Some people say there are too many literary awards. I say there are not enough.
The 2012 Janet Potter Awards for Literary Achievement
Best Re-read
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Since 2005, I’ve been telling people that Cloud Atlas is my favorite novel, even as a detailed memory of the book faded. A high-stakes re-read in October determined whether I can continue to make that claim. I can.
Best Departure from Form
Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
Rowling’s novel about small town politics, unhappy families, and class warfare is a melancholy affair, although the towns and streets still have adorable names and the villains are still buffoons. Having proven that she has an edgy side, I hope she’ll let the pendulum stop somewhere between fantasy and tragedy for the next one.
Funniest
Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson
(While recreating one of James Bond’s journeys, Ronson stalls a borrowed Aston Martin in the middle of an intersection.)
Passersby shake their heads witheringly at me. I think they’re mistaking my ineptitude for arrogance. Were I in my customary crappy car, they’d understand my stalling for what it is. Instead, they’re seeing a fabulously sleek Aston Martin braking abruptly, then revving like a lunatic. They probably think it’s my sick, slightly odd way of conveying superiority over them.
I reach the ferry. I wind down the window. ‘It’s not my car!’ I shout gaily at the immigration officer.
Most Descriptions of Characters’ Butts
Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.
By a mile.
Best Use of Emails as Character Development
Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
This motif usually grates on me, but Semple’s fictional emails are superb parody and woven in nicely. I wish she’d email me.
Most Dissonant Reading Experience
Listening to the audiobook of Julia Child’s My Life in France in the car while eating drive-thru McDonald’s.
Best Comedy of Manners
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. We had all had our supper, or were supposed to have had it, and were met together to discuss the arrangements for the Christmas bazaar. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look, “Do we need tea?” she echoed. “But Miss Lathbury…” She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realize that my questions had struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind.
I mumbled something about making a joke and that of course one needed tea always, at every hour of the day or night.
Most Belated Reading Experience
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
The first time I ever intentionally didn’t finish an assignment was when my fourth grade class read The Hobbit. I found it so mind-numbingly boring that I stopped reading it, probably in favor of something in the Black Stallion series, but then had to sit through class discussions of the book in a cold sweat of fear and guilt. On January 5, 2012, I finished The Hobbit.
Strongest Confirmation of Public Opinion
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Everyone is right. This book is great.
Strongest Refutation of Public Opinion
Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
Everyone is wrong. This book is not great.
Best Description of the Afterlife
Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
Occasionally one of the dead, someone who had just completed the crossing, would mistake the city for heaven. It was a misunderstanding that never persisted for long. What kind of heaven had the blasting sound of garbage trucks in the morning, and chewing gum on the pavement, and the smell of fish rotting by the river? What kind of hell, for that matter, had bakeries and dogwood trees and perfect blue days that made the hairs on the back of your neck rise on end? No, the city was not heaven, and it was not hell, and it certainly was not the world. It stood to reason, then, that it had to be something else. More and more people came to adopt the theory that it was an extension of life itself—a sort of outer room—and that they would remain there only so long as they endured in living memory.
Most Nightmare-Inducing
Stay Awake by Dan Chaon
He’s so good. For weeks after reading this book I was spooked of kids, pets, trees, phones, human interaction.
Biggest Crush on a Historical Figure
Grant by Jean Edward Smith
This year Ulysses S. Grant joined John Quincy Adams in the pantheon of my most-loved presidents. (Don’t ask me to choose!) I’d put my muddy boots up on a porch rail with him any day.
Hardest Book to Write About
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
It’s hard to love a book and not be able to talk about it, but the moments of genius in Flynn’s book are the twists and revelations. The upside of this is that having read Gone Girl is like being in a club. Every time I find out someone else has read it, our eyes get big and we grab each other’s shoulders and start whisper-screaming.
Best Read of the Year
Arcadia by Lauren Groff
I gushed about this book in April. Eight months later I maintain everything I said, and can now say it was my favorite book of the year. If I only came across a book like that once a year, it would still be worth reading the other fifty to find that one.
More from A Year in Reading 2012
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The good stuff: The Millions’ Notable articles
The motherlode: The Millions’ Books and Reviews
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Truman by David McCullough
The best books I’ve read all year have, for the most part, been translations: The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi, Unforgiving Years by Victor Serge, Independent People by Halldor Laxness, and The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. And one non-translation–George Eliot’s Middlemarch. I just can’t narrow it down to one. Oh, I almost forgot–A Tomb for Boris Davidovich by Danilo Kis.
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
The best books I read this year were the Europa translations of Elena Ferrantes novels, Rock Island Line by David Rhodes, and The Armies by Evelio Rosero.
Best novel “rediscovered” this year was A Long, Long Way by Sebastian Barry.
Happy holidays to the Millions contributors, and look forward to reading you in 2010!
