How to make your best-of-decade list have no meaning

British newspaper The Times has come out with its 100 best of the noughties, and though I'm running dangerously low on processing power at this time in the week I scanned it and some of the choices were pretty interesting. Then I skipped to the top 11, which I will reprint here to save you from clicking through 17 gallery pages (gah, impression-happy designers; see the full list here). Editorial comments follow:

1. Cormac McCarthy, THE ROAD -- Somehow it has gotten out that I don't like this book. Untrue! I liked it, though not as much as NO COUNTRY... or BLOOD MERIDIAN.
2. Marjane Satrapi, PERSEPOLIS
3. Barack Obama, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER
4. Robert Bringhurst (trans.), MASTERWORKS OF THE HAIDA MYTHTELLERS -- I've never heard of this, but won't rule it out just for that reason.
5. Irène Némirovsky, SUITE FRANCAISE -- Own it, haven't read it -- is it worth the hype?
6. Malcolm Gladwell, THE TIPPING POINT
7. Yann Martel, LIFE OF PI -- Ooooooooverrated.
8. Margaret Atwood, PAYBACK: DEBT AND THE SHADOW SIDE OF WEALTH -- I didn't like it but I've seen it pop up on some other lists like this.
9. Ian McEwan, ATONEMENT
10. Dan Brown, THE DA VINCI CODE
11. Leo Tolstoy, WAR AND PEACE (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

Sorry, what? I know I'm on record as declaring WAR AND PEACE overrated, and since I haven't read the new translation I can't speak to its greatness. (There's also a debate to be had over whether new translations count as new publications.) But this juxtaposition should never have been allowed to happen. I hope there was a big fight a dreadful row over that at the Times office, with people throwing around terms like "death of print."

(There ought to be a subset of Godwin's Law about that phrase and conversations about publishing, but naturally I'm not willing to donate my last name to it.)

To: HOLLY'S INBOX From: Ellen Subject: Re: The future of literature as we know it

When I heard someone had written a best-selling novel consisting of a series of e-mails, my first thought was, "This is going to be awesome." To the extent that people these days spend their lives on e-mail, it was about time that someone updated the 19th-century model of people sending letters back and forth to each other. (Not that people have stopped writing those; Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott's WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU is a great recent novel-in-letters.) Such is the premise behind HOLLY'S INBOX -- using the conceit of all the different e-mails a person gets and sends in a day to draw a life and scoot the plot forward without any ancillary scenes.

The author apparently got the idea from reading a former employee's left-behind e-mails (note to self: delete everything), which he described to Entertainment Weekly as "gripping." It's too bad he didn't just copy and paste them into HOLLY'S INBOX, because this book was so, so slow. I would say it was too realistic, but the real inbox of a new receptionist with a slutty best friend, an in-office boyfriend and a secret dark past -- and no discretion about putting all of this on company e-mail -- would have to be more interesting.

As Pie Not Included pointed out, some of the exchanges are much more like IM conversations than proper e-mails and the story one character is telling is dragged out much longer than it would be in a proper e-mail exchange. Holly is a total twit who (spoiler) nearly loses her job over an unnecessary lie, but she's capable of writing multiple-paragraph e-mails.

Why did I finish this book if it was so boring? First, it accurately replicated several e-mail forms common to homo sapiens sapiens cubiculi -- the passive-aggressive assignment thread, the snarky response to the non-response, the thinly disguised code for bitching about superiors. Second, I held out hope that it would get better once Holly's secrets were revealed (didn't).

And third, it's rare I read a novel which I think is not good but which I also believe could and will be done better soon. (Either a lot of bad novels I come across are flawed in the fundamentals, or I don't look at them with a charitable enough eye.) When it got really dull I even started thinking, "I could have written this book." Of course I'm deluded, but you would be too; think about how many e-mails you send in a day! This book tops 650 pages but because the to/from fields are constantly repeated, it doesn't contain that much text. Grandstanding aside, it's a form I'm excited to see taking shape, if not this particular shape.

Internet high-five!

Blogger Evany insisted a librarian take a picture of her with her brand-new library card. I'm pretty sure it's what Jay-Z would do.

