Books of '09

This is Miss Kitty Jenkyn, daughter of Thomas Hart, who took her godfather's last name, Reading, when he died, before she married Charles Packe. So the informal name of this portrait by William Beechey is "Miss Reading,"  a cute double entendre. Painted around 1820, the formally titled "Portrait of Kitty Packe (nee Hart)"  is not in my Women Reading calendar, which I want to keep pristine so I can tack every month up in my office when the year is out, but was a find at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The gift shop didn't have a postcard of this piece.

I’m a little late to the party, but I intended to make a list of my favorite books of 2009 some time ago. In the midst of all the Christmas celebrating, I just couldn’t remember what I have read this year, which is part of the reason I started this blog. I’ve been a book consumer instead of a book digester for the past few years, although when I was thinking about it, I realized I remember more books that I read in 2008 than in 2009. 2008 was the year of Brit Lit with my homeschool group: I returned to Beowulf, the Everyman play, Canterbury Tales, MacBeth, Robinson Crusoe, Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth, and David Copperfield with new appreciation. (Although my opinion remains that Robinson Crusoe is dull. All those details about how he made his house and bread don’t interest me.) At the beginning of 09, we read Pride and Prejudice, no comments needed, and we ended the class with Murder in the Cathedral, which, while it tied together British history, really didn’t bind me in interest.

Last year was also the year I discovered Tim Farrington’s Lizzie’s War and Alan Bennett’s An Uncommon Reader, and George Weigel’s Letters to a Young Catholic. Nancy Mitford’s Love in A Cold Climate stands out too. Maybe because of our move or because of blogging, I don’t think I read as much or as well (which is not part of the reason I started blogging.)

Anyway, here are a few of the books I can remember:

• Favorite Novel I hadn’t read before: Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty. Evocative.

• Favorite Novel I had read before: Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Haunting.

• Favorite Fun Novel: The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Gripping. 

• Favorite Religious book: I was involved in Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain for a long time. But I was surprised and delighted by Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God, which was the May pick for my dearly loved and sorely missed Catholic book club back in Virginia. When the group decided to read yet another Mary book for May, I was initially disappointed, but after a few pages of Houselander’s book, I was entranced.

• Favorite Nonfiction book: I picked up a lot of books on writing and reading this year at the library because I considered trying to teaching an entry level class at the local community college. (I applied, had an interview, and was offered a night class at the campus half an hour away. Too inconvenient with my husband frequently travelling and my kids frequently having activities.) But while I enjoyed all these books about books and the process of writing books, I really preferred Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything – a run through scientific history. Accessible but challenging.

• Saddest Endings: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene.

• Most disappointing novel: Elinor Lipman’s Then She Found Me. Boring.

• Favorite Children’s Book: Elizabeth Goudge’s Linnets and Valerians. Enchanting.

Books I want to read in 2010:

• Still working on reading Mississippi/Southern writers: On my table are Faulkner’s As I lay Dying and Go Down, Moses, the later of which I haven’t read before. Also before or after we go to New Orleans, I want to reread Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer.

• A friend gave me Ian McEwan’s Atonement before we moved, and I’ve been waiting to try to forget the movie before I read it, but it is a hard movie to forget…

• My son just finished To Kill A Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies before I could get around to rereading them, so they're under my table.

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith has been recommended enough times that it has come to my attention. I also have never read anything by J.M Coetzee.

• I borrowed Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh from my mom a long time ago, and still need to read that. I also plucked Alice McDermott’s The Bigamist’s Daughter from her shelves. I have mixed emotions about McDermott: Loved Charming Billy and After This but was disappointed by Child of My Heart.

• For spiritual reading, I’ve meant to pick up Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and I have had Peter Kreeft’s Prayer for Beginners for a long time.

• Wendell Berry has out a new book of poetry, Leavings, and a book about food with Michael Pollan, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, and Whitefoot, an illustrated book about a mouse.

• Some authors I've been intending to get around to: David Lodge, Kingsley Amis, Mary Doria Russell, Julian Green, Jose Maria Gironella

Hmm, the list keeps getting longer. I'm usually not very disciplined about following a reading plan, except when I'm in a book club, but just look to see whom I recognize at the library.  Maybe I should make being more ordered in my reading a New Year's Resolution, when I get around to that . . .