Books of the Year: The Best Books of 2012
Books of the Year: The Best Books of 2012
1. "So Big" - Edna Ferber Edna is an ardent lover of art & beauty, who is forced to be a poor cabbage farmer, yet she neither breaks nor loses her sensitivity. She wants educated due to her back-breaking labor son to see what's valuable in life, but sometimes the understanding
comes too late.
The novel may take place in turn-of-the-century Chicago, but the questions it raises are no less relevant today. What is valuable in life? What is the connection between money and success, if it is there at all? What will make us truly happy?
T2. The Homecoming of Samuel Lake" - Jenny Wingfield This family saga was called "Southern Gothic at its best", touching "on many genres-family life, Christian fiction, coming-of-age, and suspense". USA Today wrote "anyone who loves Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird will delight in Swan, the Lakes' eleven-year-old daughter".r
From Amazon: Every first Sunday in June, members of the Moses clan gather for an annual reunion... Samuel Lake, a vibrant and committed
young preacher... In the midst of it all, Samuel and Willadee’s outspoken eleven-year-old daughter, Swan, is a bright light. Her high spirits and fearlessness ... But just as the reunion is getting under way, tragedy strikes, jolting the family to their core and setting the stage for a summer of crisis and profound change.
3. "Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman" - Stefan Zweig Zweig is one of my favorite writers, and he didn't disappoint in this biography.
About his other works: "The Royal Game", a novella about a monarchist in the period after Austria's annexation, is one of the most famous of Zweig's works, but his stories on other topics are no worse. I especially like how he conveys the inner world of children, as in "Burning Secret" (a good review).
The Austrian Jewish writer had to leave his country in 1934 after Hitler's rise to power. Despite physically escaping Hitler, seeing the horrors of WW2 made him feel hopeless and in 1942 commit a joint suicide with his wife.
4. "Cows, pigs, wars & witches : the riddles of culture" - Marvin Harris Entertaining & thought provoking book.
Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches? This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter
how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.
C5.Collected poems - Siegfried Sassoon This is the most honest, chilling to the bone (anti) war book I have ever read. It is also great literature. Because the poems are so good, I managed to read only a few, but it isn't supposed to be easy
,From wiki: Sassoon showed exceptional bravery in the First World War, but then decided to make a stand against the conduct of the war declined to return to active service and threw the ribbon from his Military Cross into the river. Later he returned to the front and by the war's end had been promoted acting captain
6. "The People, Yes" - Carl Sandburg One of the best books of 2012, which I couldn't put down till the end.
[from wiki] "The People, Yes" is a book-length poem published in 1936. [It is] interspersed with references to American culture, phrases, and stories. Published at the height of the Great Depression, the work lauds the perseverance of the American people in notably plain-spoken language.
Despite trying to read poetry, the association of "poetry" with something unsuitable to read 300 pages of for fun & relaxation at the end of the day persists in me. So, for benefit of those of my readers who sometimes share the prejudice, I want to say that the book doesn't read like "poetry", but rather like a hopeful, full of love for the people and very funny conversation. I loved the funny and insightful stories & proverbs Sandburg shared, loved the simple (but not simplistic) conversational style, entirely unlike Modernist poetry with its' streams of consciousness, loved … In short, give "The People" a chance.
7. "The Book of Lost Things" - John Connolly A good fairy tale for adults and children alike.
From Amazon: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, […] reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book... The Book of Lost Things.
An imaginative tale about navigating the journey into adulthood, while doing your best to hang on to your childhood
.
8. "Mrs. Craddock" - W. Somerset Maugham A novel about her life and unhappy marriage. Maugham writes well, as usual. Recommended.
9. "The member of the wedding" - Carson McCullers. This coming of age novel also deals with gender, race and the desire to belong. In the small Southern town, with only family's African American maid and Frankie's six-year-old cousin for company, Frankie feels so left out of life that she creates entire identity for herself out of being the member of her older brother's wedding and fantasizes about leaving with the cnew couple. Quite hard to read, dark book.
10. "And Thereby Hangs A Tale" - Jeffrey Archer. If you are in a mood for easy reading, this collection of (partly RL) short stories with surprising endings may be suitable.
11-12. William Shakespeare: "Romeo and Juliet" is probably one of the most famous and easy to read plays. Despite reading it before (in Russian), I was surprised to discover numerous sexual jokes in the English edition.
"Henry VI, Part 1" - I loved BBC production of it: "The Hollow Crown". The film is highly recommended.
13. "Intrigue and Love" - Friedrich Schiller. May be the play isn't bad, but I didn't really like it.
[wiki] The aristocratic Ferdinand von Walter wishes to marry Luise Miller, the bourgeois daughter of the city's music instructor. Court politics involving the duke's conniving mistress and Ferdinand's ruthless father create a disastrous situation reminiscent of "Romeo and Juliet". Schiller develops his criticisms of absolutism and bourgeois hypocrisy in this bourgeois tragedy.
14. "The Wine of Solitude" - Irene Nemirovsky. I have already written several times about this good author and advise to check out her books. However, here she again returns to her personal painful issue of a cold distant mother & her daughter, and I wasn't interested.
15. "The Great Gatsby" - F. Scott Fitzgerald. This old American classic among other topics examines the theme of class and gender relations in the prosperous 20ies, post-WW1.
16. "The Magic of Reality" - Richard Dawkins. The book, explaining scientific phenomena and retelling myths that tried to explain them, is good, but Dawkins wrote it for YA, and I was already too old. It is a good present for children of a suitable age.
17. "Modern American poetry" edited by Louis Untermeyer (1962) - with background information about the poets. I didn't read all the poems, but liked quite many of them.
18. "The Oxford book of ballads" edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch I read many of them because of liking the rhythm of a ballad, enjoying the tales of murder & theft (Robin Hood) as "humpty dumpty" for adults in a way, and wasn't it one of ballads' original functions?
19. "Mortality" - Christopher Hitchens [ www.twelvebooks.com ] Hitchens bravely recorded his thoughts on mortality and cancer, while the latter was killing him. I admire his spirit, but didn't like the book since it didn't tell me anything new. If a book is mentally hard to read, then it must be worth reading in a way light literature doesn't have to deliver. Otherwise, why read, unless one is a masochist? Anyway, don't read it, if you're already in a bad mood.
20. "God, please make so ..." - Naum Nim Since this great autobiographical novel hasn't been translated from Russian (yet?), I won't write more than that.