Another top 10 list

I'm adopting Jenny's strategy of including two #10s as well as a list of extras that didn't quite make the list. These are my favorites of the books I read in 2008. Discuss.

Lady of the Snakes, Rachel Pastan
We follow Jane Levitsky during her first year as an assistant professor as she suffers the insecurities of a woman trying to have it all: she wants to spend more time on her research, but she feels guilty about the time away from her daughter, Maisie. Meanwhile, the subject of her research, the wife of a 19th century Russian writer, becomes more than the breakthrough that might make her academic career. As Jane’s tenuous hold on her career and family starts to slip, we feel her anguish and desperation as she keeps looking to her Russian alter ego for answers.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Each year each district must send a boy and a girl to compete in the Hunger Games, a brutal contest for survival that only one can win. When her younger sister is chosen for the Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She finds that her hardscrabble lifestyle has prepared her for the hardships of the Games, though perhaps not for the gamesmanship. Her struggles to survive, and her evolving understanding of the unfairness of the government, make this a gripping story.

The World to Come, Dara Horn
This book starts with an awkward singles cocktail party at the Jewish Museum and Ben Ziskind’s unlikely theft of a small Chagall painting. The narrative spins out forward and backwards in time from there, both detailing the consequences of his action and slowly filling in the pieces to explain how it became a family heirloom. Horn repeatedly returns to the themes of memory, beliefs, and trust in relationships.

The Good Thief, Hannah Tinti
Ren expects that he will never be adopted because he is missing his left hand. However, when he is twelve, Benjamin Nab appears and claims him as his long-lost brother. Ren immediately starts to suspect Benjamin’s claims: he is a small-time crook who uses Ren’s disability to disarm his intended marks. Ren and Benjamin’s unconventional little family stretches to include a number of other quirky and beautifully-written characters that pull together against the threats of the local factory owner. Along the way, Ren learns more about his past and also about what constitutes a family.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
This is Alexie’s autobiographically-inspired account of Junior, a Native American. Written in very spare language and illustrated with Junior’s cartoons, his diary chronicles his life on the reservation and his experiences at the white high school 20-some miles (and a huge cultural gap) away. His matter-of-fact recognition of the hopelessness and alcoholism that surrounds him is heartbreaking, but nevertheless there is a lot of humor and affection in his depiction.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver
This is Kingsolver’s account of her family’s attempt to live a year as true locavores, growing much of their own food and finding local producers of anything they couldn’t grow themselves. I especially enjoyed her anecdotal sections about her daughter Lily, who was 9 at the time, and her budding chicken farm; trying to figure out how to encourage her turkeys to have sex; and her trip to Italy.

The Commoner, John Burnham Schwartz
This is a fictionalized story of Empress Michiko, the first commoner to marry into the rigid hierarchy of the Japanese Imperial family. It is not a Cinderella story, however; the princess – here called Haruko – finds herself so constrained by her new position that she cannot even see her parents anymore. The ending breaks from what is otherwise a pretty factual telling of Empress Michiko’s life, but it does a wonderful job evoking the relationship between the Japanese people and the Imperial Family.

Away, Amy Bloom
Lillian Leyb leaves Russia after her family is killed in the pogroms and settles in New York in the 1920s. As she says early in the novel, “Az me muz, ken men” (When one must, one can), which describes Lillian’s approach to her new life. On her cross-country quest to find her lost daughter, Sophie, she moves through the vividly imagined worlds of other marginal people, adapting to their rules.

Life As We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer
What would you do if life as we knew it was ending? That is the question posed by this thought-provoking young adult novel. When an asteroid knocks the moon out of its orbit, the resulting gravitational shift causes tsunamis that destroy coastal areas. Written as the diary of a typical 16-year-old, the book chronicles her family’s survival through a series of crises, and yet there are times of celebration and family; it is reminiscent of Anne Frank in that way. Pfeffer also wrote a companion book, The Dead and the Gone, about the same catastrophe, set in NYC.

Tied for #10:
A Person of Interest, Susan Choi
The story starts with a mail-bomb. Professor Lee, a retirement-aged math professor, becomes a Person of Interest in the investigation of the bombing; his personal awkwardness and lifelong habits of reticence make him seem suspicious. We go back through Lee’s life to see the choices that have left him living in a dirty, empty home with no social life. This is not a cheerful story, but Choi creates a compelling portrait of a man who finds himself alone, uncertain how he got there.

Dairy Queen, Catherine Gilbert Murdock
DJ Schwenk does not question the silence between her family members or the ridiculous sacrifices being asked of her, running her family’s Wisconsin dairy farm, until the coach of her school’s rival football team sends his QB to help out on the farm. Murdock gives DJ a distinctive voice and places her in an authentic world peopled with interesting and idiosyncratic individuals, making her coming-of-age drama into a touching but not maudlin story.

Didn’t quite make the cut:
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin
Before I Die, Jenny Downham
The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
The Madonnas of Leningrad, Debra Dean