Your 2009 National Book Award Winners

Colum McCann won for his novel LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN; the nonfiction winner was T.J. Stiles for THE FIRST TYCOON: THE EPIC LIFE OF CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. Flannery O'Connor's collected stories garnered her the Best National Book Ever Award (not its official title). Epic prediction fail!

Also, Keith Waldrop, professor at the best school ever, took home the poetry prize, and YA honors went to Philip Hoose's CLAUDETTE COLVIN: TWICE TOWARD JUSTICE, about an African-American woman who refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus a year before Rosa Parks did.

To be discussed:
1. Does embracing the biography of a rich entrepreneur mean America's animosity towards captains of industry has ended?
2. The buzz on the YA category was whether David Small's STITCHES should have been included in that category or was more properly an adult book. Should publisher W.W. Norton be kicking itself? Why or why not?
3. Will Thomas Pynchon ever come out now after this epic snub?

You Too Can Be A Romance Novelist (For $599)

Harlequin announced it will open a new imprint called Harlequin Horizons for self-publishing projects. The 60-year-old publisher is teaming with Author Solutions to give both general self-publishing clients and rejectees from Harlequin imprints the chance to carry the romance publisher's name -- por dinero. Packages start at $599 and go up to $1,599, which will get you 25 free copies, a close edit of the first chapter "or 1700 words" and a "book signing kit" containing bookmarks and posters.

I have read some self-published books, and as you would expect some are good enough to blend in seamlessly at your local literature purveyor and some are error-ridden meandering nightmares. (Hint to self-publishers out there: At least make sure your protagonist has the same name throughout the book. Yes, that happened.) I know of at least one self-published author among those whose next book went to a major publisher, and hey, good for him.

But if I were a Harlequin author I'd be pretty depressed about the cheapening of the brand at its lower end. Regardless of what you think of their normal output -- of which I have read nothing -- the gap between being paid to publish and paying is still important in terms of what readers and other authors expect from you. Harlequin top brass may have thought it wasn't quite so important as making money, but as covered before, romance isn't feeling the recession like the rest of publishing.

Not to get all Snooty McHighbrowpants here, but the most I know about these books comes from the protagonist of LADY ORACLE who writes historical romances in secret -- a very funny subplot, if likely unrealistic.

New York Public Library: Judgy

I think there are more doubters in the world than gymnasts, but what do I know.

This is way better than vampire Darcy

Book A Week With Jen got the following in the mail:
But wait, it gets better! This is the fourth in a series of books about a Latino P.I. who became a vampire while serving in Iraq. That's right, a Latino veteran vampire P.I. -- if I'm putting those modifiers in the correct order, which I suspect I am not. It's as if the author had character dice he threw up in the air to create this guy, which means the world will never know about his Asian-American mattress salesman who was bitten by a werewolf in his old job as a postal worker.

The other books in the series, since you're dying to know now, are THE NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS, X-RATED BLOODSUCKERS and THE UNDEAD KAMA SUTRA. Here's the author's book trailer for JAILBAIT ZOMBIE. It's SFW but may leave you totally speechless:

Straw Poll Tuesday: My library, your library

If you live with other people, do you or have you comingled your books?

I have with roommates before, although I don't now because we don't have a communal bookshelf. (Since both of my roommates are grad students, I think it would be pretty easy to separate most of theirs from most of mine, and I trust them on the rest.) Throughout most of college my roommate and I were each issued our own bookshelf, but one year we shared a sweet built-in bookshelf; it was still inadequate, but it looked stylish.

I like to think if I were married or cohabitating I would gladly oversee the merging of the libraries, but I haven't been either so I don't know. Anne Fadiman has a funny essay in her collection EX LIBRIS: CONFESSIONS OF A COMMON READER about what happened when she and her husband combined their collections, a task they put off until they had been married for five years and had a child. That seems absurd to me, but maybe she was just really busy, or moving around a lot.

Two notes on memoir

"I will never write a book memoir unless something really interesting happens to me which is not likely."
--Ben Yagoda, author of the new book MEMOIR: A HISTORY, tempting fate or being honest in an interview with Reuters. Yagoda's ABOUT TOWN: THE NEW YORKER AND THE WORLD IT MADE is excellent reading, and this looks good too, although I imagine his publishers wouldn't have let him call it MEMOIR: A MEMOIR.

