maribou | best 21 books of 2008

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O'Brien (reread)
I must've read this book a dozen times by now, but I hadn't for years. Maybe since high school? Anyway it held up wonderfully - they're so beautifully civilised, and everything makes sense.

The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing is a writer of genius, and I'm barely equipped to read her, let alone review her. This book made me feel deeply and think hard, and it had chunky tasty bites of wisdom and/or beauty. It was also simultaneously enveloping and alienating. I very much liked it - it was too emotionally difficult for me to love it, honestly - and I'm quite exhausted.

Powers, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin is a master taleteller at the full fullness of her craft, and her most recent works are not just story but Story. Every word is chosen, careful as a poem. Reading her is like following tracks through the woods, except that every step is clear, and true, and gravid with the next step's sure coming. Such a thing takes a whole life's skill and practice, on top of one's natural talents, but it never gets in the way. Never once while I was reading this book did I lose the tale in admiration for its telling - only after the course was run, and I was let go to wander.

A Companion to Wolves, by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
Now, this book is splendidly (sometimes terrifyingly) internally consistent, and that's part of what made it work so well. Bear and Monette take about 15 different hoary genre tropes and just knock them all ass-over-teakettle with gleeful abandon. And then they prop them back up on their feet and make them do their jobs. Also, I am once again reminded that I really really like it when authors use smell and touch and taste and movement in their physical & emotional descriptions and/or manipulations, and not just those other two. Don't read this book if you can't handle reading about violently uncomfortable, uncomfortably violent group sex; otherwise, jeez louise, it's awfully good.
(caveat: at least one person read this review and then read the book and was truly, severely traumatized. Please do not read this if you can't handle awful awful arguably-non-consensual things happening to the protagonist, in a sexualized context no less.)
later, from a comment, addendum: I'm not sure it's *fun*, it's brutal and unpleasant a lot of the time ... though I had a lot of 'oh! god! i can't believe they went *there* with that! bwahahahaha!' moments since the authors seem to be even better acquainted with the whole gloriously cheesy genre than I am. Oh hell, actually, you know what? I like books that are sometimes brutal and unpleasant, when it makes sense, and yes, it was fun. Violent, angry, every-so-often-you-sit-back-and-think-wait-a-second-what?!? fun. I only stopped reading it the first time because I had to work the next day, and the second time because I had to leave for work, and that's rare. Plus it gets winter. I forgot that part. The winter in it is real winter, good and bad, and not la-la-la I live in Orlando winter.

Window Poems, by Wendell Berry
It's very rare that I finish reading a library book and immediately turn to purchasing it. Actually, I'm not sure I ever have before. Let that stand as a fiercely meant recommendation (at least for those of you whose hearts beat dirt and snow and trees and sky) - and I'll give the rest of my thoughts on this book a post of their own.
(said post)

Flight: Volume 1, edited by Kazu Kibuishi

manintheboat was totally right and this book was lovely lovely lovely. I confess a couple of the stories didn't quite cohere for me, but most of them are exceedingly sensical and breathtakingly gorgeous, all at once. I especially liked the story about the girl who woke up with wings, and the kite story, and the stories about Copper and Dog.

The Wild Shore, by Kim Stanley Robinson (reread)
I can lay claim to only a handful of very small talents, but I would not normally be willing to cede them in exchange for one great and specific genius. Generally, I like being a little bit good at numerous things. But if I could consistently write novels that meant as much to me as those of Kim Stanley Robinson, I'd let go my cherished minor gifts in about two seconds. Even this journeyman work of Robinson's, written in 1984 before his skills had reached their apex, brims over with insight and mythical depth and odd random shiny bits. And, you know, it's post-apocalyptical survival fiction that owes lots to Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. I dig that.

20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill
I tried all kinds of tricks to make this book last longer - reading it aloud, not reading it before bed, taking against a story for not much reason (which only managed to last about 3 pages), etc etc - but it's still over. Bah. Want more Joe Hill now please. He really really suits me - I think a lot of it is his glorious rhythms (cf reading out loud) - but even story types that would normally drive me nuts are fun for me when he does them... and some of his insights get me right in the sternum. There were some good standard horror "EWWWWWWWWWW" moments too. I'm not doing a very good job of describing them, but some of these short stories are the best short stories I've read in years.

Mendel's Dwarf, by Simon Mawer
I started reading this around 11 am today, and for most of the book, I was thinking, "Ah, yes. Delightful book. A bit like A.S. Byatt, only less Romantic. Every bit as satisfying as I was promised. Quite excellent. Won't be a problem to finish it by the end of the day tomorrow." And then the last third of the book blew the lid off. Its brilliance snuck up on me until at book's end, I was just sitting on my couch muttering in amazement to myself. I had to restrain the impulse to rush over to my library and check out all Mawer's other novels.

