Friday Top 5: Poems I Will Read Recreationally

5. "Hurt Hawks" by Robinson Jeffers

Sure, it's a little melodramatic, a little over the top in its exultation of the rough, rugged, and arrogant; but with language like this, it's hard not to get caught up in the idea.

4. "Stella oft sees the very face of woe" by Sir Philip Sidney

Ever get disgusted with yourself when a stupid movie makes you cry, and real life stuff doesn't? You know a poem is great when it's as true today as it was in the 16th century -- and the last three lines get me every time.

3. "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio" by James Wright

If you grew up in a small industrial town where all the factories and plants and mills were shutting down one by one, and that town had a high school football team, then you will understand why I love this poem.

2. "The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

I still remember running into my friend, Dave Wheat, the day after we studied this poem in college:

Me: Dude! Wallace Stevens!
Dave: Dude, nothing that is not there!
Me: And the nothing that is!
Together: Hell yeah!

1. "Thirteen Ways of Being Looked At By a Possum" by Everette Maddox

Because the best poems aren't the ones that are trying to say big and important things in big and important ways. Reading this always makes me wish that more poets weren't terrified of being funny.

And yours?

A Baseball Top 10 and Bottom 5

We here at the blog have been attending Dodgers games like mad this month, thanks to a massive sale on tickets. Seats that would ordinarily cost $30 were going for $6, so we took advantage. Baseball on tv is okay, but there's something about going in person... mostly good and a few bad.

Favorite things about baseball games:

1. Heckling
2. Base stealing
3. the Kiss Cam
4. Double plays
5. Dodger Dogs
6. Hero/villain players (the Nomar Garciaparra/Andruw Jones effect)
7. Watching pitchers bat
8. Odd facts learned about players on the Jumbotron (did you know that Paul Hoover is fluent in American Sign Language?)
9. High-fiving strangers
10. singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as loud and off-key as I can

Least favorite things about baseball games:

1. the Wave
2. People who get up in the middle of every inning to get food
3. Walks
4. Foul balls
(#3 and #4 tend to lead to increased instances of #1 and #2)
5. When the person who sings the National Anthem goes for the extra high note on "land of the free"

Books I Hate

There was an interesting feature in the Times Online this week where critics wrote about their least favorite books. Whether these titles were actively loathed (such as Ian McEwan's Atonement) or just frequently given up on (more than one person chose Crime and Punishment), I didn't see anything on the list I disagreed with. But I feel the need to add a few of my own:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Listening to teenage girls talk about Edward, I begin to think that Elvis might have had more luck with the ladies had he been a brooding fictional vampire. I paid little attention to Edward's charms, being unable to look past the lazy writing, dull plot, and annoyingly passive and bland narrator. My intense hatred of Twilight is more thoroughly documented here.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

I'm prepared to catch hell for including this one, but let me just say that I don't *hate* The Moviegoer, I just fall asleep every time I try to read it.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The year I taught 11th and 12th grade English my top priority was to teach my students how to write well. My second priority was to protect them from The Scarlet Letter and to do all that was in my power to keep it out of the curriculum. We read The Crucible instead, and everyone was grateful.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The pervasive sexism is bad enough, but the thing I could never get past in this book is that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are basically the 1950s equivalent of suburban white boys who sit around listening to 50 Cent and talking about how they are all gangsta and whatnot.

Any book by Philip Roth that is not Goodbye, Columbus

I find his writing to be uniformly nasty, ugly, misogynist, and willfully unlikeable, though I will always have a soft spot for "The Conversion of the Jews."

TBIFY Summer Reading Round-up Extravaganza

I'll be out of town for the rest of the week, basking in the considerable cuteness of my niece and nephews, and enjoying long runs in the rural countryside without fear of being sideswiped by some fool trying to text while driving. It'll be nice to get out of L.A. for a few days.

And, of course, getting a jump start on my summer reading on the flight to Pennsylvania. In my absence, here are a few of this summer's best-looking books, some for now, and some to look forward to.

June

What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn
Definitely this summer's What the Dead Know.

The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani
"With wit and fierce honesty, an epidemiologist talks about sex, drugs, and the mistakes surrounding international AIDS prevention. Pisani reveals how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data and how much money is spent so very badly."

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
"In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life to the most deeply resonant human truths. Culminating in a brilliant account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, his sixth essay collection is a new masterpiece of comic writing."

The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes and Other Surprising True Stories of Zoo Vets and Their Patients by Lucy H. Spelman and Ted Y. Mashima
"A moray eel diagnosed with anorexia…A herd of bison whose only hope is a crusading female doctor from Paris…A vet desperately trying to save an orphaned whale by unraveling the mystery of her mother’s death…This fascinating book offers a rare glimpse into the world of exotic animals and the doctors who care for them."

