And I’m not talking about the temperature in Akron, folks!
What I’m talking about is being six degrees separated from Martin Sheen. Sort of. Okay, maybe a few more degrees than that but check this out: as many know, I send my Top 10 Book List out to lots of people who then send it out to lots of people and so on and so on and etc. In years past, it’s gone halfway around the world, which is part of the fun.
So this year I figured, shoot, why not say I want the list to land in the hands of a few of the famous people I admire? So I listed Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters (naturally), and the Edge from U2 (double natch), and Martin Sheen who stands as one of my all-time favorite actors. I mean, I didn’t watch West Wing for Rob Lowe only. Um, maybe I did sometimes, but you can’t deny that President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet was a super president. There were times I wished he was actually the one running the country. Besides that, Martin Sheen is just downright cool in every way.
Last night, I’m lying on the sofa in my PJs because I’m feeling sick and I nearly choke on the Life Saver I’m sucking on to soothe my throat when I read this:
Hi Amy, As you can see I got your list from a friend of a friend of a friend. Looks like maybe your Martin Sheen goal may come true. Please see below.
So I scroll down….
From: Julie M.
My brother-in-law works for the Sheen brothers and knows Martin Sheen so I will send this to him!!! See…you should dream big!
SERIOUSLY?
I know the chances of Martin Sheen emailing me about the book list are about as good as my chances of growing three inches and suddenly having a small butt. I’m sure Martin Sheen has better things to read than my little old book list. But I do believe we should dream big. Because you never know who knows who and you never know if someone you meet might be just the person who can help you.
Of course, if I do ever get to meet anyone of my heroes or heroines, I’ll probably act like Chris Farley on the Chris Farley show. Nervous, unable to say anything other than, “do you ‘member when you…” and “that was awesome.” In my dreams, the conversation sounds much better.
“Ten! Ten! Ten! Ten! Let’s sing a song about ten! How many is ten?”
Sesame Street reference aside, ten is the number of years I’ve sent out my Top 10 Book List. We’ve made it through a decade together! For the veterans out there, I will put together the whole decade’s worth of book recommendations from yours truly and post soon. For the newbies, here’s the skinny:
This marks my tenth year of putting together a Top 10 Book List. The history of the endeavor is simple. I read a bunch and friends were always asking me to recommend something so I decided to put a list together. Way back in 2000 (remember all that Y2K hubbub?), my recommendations excluded Oprah Book Club selections on the grounds that Oprah had way too much influence over what we were reading and there way too many great authors being overlooked. These days, I make exceptions to that rule. However, after 10 years, several original rules still hold:
The books I recommend do not have to be published in that given year. There are zillions of good books in the world and I don’t want to be so narrow as to only read books published that year. Case in point: I read a book that was published in 1914 and it made my 2009 list. Oldies can still be goodies.
The first few pages of this document summarize my year as well as the overarching theme(s) in the books I’ve selected. So, you can bypass the personal stuff and get right to the selections if you choose.
Forward ho, book lovers! That means you can forward this list to anyone you know that I don’t know who likes to read.
I track where my list travels. In the past, it’s gone as far as Australia and Thailand so if you send this to a friend of a babysitter of an aunt’s twice-removed cousin overseas, let me know. Even if you send it to New Amsterdam, Indiana (smallest town in the US, population 1), shoot me an email. One of these days I’m banking on someone sending it to someone famous like Dave Grohl or Martin Sheen or the Edge. (Hint, hint, people!) A girl can dream.
And finally (insert drum roll here), this year brings a Best of The Decade List! I read a ridiculous amount of books in the 2000s and I struggled to narrow the decade list to a paltry ten, but I did it. The task was about as difficult as taking an algebra test or walking out of a shoe store without making a purchase – these two things being nearly impossible for me. There was sweating, there was regret for leaving a beloved book behind, there was grand internal debate over the rankings, there was probably gnashing of teeth. What it came down to was simply this: these are the books that I believe deserve to be read by everyone, no matter your tastes in literature. They say important things, their characters reflect who we are and what we believe, and your life will be better for having read them. ‘Nuf said.
Happy reading in the new decade!
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. –A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Here we are at the end of the decade and the beginning of another. Charles Dickens’ first paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities could symbolize this decade, if not the final year of the 2000s.
