Goodbye 2007, Hello 2008.
Just in time for going back to work tomorrow, here is my 2007 Year in Reading book list, ranking my best reads for 2007 (the only qualification is that I had to have finished reading the book for the first time in 2007). (
Here was my 2006 list.)
Brandon's Top Ten Best Reads of 2007:
01. Collected Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca.Although I'd read lots of Lorca poems before, this year I worked through the complete poems (such as we have) in a bilingual edition. Several of his books of poetry could top a "best of" ranking (particulary
Gypsy Ballads and
Poet in New York), but taken as a thunderous whole, they were spectacularly my best read of 2007.
02. The Door by Margaret Atwood.Published in the fall,
The Door was Atwood's first book of new poetry since 1995, and the poems were well worth the wait. Even the titles conjure up some delicious themes, concerns and images: "Europe on $5 a day," "Owl and Pussycat, some years later," "War photo 2." Just as
Moral Disorder spanned a life (semi-autobiographically) in prose,
The Door concerns itself with a life, from a little girl fantasizing about gasoline from an outboard motor to old age as a closing door, providing a summation of many of Atwood's ongoing themes.
03. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood.Based on a series of six lectures delivered at Cambridge after she won the Booker for
The Blind Assassin, Atwood takes us on a rolicking philosophical journey through the indignities, rewards and tumults of the writerly life.
04. A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.At only about 150 pages, this is a very short history of myth indeed. But it is absolutely brilliant in its economy of language and in the way it presents the development of mythology (including the monotheistic religions) as an organic process. It ends up being sexy too. Just inspiring.
05. Dancing Girls by Margaret Atwood.Originally published in 1977,
Dancing Girls was Atwood's first volume of short stories, and it is stunning...from a hilarious monologue "Rape Fantasies" to a disturbingly memorable story of the descent into madness set among PhD students at the University of Edmonton ("Polarities") to explorations of identity and nation ("The Man from Mars" and "Dancing Girls"). I read it early in the year (along with some other Atwood short fiction) and kept finding myself wanting to return to particular stories...and invariably the stories I'd be thinking about were in this collection.
06. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.In Atwood's first novel (from 1969), the closer a young woman comes to marrying her fiancee, the less able to eat she becomes. While the setup may sound a little trite, the execution is dazzling. The characters are strikingly and sympathetically rendered, as is the milieu of a backwater Toronto of the early to mid-1960s. In addition to the central character Marian, the odd grad student Duncan (who reminds me of Nathaniel) stay with you after the book is over.
07. Sodom and Gomorrah: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 4 by Marcel ProustIn part four (which is as far as I've gotten since I'm waiting on the final three volumes to come from Britain) of
In Search of Lost Time everyone finally gets gay. It was the volume I was waiting for as I read through the hundreds of pages of the first three volumes, and the payoff (a portrait of sexual and emotional obsession) is great...as is the cliff hanger ending.
The Captive,
The Fugitive and
Finding Time Again are on my 2008 reading list.
08. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa LahiriPublished in 1999 (and winner of the Pulitzer Prize), I'd actually never heard of it until I got it as a gift. The opening story ("A Temporary Matter") about a young Indian couple in Boston reeling from a miscarriage was the hook, but my favorite story in the collection was probably "Mrs. Sen's," an Indian wife's struggle to adjust to life in the US as seen through the eyes of the little boy she babysits. The entire collection is filled with delicately rendered portraits of Indian and Pakistani immigrants (or children thereof) adjusting to the US.
09. Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich.Ehrenreich had planned this follow up to
Blood Rites for years, but a little project called
Nickel and Dimed got in the way. Here, Ehrenreich gets back to her social history roots and examines dancing, trances, voodoo, charivaris, bacchanals and other moments of group ecstatic frenzy...and the gradual (and troubling) loss of these practices (reduced now to rock concerts, raves and sporting riots). Her examiniation of Jesus and Dionysus is first rate, and she makes a convincing argument that we need to cut loose with our neighbors every once in a while. Delightful.
10. Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff.David Rakoff is the funniest gay guy on NPR since David Sedaris. But where Sedaris skewers himself, Rakoff skewers us, as only a gay Canadian Jew who became an American citizen because of George W. Bush can. While the book is very, very funny, it is also socially biting as Rakoff aims his wit at modern consumer culture. (The book is subtitled, "The Indignities of Coach Class, the Torments of Low Thread Count, the Never-Ending Quest for Artisinal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems.")
Honorable Mention: In The Continuum by Danai Gurira and Nikkole SalterWhile the two-woman play about a young woman in Los Angeles and a working mother in Harare, Zimbabwe who both find out they are HIV-positive doesn't leap of the page to read, it was the best thing I saw onstage this year.
The Runners-Up (alpha by author):
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
The Complete Poems by Hart Crane
Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
Swann's Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 1 by Marcel Proust
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 2 by Marcel Proust
The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 3 by Marcel Proust
The Other Things I Read in 2007 (alpha by author):Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay Abaire
La commedia e finita. by David Alex
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood
Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood
Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes by Margaret Atwood
Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood
Second Words: Selected Critical Prose by Margaret Atwood
Up in the Tree by Margaret Atwood
Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New by Margaret Atwood
Selected Poems by Margaret Atwood
Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature by Margaret Atwood
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Oedipus Complex by Frank Galati
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Cook by Eduardo Machado
Passion Play: a cycle in three parts by Sarah Ruhl
The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and my Family by Dan Savage
Happy New Year!
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