Reading Roundup: The Best Books of 2014

Here's my list of the best books I read in 2014 (out of a total of what I think will be 89, still have a few days to go!):

1. The Selected Letters of Willa Cather
2. Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere - Poe Ballantine
3. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante
4. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
5. The Sound of Things Falling - Juan Gabriel Vasquez
6. The Dogs Bark - Truman Capote
7. The Night in Question - Tobias Wolff
8. The Wind - Dorothy Scarborough
9. The Descendants - Kaui Hart Hemmings
10. The People in the Trees - Hanya Yanagihara
Honorable mentions: 
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories - Norman Maclean, One Foot in Eden - Ron Rash, First Comes Love - Marion Winik, The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles, In a Narrow Grave - Larry McMurtry, In the Place of Justice - Wilbert Rideau, The One-Room Schoolhouse - Jim Heynen
Most looking forward to reading in 2015:
1. Dorothy Day, Selected Writings
2. Faces in the Crowd - Valeria Luiselli
3. The Barracks - John McGahern
4. The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
5. The Story of a New Name - Elena Ferrante
6. My Struggle - Karl Ove Knausgaard
7. The World and the Parish - Willa Cather
8. Two Serious Ladies - Jane Bowles
9. Working Days: The Journals of the Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
10. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Suzuki
And as many of the other 80+ books on my "to read" list as possible!

The Wild West, Two Ways

I recently read two books back to back that prominently feature the American West, in two very different ways.  The first was Molly Gloss' Falling From Horses, which is a straightforward and really touching story that follows the lives of two young people setting out to California to try to carve out a life for themselves in Hollywood - one as a screen writer and the other as a horse rider in Western movies.  The year is 1938, and Lily Shaw and ranch hand Bud Frazer meet on the bus as they travel to Los Angeles for the first time, and ultimately become life long friends.  We learn about Bud's difficult past regarding his sister and his family, and about his coming of age in Hollywood.  It was the first book I read by Gloss, and I plan to try another one.  The writing style reminded me in a way of Kent Haruf.  

The second book was John Williams' Butcher's Crossing.  Set in the 1870s, the book tells the story of young Will Andrews, who drops out of Harvard and heads West to explore his own "wildness" and learn more of the natural world.  He finds himself in Butcher's Crossing, Kansas, where he decides to put together an outfit of four men who will travel on a buffalo hunt.  The book perfectly captures the restlessness and sense of adventure of men in those times.  The men encounter difficulties along the way, and ultimately end up snowed in, in a valley in the Colorado Rockies for the winter, as they were so caught up with the greed and excitement of killing buffalo that they lost track of time.  

Both of these books caught me off guard - they were well written, captivating, and just plain old fashioned great story telling.  Both are recommended!

A Breath of Fresh Texas Air

William Goyen's The House of Breath (published in 1950, and Goyen's first work) was recently listed as a recommended book in Texas Monthly magazine, of which I am a subscriber. I also finally figured out how to use "LINK +" with the Oakland Public Library system, so was able to get this book on loan from another library system.  It was a book like none I have ever read before - the narrative structure and writing style is wholly unique to Goyen.  It is poetic and evocative, and brims with memories of small town life in Charity, Texas.  The style reminded me a bit of Faulkner and a bit of Garcia Marquez.   These days I'm more drawn to realistic fiction, so I didn't love the unconventional style but I appreciated some of the beautiful phrases in the book.  Here are some of my favorite passages (with spelling as it appears in the book):

"Everything then, working with and upon everything - with accompanying resistance and damage and error but turning out something changed, finished, prepared to receive something more, to take in and take on something more:  pain, wisdom, love.  This great, mysterious chemistry going on - praise it."

"Aunty just got up from her chair on the gallery and said in at the front door, "Seven years bad luck little feist," for the broken mirror.  (Oh, she had it, seven and more.)"

"I'd lie there in my bed and want to die, and think - is this what parents have to come to, a creepin at night through room and room with a shotgun after the ghosts of their children who've gone away and left them lonely and sleepless and chokin in the night?"