For me, this year was a mixed bag of best and worst times, and with 2010 looming, I declared 2009 the Year of Starting Over. The “start over” phrase is a running joke between Dave and I. When we met, my checkbook ledger looked like abstract art and was just about as difficult to interpret. Basically, when I couldn’t get my checkbook balance to match the bank statement, I crossed out the incorrect total, wrote “start over” on the next line, and then scribbled in whatever total the bank statement or my ATM receipt indicated. It’s safe to say my financial acumen has improved since then but we still yell “Start Over!” when plans aren’t going as planned or when things gets royally mussed up, or when it’s time to find a different approach because the current one isn’t cutting it.
This year, I gave the Start Over shout-out early and often, beginning in January with one of the year’s best of times – our trip to the inauguration of President Obama in Washington, DC. (Go here for the complete story). Regardless of your political stance, there’s no denying that this was an historic moment for our country. Bundled up in layers of winter gear, Dave and I – along with our friends Kevin and Doug – made the trek from Philly to DC to stand near the Washington Monument with two million others. Never have I been in a crowd so joyful. And I still believe Obama will make good on these words from 1/20/09:
“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met. On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.”
For those who are critical or suspicious of Obama and his administration, I say give our president more than a year in office before you cry epic fail. No one can fix this mess in day, let alone a year.
But I digress.
In very short order after the inauguration, I injured my right knee, had my wisdom teeth extracted, traveled to Honduras on a OneSight mission where I contracted a respiratory infection or what, upon further review, might’ve been the swine flu, and experienced an inexplicable bout of hair loss. Worst times? Nah. I felt incredibly fortunate to have a job, to be surrounded by strong friends and family, to give the gift of sight to others who have no access to eyecare, and to continue jogging along with the aid of my new best friend, The Cortisone Shot. As for the hair, at least I had mass quantities to start with so the loss was easily covered up by strategically-placed barrettes and hats.
By October, the meniscus tear in my right knee – formerly known as The Good One – was too cranky to ignore. Besides that, being so far out of my regular running routine had taken its toll on my writing and general productivity. Running keeps me focused. Without it, I’m like an unanchored boat drifting from project to idea to cleaning out the junk drawer to looking online for a new sweater…um…what was it that I was supposed to be doing? No doubt, getting the knee fixed was going to put me back in the best of spirits and get me back to having the best of times. After surgery, I went to physical therapy and claimed that I was a beginning runner again. I had to rebuild the muscles I lost and I’m just now getting back my lowest gear of speed. Building up endurance will take even more time but the experience made me appreciate how far I have come as a runner these past ten years.
In many ways, Dave and I started over in Akron as well. In our first two years here we focused on getting settled into a new life with Dave as a professor at Kent State University and me as a work-from-home employee. These were not little changes; they were changes of big-doozy proportions. We spent time making our new house and this new city feel familiar, and we sought out new friends after leaving a brilliant band of brothers and sisters in Cincinnati. Dave attempted to enter the music scene and, after playing a few gigs, he realized it wasn’t just the lackluster music scene that troubled him; he wanted to take his music in a different direction. Start over! I faced similar situations in the running community and the writing scene. There were groups I could join but none of them felt all that right. So I started the Akron Writers Group and now there’s a solid core of writers and friends in Akron supporting each other as they dig away at their craft. But, overall, we were frustrated by how slowly our community was taking shape.
For a brief period this summer, we experienced our own Dickensian “season of darkness” as we seriously questioned whether Akron was the right place for us and whether Kent State was the right place for Dave. On the one hand, Akron is a great, easy place to live and we had cobbled together a small, strong community of pals. On the other hand, we were missing our larger network in Cincinnati and Dave was realizing that teaching was more important and valuable to him than conducting research (p.s. Dave rocks as a professor, students love him and it’s awesome to see him doing what he loves). We wondered if Akron was suffering from “brain drain” and had lost the bulwark of its creative natives and the kind of people who value community. After many long discussions during dog walks and over beers at our favorite restaurant, Lockview Lounge, we decided Akron is the right place for us, for now. We’re staying and we’re going to start over in some ways by making an effort to expand our community, possibly in Kent because …
… I have applied for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Wahoo! If accepted, I will be going back to school part-time in Fall 2010 and starting my education over. The idea of taking a fiction workshop or a class on Irish literature makes me weepy –a very, very happy weepy. As does the thought of buying new school supplies! I’m thinking Foo Fighters lunchbox.
