Times' Notable Books of 2009: Already?

So while I was out, the New York Times dropped its massive list of the most notable books of the year. Accountability first: I have read six of these and they are, in order of appearance (fiction then nonfiction, alphabetical by title): CHRONIC CITY, THE LITTLE STRANGER, A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN, THE SONG IS YOU, THE LOST CITY OF Z and ZEITOUN. That is not very many -- one less than last year, in fact -- but it gives me a lot of ideas of what I want to read! (I've never even heard of ASTERIOS POLYP or HORSE SOLDIERS, to give two examples.)

I haven't made my personal best-of-the-year list, although (plug alert!) I already participated in a best-of-the-decade selection. Frankly I'm still recovering from being in that smoke-filled room for so long. Next to that I think reckoning with '09 will be a cakewalk, though as soon as I do I will read a book that blows me over completely and want to retract everything I've been saying about The State Of Literature. But in fairness, I always want to have that experience... the closing of the decade has nothing to do with it.

The Times' decade list has not appeared yet, but if you are the type to have a favorite critic, Michiko, Dwight and Janet have all put up their top tens of this year for you to judge as you will.

Back from the not so wild West

Months since leaving New York before last week: Almost 4.

Books packed: 6
Hours spent on flights each way: 6.5, approx.
Books left in airports or on airplanes: 1
Books lent to other members of the family: 1
Books borrowed from family members: 2, THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING and THE BIG BURN

Books bought: 0.
Books read: 4.


Adaptations watched of books I haven't read: 2 ("The Blind Side" and "The Men Who Stare At Goats" -- guess which one made me want to read the source material more?)
Adaptations not watched of books I have read: 1 ("The Time Traveler's Wife" was showing on the plane; I am mildly curious, since I liked the book.)

Books I saw people reading on my last flight (an incomplete study):

• Arundhati Roy, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS
• Terry Pratchett, NIGHT WATCH
• Nicholas Sparks, DEAR JOHN
• Martin Amis, TIME'S ARROW
• Patrick Tyler, A WORLD OF TROUBLE
• William P. Young, THE SHACK

All sewn up

It may not have won a National Book Award, but I still recommend you read David Small's memoir STITCHES, a book I was surprised to find on the new-release shelf at my local branch library on my last trip. It's unfair to level this criterion against all books, but it's hard to find something this powerful that can also be wrapped up in a day's commute or less.

Small depicts himself growing up in the Detroit area in a household bare of affection and almost all communication except the rhythmic slamming of doors. His idea of "fun" is sneaking up to the wards he's not allowed to go into in the hospital where his dad works. Frequently ill as a child, he goes into the hospital as a teenager for what he is told is a benign growth removal; two surgeries later, he has lost most of his vocal chords, forced to contribute to the house's sullen silence and to discover, in a letter he wasn't meant to see, what was really wrong with him.

Where Alison Bechdel loads her illustrations with text including layers of literary references, Small's style is closer to last year's Caldecott winner THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, which sought to recreate the magic of early film (and the lives of its creators) in illustrations. (That said, there are two very clever allusions here to appreciate, one connected with the harrowing page 211, my favorite panels I never want to look at again.) Small's illustrations toy with scale and the process of imagination to capture that childhood feeling when things are happening around you that you aren't quite old enough to process yourself. FUN HOME gave me the feeling that I could find Bechdel's childhood house using her pictures, but even if Small's buildings were more detailed I wouldn't want to go looking for them; his world is a little Edward Hopper, but more Edvard Munch.

As for the question of whether or not it should have been categorized as YA -- it could have gone either way, but the publisher was probably right to put it where it would face less competition, even if it didn't pay off. (From the previous paragraph, FUN HOME would definitely be adult, HUGO CABRET YA or even middle-grade children's.) Normally books are bumped up to adult because either the language or the content are too sophisticated; there isn't really a case for the former, and for the latter, I don't think it's out of reach for teenagers. What happens to Small is definitely not a "teen issue" in the after-school special sense, but that doesn't mean it should be kept from that age group either. I can't remember where I saw this, but Small said in an interview that he wanted to wait until his parents were dead to publish this book; he drew this short but striking graphic essay for Publishers Weekly about the process.

Panel from STITCHES: Galleycat

Opening this weekend: The apocalypse!

"The Road" is finally out after over a year in delays -- bad, very bad sign, but tell me this trailer doesn't clutch at your heart:



It's an action movie for the art house! Then again, a special operative for this blog went to see it on Thanksgiving Eve with his folks and gave it a review of "Meh" which was not in any case the reaction I had expected someone to have to it.

