Top Books of 2011

I never was afraid to talk about books. Well, okay, maybe once. When I was thirteen and there was a boy involved. A teacher, perhaps for a Homeroom assignment, had tasked the class with composing daily schedules, and for one short week of my life, I operated like clockwork. It was amazing. I came home, I ate a snack, I mushed through homework: Math, Science, English, History. The end goal was the library book waiting on the side table, and each day was a success. All my work done and hours till bedtime, I curled up on the sofa to plunge back into the book. It was a revelation: organizing my hours, making efficiency work for pleasure! More time to read!

But it was the seventh grade, and I had the misfortune to swing my three-ring binder open just as one of the class hooligans passed by on the cool, snooty way to his desk. “Is that your schedule? You don’t really do that, do you?” No, of course I didn’t. Or wouldn’t, ever again. The bubble was burst as quickly as it was constructed.

My path to organizational greatness may have died that day. Fortunately, my obsession with good stories did not.

I had a baby a few short weeks (and long nights) before the clock ticked its way into the new year of 2011. Did that stop me from reading incessantly? Of course not. What I find in hindsight is that my 2011 reading arranges itself pretty neatly into two categories: imaginative fantasy fiction and landscape prose (largely nonfiction). This comes as no surprise. 2011 saw me deeply engaged in writing my fantasy novel, and also largely focused on writing nonfiction essays. The correlation between reading and writing is no accident.

Here are the books that grew my imagination most while Ella grew through her first year:

Landscape Prose and other Nonfiction

~ Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, for stunning, lyrical prose and deep human sympathy; the only full-on fiction in this category. (I also recommend: Home.)

~ Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon, for well-paced, well-told travel tales.

~ "The Long-Legged House," an essay by Wendell Berry, for a strong sense of place, belonging, and purpose. And a view to the small town farming life. (I also recommend: Best Person Rural by Noel Perrin.)

~ All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, for skillfully weaving fact into fiction. It's about country veterinary work, for goodness sake, and I enjoyed it! A storytelling feat.

~ Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin, December's requisite biography. As always, Tomalin gives a balanced account with plenty of well-considered detail. (If you're looking for Dickens's fiction instead, I recommend: Bleak House, and, of course, A Christmas Carol.)

(Mostly) Fantastical Fiction

~ The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, six books by Dianna Wynne Jones, for their sheer imagination and well-wrought resolutions. (Start with: The Nine Lives of Christopher Chant and Conrad’s Fate. Then the other four Chronicles. Then Howl's Moving Castle and House of Many Ways. If children's fantasy is at all up your alley, you won't regret it. And you'll catch more than a glimpse of Harry Potter's literary ancestry.)

~ Divergent by Veronica Roth, for excellent pacing and a new author who promises creative, if particularly dark, contribution to the Young Adult dystopia genre.

~ State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, for lyrical prose, surprising turns of event, and thought-provoking scenarios, as always. (I also strongly recommend: Bel Canto.)

Honorable Mentions

~ The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan (What is sometimes-shabby in delivery is nearly made up for in wild imagination.)

~ Redwall by Brian Jacques (C.S. Lewis distinguishes between fantasy involving talking beasts - think Narnia - and realism using animals who could just as easily be people - think Animal Farm. This story is the latter, but I still enjoyed the discovery.)

~ Matched by Ally Condie (Do we really need another dystopian story with a female protagonist? I won't complain.)

Last year - 2011 - was an anomaly as years go. I won’t ever get one like it, especially not the early months when it was just me recuperating and a quiet baby sleeping her days away. There wasn’t any schedule needed, because there wasn’t anything to do except hold the small, sweet, sleeping thing - and read. I’ll never pick up Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping again without smelling that sweet-sour breath against my face. The discovery of Dianna Wynne Jones’s Chrestomanci series and Brian Jacques’s Redwall tumbles through memory with the distinct feel of a small feather-weight snuffling and snoozing in my arms. Sweet winter days. It’s uncertain whether I was changed more by the stories I read or by the sleeper I held. They’re too twined up together; I’ll never know. I don’t need to.

Top Books 2010 are here.

Top Books 2009 are here.