In my writing life, I started over on the novel. As the saying goes, all first drafts are crap and thanks to those writing friends of mine who slogged through the first draft with me, questioning what needed to be questioned and pointing out what needed fixing, editing, or total annihilation. My first draft definitely fit the crap category but I learned a lot from the process and I’m working on draft number two. In between working on the novel, I sent out one short story, and it was accepted by Third Coast for their Fall 2010 issue. Strangely enough, the story was also accepted by Southern California Review several weeks later. It was nice to know that more than one editor enjoyed the story. I also finished up the final months of the year with an online Novel Writing class through Gotham Writers. Here, I met some incredible writers and super-fantastic women. We enjoyed each other’s writing and company so much that we started our own splinter group to keep us motivated.
The most brilliant best-of-times highlight of the year was our trip to Ireland, truly a trip of a lifetime. We’re not sure we’ll ever find another city or country where we felt so instantly at home and fell so instantly in love with the people, the vibe, the scenery. (Go here to read about the entire trip). Galway and Dingle and Kilkenny are still close to our hearts and in our minds. If we can find cheap airfare like we did this time, we’ll go back sooner rather than later. And in keeping with the Irish theme, we saw U2 and Snow Patrol in Chicago in October. U2 is no stranger to starting over. The boys have defined and redefined their sound several times, and we love every iteration. Me? I fell in love with Snow Patrol’s enthusiasm. They were ga-ga about playing with their heroes and their happiness was contagious. They’re in regular rotation on my iPod these days.
So with all this chatter about starting over, I wasn’t surprised to find that same thread weaving its way through my 2009 book selections. The subconscious works in mysterious ways, yes? I fell in love with characters that struggled to begin again or were forced to start over after some type of tragedy. I lost myself in sprawling stories that focused on community and how we’re all connected, no matter how loosely. And I found comfort in tales of people struggling to make sense of their world, just like all of us do every do. As always, I didn’t happen across these books on my own. I have friends like Sandy Becker, Erik Brueggemann, Veronica Jurgena and many others to thank for passing along a must-read title.
The publishing industry has taken its own economic beating and many editors question whether literature will survive, whether in hardback or in Kindle-esque digital. I prefer to believe Alice Sebold who says: “Narrative is perhaps the most powerful antidote we have in the face of what at first may appear to be insurmountable odds.” And I believe Edward O’Brien who, in 1933, said, “In a time of doubt and uncertainty a nation is wise if it turns to its artists for enlightenment. The artists of a land are its most nearly conscious voice…new life always springs from old.”
New life springs from old. Start over. And do it with a great book! Thanks, fellow book lovers, for continuing to support writers and for seeking out new narratives. We are the stories we tell, yes?
1. The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks This slim novel packs an emotional punch as four main characters try to piece together what happened when a school bus careened off a snowy road and killed several children, forever changing the communal fabric of a small, working class town in Upstate New York. What I love about stories told from multiple viewpoints, is that we, as readers, have the freedom to choose the character we identify with the most and the character we believe in the most. Each of the four characters here – the bus driver, the widowed father who loses two children in the accident, the lawyer who attempts to pit the parents who lost their children against the town, and the beauty queen cheerleader crippled in the accident – will do more than tug at your heartstrings. They’ll make you think the next time you try to place blame on someone when the unthinkable happens, or when there’s an accident and it’s unclear what happened.
Each character has details the others don’t and each character grapples with much more than the accident in their daily lives. In the case of this story, it seems that no one is to blame for the accident directly, yet everyone is to blame for something behind the closed doors of their homes. The final scene at the town’s annual demolition derby is so well-drawn, you’ll feel like you’re sitting on the bleachers beside Dolores Discroll (the bus driver) and her husband Abbott. Ultimately, this book is about how a community comes together or is torn apart when tragedy strikes. It reminds us that we are all linked, no matter how loosely we think those links may be.
I tend to go to Richard Russo for a sense of place but Banks may be one of my new heroes in this regard. I have more than a few of his books on my reading list for 2010.
