Wrapping Up A Year in Reading

Year in Reading
December 24, 2008 | 14

With the year drawing to a close, so too is our Year in Reading series. We at The Millions would like to thank all of those who contributed to the series as well as all the helpful folks who assisted us in putting together such a great group of participants.

Though we are undoubtedly biased, it was a thrill to watch the series unfold this year. We discovered that Joshua Henkin liked a book by Charles D’Ambrosio, who liked a book by Nam Le, who liked a book by Toni Morrison. We discovered that two highly regarded authors (named Charles) were fans of Slash’s memoir this year. And we saw that many of our most admired writers were rediscovering (or discovering for the first time) literary legends like Saul Bellow, James Cain, Richard Brautigan, Anthony Trollope, Dostoevsky, Melville, and the aforementioned Toni Morrison.

We’d also like to thank all of our readers for a great year at The Millions. It was another year with more visitors than we’ve ever had before, but the numbers alone shed little light on the best aspects of The Millions this year, which came through in the edifying and enlightening discussion spearheaded and spurred on by our readers, guests, and regular contributors.

We’ll do a little roundup of some of the best posts at The Millions this year in a few days, but in the meantime, we’re going to take a breather from the breakneck pace of A Year in Reading.

As we enjoy the last few days of 2008, we invite all of you to take part in A Year in Reading by finishing this sentence in the comments or on your own blog: “The best book I read all year was…”

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Porochista Khakpour

Year in Reading
December 10, 2014 | 2 2 min read

I am a bit shocked to realize 2014 was the year I loved everything I read. I review books with some frequency and this year I don’t think I gave a single book a negative review — and not because I was feeling particularly giddy about art or life — I simply had the strange fortune of liking what I read. Most all of the books I reviewed this year were books I requested to review and none really disappointed. My highest recommendation out of that group goes to Helen Oyeyemi’s startling and exquisite Boy, Snow, Bird (which will also always hold a special place in my heart for getting both of us on the cover of the NYTBR.) I can also recommend Chang-rae Lee’s stunningly mystifying On Such a Full Sea; Darcey Steinke’s charming, gorgeous Sister Golden Hair; William T. Vollmann’s relentlessly haunting Last Stories. These were books I was paid to read, but frankly would have read anyway.

Out of the all the books I read for pleasure, the standout was Will Chancellor’s debut. He had the misfortune of becoming my friend or else I would have certainly tried to review A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall. This is what we writers call a BIG BOOK — the ambition here is matched by the talent and Chancellor’s storytelling abilities place him with the best. You’ve go water polo, academia, art world, and myth playing out in locations that span across the globe from Palo Alto to Iceland. And, well, I’m a sucker for father-son epics and novels that at least partially and unabashedly deal in ideas.

Speaking of ideas, two more, books that were unlike anything else: one came from a writer I know well and love wildly, the Chinese avant garde writer Can Xue and her second English-translated novel The Last Lover. I don’t know what to say — it is as ever very hard to piece and probe and dissect and even just arrange in a line, but the pleasure for me of reading her is reading something truly surreal in our time, an era where so many books feel painfully, embarrassingly, appallingly safe. On the other side is someone I’d never read before: T.J. Clark. I’m lucky to know a lot of excellent art historians and a visit to a venerable Midwest art department resulted in my picking up and falling in love with this art historian’s work. His The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing came out in 2006 and is simply a collection of personal, political, and philosophical musings and meditations on two Nicolas Poussin painting that were hanging in a room in the Getty in 2000. For several hundred pages, this diary where seemingly nothing happens cast a very strong spell over me, and I still don’t know how he did it.

Maybe to some “Novel of Ideas” or “Books of Ideas” sound like critical and commercial death sentences, but they have always been my page-turners, and especially in 2014 and undoubtedly onward. May we not fear concepts, philosophies, themes in a time (all times?) when it feels like our survival depends on it.