"Memoir is the Barbie of literary genres. It exaggerates the assets and invites the reader into an intimate alternative world, sometimes complete with a dream house. We hungrily buy and read memoir even as we express contempt for it. Memoirs are confessional and subversive; memoirs drop names. Memoirs print whispered secrets on their covers in 24-point type. Memoir is so much the genre of our time that sophisticated readers look for memoirs in fiction, hunting for clues to the “real story” with a fervent appetite for details of the writer’s real life."

--Susan Cheever, memoirist in review of Mary Karr's memoir LIT, NYT

NYC: Independent Bookstore Week Events to Watch

Every year, children stay up the night before Independent Bookstore Week begins, hoping to catch Book Santa and his sleigh pulled by pigeons. Okay, this is actually the first annual, and any sleigh pulled by pigeons should be shot down, but here are three free events you should check out.

Tonight at Unnameable Books: Sarah Palin-Vladimir Nabokov midnight release party. You are encouraged to dress as your favorite character from either GOING ROGUE or THE ORIGINAL OF LAURA, the novel Nabokov told his family to destroy before he died. (11:30PM; 600 Vanderbilt Ave., Prospect Heights)

Wednesday (11/18) at WORD Brooklyn: STATE BY STATE, an anthology of essays about America, comes out in paperback this week and co-editor Sean Wilsey will be talking about how he put it together. I went to a reading for this when it came out in hardcover, and it was really fun. (7:30PM; 126 Franklin St. in Greenpoint)

Thursday (11/19) at Book Culture: David Hajdu, author of THE TEN-CENT PLAGUE and POSITIVELY FOURTH STREET (excellent) reads from his new book of cultural essays. (7PM; 536 W. 112th St. in Morningside Heights)

What they're saying about reading and writing on Twitter

"I'm pretty sure this is the 1st time I have seen the word 'masshole' appear in print. Good on you, Mr. King."

--@mcgee_gorgo reading UNDER THE DOME for the good stuff, including (if you haven't heard) derogatory slang for residents of Massachusetts.

"Totally sucked at Borges Hero tonight. Failed out of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" on Easy, and now I'm not even sure if I'm real."

--@hotdogsladies wants you to try and beat him on Jorge Luis Borges.

"Avoid using 'gadzooks,' lest your monocle pop out and land in your jar of mustache wax."

--@FakeAPStylebook is still pure gold. I don't think I've ever said this about a Twitter account before, but someone get this guy a book deal (and a lawyer for the inevitable Associated Press lawsuit).

"in the midst of a SESTINA FAIL"

--If like me you would be completely unable to help @allysonkalea with her poetics emergency, here's an example of a sestina by W.H. Auden.

Opening this weekend: "The Fantastic Mr. Fox"

I haven't seen this yet, but I'm going to go ahead and recommend it because I like Wes Anderson that much. In fact, this would be a great place to report on the free talk Anderson gave earlier this week in New York, but I didn't get to it early enough and was turned away (and went home to flavor my can of Sparks with tears). Meryl Streep was there too! Oh well.

I might be more hesitant if this were one of my favorite Roald Dahl books, but it's not. I think we're all more susceptible to bad movie adaptations of our childhood favorites; I had to change the channel on "Matilda" after about 20 minutes.

Books That Make You Laugh

Back when I wrote my list of books that make you cry I promised to write its counterpart later in the year when it would be necessary. What I didn't consider was that really, there are two potential opposites for books that make you cry, being those that make you laugh (the direct correlation) and books that somehow make you feel better or uplifted, but aren't necessarily funny. I've been pretty grumpy recently so I will now hold forth on the former.

Sentimental favorite: Gordon Korman, NO COINS, PLEASE. This is the first book I can remember reading and laughing at; it's a middle-grade chapter book about an eleven-year-old con artist on a chaperoned trip across America who runs a new scam in every city. What's even cooler about it is that Korman was a writing prodigy who published this book when he was just 21.

