The Reading Life: Top Books of 2010

It's been a reading kind of life the last two-and-a-half years. Starting with my move to Charlottesville in Summer 2008, I transitioned away from full-time work, a conscious decision on both our parts to scale down on my office time and open up schedule space for the kitchen and, more importantly, for the pen. And then after Kenton's work moved our lives down to Blacksburg, we agreed I should leave the office entirely behind, and see where the writing life might take me.

Oh, the places I have gone! One being into the interior of books - book after book after book - reading in new ways, with fresh, writerly eyes. At the end of last year, my brother asked what books had influenced my writing the most, and it was easy to produce a list of the 2009 top ten, ten books in the span of one year that had provided ideas, insight, courage, and affirmation as I set about my own work in fiction. These were not stories to emulate; each is its own work, and my work is my own. But there's a sharedness, a comaraderie of idea, feel, character, pace, that I've discovered amongst some pages (and not in others) that has helped me move ahead in my own way. That was last year's reading.

This year: another reading kind of annum. Just as full of late-night page flipping. Just as many trips down Preston Street to the library. Not as rich in inspiration. It was a year of starting and stopping, picking up and putting down, enjoying often lightly but not deeply. Thus, my 2010 top reads list boasts a scanter seven, though there are a few gems - some surprising, even to me.

Marcelo in the Real World
by Francisco X. Stork (read early January 2010)
     The magic and the realism with which this story is infused, the voice in which it is told, the subject matter: bestill my sleep. I could not put it down this time last winter. This book left me changed in very good ways. . . . And now I'm thinking it's about time for a reread. More specific thoughts here.

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston (read February 2010)

     I audited a creative writing class last spring; this was one of the books on the list. I'm glad because it's out of my usual genre, not a read I would have gone to on my own. Lyrically stunning, I'd recommend it for the language alone. But also for its landscapes, which are at once mythical and earthy, and most of all for its characters. The characters are the thing, and one in particular, whom Hurston handles with particular skill and an insight that I'd like to learn from.
     There is a moment toward the end of the story in which this particular character behaves unforgivably, and the reader must decide whether or not to forgive him. This was my first foray into understanding that one mark of a good writer is not only understanding of her created people, but also empathy toward them in such a way that she can reveal their dirtiest depths and still elicit from the reader sympathy for them. I cannot claim credit for this insight; it was the result of class discussion, in which the professor pointed out that to become good writers, we must have this perspective with actual people, too, must maintain a gracious and merciful empathy in our own lives, so that that empathy flows from our true appreciation of others into the "others" we create on the page. It's a moral matter, and Hurston masters it. She knew people and she cared about them, and it shows on the page.
     Further, did I mention the lyricism, the downright syntactic beauty in this story's telling? Stunning work, Ms. Hurston. Stunning.

A Place on Earth
by Wendell Berry (read March 2010)

     Ah. Wendell Berry, thank you. I'd read a novel or two of his before, as well as some nonfiction essays on community and on food and agriculture. But this - this book is fuller and richer yet than his other fiction, in a gloriously slow-moving kind of way. This is not a book to read quickly; it is one to quietly revel in. And it, also, is outside my chosen writing genre. Its setting might as well be just down the road (from us here in Southwest Virginia, at least); its events are raw and real.
     What I appreciated most here was the broad scope of community life masterfully interwoven with the deep, individual, personal experiences of various town members. Also, the handling of tragedy. There is deep, deep tragedy in this tale (tales, rather, as this book is a conglomeration of numerous characters' stories), especially as the narrative goes on. Berry somehow shows it in a way that is at once as weighty as the events warrant, but without leaving the reader completely crushed - though he comes close. At the close of the book, I had been there, in the town of Port William. I had known these people. I had rejoiced and sorrowed with them. And the experience, in the end, was beautiful, and it rendered me healthily sober, for a good couple days, at least.

The Graveyard Book
by Neil Gaiman (read June 2010)
     Happy surprise! My first foray into Neil Gaiman, and it did not disappoint. This fantastical story gets closer in some ways to elements of my own fiction writing, and I was inspired and nearly entirely intimidated by the creative skill this man wields on the page. From the whimsy with which dark and disturbing events are told to the spectrum of unique characters, to the very subtle incorporation of folk and fairy tale elements, to the manner in which seemingly-unconnected occurances rush together at the end in a whirlwind of Harry Potter-esque "so this is what has been going on all along" adventure-resolution (In the end, I, pregnant, read two hours past the call of the bathroom in order to get to the end of the book.), to the sheer creative concept behind the whole tale: a living boy raised by ghosts, in a graveyard. My only complaint is that I am desperate to know what Bod has done out in the wide world now that he's left his graveyard home. But I don't sense a sequel, which is probably as it should be.