Um. It's about Gregor Mendel? And also this achondroplastic geneticist? And ... nah. I'm not going to explain any more. But it's SO SO SO GOOD. Seriously, if you like science in your fiction, like Andrea Barrett only (gasp!) even better, you ought to read it. Soon.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick
This is exactly the sort of book I like, gritty and thorough and so full of interesting ideas that you can't help thinking, 'hey, wait, I want more of that part!' from time to time. And told straightforwardly enough to be read while sick, but still dense and lush and full of tasty odd words and complicated sentences.

Except, that's not all. And I can't get at what I really want to say about this book, what really matters about it, because I'm sick and my brain is uncooperative, but it has something to do with it being a lot more morally complicated than most of the books I read. Not *darker*, I've read lots of things this dark, some things darker, but just ... the dark things are dark because dark things shouldn't be left out of something true; they make the story *realler*, rather than being there to be transformative or exciting or triumphed-over or shown-to-not-really-be-dark or ... bah, can't splain it, brain too fuzzed. If you just go and read it, you'll either see or you won't. Hm. Maybe?

Also, the pale man's story was something else - that's the point from which I couldn't put the book down ... though I did fall asleep for about 30 minutes with it still in my hands at one point. Woke up, kept reading. Glad to have this one in my brain.

The Animal Dialogues, by Craig Childs
I started reading this book, was irritated by the author's narrative voice, wandered off, and came back a month later to fall in love. Full of poetry and sharp observation - and the author is one of those people who takes all sorts of risks I find appealing but choose not to take, and then comes back and writes stories down for my voracious reading pleasure. I have no idea what I thought I was reading first time around - something more pretentious and less grounded, maybe?

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff
A glorious book. Lush and rambly and realistic and fantastic and funny and sad and ... Much like _Ahab's Wife_ (where you didn't need to have read Melville), you don't have to have read any Cooper to love this one.

Eden's Outcasts, by John Matteson
Very engrossing historical biography discussing Louisa May Alcott, her father Bronson, and their general circle (Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau). This won a well-merited Pulitzer - the writing is wonderful and the research is painstakingly documented. Big thumbs up.

The Country of My Skull, by Antjie Krog
This book was brilliantly written and very important. And informative. And oh holy cow, it's so sad and hard to read and I had to put it down about a million times. (Subject: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the author's experiences reporting thereon - the subtitle is Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa.)

Wesley the Owl, by Stacey O'Brien
I really only picked this up to cleanse my palate a bit and avoid burning out on travel writing, but wow! It is extremely nifty. Engaging and full of sharp observations and wry, but juuuuuust gooshy enough to push my awwww buttons. It probably helped a lot that the author had a lot of biology training, and that she was still unafraid to admit to her less rational perceptions. I cried at the (not unexpected) conclusion.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis
Idiosyncratic and inventive retelling of the Psyche story. For all that C. S. Lewis occasionally drives me crazy, his storytelling voice is one of my very most favorite narrative voices in the whole world. I LOVED this book; I'm glad I was finally made to read it.

Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, by Alison Light
The best kind of personal history. Intensely researched and delicately written. One of my favorite books this year, for sure.

How Beautiful It Is, and How Easily It Can Be Broken, by Daniel Mendelsohn
Mendelsohn writes so fluidly and so persuasively that I love to read everything he writes - even when I strongly disagree with his theses. He also has a completely endearing knack for starting an essay about a current play or movie or book with a digression - a pages-long digression - onto some seemingly unrelated piece of Classical esoterica, and then moving to the actual object of his review, and then tying everything together so that it is quite obvious what the seemingly unrelated college-lecture about some wacky lost piece of Greek literary history has to do with the subject under discussion. It's pretty nifty. Furthermore, he has re-enthused me re: wanting to catch up on my lack of Ancient Greeks and Romans.

After Man, by Dugal Dixon (reread)
This is an absolutely incredible book, detailing the author's vast imaginative act of dreaming up an entire ecosystem's worth of post-apocalyptic evolutionary forms. I LOVE this book. It's so beautiful and inventive. One of these days I will get my own copy instead of just reading a different library copy every couple of years. I wish it was still in print.

King Rat, by China Miéville
Friggin' great. LOVED this, excellent recommendation by

ilmarinen, very impressed, maybe a little bit haunted. Punkish fairy-tale-inflected horror/fantasy, with lots of drum'n'bass worked in. Thud thud thud wooo-ee.

84 Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, by Helene Hanff (my edition was a 2-in-1)
I'd been not getting around to this for years, mostly I think because I was afraid it would be too precious - and it's marvelous! The first book is a brilliant and touching letter collection. It added extra zing to the second, otherwise-not-quite-as-good book, for me, to be reading about the author's reaction to visiting some spot in London, cherished for her historical/literary associations with the place, or some other reason like the quality of light there, and then to be remembering at the same time my own visit to that exact spot ... sometimes we cherished it for the exact same reasons even (Russell Square, I'm looking at you). If you revel in books-as-objects, London, or English history, I can't see why you wouldn't like this book.