Year-End Wrap-Up 2009

We are back in town after a little Christmas jaunt up to my parents' house in Northern California. We had a lovely time. I took my daughter to see the San Francisco Ballet's production of The Nutcracker, which was magical. I'm not sure which I enjoyed more, watching the dancing, or seeing the scores of little girls in the audience, all dressed up in their holiday finery. My daughter loved it all!

I always hesitate to do a year-end reading wrap-up, because I usually haven't read that many books actually published in the year I'm wrapping up. This year I have a few books from 2009 to recommend, so I will. I'll also throw in my cousin's favorites of the year, since he's a voracious reader, he reads mostly new fiction and non-fiction, has good taste, and his favorites include a bunch of things I want to read!

Some of my favorite reads of 2009, published in 2009:

Fiction:
The Anthologist: A Novel, by Nicholson Baker
The Lacuna: A Novel, by Barbara Kingsolver
The Believers: A Novel, by Zoe Heller
A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore
The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Memoir:
Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr
Confections of a Closet Master Baker: One Woman's Sweet Journey from Unhappy Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker by Gesine Bullock Prado

My cousin's 2009 favorites include:

Fiction:
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned: Stories-Wells Tower
The Believers-Zoe Heller
Sag Harbor: A Novel-Colson Whitehead
Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It-Maile Meloy
Juliet, Naked: a novel-Nick Hornby
A Gate at the Stairs-Lorrie Moore
A Good Fall: Stories-Ha Jin

Non-fiction:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon-David Grann
Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir-Christopher Buckley
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter-Jason Kersten
True Compass: A Memoir-Ted Kennedy
Lit-Mary Karr
The Hunger: A Story of Food, Desire, and Ambition-John DeLucie
Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"-David Bianculli

What does your year-end wrap up look like this year? Do you make an accounting of what you've read in the year?

Still on the jury...

I'm on a jury. The trial is supposed to last two weeks, but we hear it might go a day or two longer. Which means it will get dangerously close to Christmas.

We celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas in our family. At home, we've been lighting our candles nightly, and it is quite beautiful. Then next week we plan to head to my parents' house, a six-hour drive away, to enjoy their Christmas tree and lots of presents and food. I was hoping to drive north on the 22nd, but...I could still be in court. I'm thinking the judge won't like it if I skip town...

I've barely cracked a book during the trial, because I've had no time to do any of my part-time work, regular errands, Christmas shopping, or kid stuff during the day. Due to the trial, I'm missing one child's family history presentation at school, and another's teacher-appreciation party. My third is in the middle of finals week, so in honor of that, I thought I'd post a little list of vocabulary words for y'all to ponder.

My eighth-grader (13-year-old) read To Kill a Mockingbird this semester in his English class. This is the list of vocabulary words, mostly gleaned from that book, that he has to know the definition of for tomorrow's exam. I thought it was a pretty good list for a 13-year-old to know. You can quiz yourself on how many you know :)

morbid
prowess
expound
nebulous
rue
articulate
fractious
furtive
perpetrate
temerity
mitigate
indolent
affable
deplorable
solicitous
amenity
distraught
urbane
truculence
terse
righteous
reconcile
conjecture
patronize
lurid
dexterity
discourse
protract
restive
indiscriminate
countenance
cultivated
uncanny
duress
repose
inordinate
assuage
venerable
ingenuous
intricate
exuberant
vehement
disposition

Doing my Civic Duty--which means a Blogging Break

I am on a jury, for the first time in my life. I've had jury duty before, but have never been picked for a jury, until now. I was hoping that I would have time to blog while being in court all day, but that was a fantasy.

So I'm going to take a blogging break for the next week, and get back to it after the 18th.

Every day I take two books to the courthouse with me, both of which were birthday gifts from my sweet husband: Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna: A Novel or Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. However I try to parcel out the minutes, I have no time to actually read them.

And then I'm too tired to read when I get home at night. I'll let you know if I've made progress once I'm back! In the meantime, I'll try to check in with all my blogging friends, but doubt I'll have time to write much. We'll see!

Book Bloggers Unite...

...and have lunch!

The antidote for a crappy week: getting together with book blogging friends in real life at the charming Aroma Cafe (which houses the cute Portrait of a Bookstore) and having a lovely lunch and book gift exchange.