The Hunger Games series
by Susan Collins (read November 2010)
     Happier surprise: I'd been eyeing this trilogy at the library for nearly a year, but something kept me from going for it. Once I did, there was no turning back. I read a review in which these books were labeled "plot-driven," and they are. But I return to the suggestion above, regarding Hurston, that there is something supremely skillful about an empathetic author. In this case, Collins works out a tenuous moral position in her protagonist, Katniss, allowing her to be be believably - sometimes unlikeably - flawed, and yet also demonstrates growth in her empathy toward others. There are scenes in which the people Katniss could easily hate have become so real to her that she changes her mind - and heart - about them. (Harry Potter could take a lesson regarding his cousin Dudley at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.)
     And if the story is chiefly plot-driven, what of it? This is a supremely creative plot (though I'm an admitted sucker for YA distopian lit) that drives reading from compelling start of The Hunger Games to breathless finish of Mockingjay. I would argue, however, that Collins's characters are as strong as her plot. And though I'm not interested in writing in the distopian vein myself, I am challenged by the imaginatively futuristic setting and by the interplay between the characters that kept me frantically reading to the very last page. (What was going to happen to Peeta???)

A Passage to Egypt
by Katherine Frank (read November 2010)
     A lovely, fresh hardback copy of this biography arrived in my mailbox at Thanksgiving-time, a timely birthday gift of an early-holiday, pre-baby read to savor over a long weekend in front of the tree. Thanksgiving Day came; I opened my gift (relishing in the shiny, crisp newness of the book, a rarity for this library-user!); I began it that very evening and finished it by the following Monday.
     One of the biggest bookish surprises of my year has been the discovery that I - avowed fiction-only reader - really enjoy a good biography. Particularly of the writerly focus: last winter's read of Jane Austen: A Life got me started, and this book closed out my reading year by bringing me back to the genre. (I'm now on to a Dickens bio, and next on the docket is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.) There's a way of retelling the stories of people's lives in an engaging, fact-packed-but-not-overly-packed manner that this biographer nails. I'd like to learn her secrets. And someday, I'd like to experiment with a project that merges biography and fiction. I dare you to guess who the subject might be.

A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens (read December 2010)
    This one makes it in just under the wire. Pending holidays and snowy weather tend to turn my thoughts to specific past-reads: Jane Eyre, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Dickens in general. But, very shocking!, I had never actually read A Christmas Carol, despite my family's traditional rewatch of the movie (George C. Scott version and never any other) every Christmas Eve. This was a delicious way to experience Dickens - all the language, the whimsy, the leap-off-the-page characters of his longer works without the complication of a large cast or intricate plot.
     I'm now on to read the rest of the Christmas tales in the volume, and am enjoying them just as much. The comaraderie with which Dickens conspires to share his tale with you, yes you, his reader-in-cahoots, charms me every time; the insight with which he develops characters, their actions and responses - I would sit longer at the feet of this master. I only wish his language would go over as well today in a current piece. Kudos to Susannah Clarke, another master, for making that happen.

Honorable Mentions:

The Small Rain and A Severed Wasp
by Madeline L'Engle (read June 2010)

     I'll give these two a quick write-up, as I spent an unexpectedly-engrossed first trimester week reading from one and then the other, back-to-back. These are both pure Madeline L'Engle, from beginning to end. One element I appreciate is that the first was written early-on, in her young days of both authoring and acting. The sequel was written decades later, toward the end of L'Engle's writing life. The growth in her writing between the two books is interesting to note and appreciate, but what I appreciate best is the idea of, across two novels, showing the scope of a character's life without telling all (here, leaving out a good fifty "middle" years between Rain and Wasp). The protagonist tracks closely with L'Engle's age: in the first volume, a young woman, in the second, old. The second book, in particular, is beautifully-developed, especially as the life events that took place in the gap between books must be filled in retrospectively, creatively. L'Engle's handling of such story telling is near-artful here.

And now, baby-in-hand, I give a long, longing glance at the growing books stack on our living room desk. The prospects for 2011 look good: that Dickens biography, then the one on Conan Doyle, Dinty Moore's Crafting the Personal Essay, Robinson's Housekeeping (already lovely in the first twenty pages), The Red Pyramid (already solidly-established as nursing-time reading), several Harry Potter analyses, the rest of Great with Child (lovely letters on motherhood), Chesterton's Brave New Family. It's an auspicious start. And there will be more to add. What remains to be seen is how much reading and writing gets worked in around Ella, who is her own supreme creative work, and the priority of the moments and years to come.