July

The Last Embrace by Denise Hamilton
"Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, comes to Los Angeles to find her late fiancé's sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. The next day, Kitty's body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive starlets, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs, and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice. But the landscape in L.A. can shift kaleidoscopically, and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers"

Real World by Natsuo Kirino
"Psychologically intricate and astute, dark and unflinching, Real World is a searing, eye-opening portrait of teenage life in Japan unlike any we have seen before."

Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer
"Television reporter Riley Spartz is recovering from a heart-breaking, headline-making catastrophe of her own when a longtime police source drops two homicide files in her lap. Riley suspects a possible serial killer and stages a bold on-air stunt to draw him out."

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
"By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, this memoir is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running."

The King's Favorite: A Novel of Nell Gwyn and King Charles II by Susan Holloway Scott
"Nell Gwyn has never been a lady, nor does she pretend to be. Blessed with impudent wit and saucy beauty, she swiftly rises from the poverty of Covent Garden to become a sensation in the theater. Still in her teens, she catches the eye of King Charles II, and trades the stage for Whitehall Palaceand the role of royal mistress."

August

The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
"A Dickensian cast of characters in 19th-century New England comes brilliantly to life in this wondrous debut novel about an orphaned boy and the colorful con man who claims to be his brother."

Southern Storm: Sherman's March to the Sea
I'm going to bring this one home just to listen to Potts complain about it. Yeah, I know, Sherman was a thug.

Weekly Geeks #4: Adoption Law and History

For this week's Weekly Geeks, the challenge is to choose a political or social issue, and compile a list of books on the subject.

My interest in adoption law and history is motivated by a few really great books I've read on the subject, coupled with the ways it's impacted the lives of people around me -- from my cousin and his partner, who have spent the past four years navigating the murky waters of adoption through the County of Los Angeles, to a friend who is legally prohibited from receiving medical history information about his biological parents. Our system of adoption in the United States is a troubled, and troubling one.

A few recommended reads:

The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler

Fessler's book contains the oral histories of unmarried women who became pregnant, entered homes for unwed mothers, and surrendered their babies for adoption during the 1950s and 60s. It's a truly moving, tragic, and horrifying social history from people in the adoption equation whose stories are often overlooked.

The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Georgia Tann brokered over 5000 adoptions out of her Memphis orphanage, and raked in over $1 million doing it. Her methods were monstrous, and involved tricking unwed and poor mothers into signing away legal custody of their children, kidnapping children from poor families, and falsifying birth certificates so they'd be impossible to track down once she sold them across state lines. Raymond's harrowing account of Tann's practices, and how she got away with them is not to be missed.

The English American by Alison Larkin

A bit lighter than the first two books listed here, The English American is about Pippa Dunn, a young woman born to American parents, but adopted by a British family. When Pippa decides to contact her birth mother, she runs headlong into the infuriating legalities of the U.S. adoption system, but is eventually reunited with Billie, a dramatic, creative woman with whom Pippa feels an immediate connection. However, as she gets to know Billie, and her birth father, Walt, their happy reunion gradually becomes cloudier and more complicated. Though the premise plays out in sometimes fanciful ways, the relationships and emotions explored here always ring true.

And here are some others I haven't read yet, but am interested in:

Like Our Very Own: Adoption and the Changing Culture of Motherhood, 1851-1950 by Julie Berebitsky

Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption by Barbara Melosh

Great Baseball Reads from Them in the Know

If you're interested in books about baseball, there are a ton of them listed today at Baseball Toaster.

Bob weighs in with his top ten list, and has never once steered me towards a baseball book that I haven't loved (The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America and The Pitch That Killed: The Story of Carl Mays, Ray Chapman, and the Pennant Race of 1920).

Now I just need to buckle down and read that big, fat, scary-looking Branch Rickey biography.

Friday Funsies: Authors A-Z

I saw this on bookeywookey, and felt compelled to steal it. I'm a sucker for the book list:

A is for Dorothy Allison: Cavedweller
B is for Larry Brown: Big Bad Love: Stories
C is for Raymond Chandler: The High Window
D is for Roald Dahl: The BFG
E is for James Ellroy: L.A. Confidential
F is for Louise Fitzhugh: Harriet the Spy
G is for Tim Gautreaux: Same Place, Same Things: Stories
H is for Dashiell Hammett: Red Harvest
I is for John Irving: The Cider House Rules
J is for Thom Jones: The Pugilist at Rest
K is for E.L. Konigsburg: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
L is for Jhumpa Lahiri: Interpreter of Maladies
M is for Ross MacDonald: The Galton Case
N is for Frank Norris: McTeague: A Story of San Francisco
O is for Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find
P is for Ann Patchett: Truth & Beauty
Q is for quite impossible to think of
R is for Nina Revoyr: The Age of Dreaming
S is for Anne Sexton: Complete Poems
T is for Scarlett Thomas: Popco
U is for Upton Sinclair: The Jungle
V is for Brian K. Vaughan: Y: The Last Man
W is for Alice Walker: The Color Purple
X is for xylophone, because as Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book taught us, "X is always for xylophone!"
Y is for Steve Yarbrough: The End of California
Z is for Ruth oZecki: My Year of Meats