It's been one of those weeks. I had jury duty, and got on a trial. And it will be a long two weeks in court. If I'm lucky.

So I was cheered to meet up with Ti from Book Chatter, Florinda from 3 Rs Blog, Jill from Fizzy Thoughts, and Amy from My Friend Amy.

Sweet Jill drove the farthest, and brought us special CDs of Christmas music. And we each brought a wrapped book for a holiday book exchange. Lamebrain that I am, I forgot my gift, but fortunately we were right next to the lovely little bookstore, so I quickly picked a favorite and had it wrapped. We ate, drank, chatted about books and life, and browsed in the tiny but cute bookstore at the back of the cafe. All in all, a very nice day.

Here's Florinda with her book exchange book.

And here's Ti with her new book.

Amy (left) and Jill (right)
I'm looking forward to seeing them all again at this year's LA Times Festival of Books in April, if not before.

Sunday Salon: In my head

The front page of the New York Times Book Review has a really nice review of Alice Munro's new story collection, Too Much Happiness. It's a book that I covet. And now that my birthday has come and gone, I have a couple of book store gift certificates that I can use to buy it!

The review, by Leah Hager Cohen, starts out saying something that I often talk about in relation to my favorite books--that sense that the author is speaking words you might speak, or at least is writing about things you've thought about. It's a wonderful feeling when it happens, and it happened to this reviewer when she read this book of Munro's. Cohen writes, "...the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances you wonder, 'How could the author have known what I was thinking?' Of course, what has happened isn't this at all, though it's no less astonishing. Rather, you've been drawn so deftly into another world that you're breathing with someone else's rhythms, seeing someone else's visions as your own."

I love when this happens. It doesn't happen for me with many authors, but with some. For me, it happens with Lorrie Moore, and Laurie Colwin, and Alice Munro. Raymond Carver, every once in awhile. Less so with authors who wrote before the 20th century, because their language is so different than that which I use myself, even though I may get caught up in the poetry of it.

Which, if any, authors do that to you?

I'm in the middle of Nicholson Baker's novel The Anthologist, which I'm really liking. There is a similar sensation reading this book. I think it's because it's a stream-of-consciousness novel to begin with, and Baker has been able to really draw me into his main character's head. He doesn't think exactly the way I do, but I like the way he thinks, and it makes the reading experience very enjoyable.

I would imagine that being inside the head of a character you don't like or relate to would be excruciating. I can't remember any reading experiences like that. Do you have any painful stream-of-consciousness reading experiences?

The world's worst library books

My sister-in-law sent me a link to a website appropriately named Awful Library Books, which rounds up the worst library books out there, most of which are hopelessly and hilariously outdated. Made me giggle.

An update to my wish list for new books:

Too Much Happiness: Stories, by Alice Munro. I almost always love Munro. Her stories are often little gems. I'm looking forward to savoring these.

Wolf Hall: A Novel, by Hilary Mantel. I'm interested in learning about Thomas Cromwell, and this won the Booker this year, and the buzz is good. It's on my list.

My Wish List Grows Longer...

All of a sudden there are so many new books out that I want to read. I'm coveting them. Good thing my birthday is coming up, maybe I can convince the hubby to spring for some of these.

Here's a partial list of the books I'm drooling over:

The Lacuna: A Novel, by Barbara Kingsolver. Here's the review in the New York Times Book Review, by Liesl Schillinger, which ends with this nice bit: "The Lacuna can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver's novel lies in its call to conscience and connection."

The Children's Book, by A.S. Byatt. Here's a review and interview with A. S. Byatt from NPR station WBUR in Boston. In it, Byatt calls this novel, "the one I find easiest to love." It is said to be long and rambly with lots of characters, but I'm in. I'm definitely going to get a copy of this one.

Invisible, by Paul Auster. The review in the New York Times Book Review, by Clancy Martin, ends with the superlative, "It is the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written." I have liked some of Auster's novels, and not responded to others, but certainly want to read his finest. Onto the list!

Lit: A Memoir, by Mary Karr. This is a new memoir by Karr, who was mesmerizing in her first memoir, The Liar's Club. I didn't read her second book, but I hear this one is really amazing. Susan Cheever says it is a serious book about motherhood, faith, alcoholism, and more in a NY Times Book Review podcast.

Hello husband? You listening? Book store gift cards are nice, too.