Author Of The Year
Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice (A+) also Book Club: Randi
The Nobelists
Saul Bellow: The Dean’s December (C-)
William Golding: Free Fall (D)
Andre Gide: The Immoralist (B+)
The Pantheon
“The Secret Sharer” And Other Great Stories (B+)
Paul Bowles: The Delicate Prey (A+)
Kobo Abe: The Woman In the Dunes (A)
Willa Cather: Alexander’s Bridge (B+)
G.K. Chesterton: The Scandal Of Father Brown (D)
John Barth: Chimera (A)
Kurt Vonnegut: Deadeye Dick (A)
James M. Cain: Mildred Pierce (A-)
Book Club: Randi
Penelope Fitzgerald: Offshore (A+)
Simon Singh: Fermat’s Enigma (C-)
Muriel Barbery: The Elegance Of The Hedgehog (A+)
Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses (C+)
Junot Diaz: The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao (A)
Cormac McCarthy: The Road (A)
Jon Krakauer: Into Thin Air (A+)
Book Club: Orbis-Quintus
Norman Thomas Di Giovanni: The Lesson Of The Master (A+)
Pierre Bayard: How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (B)
Greeneland
Graham Greene: Our Man In Havana (A+)
Graham Greene: The Power And The Glory (A+) also Book Club: Randi
Graham Greene: The Ministry Of Fear (A+)
The Moderns
The Moderns
Jerome Charyn: The Tar Baby (A+)
Carol Shields: The Stone Diaries (A+)
Ethan Canin: Blue River (B)
Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road (A)
Granta: Best New American Novelists (B)
Penelope Fitzgerald: Human Voices (B-)
Susan Sontag: Against Interpretation (F)
Ann Beattie: Love, Always (D)
Ken Follett: A Dangerous Fortune (A)
Stephen King: Everything’s Eventual (B)
Ben Travers: Mischief (B+)
George Saunders: The Brief And Frightening Reign Of Phil (A+)
Brad Leithauser: A Few Corrections (A+)
Holocaust/Jewish Studies
Abigail Pogrebin: Stars Of David (A-)
Cordelia Edvardson: Burned Child Seeks The Fire (A-)
Poetry
Phyllis McGinley: The Province Of The Heart (B)
Black Lit
James Baldwin: The Devil Finds Work (B)
Travel
History/Science
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: A Midwife’s Tale (C)
John Cornwell: Earth To Earth (B)
Louis J. Weichmann: A True History Of The Assassination Of Abraham Lincoln And Of The Conspiracy Of 1865 (C)
George Cooper: Lost Love (B-)
David McCullough: Brave Companions (B)
Bruce Catton: Reflections On The Civil War (D+)
Sarah Vowell: The Wordy Shipmates (A+)
Jon Ronson: The Men Who Stare At Goats (B)
Mem-wahs/Biographies: Belles-Lettres
John Maxwell Hamilton: Casanova Was A Book Lover (B)
Alastair Cooke: Talk About America 1951-1968 (C+)
David Foster Wallace: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (B+)
Cynthia Ozick: Quarrel And Quandary (B+)
Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret (C+)
Richard Lederer: The Miracle Of Language (C-)
Bill Buford: Heat (B)
Steve Dublanica: Waiter Rant (B)
Wilfrid Sheed: Essays In Disguise (B)
William Styron: Havanas In Camelot (A)
H. L. Mencken: Prejudices (C-)
Harold Rabinowitz & Rob Kaplan (eds.): A Passion For Books (B-)
Axel Munthe: The Story Of San Michele (B+)
Ammon Shea: Reading The OED (A-)
Mem-wahs/Biographies: Sporting
Stephen Jay Gould: Triumph And Tragedy In Mudville (C+)
Bobby Murcer: Yankee For Life (A+)
Peter Golenbock: Amazin’ (A+)
Joe Queenan: True Believers (C-)
Will Leitch: God Save The Fan (A+)
Michael Shapiro: The Last Good Season (B)
Mem-wahs/Biographies: Show Business
David Hajdu: Positively 4th Street (A)
Ben Hecht: A Child of The Century (D)
Peter Manso: Brando (B+)
Johanna Fiedler: Molto Agitato (C)
David Stenn: Clara Bow (B)
Ray Davies: X-Ray (C-)
Dave Davies: Kink (A-)
Cecil B. DeMille: Autobiography (A-)
Philip Dunne: Take Two (C)
Anthony Curtis (ed.): The Rise And Fall Of The Matinee Idol (B+)
Marianne Faithfull: Faithfull (A-)
Patrick McGilligan: George Cukor—A Double Life (C+)
Eric Lax: Woody Allen (B)
Sidney Lumet: Making Movies (A-)
Leonard J. Leff & Jerold L. Simmons: The Dame In The Kimono (B+)
Jeannette Walls: Dish (B)
Mysteries
Georges Simenon: The Clockmaker (B-)
The Best American Mystery Stories 1997 (C+)
Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason: The Rule Of Four (D)
Qiu Xiaolong: Death Of A Red Heroine (A+)
James Ellroy: Hollywood Nocturnes (A)
Thomas Hauser: The Hawthorne Group (A)
Time-Fillers
Eric Idle: The Road To Mars (C+)
Richard Rayner: Los Angeles Without A Map (C+)
Classic English Short Stories: Charmed Lives (C)
Max Apple: The Oranging Of America (C+)
Helen Schulman: The Revisionist (C+)
Slavenka Drakulic: S. (C)
Robert Chalmers: Who’s Who In Hell (C)
Robert Grudin: Book (C+)
Mike Nelson: Mind Over Matters (C)
Jean Rouaud: Fields Of Glory (C+)
Theodore H. White: The View From The Fortieth Floor (C+)
Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises From Inanimate Objects (C+)
Writer’s Harvest (B-)
The Best Of TriQuarterly (B)
Giovanni Guareschi: Comrade Don Camillo (B+)
Steven Sherrill: The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break (C-)
Nigel Williams: The Wimbledon Poisoner (B-)
Goffredo Parise: Solitudes (C+)
Alan Lightman: The Diagnosis (B)
Per Olov Enquist: The Royal Physician’s Visit (B+)
Daniel Akst: The Webster Chronicle (B)
The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Alice B. Toklas: Staying On Alone: Letters (A-)
John Lahr (ed.): The Orton Diaries (A-)
Rubbish
Francesca Duranti: The House On Moon Lake (D+)
The Time Out Book Of New York Short Stories (F)
Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke (D-)
Tin House 10 (F)
Humberto Costantini: The Gods, The Little Guys, And The Police (D+)
Edward Swift: Splendora (F)
Terence Blacker: Kill Your Darlings (F)
Doug Marlette: The Bridge (D+)
The Worst Book Of the Year
Robert Dessaix: Night Letters (F)
Thomas Pynchon noses out Carol Shields, who noses out Paul Bowles. Followed by Brad Leithauser and the book about the Mets. All recommended.
Pretty much a slush pile.
As noted ad nauseam and ad infinitum in the ’08 book notes (qv), it’s been more about inventory reduction than pleasurable reading. That’s not to say it was all in a lost cause; not so. Out of 123 books read for the year, the expected one-third measured up. Not a lot of real crap, and some damn cool reads. And more space for the apartment.
Two Kinks memoirs back-to-back. Some books that had been kicking around for nearly twenty years. Some (but not enough) current books. Some (but not enough) quality fiction. Lots of filler and lots of non-fiction. And it’ll be a while before I tackle another William Golding, thank Christ.
Not a great year for reading, but a good year for me personally. In many ways life got better.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is now in the queue! I was skeptical, but an A+ is a pretty strong recommendation.