"O what's the meanin of it all?  There must be some meanin somewhere - it cain't all be just this rabblement and helter-skelter."

"We ought to see it that we make good memry for ourselves, like a slow and perfect stitchin, as we go along, and embroidry a good and lovely memry out of all the tread we one day have to set, alone, and unravel, stitch by stitch."

"You didn't want to flicker around East Texas, you wanted to blaze in the world, to sparkle, to shine, to glisten in the great evil world."

In the Place of Justice

Wilbert Rideau's In the Place of Justice:  A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, is a memoir of Rideau's forty four years spent in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola prison).  Rideau killed a woman at the age of nineteen in a bank robbery attempt and was sentenced to death, a sentence that was eventually changed to life imprisonment.  Many years later, his murder conviction was changed to manslaughter, after it was determined he had not been given a fair trial because of racial discrimination.  While at Angola, he became the editor of the prison magazine, The Angolite.  Under his editorship, Rideau won many awards for journalism, and The Angolite was nominated multiple times for the National Magazine Award under his leadership.  Rideau even became an NPR correspondent from Angola.  He was the first African American editor of prison magazine in the U.S. This unflinching, honest account of Rideau's life explores issues of race, power, and the concept of redemption.  Very interesting and thought provoking - highly recommended.

A Poe to Know

For many years now, I've had the opportunity to read Poe Ballantine's work in The Sun magazine, a publication known for its raw, honest, gut wrenching writing.  I recently read Ballantine's Fear and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere, and Things I Like About America, and I very highly recommend both of them. Both of them capture Ballantine's humor, grit, resolve, and fabulous writing, as he writes of his life as a drifter with blue collar jobs, to his eventually getting married and settling down in Chadron, Nebraska, with his wife and son.  I've never met him (though I would love to go to a reading of his someday!), but I feel like I know Ballantine very well after these two books.  He's that great, "undiscovered" writer that you haven't heard of, but beware - he's going to get big someday.  In fact, Cheryl Strayed (of Wild and tiny beautiful things), wrote the intro to Fear and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere, and really sums it up best when she says, "Wow.  Yes.  Jesus. Poe."  His books probably aren't available at your local library, but why not support a local independent press, and purchase some of Poe's books?  You won't regret it!

On the Road with McMurtry

I'm a huge fan of Larry McMurtry's non-fiction, even more so than his fiction.  I'm thinking of his memoir Books, and his essays on Texas, In a Narrow Grave.  Here are some of my favorite quotes from his book, Roads:

"It may be that the Midwest produces a distinct kind of disappointment, which, in some, becomes murderous resentment.  I think this disappointment has to do with glamour - or rather, with the lack of it."

"What would America, much less ldaho, be without waitresses named Kitty?"

Roads reminded me somewhat of Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America, except that admittedly, without a Charley (or other side kick), it wasn't quite as entertaining.  However, I wrote down some of the routes that McMurtry recommends (highway 2, highway 83), and I can't wait to drive them someday!

The Book of Unknown Americans

Cristina Henriquez's The Book of Unknown Americans weaves together the interlocking stories of a group of Latino immigrants living in the same run down apartment complex in Delaware.  Through the eyes of these characters, we come to feel what it would be like, for example, to be dropped off in a less than idyllic setting (with thoughts of the "American Dream" quickly pushed aside), with hardly any possessions and no knowledge of English.  The book centers around the story of Alma and Arturo Rivera, who come to the United States seeking medical help for their impaired daughter who had an accident in Mexico.  Despite Arturo's efforts at work and Alma's efforts to protect her daughter and create a feeling of home, there are no simple answers or quick fixes, and in fact, some of these characters face even more tragedy in the U.S. than they did at home.  Henriquez doesn't sugar coat the lives of her characters, and in avoiding doing so, she brings the reader face to face with the realities of many "Unknown Americans," in all of their heartbreaks and struggles.

