Best Books Read in 2008

I started thinking about the books I’ve read over the past year and realized this is a pretty tough decision. For non-fiction books Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Renin was certainly the most inspiring. I laughed the most reading the short stories by Ryan Boudinot collected in The Littlest Hitler. Of course, I may be biased as he writes about my hometown and a summer job I once had. My latest favorite mystery author is Ian Rankin, although Kate Atkinson comes in a close second.

I did not read a book this year that would knock anything off my top ten favorite fiction books. The book that came the closest was The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Any suggestions for good fiction books out there that I missed?

Bat 6 by Virginia Euwer Wolff

The Deschutes County Public Library is doing something a little different for this year’s A Novel Idea. For the past five years one book has been selected with the idea being that the entire county will read it, and the book will hopefully generate community discussion and interest. For past choices, see this blog post about last year’s choice, The World to Come. However, this year three books, a memoir, a young adult book, and a children’s book, were chosen.

I started with the young adult novel, Bat 6, simply because it was readily available. This book initially did not sound that interesting to me as the story revolves around a sixth grade girls’ softball game. It is told in turn by both members of rival teams as they gear up for their annual game. This game is unique as it has been played since 1899 and this year, 1949, is the 50th anniversary of that first game. However, with a Japanese-American girl home from the internment camps on one team and a girl whose father was killed during the Pearl Harbor bombings on the other, the game does not go as anticipated.

I found it an interesting book, and, of course, it reminded me of one of my favorite books, Snow Falling on Cedars. I would be curious to know how well this plays to the intended audience. Will sixth graders appreciate the book? The consequences of a simple softball game are pretty serious and extend beyond the team players to the people in the towns involved. A quote from the author on the back page of the book: “Our daily news is filled with children doing horrifying thing, and I’m fascinated by the question: What is it we notice about these kids but decide not to acknowledge?”

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

In general, I am not a fan of poems. I don’t usually get them, they’re often difficult to read, and can be too short to get into or long and rambling. However, I’d seen multiple good recommendations for Patricia Smith’s poems. She was also at The Nature of Words last month. I wish now that I would have gone to see her reading.

The poems in Blood Dazzler are set in New Orleans as Katrina approaches and devastates the city. The poems are in chronological order often with a report from the National Hurricane Center about the status of the storm or other factual information. For me this really helped to tie the poems together. The images of the storm coming are intense. From “She Sees What It Sees”:

And the levees crackled,
And baptism rushed through the ward,
Blasting the boasts from storefronts,
Sweeping away the rooted, the untethered,
Bending doors, withering the strength of stoops.

I began to wonder about Patricia Smith. Was she in New Orleans during Katrina? Her book jacket says she lives in New York. How could someone who wasn’t there capture these images? Her website didn’t really enlighten me: http://wordwoman.ws/index.html. Regardless, these are amazing poems in the way they convey the rage, terror, and helplessness surely experienced during Katrina.

From a poem titled “34”, referring to the nursing home where 34 bodies were found:

They left us. Me. Him. Our crinkled hands.
They left our hard histories, our gone children and storytells.
They left the porch creaking.
They left us to our God,
But our God was mesmerized elsewhere,
Watching His rain.

I started reading these poems the same day our newspaper had an article titled “Long after Katrina, Children Still Suffer” by Shaila Dewan. A telling sentence: “After more than three years of nomadic uncertainty, many of the children of Hurricane Katrina are behind in school, acting out and suffering from extraordinarily high rates of illness and mental health problems.” It is hard to believe that kids have lost years of schooling because of Katrina. What is going in the state or federal government that has allowed this to happen?

if they are roses by Linda Falcone

Linda Falcone writes a column for The Florentine, an English language newspaper in Florence, and this book is a compilation of her columns. It took me a little while to get into it as each column is only 2-4 pages long. I generally prefer novels to short stories and these columns are ultra-short snapshots of life. if they are roses is subtitled the italian way with words, and Falcone uses an Italian phrase in each column to illustrate a cultural trait or difference. The topics of her columns range from cooking pasta to American movies, money, fashion, food, and soccer along with others.

Here she addresses money: “It could just be me, but I’m convinced you can tell a lot about a culture by the way it talks about money. After all, money may not make the world go round, but it certainly coaxes people to turn corners quickly. Find out how a country talks about cash and you will discover its system of values.”

And here is an example of a commonly used phrase that a non-native speaker may have a hard time deciphering.
“Magari is versatile to the point of being reversible, and it can cover the entire spectrum of future possibility. For highly probable scenarios like ‘Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?’, magari is ‘Yes, I’d love to.’ For daring propositions that have ‘impossible’ written on them in red, magari means ‘nice idea-but no way.’
If you plan on living in Italy long, you’d best get used to this ambiguity. The Italian language often leaves room for interpretation, and words sway with the mood as if conversation were a sudden summer breeze.”

This book would be an excellent gift if you know a non-native heading to Italy for an extended time period, or for anyone dreaming of doing that.