For those of you who prefer slightly smaller scale disruption, Rebecca Miller's adaptation of her own novel THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is also out, featuring Robin Wright Penn as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks dressed in holiday style

It's the official Curmudgeons Admit The Start Of The Christmas Season day. I can't lie, I love the trappings, looking in windows of stores where I never shop and inhaling peppermint bark and watching the Claymation Christmas Special for the 475th time (and doing the latter two things sacked out on the couch with my siblings, reminiscing about the year the twins were young enough to fit into their stockings, or the year my sister got sick and begged for a Chia Pet, or the year my dad kept pulling relatives aside during dinner to watch "A Special Christmas Box").

One of the holiday chores we would typically be doing the day after Thanksgiving is getting out the box of Christmas movies and books. I try to re-read David Sedaris' HOLIDAYS ON ICE and the first two chapters of LITTLE WOMEN every year. For picture books you can't go wrong with HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (best read aloud in Boris Karloff voice), THE POLAR EXPRESS or the edition of THE NUTCRACKER with the almost-too-scary Sendak illustrations in it. What's your favorite holiday book?

(Sorry this list is so Christmas-centric; despite working in a hillel I don't know of any Hanukkah books. Please pitch in and correct my ignorance.)

Since today is also Buy Nothing Day, here are the free full texts of "The Gift of the Magi" and A CHRISTMAS CAROL; you can also listen to Sedaris' "Santaland Diaries" radio pieces (my first ever exposure to him) here.

Still from "Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas": GeekUSA

Books cited in Zadie Smith's new essay collection, CHANGING MY MIND

(An incomplete list)

• Zora Neale Hurston, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD
• George Eliot, MIDDLEMARCH
• THE BBC TALKS OF E.M. FORSTER, 1929-1960
• Roland Barthes, "The Death Of The Author" and THE PLEASURE OF THE TEXT
• Kingsley Amis, "No More Parades"
• Vladimir Nabokov, LECTURES ON LITERATURE
• Louis Begley, THE TREMENDOUS WORLD I HAVE INSIDE MY HEAD: FRANZ KAFKA: A BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
• Franz Kafka, LETTER TO MY FATHER
• Joseph O'Neill, NETHERLAND
• Tom McCarthy, REMAINDER

Giving thanks for reading that begets reading!

Reading on the Road: Giving thanks for paperbacks edition

In terms of surviving long flights and delays there is no better technology. Four of these are paperbacks, which is good enough:

Jonathan Miles, DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES (already started, haven't had time to finish even though it is really short and debatably a waste of space)
Malcolm Gladwell, WHAT THE DOG SAW
James Dickey, TO THE WHITE SEA (Wrapped Up in Books)
Tom Mendocino, PROBATION (review)
Scott Rosenberg, SAY EVERYTHING: HOW BLOGGING BEGAN, WHAT IT'S BECOMING AND WHY IT MATTERS

I know, still too many, but I have two long travel days and this should help. (I'll be in the land of sketchy WiFi, although this blog will continue to magically write itself until I can find a signal.) If you're going somewhere for the holiday, what are you taking with you?

Photo: fabiovenni

I guess it could be a compliment...

If a critic writes of an author, "You don't read a novel by [author] so much as you give in to one... You read on to be free of it. You read on because you must," is she paying a compliment or giving him an expert backhand? You be the judge, because my feeling about this author is infecting my perspective.

Speaking of infecting, I'm still sick. I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure that it's the first recorded female case of Man Cold.

I don't have any court documents to back up this observation, but yesterday I saw James Frey at my favorite neighborhood brunch place. He probably just had coffee and called it brunch.

ETA: I'm super sick today, and I think we all know whose fault it is (although he likely had nohing to do with it). What else would you like to blame on James Frey?

Sesame Street Sunday

Lazyblogging, I know, but I just saw on Twitter that the Brooklyn Public Library is hosting a 40th-anniversary exhibit on the show which just opened last weekend. The show has been teaching kids to read for 40 years and the West Coast bureau and I can't be the only ones who have near-photographic memory (videographic?) of these snippets given how many people have tried to set them to rap songs and so on.

And now, a few favorite videos.

Bert and Ernie's rhyming game:


"Ma! There's an alligator in my room!"


The Yip Yips discover the telephone:


Cowboy X


Smokey Robinson being groped by the letter U (because even though I posted it before, it is just so unsettling and would never make it into a children's show today):

People who've gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows.

--Cormac McCarthy gives one of his very few interviews (first one since Oprah? Maybe) to the Wall Street Journal and takes advantage of the opportunity to scare us all. Also covered: the real-life kid behind the kid, his own one-star review of MOBY DICK and one more pullquote of awesome:

I was at the Academy Awards with the Coens [for "No Country For Old Men"]. They had a table full of awards before the evening was over, sitting there like beer cans. One of the first awards that they got was for Best Screenplay, and Ethan came back and he said to me, "Well, I didn't do anything, but I'm keeping it."

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?