Over at Steel White Table, Phillip is counting down his ten favourite movies from last year. Now, usually I’m lucky if I can remember the last two movies I saw, let alone the ten best. However, I did keep track of all the books I read last year, so I can tell you which ones I liked the best. It’s not in any particular order of greatness; rather, I’ll go in chronological order.
1. Sarah Vowell, Partly Cloudy Patriot
A very earnest and heartfelt tribute to the United States - she’s not overly sentimental, nor is she harsh towards those who tarnish that golden image she paints of her homeland. Her chapter on Al Gore is excellent, and explains how his run for the presidency wasn’t only a battle of liberals vs. conservatives, but a war between nerds and jocks.
2. Dan Savage, The Commitment
This is a scathing indictment of the whole anti-gay marriage movement, as well as a look at the personal choices he and his boyfriend made. It’s no-holds-barred, blunt, and sometimes shocking, but meaningful at the same time.
3. Anthony Bourdain, Tyhopid Mary: An Urban Historical
I love Bourdain. If he wrote the phone book, I’d be sure to get a copy and read it all in one sitting. In this book, he turns an otherwise colourless story about a woman who was a one-woman typhoid factory into a story about the history of kitchens, food prep and the servant class at the turn of the 20th century.
4. Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood
Brite is another of my phone book authors. It’s gory and messy, and there is violence and unbridled emotion in this story, but it’s one of my favourites, and I read it almost every summer.
5. Pamela Ribon, Why Moms are Weird
Loved loved loved this book! I sat down and read this book from cover to cover in one go. There were passages that cracked me up, and others that just ripped my heart out.
6. Terry Pratchett, Thud
The world can be divided into people who love and “get” Pratchett, and those who feel obligated to read Pratchett to humour those in the first category, but don’t really like it or “get” it. That’s not really relevant to anything, but I just felt the need to get that out there. Anyways. I always feel smarter after I finish one of his books because he manages to make current events or political situations understandable by simplifying them and then breaking it down.
7. Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
What I love about her novels are the emotional breakthrough her characters go through, and how support usually comes from unexpected sources. Her characters are real, and their pain and problems are real, and that even though they come through the crisis, they still need support. (I also love that her male characters are arty and creative, independent creatures, and sweet and understanding souls. Why aren’t there more men like that in the real world?)
8. Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job
Not only is Moore strange and funny, he can also write about sorrow with deftness. But it’s a mostly funny book.
9. Rachel Cohn and David Levitan, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
It’s a great story about two wild and crazy kids, and the fateful night they met. No matter what happened to them after the story ended, it would have made a great story to tell the grandkids.
10. Kevin Brockmeir, A Brief History of the Dead
Mildly creepy - definitely one I shouldn’t have started reading after 10pm, because I ended up having to stay up until I finished reading it, and then also regretted that decision. Still! It’s an interesting story about what happens to us after we die, and what might happen if everyone dies.
11. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
No matter how many people had great things to say about this one, I was always worried that the time travelling aspect and non-linear storyline would throw me off. However, it’s a beautiful love story, and I won’t say anything else lest I spoil the ending.
12. Keith Miller, The Book of Flying
A story about stories, and the young man who collects them. And I swear I didn’t love this book just because the main character is a librarian!
