read in recent memory.  But more than anything, I loved the language, which was beautifully crafted and unexpected at every turn.  This book has been highly polarizing among readers, who seem to have a love it or hate it response.  Clearly I'm in the "love it" camp, but this won't be the only polarizing choice on my list.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht - I'm right on the bandwagon with this one.  Early in the year, this became one of the most acclaimed debut novels in recent memory, and the young author something of a wunderkind.  All hype aside, I thought this was a gorgeous, beautifully-written book.  Unlike some readers I know, I'm not turned off by a little magical realism.  In fact, in my book it's a plus.

I'll Never Get Out of this World Alive by Steve Earle - I was not familiar with Renaissance man Steve Earle in his incarnations as a musician, playwright, political activist, or actor.  And the description of this novel's plot--dealing as it does with junkies, dealers, prostitutes, and the ghost of Hank Williams on a Texas Skid Row in the early 60--was distinctly weird and unappealing.  I'm pretty sure I only picked it up because it was so short.  Well, thank goodness I'm lazy!  This was surely the surprise of the year.  It was heart-warming, bittersweet, and uplifting.  I loved it.

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard - This was another short debut novel to which I brought absolutely no expectations.  It was also a book I read in the first week of the new year, in a single day.  This is what I remember most about the experience of reading it:  By the time I finished, I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin if I couldn't discuss it with someone--immediately!  (This is a very rare response.  And a problem; the novel had not yet been published.)  This book has been compared to Eugenides' debut, The Virgin Suicides, and it is likely that had I read that novel, this one would not have affected me so powerfully.  But I haven't, and it did.  I thought the strange first person plural voice and structure of the novel was fascinating, effective, and beautiful.

11/22/63 by Stephen King - As I wrote in my review of this book, it's amazing and awesome that Mr. King is still finding inventive ways to tell new stories at this stage of his career.  This was just great storytelling pure entertainment.  And there are few authors as adept at character development.  All of his characters wind up feeling like friends--especially when you spend nearly 900 pages with them.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett - Two of my favorite literary genres are thrillers and literary fiction.  It is incredibly rare to find the two blended in the manner that Ann Patchett did with this book.  Really, this was like my dream novel, and unlike some others, I thought she did an amazing job pulling it off.

The Submission by Amy Waldman - This one sneaked up on me.  If you had asked me at the time I read it, I would not have expected it to make my top 10 list.  This is one of the most provocative novels I've read in years.  It made me angry.  It was totally fictional, but so realistically (and yet still somehow satirically) depicted that I fumed for weeks over an imaginary situation.  This one is really going to stick with me for a long time, and that counts for something.


So, for better or worse, those were my top 10 for 2011.  Agree?  Disagree?  Feel like sharing your own list?  I'd love to get the year started with a good discussion!

Susan's Top 10 Books of 2010!

What a great year of reading 2010 was! I read 79 books, which is the most I've managed in recent years. Of those, 5 were young adult (YA) titles, 6 were non-fiction, and eight of them could be classified in the genre I coined... trashy underwater fiction. Of course, the more books you read, the harder it gets to narrow down the list to just ten. Plus, I was reading some of the best books of the year, right up to the final days of 2010. It seemed prudent to hold off until January before finalizing the list. Here it is:

1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet - David Mitchell

Union Atlantic - Adam Haslett

The Three Weissmans of Westport – Cathleen Schine

A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan

Skippy Dies - Paul Murray

Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes - Stephen Sondheim

Kraken - China Mieville

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloop

As is my tradition, only the first book is ranked. All others are listed in the order read. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman was a strong contender, but got edged out by Egan's Goon Squad, another novel of linked stories. Likewise, Allegra Goodman's delightful The Cookbook Collector was edged out by Cathleen Schine's equally Austenesque Weissmans. Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil was a strong contender in my heart, but I just didn't want to deal with the fallout if I named it.

Other high-profile books that didn't make the cut included Room by Emma Donaghue, Solar by Ian McEwan, The Passage by Justin Cronin, Great House by Nicole Krauss, By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, C by Thomas McCarthy, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson. This was a year of great and diverse literature!

So these were my favorites in the past year, and I'm about to post the review of a contender for next year's list. The hits just keep on coming!

Top 10 Books of 2009

So, it's true. I've been avoiding all potentially great books for at least a month now because, of the 72 books I read this year, narrowing it down to just 10 was agonizing. In fact, I failed. My top 10 list is 11 books long (but who's counting?). Here's what happened... Traditionally, the only book on my list that's ranked is #1. This year, for the first time ever, there was a tie for #1. The other 9 books are listed chronologically in the order in which they were read.

1. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

1. Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman

Fragment by Warren Fahy

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore

Shades of Grey: The Road to High Saffron by Jasper Fforde

All of these books are out except Bite Me, which you can look forward to reading in April. Reviews of all of these books can be found posted to this blog this year, but as I have no idea how to link them, I'm afraid you'll have to hunt them down yourself.

Comments? Interested in sharing your own list? Please post below!

Susan's Top 10 Books of the Decade (2000-2009)

You may have noticed that this is the time of year that every person and publication ccomes out with various top 10 lists. I must admit, this is an activity I engage in every year. I'm not quite ready to commit to my Top 10 books for 2009. It's gotten to the point that I've become bitterly resentful of any truly wonderful contender for this year's list. Cutting it down to 10 will be brutal.

This is the first time I've ever compiled a best of the decade list. Oddly, it was significantly easier to come up with these titles. Of course, there were many, many worthy books I couldn't include. I've read hundreds and hundreds of books in the past decade, but these ten stood out--either for their literary merit, because the book or author is a personal favorite, because it represents a favorite genre, because the novel has stuck with me, or because it was simply the single best book I read in a given year.

The only author who was short-changed was Michael Chabon. The Yiddish Policemen's Union could and arguably should have made the list, but as wonderful as it is, it pales in comparison to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, IMHO. And in order to have a more diverse list, I decided to list only the stronger novel.

So, for what it's worth, here are my personal Top 10 Books of the Decade:

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon (2000)
• Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold (2002)
• Prey - Michael Crichton (2002)
• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)
• Lamb; The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore (2003)
• The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (2004)
• Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (2004)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows(2008)
• The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood (2009)
• Last Night in Twisted River - John Irving (2009)

Apparently, I really like books with incredibly long titles, LOL. I also seem to be favoring novels from the first half of the decade. Perhaps with a few more years' perspective, there would be other, more recent, titles that would make the cut. I realize that not all of these books are in the same league, but these are my picks. What are yours?