Best Books of 2010

Here's the deal: These are the best books I read in 2010, not the best books published in 2010. I feel like I didn't read much this year, but the truth is I just didn't read much that was very good. There are only a few knock-your-socks-off books out there, you know? Whenever I hand people a copy of Time Traveler's Wife or The Book Thief or The Road, I warn them: I will not be able to recommend you other books as good as these. Because there just aren't any. Many.

Full disclosure: I may or may not have actually read these books in 2010.

In no particular order:

The Reapers Are the Angels, Alden Bell.

This title just wormed its way into my brain and wouldn't leave. I was right ticked that someone else had come up with this beautiful, haunting phrase and not me. I wanted to write a book just to fit this title. Then one night I was reading about angels on wikipedia. And I clicked on a link to a parable. And it turns out, Alden Bell didn't coin this phrase. Jesus did. So at least I don't have to feel too bad for not being as good as, you know. Jesus.

If Cormac McCarthy and Joss Wedon teamed up to write a book about zombies, this would be that book. I'm always up for a good yarn about an apocalypse.

You know you are a Joss Whedon fan when: You refer to it as AN apocalypse, not THE apocalypse.

The Book Thief, Mark Zusak



Another book that found me. Death observes humanity during the terrors of World War II. Observes us with deep tenderness and awe. Liesel restores your faith in humanity. Papa was like an accordion. This book might change you.

The Jacqueline Carey Kushiel Novels.

I loved them. I don't recommend them to most of you who read this blog. They are very sensual. The first fantasy I have ever read that was written directly for the female eye, if you get my drift. Phedre kicks ass and takes names. Joscelin (a dude with an unfortunate moniker) challenges Waldemar Skelig to the holmgang and I had one of my 'spells'.

(If you read these books, and enjoy them, you're going to be too embarrassed to ask for more like them. Anne Bishop is the closest thing I've found, though hers are considerably darker. You're on your own from there.)

The Painted Drum, Louise Erdrich

I think this is Erdrich's most approchable novel, if you will forgive me for using that term on my blog. Her writing is so thoughtful and tender. My dad didn't like it, but he's only into lad lit these days. (Yes I do call DeLillo and McGuane lad lit, dad. Bite me.)


Faithful Place, Tana French

This was my favorite book of the year. It's technically a 'mystery', don't let that scare you off. I don't suffer Patterson, either. One seriously dysfunctional Irish family has a dark secret or two. Tana French's characters are so real to me. For weeks after reading this book I'd be chopping carrots and find myself wondering why Frank never comes round for dinner anymore.

Frank is the main character in the book.

Delicate, Edible Birds, Lauren Groff

I absolutely did not read this book in 2010. Lauren Groff's words are delicate and edible. Like birds. I'm a motherfraking lyrical genius. Motherfriggin wordsmith.



When The Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd, and Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor. Good old Sue's approach to Christianity just works for me. One day last spring I was wondering around a bookstore feeling lost and empty. When The Heart Waits literally fell off the shelf and landed in front of me. It was exactly what I needed. Traveling With Pomegranates is a mother-daughter memoir about several trips they took to visit sacred sites around the world. Sue Monk Kidd delights me because she is so darn different from me. She is deeply introspective and contemplative and is capable of finding deep meaning out of things like glass pomegranates in a window display or a bee on her shoulder. Some of my happiest moments this year were spent reading this book and considering things deeply the way Sue and her daughter do. Also commendable for its frank look at depression and the complications of mother-daughter relationships. I recommend this one highly. (Sidenote: I couldn't finish The Secret Life of Bees. Just in case you couldn't either.)

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins. The world needs much more Katniss and much less Bella. If you haven't read them, you are a sorry sonofabitch. Apologies. I'm feeling feisty today.

Books I'm most looking forward to reading in 2011:


1) The Reapers are The Angels (I just can't stop saying it). Temple is my favorite character since Buffy. Who was my favorite character since Starbuck. Who was my favorite character since Katniss. It all started for me in about 1989 with a feisty redhead named Anne. With the 'e'.

2)The Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich. It's about vampires. I was over vampires before they began. I read Anne Rice in 1991, ok? But someone on NPR's book reviews said "the book feels written in a fever. It is breathless, scary, and like nothing I've ever read before. As critic Steve Erickson wrote, 'If a new literature is at hand then it might as well begin here'. Krilanovich's work will make you believe that new ways of storytelling are still emerging from the margins." Sold.

