Time for the annual reading round-up, the grand analysis of reading trends of 2017. I read more this past year, but as I look through my list, I am having trouble identifying a "Don't Miss This!" book. I read a lot of interesting and worthwhile books, books that I would recommend, but there's not one that outshines the rest. Here is the summary:
Number of books: 64. More than the last couple of years, but I counted literary journals - of which I have also read more since I have a Paris Review subscription and my sister is sharing Lapham's Quarterly. Although I read more, I posted much less.
- 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
- 7 were rereads
- 26 were nonfiction.
- Of those, 9 were memoir type books
- 4 were books for spiritual growth
- 3 were collections of essays
- The other 11 could be categorized as how to or history I think. Now that I think of it, I did not include the three travel guides to Ireland that I read pretty thoroughly and included a lot of historical and cultural information.
Of the 43 books of fiction:
- Only 6 were children's chapter books. And only 1 was a read aloud. I did not count the countless picture books the preschooler and I have read.
- 4 poetry collections. I read more than usual amounts of poetry this year including the journals.
- No big classics per se, although the Montgomery books and the Laura Ingalls Wilder book are children's classics, and the Elizabeth Bowen book, Death of the Heart, might count as a lesser classic in a stretch.
The evaluation:
- Books I read even though I didn't love them and wish I didn't spend the time: Never Unfriended, A Table in the Wilderness - both of these were books that addressed faith written by young bloggers and both had a similar feel - a bit repetitive, a bit hyperbolic. Other books I was disappointed in: I couldn't bring myself to love either Gibbons' Recipe for the Charmed Life or the Diaz book. Other people love the acclaimed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I never felt drawn in. Oscar reminded me a bit of Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, a book I disliked intensely. Because he was large or because he was critical? I'm not sure, but neither book gets a thumbs up from me. Station Eleven also got great reviews, but I couldn't bring myself to accept that people would still be living in tents in an airport twenty years after a catastrophic flu epidemic - WHEN PERFECTLY GOOD HOUSES ARE EVERYWHERE! And libraries full of books about how to set up electric currents, among many other valuable skills. What else did people have to do all day. They don't even seem to be gardening!! I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough.
- My favorite novels this year were Reading Turgenev, Silence, The Course of Love, and for fun, Finding Bernadette. Silence I've read before, but the William Trevor is new to me. I was charmed by Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, an analysis of a marriage. It was a book I couldn't wait to sit down with - Charming and interesting point of view, likable characters. The Bernadette book was light and fluffy, but one that was fun to read. My fifteen year old read it first and loved it. It's sometimes hard to find books she likes to read that don't seem too adult - so I'm always excited when I find a winner for her.
- I did love Melissa Sweet's Some Writer! about E. B. White and rereading Emily of New Moon - those two win for best children's book, and maybe favorites of the year.
- Other books I would recommend: of course, The Joy of Love by Pope Francis, and also Houselander's Reed of God, Barron's Vibrant Paradoxes, Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic. Books that stayed with me several weeks after I read them: Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, Irish Saints, and the Warnick book This is Where You Belong. Neil Gaiman's big book of collected essays The View from the Cheap Seats may be the book I read with the most relish. I don't love all the science fiction that Gaiman loves, but I love his frank delight in literature.
3 comments:
Have you read the trilogy by Rebecca West about the Aubrey Family, beginning with The Fountain Overflows? I read that first title twice through while I waited for the next ones in the series to arrive. I was in love with that family and wished I didn't have to leave them after three novels.
Do you like to read favorite books repeatedly? If you have any that you've enjoyed more than once, I'd love to see that list! Forgive me if you've already published it here - I miss a lot, I know.
I looked up Finding Bernadette and only came up with Where'd You Go, Bernadette? which I assume is the title you were referring to. I'd love to read something along with one of my teenaged granddaughters so I'm always keeping my ears open for something agreeable to both generations!
You are right, GretchenJoanna - I mistyped the title! It is about an eccentric family of three. The daughter is a child genius whose mother disappears in the middle of a flap with the neighbors, and the book is the story of how she tries to track her down. Meanwhile, the father is a Silicon Valley genius who has to reevaluate whether he wants to spend more time at work or at home. It does have a part where the father starts to get involved with someone he works with after the wife has left, so it does have some adult themes. I don't know in retrospect if I would have picked it out for my daughter to read - so if you are thinking about sending it to your granddaughter, you may want to read it first! In fact, on second thought, I would probably recommend the Agatha Christie books for a teen girl over this one if I were picking - and my daughter read Murder On the Orient Express around the time the movie came out and liked it. The Semple book does end with a reunion, so the characters make apologies and forgive in the end. It's more of a beach read, plot driven, than a particularly literary book - but my year of reading didn't include many novels of substance other than Silence, which I had already read, and the Montgomery books. I don't always reread so many titles - most of my rereads were for my book club or were childrens' chapter books. However, I have been trying to reread some of the classics I read so long ago I barely remember them. I will definitely look for the Rebecca West books. Would they be good for teen girls?
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