A.O. Scott praises the American short story in a recent NY Times article. And I praise A.O. Scott for her viewpoint on the short form of fiction. I’m a big fan of the short story. Not only reading them but writing them. A lot of book lovers shy away from short story collections. They say there’s not enough there for them to grasp onto. But I say if the writer is doing her job, you get a novel’s worth of impact in less than 20 pages.
Short stories are great for night-time reading when you can only make it through a few pages before falling asleep. They’re great for a bus or train ride to work. Or when you’re hanging out in a coffee shop.
I just finished Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It’s a novel in short stories with Olive, a cantankerous retired school teacher as the thread running through the collection. If you want to try out a short story collection but want the feel of a novel, this might be a good place to start.
Here are a few of my all-time favorite collections:
Like Life, Loorie Moore What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver At The Gates Of The Animal Kingdom, Amy Hempel A Multitude of Sins, Richard Ford The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill Love Life, Bobbie Ann Mason
All of Alice Munro’s collections – you just can’t go wrong with this Canuck
My name is Amy and I am a Bookaholic. Hardback, paperback, it’s hard stopping myself. I have way too many books — all of them read once, some of them read multiple times. Dave and I have moved frequently in our lives and the movers always complain that we have more books than furniture. What, exactly, is the problem with that?
Throughout our 18 years together, my books have been stowed away in various particle-board bookshelves, milk crates, cardboard boxes, nightstands, coffee tables, drawers and other flat surfaces that looked like they needed a friendly book to keep them company. I’ve been known to sneak a book or two into the house (like clothes) and pretend I bought it before I started the five other new books on my nightstand.
Trouble is, when I want to read this or that short story again or I want to revisit an author I haven’t read in awhile, it takes me days to find the book amongst the literary rubble around the house. So, I have forever wanted my own “library” and forever has finally arrived! I spent the better half of the weekend organizing – shocking, I know; me organizing? - my books on our new shelves.
On the left we have our glorious Fiction section with the two bottom shelves dedicated solely to short story collections. So far, this is my favorite section of my new library. Ha, did you read that? “My new library.” Man, I dig that. No more will I have to search every closet and cabinet for Amy Hempel’s At The Gates of the Animal Kingdom or Raymond Carver’s Where I’m Calling From. The upper shelves are dedicated to long-form literature. I’m not anal enough to alphabetize by author’s last name but they are, for the most part running A to Z.
In the middle, we have Non-Fiction. I did generously concede two shelves to Dave for his non-academic, non-fiction books. I lovingly call these two shelves the Death, Murder, and Mayhem Section because the titles read like the headlines from your local newspaper’s Metro section. There are some nice music-oriented books here so it’s not all bad news. But let’s skip right on over to the Classics on the right side. Here’s where you’ll find everything from Jane Eyre to Anna Karenina to Animal Farm and Catcher in The Rye. I get weepy just looking at this section.
Each shelf holds, on average, 35 books. Obviously, I’m nowhere near finished yet. I haven’t even brought the big authors down from my upstairs office. But when I’m finished, there will be more than 500 books on these shelves. Like I said – I’m a big sicko. I might even give up my dream to own a pair of shoes to match every outfit now that my dream of having “my library” has become reality. But that just might be all the dust from the dust jackets making me talk crazy talk.
Time to geek out over books, at least the ten that made my annual Top 10 Book List. For those of you who are new to the book list tradition, welcome. It’s pretty simple: I rank the best books I read and offer up some commentary. The books do not have to be published in 2008; they can be classics or titles that have been on my wish list for years. The books can be fiction, non-fiction, or short story collections.
For a few years, I refused to select any of Oprah’s picks, mainly because those authors were already getting their fair share of publicity. I kept my list to lesser-known writers who deserved just as much praise. I’ve slacked off that rule in recent years but still firmly believe that, while Oprah is a tastemaker in the literary world, there are plenty of writers she doesn’t select who deserve our undivided attention.
New this year — I listed all the book recos that came my way after people received the list. Let’s keep that part of the tradition. I discovered some fantastic authors because of you.
And finally, please continue to buy and read books. The publishing industry, like ever other industry, is suffering from the economic crisis. If you don’t have the extra cash for books, head to your local library. There were nearly 200,000 books published in the U.S. in 2008. Surely there’s something you’ll find more interesting than watching Seinfeld or Top Chef re-runs.