3)
My Mother, She Killed Me, My Father, He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales. Francine Prose, Karen Joy Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates all have entries here. I'm into new-spun fairy tales right now. If the title didn't sell you, I don't want to be your friend.

4) Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, Alissa Nutting. I think it's another sort of dark magic-realism deal. On the cover is a naked woman holding a fish.



5)Temperance, Cathy Malkasian. This was from some other list on NPR. It's a graphic novel and I have yet to finish a graphic novel. I'm not highly visual. I get the characters confused.

6) YA lit. It's a brave new world. In YA, if you don't write like 2010's Hemingway, it's a-ok. I dig the elbow room.


Final thoughts on books of 2010: I don't like anything by Kate Morton, but for some reason I wish I did. When will Oprah pick a book written by a woman? Freedom was just not up my alley. Martha Beck, I like your style. You sly, sly minx. I've started Kingsolver's The Lacuna three times now but haven't finished. J.V. Jones, please get your groove back. Jordan/Sanderson, foot-stamping and braid-pulling does not a character make. That's enough, World War II books. The Book Thief is the only one anyone needs to read. How many days 'til Tana French has a new book?

Feminine Divine

"I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless: he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in their makeup bags." --Tana French, Faithful Place.




*****


I have this memory of gazing down at baby Indy, all fat-cheeked and sweet smelling, deeply peaceful in her sleep, and saying to her, "You are a reflection of the Divine."

I had been reading--here she is again--Sue Monk Kidd's "The Dance of The Dissident Daughter". It felt like healing. Like balm on a raw soul-wound.

This was during the pregnancy when more than one person saw my swollen belly, my little daughter, and said to me: "This next one's a boy, I hope!"

The pregnancy of seeing the slight hitch of disappointment in strangers faces when they asked what this one was and I said, "A girl".

A time when I almost--almost--learned to say it apologetically.

"Another girl." Sorry.

Strangers faces saying: Too bad.

Then there was Sue, telling me that if the Divine could be male, it could be female too. That women are as capable of understanding, comprehending, interpreting, and communicating with the Divine as men are.

And then I looked down into my female child's face and saw Her: Divine.

*****

I am in awe of the women around me. Women who are incredibly, divinely strong. By 'incredibly', I mean they are strong through times and situations they should not possibly be strong through. Things that rightly should make any person crumble. It might take a woman years to find her voice but once she does, I don't think she ever stops listening.

That's what I can't get over. These women I know, or know about, who find themselves in terrible situations: terrible marriages, terrible poverty, terrible illness or violence or circumstances--and somehow find it within themselves not just to keep going, but to evolve. To start over. To reach down to the bottoms of their very selves, take stock of what's there, and then leave things in the dust: Parental expectations. Societal expectations. Bad husbands, bad jobs. Bad turns of luck.

They go into a sort of hibernation and then they emerge: beautiful winged creatures. Free and lovely things. Things that show me what sorts of strength I may be capable of, if I had to be.

I am so honored to watch.

I had a friend tell me lately she went through a number of turns that left her, as she put it, reduced to her core. And there she was, just her and her center. Not ravished like a wind stripped tree, but raw like a thing just starting to bloom. Such pretty wings, flapping slowly. Waiting to sense what's on the breeze.

I had a friend tell me "I'm a proponent of marriage, but I'm not a proponent of amazing women being stuck with shitty husbands." This woman who works, raises children alone, goes to school, dreams beautiful dreams of making life better for others.

I had a friend tell me that one day a switch turned off and she couldn't stay in her old life another minute. A woman whose core has proven to be built of stronger stuff than her sweet demeanor would ever betray.

I thought I was a strong woman. And then I see these people. Adversity hits, and what do they do? They push back their sleeves. Dirty their hands and scrape their nails against the absolute bottom of the well.

Their hands come up clutching bounties of stars.

****

I was thinking of this last night as I fell asleep. In the Bible, the wisdom of the Divine is personified as female.

They call it Sophia.

That girl-child in whom I recognized the presence of God: her middle name is Sophie.

When I tried to conjure up a symbolic image for this point in my life, I kept seeing darkness all around. But I was holding a little light. I could see more in the distance.

Last night, thinking about these people, I finally saw what was beneath me.

Wild waters. An ancient, living ship. Carrying me home.



I am Vesuvius, and I was afraid but I wrote this anyway.

**Credit for the above photo goes to Lady Cierra Lorenzen, who probably needs a website; to "the timer on her camera"; and to the general awesomeness of all the Lorenzens for probably generations back, but specifically to Kiah, Cierra and Lucy.