American Rust by Philipp Meyer and The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
Not done with it yet, but Margaret Atwood’s Payback is turning out to be the most interesting book I’ve read this year. The historical, literary, anthropological, sociological, and psychological analysis of debt in essentially every meaning of the word is thought-provoking and ingenious.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell was a close second.
I am new to this blog but yet would like to post my read novels and books which I completed in the year 2009….The latest being John Grisham’s Ford County, I am happy to have ended with a thrilling short story collection…I am not a passionate reader but now with my most of the time getting consumed up on net, i prefer reading ebooks directly online from store like A1Books and purchase physical books rarely. But reading blogs like these has really aroused an interest. I hope to read more of them in the coming year 2010.
Cheers to readers!!!
Machine by Peter Adolphsen
Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherly
Impotent by Matthew Roberson
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.
But The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters deserves a special mention.
The best new book I read this year was either “lowboy” by John Wray or “Chronic City” by Jonathan Lethem.
The best book I read this year was hands down Amy Hempel’s Collected Stories. I haven’t gotten to too many new releases yet but Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor was also a great treat.
The best “new” books (new to me, at least) that I read this year include:
Mariette in Ecstasy — Ron Hansen
The Transit of Venus — Shirley Hazzard
In the Skin of a Lion — Michael Ondaatje
Also, this was the year of James Salter. Why did it take me so long to discover his work? Dusk, Last Night, Light Years, and A Sport and a Pasttime — enthralling books, every one.
Tender Is The Night.
hear, hear, Chad!
Blame by Michelle Huneven. I’m checking out the rest of her work pronto.
Call it Sleep by Henry Roth, definitely the most beautiful novel I’ve read in a long time and one that more people should know about.
Mike, I remember in the 60s when Call it Sleep got rediscovered. Time for another rediscovery.
I want to list my best books but I am away and my book list is in my computer at home. My poor memory frustrates me, maybe this thread will still be going in a few days. Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Housekeeper and the Professor, early Coetzee (Waiting for the Barbarians and Life and Times of Michael K), rereading Natalia Ginzburg, went on an immigrant short story journey (binge)–Ha Jin, David Bezmozgis, Jumpa Lahiri, Andrei Codrescu, Isaac Rosenfeld and others.
– “Revolutionary Road” by Richard Yates.
– “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami
– “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
– “The Master and the Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov
– “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy
– “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
“Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen was the best page turner I read this year.
I alos discovered “I Capture the Castle” by Dodie Smith and thought it was a lovely book.
But my favorite that I read this year, and one that had a great impact on me, was “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson.
Ugh, it’s impossible to pick just one book in a year in which I discovered Roberto Bolaño, Richard Yates and Hans Fallada.
Best books I read this year
Kurt Vonnegut – “Slaughterhouse V”
George R.R. Martin – “Game of Thrones”
Stephen Fry – “Moab is my Washpot”
“Everything Matters!” by Ron Currie, Jr. Followed closely by “The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet” by Reif Larsen.
I concur on the Henry Roth book, Call It Sleep. I read this in the early 80’s. It is a truly beautiful book. Another book I read about the same time–equally stunning and unforgettable–is Harriette Arnow’s masterpiece The Dollmaker. The Dollmaker is on a list that looks very intriguing–along with one of my favorites of the year (as well as being one of the best books I’ve ever read) Enchi’s The Waiting Years. The list is 500 Great Books by Women. Others included are Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Olive Schreiner’s Story of an African Farm. Those four alone are pretty high-calibre books. I’m sure the rest are just as wonderful.
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery.
Favorite book was “The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and also, “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. Both were so good, I wanted to leave parties to go home and read!
The best books I read all year:
— By Night in Chile, para Bolano
— Death in Spring, Rodoreda
— Les Fiancailles de M. Hire, par Simenon
— Henderson the Rain King, by Bellow (a name which should always be capitalized)
— The Kingdom of This World, by Carpentier
Best books I read all year:
two fiction works come to mind:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
AND Jose Saramago’s Death with Interruptions.
Nonfiction: Richard Wolffe’s book Renegade on the Obama campaign;
Ted Kennedy’s memoir
Javier Marias, Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
Cesar Aira, Ghosts
Vic Glover, Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge
Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice
Max Geert, Europa
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Homer, The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Mary Beard, The Fires of Vesuvius
Oops, that’s more than one.
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurtson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay, a Canadian writer. Won the ScotiaBank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award. I’ve also read her novels A Student of Weather and Garbo Laughs. Elizabeth Hay ranks right up there with Alice Munro. Gave a copy of LNOA to a friend for Christmas–she thought the writing was first-rate.
Forgive me everyone. I am starting Best of 2010 because I just finished the most brilliant amazing enthralling book: The Humans who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We survived by Clive Finlayson. I am reeling.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Best Re-Read: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Two standouts in 2009 — The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden.