2009 Reading List
(+) indicates a book that I liked/would recommend.
1. Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (+)
2. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
3. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (+)
4. Knock ‘em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide 2009 by Martin Yate
5. Eat This, Not That! by David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding
6. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (+)
7. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris (+)
8. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
9. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris (+)
10. Class Matter by Correspondents of the New York Times
11. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeir
12. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris (+)
13. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
14. This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
15. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
16. The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner (+)
17. Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (+)
18. Resumes for Dummies by Joyce Lain Kennedy
19. Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky by William Van Meter
20. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
21. The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited by Jeff Martin
22. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter (+)
23. The Man of my Dreams by Curtis Sittenfield
24. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose
25. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn (+)
26. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris (+)
27. Masters of Death: the SS Einsatzguppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes
28. The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming by Shreve Stockton
29. One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak (+)
30. Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins
31. Thin is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel
32. Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
33. When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons from the Art of Living by Mark Matousek
34. Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties: An Entertaining Life (with recipes) by Julia Reed
35. Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees (+)
36. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien (+)
37. We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert Johnson
38. The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your health by Paul Campos
39. Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen by Julie Powell (+)
40. The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely to be Asked and the Answers that Will Get you Hired by Peter Veruki
41. The Diving Bell & the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (+)
42. Cook-off: Recipe Fever in America by Amy Sutherland (+)
43. The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner
44. Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck
45. Above Us Only Sky by Marion Winik
46. What It Takes to Get to Vegas by Yxta Maya Murray
47. Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You by Sean Thomas
48. The Anatomy of Evil by Michael Stone (+)
49. The Film Club by David Gilmour
50. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (+)
51. The Right Madness by James Crumley (+)
52. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips (+)
53. Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
54. Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray
55. The King’s Nun by Catherine Monroe
56. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenburg (+)
57. Revenge of the Paste Eaters: Memoirs of a Misfit by Cheryl Peck
58. Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn
59. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (+)
60. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
61. 201 Killer Cover Letters by Sandra Podesta and Andrea Paxton
62. The girl who stopped swimming by Joshilyn Jackson (+)
63. Shake the Devil Off by Ethan Brown
64. The Circle of Hanh by Bruce Weigl
65. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (+)
66. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer (+)
67. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (+)
68. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
69. The Story of a Million Years by David Huddle (+)
70. She’s Gone Country by Kyle Spencer
71. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
72. A Touch of Dead: Sookie Stackhouse: The Complete Stories by Charlaine Harris (+)
73. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (+)
74. Girls by Frederick Busch
75. Some Day You’ll Thank Me for This: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Being a “Perfect” Mother by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays
76. Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays
77. Columbine by Dave Cullen
78. Traveling with Pomegranates: a mother-daughter story by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor
79. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (+)
80. The Floating World by Cynthia Gralla
81. The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
82. Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dennis Leary
83. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen (+)
84. The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
82. Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dennis Leary
83. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen (+)
84. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science by Jill Price with Bart Davis (+)
85. Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
86. Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
87. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
88. The Slow Moon by Elizabeth Cox
89. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler
90. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson (+)
91. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
92. At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse (+)
93. Flying Changes by Sara Gruen
94. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (+)
95. April 16: Virginia Tech Remembers edited by Roland Lazenby (+)
96. The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt
97. Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival by Carmina Salcido with Steve Jackson (+)
98. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (+)
99. Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
100. In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (+)
101. Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin by Paul Feig
102. The Mourner’s Bench by Susan Dodd
103. The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel (+)
104. Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg
1. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn: is a brilliant book. In the first half, Kate is a ten-year-old girl who has formed a junior detective agency along with her toy monkey. Kate's father has died of a stroke and she's left in the care of her emotionally distant grandmother. Kate spends her days patrolling the newly built mall and forming an unusual friendship with Adrian, a grown man who works in a neighborhood store. When Kate disappears, Adrian is blamed.
Twenty years later, in the second half of the novel, Adrian's sister, Lisa, is working at an unsatisfying job in the same mall. Kate's disappearance has never been solved. Adrian himself disappeared after his name wasn't cleared, his only contact with Lisa the mix CDs he sends on her birthday. Lisa forms a friendship with a security guard who has glimpsed a young girl on the mall's security cameras. Together, they start unraveling the mystery of what really happened to Kate.
This book was very well-done. Kate is a likable and fully developed character, not a precious caricature. O'Flynn lets the facts of Kate's life speak for themselves without trying to hit you over the head with how sad it is. Lisa is an equally interesting character and some of the details of her job at the mall are funny. A survey of the mall employees "revealed levels of dissatisfaction so consistent and so acute that, unknown to its subjects, it later went on to become a case study for undergraduate sociologists" (89).
The impact of Kate's disappearance is handled well and in some strange way, the mall becomes a character and a metaphor for the disconnection of modern life. The book reminds me of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, but sadder and less sentimental. I highly recommend it.
2. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley may have the best opening line of all time: "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon" (1).
C.W. Sughrue is a private detective who was hired to track down a drunken famous author, Abraham Trahearne, by the man's ex-wife. Trouble ensues when he finds the author in a bar. CW winds up taking the case of the barmaid's missing daughter, who has been gone for ten years. Traheane ends up tagging along as CW explores the seedier side of the hippie scene.
I enjoyed the book, even though I'm not normally a detective story fan. I liked that I couldn't see the answer from a mile away and that things didn't resolve themselves in a completely outlandish manner, two of my frequent mystery novel complaints. The Last Good Kiss is worth checking out, even if you don't like mysteries and/or detective novels.
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby is an incredible book. The author was the editor-in-chief of French Elle when he suffered a rare stroke. It left him a victim of locked-in syndrome, with his left eye the only part of his body that he could move. Bauby learned to communicate by blinking and blinked this extraordinary memoir about life in a body that no longer worked. One of the reviews on the back of my edition called the book, “as riveting as a narrative from an explorer of deep space.” There is something distinctly otherworldly about the memoir, whose author died two days after its publication. The chapter in which Bauby’s children come to visit him in the hospital is one the saddest things I’ve ever read.
4. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien is one of the best books about an animal that I've read. I was completely surprised by how much I loved the book. It’s everything you could ask for in an animal story--funny, charming, heart-warming and sad. I enjoyed how Wesley said, "Dee-dee deedle deet dee" when he was happy. I never realized that someone could be so emotionally attached to an owl, but this is a true love story between a person and an owl. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt that as a reader, I also fell in love with Wesley.
5. The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner is a lovely, poetic novel. Julian and Paula are the adult children of a father who survived the Holocaust. Julian is a recluse who has internalized the traumas of his father, but Paula is a vibrant opera singer. When Paula leaves for a tour of European opera houses, she asks her housekeeper, Sola, to keep an eye on Julian. Sola is the only survivor of the Mexican government's massacre of her village. Julian and Sola begin to heal through their tentative friendship.
6. The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris: My surprise this year was how much I loved the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris. I read the first book, Dead Until Dark, after falling in love with the HBO series, True Blood, which is based on the series.
I'm not usually a fan of the urban fantasy genre, and these books have vampires, werewolves and shape-shifters galore. But these books are a charming, Southern fried, genre-bending combination of ordinary life, romance and the supernatural. I strongly identified with Sookie, the main character, who's a telepathic waitress, and I find myself rooting for her and wanting to know what happens to her. I actually think that the television series is a little better than the books, but I found the books to be a lot of fun since I devoured the entire series this year.
7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt is a glorious romp of a novel that made me jealous that I don’t know any voodoo or drag queens. John Berendt is a journalist enjoying the colorful locals of Savannah, Georgia when his acquaintance Jim Williams, shoots his handyman/lover/local hustler, Danny, in alleged self-defense. All of the characters seem too eccentric to be real, but it is great fun. If you haven’t read it, read it.
8. The Well and The Mine by Gin Phillips is about the lives of the Moore family in Alabama during the Great Depression. I haven't read a lot of books set during the 1930s, and I felt like this book gave me a better understanding of that time period. The novel opens with nine-year-old Tess watching a woman throw a baby into the family's well, but the novel is more portrait than murder mystery.
9. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenburg probably wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it combines two of my favorite things, cooking and memoirs. It mixes stories from Molly Wizenburg's life ranging from her father's death to how she met her husband, with recipes. I was especially pleased that the recipes both appealed to me and were accessible to the home cook, unlike some food memoir books that I have read where the recipes required something along the lines of 30 expensive ingredients and 3 hours to make. The recipes that I copied down from the book were: Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake, Hoosier Pie (involves bourbon, pecans and chocolate), Fruit-Nut Balls, Bouchons Au Thon (like miniature tuna souffles, to my understanding) and French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon. Wizenburg has a blog (http://orangette.blogspot.com/), and I believe that most of the book came from the blog.
10. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy: I don’t normally like to put re-reads on my top ten lists (which I know doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think books make a bigger impact on me the first time I read them), but this book is one of my all-time favorites. Conroy gets the South exactly right here--the eccentricities, the beauty and the badness. The rise and fall of the Wingo family is Shakespearian in its tragedy. It’s Conroy at his best. A wonderful book.
1. Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (+)
2. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
3. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (+)
4. Knock ‘em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide 2009 by Martin Yate
5. Eat This, Not That! by David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding
6. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (+)
7. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris (+)
8. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
9. Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris (+)
10. Class Matter by Correspondents of the New York Times
11. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeir
12. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris (+)
13. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
14. This Land is Their Land by Barbara Ehrenreich
15. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
16. The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner (+)
17. Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (+)
18. Resumes for Dummies by Joyce Lain Kennedy
19. Bluegrass: A True Story of Murder in Kentucky by William Van Meter
20. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (+)
21. The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited by Jeff Martin
22. Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter (+)
23. The Man of my Dreams by Curtis Sittenfield
24. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose
25. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn (+)
26. From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris (+)
27. Masters of Death: the SS Einsatzguppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes
28. The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming by Shreve Stockton
29. One for Sorrow by Christopher Barzak (+)
30. Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners by Alan Emmins
31. Thin is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel
32. Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
33. When You’re Falling, Dive: Lessons from the Art of Living by Mark Matousek
34. Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns and Other Southern Specialties: An Entertaining Life (with recipes) by Julia Reed
35. Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees (+)
36. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien (+)
37. We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love by Robert Johnson
38. The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your health by Paul Campos
39. Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen by Julie Powell (+)
40. The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely to be Asked and the Answers that Will Get you Hired by Peter Veruki
41. The Diving Bell & the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (+)
42. Cook-off: Recipe Fever in America by Amy Sutherland (+)
43. The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner
44. Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck
45. Above Us Only Sky by Marion Winik
46. What It Takes to Get to Vegas by Yxta Maya Murray
47. Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You by Sean Thomas
48. The Anatomy of Evil by Michael Stone (+)
49. The Film Club by David Gilmour
50. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (+)
51. The Right Madness by James Crumley (+)
52. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips (+)
53. Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
54. Julie and Romeo by Jeanne Ray
55. The King’s Nun by Catherine Monroe
56. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenburg (+)
57. Revenge of the Paste Eaters: Memoirs of a Misfit by Cheryl Peck
58. Kitty Goes to Washington by Carrie Vaughn
59. Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (+)
60. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
61. 201 Killer Cover Letters by Sandra Podesta and Andrea Paxton
62. The girl who stopped swimming by Joshilyn Jackson (+)
63. Shake the Devil Off by Ethan Brown
64. The Circle of Hanh by Bruce Weigl
65. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt (+)
66. The Dive from Clausen’s Pier by Ann Packer (+)
67. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy (+)
68. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust
69. The Story of a Million Years by David Huddle (+)
70. She’s Gone Country by Kyle Spencer
71. A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
72. A Touch of Dead: Sookie Stackhouse: The Complete Stories by Charlaine Harris (+)
73. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (+)
74. Girls by Frederick Busch
75. Some Day You’ll Thank Me for This: The Official Southern Ladies’ Guide to Being a “Perfect” Mother by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays
76. Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays
77. Columbine by Dave Cullen
78. Traveling with Pomegranates: a mother-daughter story by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor
79. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (+)
80. The Floating World by Cynthia Gralla
81. The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
82. Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dennis Leary
83. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen (+)
84. The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace
82. Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dennis Leary
83. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen (+)
84. The Woman Who Can’t Forget: The Extraordinary Story of Living with the Most Remarkable Memory Known to Science by Jill Price with Bart Davis (+)
85. Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
86. Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey
87. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
88. The Slow Moon by Elizabeth Cox
89. My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands by Chelsea Handler
90. Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson (+)
91. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
92. At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life by Wade Rouse (+)
93. Flying Changes by Sara Gruen
94. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (+)
95. April 16: Virginia Tech Remembers edited by Roland Lazenby (+)
96. The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution Chlorinating the Gene Pool by Wendy Northcutt
97. Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival by Carmina Salcido with Steve Jackson (+)
98. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris (+)
99. Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott
100. In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (+)
101. Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin by Paul Feig
102. The Mourner’s Bench by Susan Dodd
103. The Broke Diaries by Angela Nissel (+)
104. Her Last Death by Susanna Sonnenberg
1. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn: is a brilliant book. In the first half, Kate is a ten-year-old girl who has formed a junior detective agency along with her toy monkey. Kate's father has died of a stroke and she's left in the care of her emotionally distant grandmother. Kate spends her days patrolling the newly built mall and forming an unusual friendship with Adrian, a grown man who works in a neighborhood store. When Kate disappears, Adrian is blamed.
Twenty years later, in the second half of the novel, Adrian's sister, Lisa, is working at an unsatisfying job in the same mall. Kate's disappearance has never been solved. Adrian himself disappeared after his name wasn't cleared, his only contact with Lisa the mix CDs he sends on her birthday. Lisa forms a friendship with a security guard who has glimpsed a young girl on the mall's security cameras. Together, they start unraveling the mystery of what really happened to Kate.
This book was very well-done. Kate is a likable and fully developed character, not a precious caricature. O'Flynn lets the facts of Kate's life speak for themselves without trying to hit you over the head with how sad it is. Lisa is an equally interesting character and some of the details of her job at the mall are funny. A survey of the mall employees "revealed levels of dissatisfaction so consistent and so acute that, unknown to its subjects, it later went on to become a case study for undergraduate sociologists" (89).
The impact of Kate's disappearance is handled well and in some strange way, the mall becomes a character and a metaphor for the disconnection of modern life. The book reminds me of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, but sadder and less sentimental. I highly recommend it.
2. The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley may have the best opening line of all time: "When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon" (1).
C.W. Sughrue is a private detective who was hired to track down a drunken famous author, Abraham Trahearne, by the man's ex-wife. Trouble ensues when he finds the author in a bar. CW winds up taking the case of the barmaid's missing daughter, who has been gone for ten years. Traheane ends up tagging along as CW explores the seedier side of the hippie scene.
I enjoyed the book, even though I'm not normally a detective story fan. I liked that I couldn't see the answer from a mile away and that things didn't resolve themselves in a completely outlandish manner, two of my frequent mystery novel complaints. The Last Good Kiss is worth checking out, even if you don't like mysteries and/or detective novels.
3. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby is an incredible book. The author was the editor-in-chief of French Elle when he suffered a rare stroke. It left him a victim of locked-in syndrome, with his left eye the only part of his body that he could move. Bauby learned to communicate by blinking and blinked this extraordinary memoir about life in a body that no longer worked. One of the reviews on the back of my edition called the book, “as riveting as a narrative from an explorer of deep space.” There is something distinctly otherworldly about the memoir, whose author died two days after its publication. The chapter in which Bauby’s children come to visit him in the hospital is one the saddest things I’ve ever read.
4. Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O’Brien is one of the best books about an animal that I've read. I was completely surprised by how much I loved the book. It’s everything you could ask for in an animal story--funny, charming, heart-warming and sad. I enjoyed how Wesley said, "Dee-dee deedle deet dee" when he was happy. I never realized that someone could be so emotionally attached to an owl, but this is a true love story between a person and an owl. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt that as a reader, I also fell in love with Wesley.
5. The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner is a lovely, poetic novel. Julian and Paula are the adult children of a father who survived the Holocaust. Julian is a recluse who has internalized the traumas of his father, but Paula is a vibrant opera singer. When Paula leaves for a tour of European opera houses, she asks her housekeeper, Sola, to keep an eye on Julian. Sola is the only survivor of the Mexican government's massacre of her village. Julian and Sola begin to heal through their tentative friendship.
6. The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris: My surprise this year was how much I loved the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris. I read the first book, Dead Until Dark, after falling in love with the HBO series, True Blood, which is based on the series.
I'm not usually a fan of the urban fantasy genre, and these books have vampires, werewolves and shape-shifters galore. But these books are a charming, Southern fried, genre-bending combination of ordinary life, romance and the supernatural. I strongly identified with Sookie, the main character, who's a telepathic waitress, and I find myself rooting for her and wanting to know what happens to her. I actually think that the television series is a little better than the books, but I found the books to be a lot of fun since I devoured the entire series this year.
7. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt is a glorious romp of a novel that made me jealous that I don’t know any voodoo or drag queens. John Berendt is a journalist enjoying the colorful locals of Savannah, Georgia when his acquaintance Jim Williams, shoots his handyman/lover/local hustler, Danny, in alleged self-defense. All of the characters seem too eccentric to be real, but it is great fun. If you haven’t read it, read it.
8. The Well and The Mine by Gin Phillips is about the lives of the Moore family in Alabama during the Great Depression. I haven't read a lot of books set during the 1930s, and I felt like this book gave me a better understanding of that time period. The novel opens with nine-year-old Tess watching a woman throw a baby into the family's well, but the novel is more portrait than murder mystery.
9. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenburg probably wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but it combines two of my favorite things, cooking and memoirs. It mixes stories from Molly Wizenburg's life ranging from her father's death to how she met her husband, with recipes. I was especially pleased that the recipes both appealed to me and were accessible to the home cook, unlike some food memoir books that I have read where the recipes required something along the lines of 30 expensive ingredients and 3 hours to make. The recipes that I copied down from the book were: Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake, Hoosier Pie (involves bourbon, pecans and chocolate), Fruit-Nut Balls, Bouchons Au Thon (like miniature tuna souffles, to my understanding) and French-Style Yogurt Cake with Lemon. Wizenburg has a blog (http://orangette.blogspot.com/), and I believe that most of the book came from the blog.
10. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy: I don’t normally like to put re-reads on my top ten lists (which I know doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but I think books make a bigger impact on me the first time I read them), but this book is one of my all-time favorites. Conroy gets the South exactly right here--the eccentricities, the beauty and the badness. The rise and fall of the Wingo family is Shakespearian in its tragedy. It’s Conroy at his best. A wonderful book.