Kaui Hart Hemmings - master of hilarity and heartbreak

Hemmings' The Descendants finds the perfect balance between hilarity and heartbreak, and she does it again in The Possibilities. The novel follows Sarah St. John's grieving the loss of her 22 year old son, Cully, who died in an avalanche near Breckenridge, CO. Hemmings takes us into the inner workings of Sarah as she comes to grips with this devastation in her life, as she navigates her relationship with her own father, Cully's father who comes back into her life, and a young woman who holds a secret that links her to Cully and therefore to Sarah.  Set over the course of just a few days, this novel explores the messiness and beauty of familial ties and love.  Hemmings is a brilliant talent - I recommend starting with The Descendants, as I think this is her stronger of the two!

A Mouthful of Murakami

Murakami is one of those rare authors with a cult following, and I've read all of his works and wait in anticipation of his next book (I hear there is a new one coming not too long from now)!  I was thrilled to go to the library to pick up Murakami's new book, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  The novel tells the story of Tsukuru and his group of friends in high school, all who have a color in his last name except for him.  Feeling the most colorless and bland of the bunch (similar to other Murakami protagonists), Tsukuru goes off to college to study engineering and while there, learns that his friends want nothing to do with him anymore and cut him off completely.  Tsukuru, now 36, is hoping to form a serious relationship with a girl he has recently met, but she encourages him to find out why his friends cut him off as this seems to be preventing Tuskuru from forming a deep, trusting relationship with her.  Tsukuru decides to meet up with his friends to discover why they cut him off years ago.  This is classic Murakami - impossible to put down but I couldn't really tell you why.  On the one hand, Murakami often pays attention to very small seemingly bland details (we hear all about characters daily rituals and ablutions), but also writes in somewhat of a dreamlike manner.  All in all, I love Murakami's writing.  This wasn't my absolute favorite of his, but it was interesting and engaging.   

Two Great First Novels

Ron Rash is one of my favorite contemporary Southern writers.  His novel Serena and his short stories Burning Bright, are very memorable and readable.  One Foot in Eden, Rash's first novel, is an atmospheric tale of love, loyalty, and family ties that takes place in rural Appalachia in the 1950s.  It was totally riveting - couldn't put it down!  Billy and Amy Holcombe, a young married couple, try to get pregnant, but after failing to do so, Amy makes a decision that yields her a son, Isaac, but ultimately costs her more than she could have imagined.  

Tobias Wolff is one of those authors where each of his works must be savored, as he is spare in words and not as prolific as some of his contemporaries.  His first novel, The Barracks Thief, explores the relationships between three young paratroopers before being sent off to the Vietnam War.  While narrow in breadth and short in length, Wolff shows off his ability to create flawed characters that we root for and with whom we sympathize.

I highly recommend Rash and Wolff!

Library Love

Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House is a story of romantic love that transcends the boundaries of age and physicality.  Misanthropic and lonely Peggy Cort is the local librarian in a small town on Cape Cod.  She comes to befriend a boy named James who visits the library and who has one literally fatal flaw - he can't stop growing due to a problem with his pituitary gland, and literally becomes the gentle giant of the town, as well as a tourist attraction and spectacle.  Forced to live on his own in a large house made just for him, Peggy tends to his every need and is attuned to his soul.  The love story is quite compelling, though the ancillary characters didn't seem to have much to add to the story.  A good, though sad, summer read.

A Female Cormac McCarthy?!

Courtney Collins' debut novel, The Untold, has the grit, realism, brutality, and beauty similarly captured in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy novels.  While the writing and setting is stylistically similar, Collins has a distinctive voice.  In this novel, she tells the story of real-life Jessie Hickman, a horse thief living in the Australian outback in the 1920s, on the run from her law.  It's a beautiful read that moves at a quick pace.  However, given the austerity of the novel, I'm not sure it will stick with me for a long time.  Just as I was getting to know the characters more intimately, the book ended, but perhaps this was intentionally.  Jessie Hickman was elusive to those around her, and while she stays in our grasp while we are reading, she slips away in the end.  Recommended!

An Oldie, A Goodie

Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, is classic Americana at its best.  I enjoyed all three stories in this collection.  There is a serenity and simplicity to the stories, but also a subtle complexity to the characters and their internal worlds.  Plus, the back drop of the stories is described in beautiful but not overly flowery language.  And, Maclean is funny too.  All in all, its worth taking a few sunny afternoons and settling into these novels, in which the waters flow smoothly on the surface but rumble with depth just under the surface.

More on Marfa

Tony Cano's The Other Side of the Tracks is a book I learned of when I visited Marfa, TX for the first time last year.  Cano's book follows the coming of age of a Mexican teenage boy in the 1950s in Marfa, when he and his friends, who call themselves The Chinglers, begin to challenge the unspoken racial divide between Mexicans and whites living in small-town Marfa.  Cano writes of dynamics on school sports teams, local establishments, and young love between Mexicans and "Anglos."  While the writing isn't beautiful, the pace is good and Cano's voice is authentic and draws the reader in to day to day life at that time, and to the protagonist's thoughts about being treated as lesser by many whites in the town.  I'm fascinated with all things Marfa, so this book provided a new lens through which to see this unique place.

The Sound of Things Falling

Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vasquez hits it out of the ballpark with his novel The Sound of Things Falling.  From the first page to the last, this book had me absolutely riveted.  Its a quiet, almost sleeper sort of book, and the translation is gorgeous.  The narrator is a young law professor named Antonio Yammara, who meets Ricardo Leverde at the local pool hall.  As he slowly learns about Leverde's life, and in particular, the love of his life Elaine Fritts who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, he becomes more intrigued and intertwined with Leverde's story, eventually leading him to meet Leverde's daughter who lives a reclusive life as a beekeeper outside of Bogota.  A really beautiful, captivating book, ultimately about how we can become intertwined in each other's life stories, which can both wound us and heal us deeply.  Read this one!

Still Crying Wolff

It's a shame Tobias Wolff only wrote a few books, because his writing is fantastic.  Old School is the story of a boy in prep school who is a young aspiring writer.  With guest appearances by Robert Frost and Ayn Rand!  Wolff writes in a gritty but very poetic way - a rare combination.  He is a must read.

The Very Best Kind of Dysfunctional Family

Matt King's wife lies in a coma, and his daughters, Scottie and Alex are suddenly under his full charge.  Thus begins Kaui Hart Hemmings' The Descendants, a really good novel which captures the true messiness of families with unflinching dialogue and total resistance to tying any scene with a neat bow.  It's wonderfully caustic and immensely readable.  Can't wait to read The Possibilities, coming out soon!

Perla

Carolina De Robertis' Perla is a fascinating book that explores the life of a young Argentine woman living in Buenos Aires, as she comes to face the reality of her own family history.  Perla's father is a naval officer who was involved in the military dictatorship in which thousands of Argentinian citizens disappeared, yet she is drawn to a young man who is a journalist who reports on the disappeared, creating a significant tension in her life.  A ghostly figure appears in Perla's living room, who holds the key to Perla's understanding where she has come from.  Blending sensuality with brutality, realism and surrealism, De Robertis' has crafted an interesting tale.  However, the language was overly flowery for me and the element of the ghostly figure was a bit overdone.  Nonetheless, a good read. 

A Trip to Turkey

A friend recently recommended Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul.  Shafak is one of the most outspoken and acclaimed Turkish female writers.  This novel focuses on the women in an Armenian American family and in a Turkish family.  While the novel deals with very serious subject matter (for which the author may have landed herself in prison in Turkey though the charges were eventually dismissed), it also is filled with wacky characters and a good dose of wit and humor.  Spanning topics from genocide, repression, tattoos, and Johnny Cash, this book weaves together both Western and Eastern storytelling and characters, and made for a very illuminating and fascinating read, and exposed me to a slice of history I knew nothing about prior to picking up this book.  I definitely look forward to reading Shafak's other novels.

The People in the Trees

Every now and then I pick up a book and literally cannot put it down.  I read Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel The People in the Trees in two days, despite it being nearly 500 pages long.  It is a tale so absorbing, fantastical, and shocking, that it captured me from the get go.  Dr. Norton Perina visits a Micronesian island where he makes a game changing discovery about a native tribe that has found a way to maintain immortality.  We learn from the very beginning that Perina has been convicted of terrible crimes, but it isn't until the end of the novel that all is revealed.  Perina, as antihero, keeps us riveted as the story unfolds though we want to look away at the same time.  Totally fascinating read - highly recommended. 