Sentimental favorite II: P.J. O'Rourke, MODERN MANNERS. As I wrote before, my parents took this book away from my sister and me after we discovered it and thought it was the funniest thing in existence. Now I'm grown-up and no one can stop me from owning a copy of this book, or from listening to him on "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!" I even think he's kind of handsome in an elder-statesmanly way, which: yeah, I know.

Algonquin Round Table pick: I love Dorothy Parker, but you all know about Dorothy Parker, so might I direct you to the Robert Benchley collection THE BENCHLEY ROUND-UP? As a miniaturist writing about topics like how to read a newspaper in public and the psychological benefits of chewing gum, he is often overlooked in the pantheon, but I think it was his work more than any other's that shaped the Shouts & Murmurs column as it appears today.

Funny and best-selling for a reason: The writers of "The Daily Show" could have just regurgitated some of their best known bits into book form. Instead they came up with AMERICA: THE BOOK, which resembles a real(ly unorthodox) textbook, including wacky definitions and a recurring sidebar entitled "Would You Mind If I Tell You How We Do It In Canada?"

Funny in 2009: Steve Hely, HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST. I mentioned this book last week in the context of Colson Whitehead's "What To Write Next," but I'm plugging it again here. This satire of a frustrated writer can get pretty cutting and if I were Hely's publisher, it might not be the kind of mirror I'd want to see myself in, but it's funny enough to risk the injury. The four people I know who actually took my advice and read it all liked it, and how can a not-at-all random sampling of four people be wrong?

Funny, but also sort of uplifting: Mark Salzman's memoir LOST IN PLACE: GROWING UP ABSURD IN SUBURBIA has been one of my favorites for going around 10 years now. The author was a teenage cello-playing dork who one day became obsessed with kung-fu movies and decided his true calling was to become a Buddhist master with a black belt. Sometimes, he acts like a complete idiot, but his reckless passions are enviable -- maybe I'll regret sneaking it onto this list when it comes time to do the other.

What are the books that make you laugh the most?

How is the housing crisis playing out in fiction? According to this incredible write-up by i09, by showing the "scary underside" of "real-estate fetishism." I wouldn't have thought to put Sarah Waters' Booker-nominated THE LITTLE STRANGER in that category, but since it concerns a family on the verge of losing its potentially haunted house, it's not too much of a stretch.

Culture Jamming With Charles Darwin

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and some people aren't happy about that. Weird evangelical actor whose last name is not "Baldwin" Kirk Cameron is one of those people, and he's doing something about it: He's raising money to pass out 50,000 copies of a special edition of Darwin's work on Nov. 19 at college campuses, since that is where America's youth learn to be atheists from their godless professors. (His [slightly paraphrased] words, not mine.) This special edition features an introduction pointing out that Hitler loved evolution, the Big Bang doesn't make any sense and this one time some Girl Scouts came to Darwin's door selling cookies and he pretended not to be home.

Cameron announced this plan in a video not worth your time posted to the Hollywood Reporter, which calls the books "Trojan bibles" and compares him to Dr. Horrible -- but that is giving him way too much credit. (Sidebar: If you haven't watched "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," yet, I will wait here until you're finished.)

As my italics might suggest, I am not an advocate of intelligent design, but that's not why I'm posting this -- though I do giggle at edition editor Ray Comfort's theory that God put fossils on Earth just to mess with us. He thought of everything!* Besides the obvious, this effort is misguided for three reasons: First, college students are too busy reading their assigned work (or not) to read a random book someone gave them in the quad. Second, if by slim chance they do, they're going to skip the introduction, making it ineffective as a culture jam. And third, if you're handing out your refutation of one of the most important scientific works of our time to a small army of people who are learning how to be critical thinkers, your argument had better be airtight -- and early reviews suggest it is not. I mean to begin with, the Girl Scouts hadn't even been established during Darwin's lifetime.

In terms of appropriation of forms, this is a really lazy way to get your point across. Anyway, I can't find a list of the lucky campuses that will be swamped with free books, but if you get your hands on one please report back on the insanity. I haven't read all of ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and now I sort of feel that I should -- post-anniversary book club anyone?

---
*This was not, I hasten to point out, a God angle explored by my own religious upbringing, which was about evenly split between the Methodists and the Presbyterians.