Most of my friends, like myself, are avid readers--and Starbucks is our place of choice to exchange reading information. Yesterday, a few of us, eggnog lattes in hand, sat ourselves down, and discussed our year's best reads. The list is shorter this year, as time has been short, as it is for so many of us, but by the time we were done some "don’t miss this" titles had been named and dissected. Now I would like to share them with you here.
First, a novel we all enjoyed: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. The story begins with descriptions of what can only be said to be the perfect school for very special children—and ends, despite liberally dropped hints along the way, in territory unknown. Ishiguro is a master of detail. And the narrative is so smooth as to seduce the reader’s attention away from the hints of trouble sprinkled throughout the story—a tactic which would ordinarily, in less talented hands, very quickly lead one to rejecting out of hand places within as being too painful to explore.
Instead the book sticks like oatmeal on a winter’s day. The end is hardly a surprise. Yet it is not really until we finish the last page—and then go on with our daily lives, that that we even begin to integrate what we have read into our thoughts and minds.
I don’t want to say more here as I don’t want to give plot away. I will say this; when done, I came gradually to embrace the feeling that what was the author has accomplished is to create a metaphor for the times our society is living through today. Times when we seem to be being fed a barrage of information designed to keep us, as steadily and as happily as possible, in line, while all the while we are headed, for territory quite hidden from view, and certainly at odds with what might, in saner and less frightening days, be in line with our overall best interests and personal happiness.
Next up is a book you have all most likely heard of, a best seller titled The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I don’t think it will be giving anything away to share that this book is a chronicle of the year of grief and coping that followed the sudden death of Ms Didion's husband.
Why is this book so popular? I suspect it is two things. First, there is the commonality of our realization that loss and grief are part of the human condition. And just as we peer, albeit often from behind fingers held in front of our faces, at traffic accidents, so too do we all have a compulsion to peer into other frightening life experiences, uttering either consciously or unconsciously as we do so, the softly whispered prayer: “There but for the love of god go I.”
Second, I honestly do feel that we are, as citizens, after the events of 9/11, and what has followed, hungry for unadorned facts. Real facts. Not window dressing facts geared to making us feel better about a tough situation—but jagged, how to cope with life facts. And it seems to me that these days we search for Cliff notes for situations that scare us, drifting drift on the surface of our lives, no matter how deeply we try to bury them within.
Ms Didion’s book is a Cliff note of very high quality indeed; a gift to us all. Within it we find commonalities of understanding of our losses—including, for me, the loss of my hearing.
For history buffs I offer you Doris Kearn Goodwin's newest book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. I admit to being a Lincoln buff. Perhaps this is hereditary for my paternal grandfather went so far as to name his eldest son Abraham Lincoln Scott. In any case, I have read just about everything there is to be read on Lincoln, and despite that fact I found myself fascinated in a new way by this book.
Goodwin, employing her usual very accessible writing style, has managed to bring a new perspective to arguably our greatest president--and surely, inarguably our most fascinating one. This is Lincoln as seen through his relationships with his cabinet members. While this might seem to non historians to be on surface a dry way to approach a very human man and angst-ridden man; it quickly becomes apparent that it is to the contrary the perfect way to reveal the character, humanity and vulnerability of our 16th president. I was fascinated.
Many of you I am sure read and enjoyed A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr. I remember well reading that book. My mother in law brought it with her as reading material on a visit, and in an odd moment I picked it up and scanned the first page. I am loath to share with you that the poor lady did not get her book back until I had turned the last page. When it comes to reading I take no prisoners!
Harr has done it again in his newest book The Lost Painting: The Search for a Caravaggio Masterpiece . Listed by the NY Times as one of the ten best books of the year, it is another page turner on a subject most of us might expect to find anything but interesting—the tracing of lost classical art. As an added bonus Mr. Harr succeeds in bringing to life both the Italy and British Isles wherein the actions of the book take place. Those of you who enjoyed A Civil Action will, I am thinking, enjoy this title also. So much did I enjoy it in fact, that one of my book-loving Starbuck friends will find it under the tree this year.
Another follow up book from a best seller does not fare as well in my opinion. Like so many others I gobbled up John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil—a classic, utterly fascinating, travel book which brought to such life the oddities of Savannah, Georgia. Following this success, the author settled on Venice, Italy for his next book. The result, The City of Falling Angels, while quite good, is not, in my opinion, up to his previous work. It is, perhaps, unfair to compare the two works as I am doing here—for I suspect that had this book been written first I would rate it more highly. Still it IS a good read, and those of you who have been fortunate enough to visit Venice itself—may well rate it higher than I have done here.
Happy Reading—and holidays, to you all!