More from A Year in Reading 2014

Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles

The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews

Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, and follow The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

Year in Reading
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14 comments:

  3. The best book I read all year was… also Never Let Me Go by Kasuo Ishiguro. And the best new book was Netherland by Joseph O'Neill.

  6. Fiction: Stoner by John Williams.
    Non-Fiction: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.
    Poetry: Ooga-Booga by Friedrich Siegel.

    year of publication irrelevant!

  7. …not yet determined, because the year isn't over yet. I probably have another two books to go, and either of those could be brilliant.

  8. Non-Fiction: American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
    Fiction: His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman. (Ignore the movie.)

  10. The best book I read [for the first time] all year was Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto"; the beest book I read [again] all year was Dickens's "Bleak House."

  11. The best book I read all year comes out of this group:

    The After Life by Kathleen Stewart
    The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island by Chloe Hooper
    The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
    The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
    Disquiet by Julia Leigh
    The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
    The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers
    Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

    Sorry, can't separate them, all unforgettable.

    Cheers to The Millions!

  12. Fiction:
    #1 Edgar Sawtelle, then in no order
    Lush Life-Richard Price
    Cellist of Sarajevo – Steven Galloway
    Out Stealing Horses-Per Petterson
    The Other – David Guterson
    all 5 Ripleys – Patricia Highsmith
    Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penney
    The English Major – Jim Harrison
    Katherine Weber – Triangle and The Music Lesson
    St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
    Desertion – Abdulrazak Gurnah
    currently: The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg–so far very good
    Non Fiction:
    The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
    The Ghost Map – Steven Johnson
    The End of Food – Paul Roberts
    The Soloist – Steve Lopez
    Enrique's Journey – Sonia Nazario
    The Good Good Pig – Sy Montgomery
    The Zookeeper's Wife – Diane Ackerman
    Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
    A Spring Wihtout Bees-Michael Schacker
    Deep Economy – Bill McKibben
    To See Every Bird on Earth – Dan Koeppel
    The Horses of Proud Spirit – Melanie Bowles

    I retired this year and my dream came true–unlimited reading time, averaging 13 books a month. Is this heaven or what?

  14. My ten favs from '08:
    1) Revolutionary Road
    2) The Human Stain
    3) The End of Vandalism
    4) The Things They Carried
    5) The Prince of the Marshes
    6) On Chesil Beach
    7) His Dark Materials trilogy
    8) Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs
    9) Mountains Beyond Mountains
    10) The Audacity of Hope

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Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Emma Straub

Year in Reading
December 8, 2011 | 1 2 min read

This was a sad year for my bookshelves. Most of my favorite books of 2011 were full-on sob-fests, stories that had me reaching for the tissue box as often as I turned the page. Meghan O’Rourke’s memoir The Long Goodbye, written about her mother’s death, is honest and vivid, written with a poet’s precise use of language. The observations of illness and grief are both exacting and heartwrenching, and I hiccuped so loudly while reading it that I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the police. Darrin Strauss’s Half A Life, a slip of a book about accidentally hitting (and killing) a high-school classmate with his car, was a meditation on guilt and sadness, and I think I read it in one sitting. Furious Love, Sam Kashner’s biography of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s extremely tortured love affair, made me simultaneously disappointed and relieved that my husband is not an alcoholic Welshman with a penchant for poetry.

Of course, fiction can be sad, too: Justin Torres’ We The Animals made me want to go grocery shopping, clean the house, and take better care of my imaginary children. Jessica Francis Kane’s novel The Report made me afraid to walk up or down subway stairs, for fear of being crushed to death. My favorite novel of the year, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child, is one of the most melancholy books of all, following a writer’s legacy for decades after his death. That, my friends, will not only make you cry, but also question your entire existence, and everything you know about your favorite writers, and if that isn’t worth reading, then I don’t know what is.

More from A Year in Reading 2011

Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles

The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews

Like what you see? Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

Year in Reading
| 1 2 min read
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