Hello again, Columbus

I recently re-read Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth, and loved it all over again.  So much wit, complicated relationships, and just great storytelling.  It is a must read!

Crying Wolff

Tobias Wolff's short story collection The Night in Question is simple in design but subtly and beautifully crafted.  Each story grabs the reader right away, due to Wolff's ability to convey a scene in a manner that is so realistic that you can imagine his characters as your own neighbors.  I'm officially a fan of Wolff, having also really enjoyed his memoir This Boy's Life.  Next, time to read Old School!

Seeking Shelter

I have had The Sheltering Sky on my "to read" list for many years.  I finally got around to reading it and found it utterly fascinating.  It tells the story of three American travelers to North Africa after WWII, and focuses on their alienation, isolation, and ultimately, despair as they navigate life in a different culture of which they have little knowledge and much naivete.  The novel takes a shocking turn at the end, highly unexpected.  Definitely a classic and well worth the read, despite somewhat of a slow start. 

Love Actually

In her unflinching and heartbreaking memoir First Comes Love, Marion Winik tackles one of the most intimate subjects - romantic love.  Winik recounts the story of falling in love with her husband Tony, a gay man.  Despite this challenge, their love is fierce, volatile, and deep.  After building a family together and having two sons, Tony passes away due to AIDS.  This book proves that love has no boundaries, and that it can be infinitely beautiful and equally devastating.  Very moving and emotional read. 

Wow! Ozeki

I didn't know much about A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki, before I opened the book, other than that it is a nominated for the 2013 National Book Critic's Circle Award.  And wow!  It was such an inventive, readable, heartbreaking, intelligent, funny novel.  The story links together the lives and voices of a 16-year old girl named Nao who lives in Tokyo, after moving to Japan after her father loses a good tech job in Sunnyvale, CA, with Ruth, a writer in Canada.  Picked on mercilessly in school and dealing with her overworked mother and suicidal father, Nao takes to journaling to express herself, and to try and tell the story of her 104-year old great grandmother Jiko, a Buddhist zun.  Nao's diary is found on the shore by Ruth, a writer living on an island in British Columbia after the Japanese tsunami in 2011.  I found myself more considerably more interested in the parts of the novel told by Nao's perspective, but overall, this was like nothing I've read before.  Refreshing - read it!

Rags and Riches

There are many Doctorow books that I really enjoyed (my most favorite being World's Fair), and while Ragtime was filled with interesting characters and sub-plots, it felt overly peopled and without focus.  Doctorow employs an interesting technique of including both real people (Emma Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, etc.), with fictional characters.  While he captures the excitement of New York City in the early 1900s before WWI and focuses on ideas and events critical to that era in American history, there was no one story line that truly engaged me. 

Deep in Detroit

LeDuff, a native Detroiter, blends personal history and journalism in Detroit: An American Autopsy.  With grit and unflinching detail, LeDuff highlights Detroit's challenges and characters, and gives us a glimpse of day to day life in what used to be one of America's most prosperous cities.  While this book won't give you all of the historical background, its more personal and storied approach to portraying life in this city is highly effective and readable.  One can only hope that over time, this city ravaged by unemployment, a failed school system, over 70,000 abandoned buildings, and political corruption can rise from its ashes. 

A New Nigerian Voice

Chinelo Okparanta's debut, Happiness, Like Water, focuses mainly on African women navigating intimate relationships and hard choices.  Raised in Nigeria and an immigrant to the U.S. (with an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, no less), Okparanta is a fresh, strong voice in fiction.  These stories are simply and deftly constructed.  I look forward to a novel from Okparanta!

Capote Captures it All

Truman Capote is one of my favorite writers of all time, and his book The Dogs Bark:  Public People and Private Places, demonstrates his wit, sense of humor, and incredibly astute eye for detail.  He writes about many different people (Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Isak Dinesen, etc.) and places (New Orleans, Brooklyn, Russia, Japan, etc.).  Some of my favorite quotes:

From New Orleans:  Miss Y. does not believe in the world beyond N.O. ; at times her insularity results, as it did today, in rather chilling remarks.  I had mentioned a recent trip to New York, whereupon she, arching an eyebrow, replied gently, "Oh?  And how are things in country?"

From New York:  Could it be that the transition from innocence to wisdom happens in that moment when we discover not all the world loves us?

From Brooklyn:  I wanted to blow her up.  She's a stinking pig; she and Cook have it fixed up between them never to give me any chocolate sauce so she can gobble it all her big fat self.

From A Ride Through Spain:  In our compartment, the dark , dusty mother sat just as we had left her.  She had not seen fit to join the party.  She gave me a long, glittering look.  "Bandidos," she said, with a surly, unnecessary vigor.  

From Self Portrait:  Not long ago my doctor suggested that I adopt a hobby other than wine-tasting and fornication.  He asked if I could think of anything.  "Yes, murder."  He laughed, we both did, except I wasn't laughing.  Poor man, little did he know what a painful and perfect demise I'd planned for him when, after eight days abed with something closely resembling black cholera, he still refused to pay me a house call. 

And I truly loved Capote's account of a raven with clipped wings who he comes to care for,  named Lola. 

On the run in NC

I read Wiley Cash's second novel this dark road to mercy, in two sittings.  Told from three different perspectives, it is a tale with momentum and build up.  Set in North Carolina, the novel centers around 12 year-old Esther Quillby and her younger sister, who both are in foster care given the death of their mother from an overdose and their absent father, Wade.  Wade shows up in the middle of the night and whisks the girls away.  Two other men are on his trail - the first, Brady Weller, the girls' court appointed guardian, and the second, Robert Pruitt, an acquaintance of Wade's nursing an old vendetta.  This is a quick read but once I finished, the story didn't linger in my mind.  I did not enjoy this nearly as much as Cash's first novel, a land more kind than home, which I found to be more memorable and atmospheric. 

The Reason I Jump

The Reason I Jump is written by a thirteen year old Japanese boy with autism, and includes his frank and thoughtful answers to questions about people along the autism spectrum.  It was one of the most interesting accounts of autism I have read.  Here are some highlights from Naoki Higashida's responses:

"Every single time I'm talked down to, I end up feeling utterly miserable - as if I'm being given zero chance of a decent future."  
"The truth is, we'd love to be with other people.  But because things never, ever go right, we end up getting used to being alone, without even noticing this is happening."
""We can put up with our own hardships okay, but the though that our lives are the source of other people's unhappiness, that's plain unbearable."  

Naoki conveys the challenges of life with autism, but also conveys a sense for hope that with compassion, we can help people with autism and that those with autism can also help the rest of us understand how they think and move through the world. 

The Last Time I Read Richard

With Young Hearts Crying, I have now read all of Yates' books, which include novels and short stories.  They are all stellar and sharp, and I highly recommend Yates despite how depressing his work is.  Young Hearts Crying tells the story of a failed marriage between a young couple, Michael and Lucy, who struggle to find meaningful connections to each other, their friends, and their artistic passions.   My favorite Yates work is The Easter Parade, mainly because it shows off Yates' wit and humor which can often get lost in his other novels.  Yates perfectly captured a particular American epoch, and I see him as very important to our literary canon. 

A First Novel

I've heard a great deal about Anthony Marra's debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.  The novel spans the 1990s through 2004 and takes the reader to a wintry village in Chechnya.  Havaa, an eight year-old girl, is taken under the wing of a family friend named Akhmed after her father is abducted by Russian soldiers.  Akhmed takes Havaa to the local hospital where a woman named Sonja is the sole surgeon.  This is a very well written, heartbreaking novel that explores family and loyalty, tenderness and brutality.  Most interesting for me was the fact that Marra's novel exposed me to a topic and region that I knew very little about.   This was an eye opening read, and what I got most out of the novel was the eduction that it provided. 

Lee's New Direction

Chang-Rae Lee's fifth novel On Such a Full Sea, is a significant departure from his other works which all had a firm footing in realism.  On Such a Full Sea is set in a dystopian future in the United States, based in a city called B-Mor, and focuses on a young woman named Fan.  I was very intrigued by the beginning of the novel, but it lost my interest toward the end.  I have never been a fan of novels bordering on the sci-fi, as this one does.  Nonetheless, Lee's writing is well-crafted, and the oddness of the story drew me in, plus he explores major themes such as individualism versus the common good.  I would recommend starting with Lee's Native Speaker or Aloft, both of which I enjoyed immensely. 

2013 wrap up/2014 preview

The best 10 books I read in 2013 were:

1. My Antonia - Willa Cather 
2. The Grass Harp - Truman Capote 
3. America and Americans - John Steinbeck 
4. The Gift of Asher Lev - Chaim Potok
5. All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
6. World's Fair - E.L. Doctorow
7. How to Cook a Wolf - MFK Fisher
8. tiny beautiful things - Cheryl Strayed 
9. Rock Springs - Richard Ford
10. Serena - Ron Rash

Honorable mentions: Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , Ordinary Grace - William Kent Krueger, A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor, Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry, The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo, A Lost Lady - Willa Cather, O Pioneers! - Willa Cather

Most looking forward to reading in 2014:

1. On Such a Full Sea - Chang-rae Lee
2. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena - Anthony Marra
3. These Were Hard Times - Tim Egan
4. Detroit - Charlie Leduff
5. The Other Side of the Tracks - Tony Cano
6. The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson
7. Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
8. The People in the Trees - Hanya Yanagihara
9. Young Man With a Horn - Dorothy Baker
10. Happiness, Like Water - Chinelo Okparanta

First novel of 2014: Tartt-astic!

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt's third novel, is over 700 pages long.  I never once looked at the page number I was on, or flipped forward to see how many pages were left in a particular chapter, and that is one of the highest complements I can give, especially to such a behemoth book.  This is an engrossing, dizzying, rollicking, heartbreaking book.  I felt like I was along for the (roller coaster) ride of Theo Decker's life, as he comes to reconcile his mother's death and his isolation in the world.  This was a great novel!

Solnit's San Francisco

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, is a beautiful "coffee table" book that represents San Francisco in a variety of unique and compelling ways, and includes beautiful maps of the city.  The maps tend to focus on two seemingly dichotomous ideas, such as "death and beauty" which pinpoints the 99 murders in San Francisco in 2008 juxtaposed with the location of the city's cypress trees.  Another map, "poison/palate" highlights many of the "foodie" artisan gourmet food locations such as the Straus Family Creamery and the Alemany Farmers Market along with "poison sites" such as the Mount Diablo mercury mine and the Port of Oakland.  Overall, this is a refreshing and intriguing representation of San Francisco, and highlights its infinite nature.  The best part of book is by far the maps themselves.  I didn't get that much from the narratives accompanying the maps (with some notable exceptions, such as the narrative that discusses the effect of the Great Migration on San Francisco) and the photos did nothing for me.  Solnit has a new book out called Unfathomable City, her take on New Orleans.  Solnit is fascinated by and seems to have a deep understanding of urban landscapes.

Lean In, Breathe Out

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In:  Women, Work, and the Will to Lead encourages women to try to overcome both the external and internal barriers that prevent women from gaining power and taking advantage of (or better yet, envisioning and creating) leadership opportunities in the workplace.  I thought the most interesting parts of the books were the recent statistics and studies that Sandberg highlights about men and women in the workplace, rather than Sandberg's personal journey from her college days to her now being the COO of Facebook.  Having gone to an MBA program that focuses largely on women's leadership, and having read many books by feminists, I didn't find much of what Sandberg wrote to be new information, though it did confirm and mirror some of my own experiences in the workplace.  The dean of the Mills College MBA program wrote a response article entiled, "Women can move up if men 'lean in'" in which she states, "Sandberg's strategy for change confounds me" because she felt that Sandberg, "continues to place the onus for change on women" as opposed to encouraging men to "lean in" as advocates and allies of women so that they can advance to leadership positions.  I agree with Sands that it is equally, if not more important for men to read Sandberg's manifesto.