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.

Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Cristina Henríquez

Year in Reading
December 21, 2009
Of the many books I enjoyed this year, the ones that stuck with me the most were all nonfiction, not my usual arena for reading. Of those, the one book I read in 2009 that I haven’t stopped thinking about and that awed me in a way that made me want to ask more of myself both as a writer and as a person was a volume called Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays by Eula Biss. These are essays about race, but they are far more honest and thoughtful than the treatment that topic usually inspires. The first piece, which begins as a history lesson about the humble telephone pole and swiftly turns into the darker history of lynchings from those same poles, took my breath away. Every essay after that made me stop, made me think, made me rethink, made me reread, made me question, and made me see. I found I was dogearing nearly every other page, scribbling in the margins. The book is as graceful and serious as any I’ve read not only this year, but in recent memory, which, despite the gravity of the subject matter, made me feel unexpectedly hopeful about the direction in which the world is headed. More from A Year in Reading
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: Bruna Dantas Lobato

Year in Reading
December 20, 2015 | 3 min read
I read Rivka Galchen’s American Innovations back in January, during a harsh winter I spent in the suburbs of Boston. I had just started drafting the first attempts at a story collection of my own, about displacement and being a stranger in one’s own home. It’s no surprise, then, that I’d been searching for the stories I wish I’d written, stories in which characters wonder: where did my life, my memories, my language, and home go? My journey has inevitably colored my reading of Galchen’s text. In the strongest story in the collection, “Sticker Shock,” a mother and daughter grow apart. The mother, a real estate agent, wishes she could live in the well-lit apartment she’s selling to a Swedish client. Eventually, the client doesn’t buy the spacious studio with its tall windows and smooth floors, because it doesn’t feel "homey." New York “is a city of compromises.” The implication is that if he doesn’t like the best place she could find in the city, he might never be satisfied anywhere. The final story, “Once an Empire,” finds a Brooklyn woman watching the contents of her apartment walk down the fire escape. These are characters who look for comfort in family and friends, living spaces, familiar objects from childhood, but, in the end, they find no answers -- home is nowhere to be found. In the title story, the narrator wakes up one day to find that her body has changed: now she has a third boob on her back. Her doctor considers what might have triggered her condition. He asks her, any “losses you haven’t accepted?” And the patient answers, “Not really. I mean, I’m far from home. But I guess we’re all far, right?” Right. The voices that narrate this collection are strong and, at times, distant. American Innovations begs the question of the limits of our bodies and the spaces they occupy. I also admired Kirstin Valdez Quade’s Night at the Fiestas, which I read a couple of weeks ago during my commute to and from work. I was struck by the tenderness of these stories set against the unforgiving landscapes of New Mexico. “Nemecia” (which was eventually chosen for The Best American Short Stories 2013) is Valdez Quade’s tour de force, a vivid piece about family ties and community. Of course I read many other books that are worthy of mention. These included Ferreira Gullar’s 60-page poem on exile, Dirty Poem (which I reviewed for another publication), Michael Dumanis’s My Soviet Union, a devastating poetry collection about a country that no longer exists, as well as Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary, a book that deconstructs language and exposes its violence. As for works of nonfiction, I fell in love with Valeria Luiselli’s Sidewalks, an essay collection I’ve already read twice this year. Luiselli explores urban spaces, melancholy, and the very concept of home. “Perhaps a person only has two real residences: the childhood home and the grave,” she writes. “All the other places we inhabit are mere gray spectrum of that first dwelling.” More from A Year in Reading 2015 Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2014, 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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