A Year in Reading: Madeline Miller

December 4, 2012 | 4 books mentioned 2 min read

coverIn a normal year, I usually find only one or two books that I truly love, that I know I’ll continue to cherish, reread and constantly press on others. But this year the list of those books was happily quite long. Here’s a sample:

I greatly admired Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which follows the rise of Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII’s court, and I’m delighted to say that her follow-up, Bring up the Bodies is even better. It’s hard to find new praise to heap on these books after the amazing reviews and the second Booker prize, so I will merely say: it’s all true. Thomas Cromwell is a hypnotic figure, and Mantel is as magnificent at conjuring the twists of his psyche as she as at bringing his world to life. You know an author is talented when they can make five-hundred-year-old currency reform feel like life or death.

coverI’ve received many wonderful book recommendations this year, but I think my favorite might be the one from the booksellers at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath — because they were the ones who told me about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. The novel follows Billy Lynn, an American soldier in Iraq, caught on film by an embedded reporter in some wartime heroics. He and his unit are shipped back to America for a PR-filled victory tour. Ben Fountain depicts this disorienting experience with eloquence, empathy, humor, and a piercing understanding of America’s conflicted ideals.

coverAt the time of this writing, I am technically only three quarters through Junot Díaz’s new book of short stories, This is How You Lose Her, but I already know it’s one of my favorites. Díaz’s writing is vivid, surprising, and viscerally engaging — just like his characters. Several of the stories are centered around Yunior, the narrator of Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I am glad for the chance to return to his — both Yunior’s and Díaz’s — elegiac and compelling company.

Though this book can hardly be called new, I couldn’t close without mentioning George Eliot’s Middlemarch. After years of having this book recommended to me, I finally decided to read it and found it as brilliant as everyone says. Eliot’s understanding of human quirks and follies is pitch-perfect: she lays us bare with humor and scalpel-insight, but not without empathy.

Here’s hoping for a 2013 filled with great books!

 

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

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is the author of The Song of Achilles, which won the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a New York Times Bestseller. When she's not writing, she teaches Latin and Greek, and directs Shakespeare plays. She lives in Cambridge, MA.