Top 10 Books Read in 2008

Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Well, I am. It's January and time for looking back. Here are the top 10 (well 11) books that I read in 2008. They are in no particular order and they have been chosen based on my engagement & excitement and not necessarily for literary value (though I would argue the merits of any one of them).

#1: Sharp Teeth: Toby Barlow

If George Pelecanos, Kelley Armstrong, and Sonia Sones all got together in a dive bar in L.A., talked for hours and had a few too many, a novel like this might have been the result. Written in blank verse, Sharp Teeth tells the gritty, bloody, yet strangely captivating story of a lycanthropic underworld in Southern California filled with schemers, criminals, and down and out folks simply wanting to belong . . . to something.


#2: Fingersmith: Sarah Waters

If David Mamet's movie of cons and con men, House of Games, had been set in 1860's London, it might have gone something like this. Sue Trinder, orphaned at a young age, and raised by Mrs. Sucksby and her "family" of thieves, fences, and ner-do-wells, is pulled into a complex con game with a young man, the neighborhood calls the "Gentleman." He needs Sue's help to woo another young orphan, Maud, who lives with her reclusive uncle in the country--an orphan who will come into money of her own only after she is married. Sue takes on the role of Maud's maidservant and her job is to help the romance along; however, once the Gentleman spirits Maud away to be married (since her uncle would never permit it), the plan is to have Maud institutionalized as insane and for Sue and the Gentleman to take the money. However, things are much more than what they seem and Sue certainly did not bargain on having feelings for Maud.


#3: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Stieg Larsson

A mystery in the vein of Henning Mankell--that is, not a lot of flashy show downs (okay, well one) but a lot of intriguing, deliberate investigation and some vivid characters. A crusading financial journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, recently convicted on libel charges, is hired by Henrik Vanger, the aging head of family-owned corporation, to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, almost 40 years before. Lisbeth Salander works for the security firm that is initially hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate Mikael (prior to hiring him). People often underestimate her--judging her by her punk rock exterior, all heroin skinny with lots of tattoos and piercings. Also, her social skills leave something to be desired. However, not only is Lisbeth a genius hacker but she is a brilliantly meticulous investigator. It is when Mikael and Lisbeth join forces that things really get interesting.


#4: The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins

This novel, set in a dystopian future, has the United States divided into twelve districts (the 13th district was obliterated after a failed rebellion) and a ruling Capital (giving shining city on a hill a whole new sinister twist). Life in many of the districts is hard and made harder by the fact that each year every district must send two tributes, one girl and one boy, between the ages of 12 - 18, to the Hunger Games, a contest-to-the-death a la Survivor, broadcast on national television.

Katniss Everdeen is sixteen going on 30, supporting her mother and sister, Prim, by hunting game and collecting plants in a forbidden area outside of District 12 (an area encompassing much of Appalachia and focused on mining). When Katniss's sister, Prim, is chosen for the Hunger Games, Katniss steps in to take her place. The boy chosen from District 12 is Peeta, son of the local baker, and a boy that once did Katniss an enormous kindness. As the novel follows Katniss to the Capital and through the horrible (but all too familiar) rituals preceding the games, the tension grows. Will Katniss be the first tribute from District 12 to win in decades? When the time comes, will she be able to kill Peeta? What will be lost by winning?


#5: Love is a Mix Tape: Rob Sheffield

I really loved this book. It wasn't just that it made me laugh. It wasn't just that it brought back a swirl of music-tinged memories from the 90's. It wasn't just that it made me cry. It wasn't just that the author is my age and that we seem to speak the same pop culture language. It was all these things and more. Rob is a tall, shy music geek from Boston pursuing a graduate degree in English when he meets Renee, a bold "punk-rock girl" from West Virginia who is getting her MFA. Music connects them from the very beginning. They both perk up when a Big Star song is played at the local bar and the soundtrack to their developing relationship is wonderfully eccentric (and most likely recorded over some crappy band's demo tape). This book isn't just a mix tape; it's a love letter. A love letter to Charlottesville, Virginia, to Renee and all she stood for, to music and especially 90's music, and, of course, to mix tapes.

#6: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: David Wroblewski

This is the third book that I've read in the last year that does a modern take on Hamlet and it was by far the best. David Wroblewski takes the spirit of the Shakespeare play and crafts a novel about family connections, silence and communication, and the dream of creating the perfect breed of dog. Edgar is a young man growing up with his parents on a farm in northern Wisconsin. He has been mute since birth but is able to communicate with his parents, Gar and Trudy, using sign language--part ASL and part his own creation. The family business is breeding dogs and training them and that's just one of the fascinating bits of this story. When Gar's brother, Claude, returns to the area, trouble starts because the brothers' relationship is complex and strained. As the story begins to build and you know (or at least suspect) that the events will lead to a Shakespeare-like tragedy, it's hard to stop reading.


#7: Maynard & Jennica: Rudolph Delson

This is a quirky love story set in New York around the time of September 11th and narrated by a cast of thousands (well, more like 30). This cast includes the two title characters but also friends, family members, and a number of random New Yorkers, who weigh in as the relationship between Maynard and Jennica develops. If you hate things that border on twee, this is not the book for you but I enjoyed the eccentricities including the structure of the story itself. Besides, how can you resist a book that concludes with a list of "speakers in this comedy" and said list ends with, "As well as an aged MACAW, certain CICADAS, certain FROGS, certain CRICKETS, and one EMERGENCY BRAKE on a certain No. 6 train" (p. 296)?


#8: The Translation of Dr. Arpelles: David Treuer

In this novel, David Treuer weaves two stories together in interesting and ambiguous ways. One strand follows a 40-something translator of Native American languages who works archiving unwanted books in a giant book depository (I picture that warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones). Every other Friday, Dr. Apelles visits a library archive to work on translation projects. At the start of the book, he has found an exciting new text to translate and one that changes him in the process. The other strand seems to be the story that Dr. Apelles has found-a story of two Native American young people, who are destined to be together--though they must survive many challenges to do so. By the end of the novel, it is not clear what is being translated and what is truth and it left me with many questions (in a good way) and a desire to talk about this book with a book group and lots of coffee.

#9: Dairy Queen: Catherine Gilbert Murdock

This is a great coming-of-age story that involves football, cows, and learning to take chances. DJ Schwenk worries that she has become a cow-not questioning the many hours a day that she spends keeping the family's dairy farm going (while her dad recovers from hip problems), not questioning the angry silence between her Dad and her two older brothers (who are both off playing football in college), and accepting her flunking of English class the previous semester as inevitable. However, when a family friend, who happens to be the football coach of a rival town's team, sends his star quarterback, Brian Nelson, to help DJ with farm chores (and eventually to be trained by DJ), something happens . . . and nothing in the Schwenk family will be the same.



Tied for #10:

Mistress of the Art of Death: Ariana Franklin

Though it took me a chapter or two to get into the rhythms of this novel's omniscient narrator, once I did I couldn't put it down. In 12th century Cambridge, a young child is murdered and the townspeople blame the Jews. An out-of-control mob not only attacks and kills one of the wealthier Jewish families but they chase the rest of the community into the local castle, where the sheriff and his men must protect them. The king, Henry II, is concerned because the Cambridge Jews had been a reliable source of income for his royal coffers. He contacts his cousin, the King of Sicily, to send for a "doctor of death," a doctor who has been trained to examine dead bodies to determine cause of death (think forensic investigations when autopsies were still a sort of blasphemy.) The Italian king sends his best doctor, who just happens to be a woman.


Kornwolf: Tristan Egolf

What do a middle-aged boxing trainer, a 30-something journalist who has trouble keeping a job, and a young Amish boy whose father brutalizes him have in common? Read this novel and find out. It's a story of prodigal sons (to quote the back cover), werewolves, family curses, rural Pennsylvania, and human weakness. Yet it's also wickedly funny, dark, suspenseful, and satirical. Not your typical werewolf story or really typical in any way. I found this at a used bookstore in Providence, RI, and bought it because . . . who can resist a story that combines the Amish and werewolves. This, however, nicely exceeded my expectations and I'm looking forward to tracking down Egolf's two earlier works. I wish there were more to come but Tristan Egolf committed suicide in 2005.


Contenders that didn't make the cut:

No Country for Old Men: Cormac McCarthy
by George: Wesley Stace
Unaccustomed Earth: Jhumpa Lahiri
Julie & Julia: Julie Powell
And She Was: Cindy Dyson
The Spellman Files: Lisa Lutz