Obligatory Best Books of 2007 List: Nonfiction

1. 1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose
A couple of year ago my friend, Pat Woolf, introduced me to Chris Rose's post-Katrina columns in the Times-Picayune, and I became an avid reader. This compilation of columns on life in the Big Uneasy, the oddly funny, the gut-wrenchingly sad, and the too twisted for color television, is far and away the best book I read this year. A couple of months ago, Rose was invited to appear on Oprah for her Katrina anniversary show. Problem was, they only wanted him to talk about his experience with PTSD and depression; he was explicitly forbidden from mentioning his book, which had been released the week before. Clearly, I do not have Oprah's hit-making track record with book recommendations, but if she wouldn't do it, I feel obligated to say my little bit on Rose's behalf.

2. The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America by Joe Posnanski
I heard my boss talk about this book during a program at the liberry, and I think he summed it up best. So, to paraphrase him, Buck O'Neil was such a big-hearted and charming man that he's often idealized. Posnanski presents a realistic O'Neil, a man who sometimes gets tired and cranky, who wishes he'd been a better husband. However, by taking him down from the pedestal, O'Neil becomes even more admirable -- an extraordinary human being, not just a baseball figurehead. Two hundred pages isn't nearly enough time to spend with him.

3. The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond
This unbelievable true story of a woman who kidnapped poor children from their families, and sold them to wealthy adoptive families, and whose monstrous legacy impacts U.S. adoptees to this day had me gasping (and cussing) within the first five pages.

4. Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre
Another unbelievable and shocking account, Eddie Chapman's adventures as a double agent for MI-5 during World War II read like something straight out of a Ken Follett spy novel.

5. Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles, 1910-1939 by Katie Roiphe
Roiphe's highly readable account of seven literary marriages shows how very unconventional people made a go of a very traditional institution. And how H.G. Wells was not going to win any husband of the year awards.

6. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande
The always engaging and frank Gawande turns in another stellar collection of essays. Whether you're a medical professional or a patient, it's impossible to come away from one of his pieces without a more thoughtful, nuanced perception of health care.

7. Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story by Laurie Lindeen
Lindeen's story of paying her dues big time in a band that only achieved mid-level success is funny, touching, and many cuts above the average rock and roll memoir.

8. Ask a Mexican: Everything You Wanted to Know About Mexicans but Were Too Politically Correct to Ask by Gustavo Arellano
While the premise of Arellano's popular syndicated column may seem, um, wrong, this collection is consistently entertaining, well-informed, and appropriately wise-assed. Whether he's dealing with xenophobic Minutemen, well-meaning gringos, or confused third generation Latinos, Arellano spins even the most offensive, empty-headed questions into cultural studies gold in 500 words or less.

9. Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield
In 1997, Sheffield's wife, Renee, died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 31. Sheffield reflects on her life, and the music that brought them together in this incredibly sad and sweet memoir.

10. The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting by Jim Walsh
Walsh goes the extra mile to create an account that perfectly captures the messed up, drunken angel spirit of the 'Mats, even though fans probably would have gobbled up any old thing.

Obligatory Best Books of 2007 List, Which I Will Enjoy Making Way Too Much: Fiction

There's a little bit of everything here -- my favorites of the year include some horror, some crime, some historical fiction, and even a YA novel.

1. A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans
When I reviewed this book in June, I said it was the best thing I'd read all year. It held up. And I haven't been so thoroughly terrified by a book since I read It under the covers in 8th grade.

2. Scandal of the Season by Sophie Gee
Gee's fictionalized account of the events surrounding Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" has steamy, forbidden romance, regicidal plots, and the best, wittiest dialogue of any book of 2007.

3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The story of Dominican uber-geek Oscar de Leon, his family, and the bloody dictatorship of Trujillo actually lives up to all its glowing reviews, and then some.

4. World Without End by Ken Follett
Because I'm a sucker for a big fat medieval soap opera, especially when it involves the plague.

5. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch
Even though it's not quite as good as its predecessor, The Lies of Locke Lamora (which made my Best of 2006 list), Lynch does things with a plot that shouldn't be possible, probable, or attempted at all by lesser writers, which is pretty much everyone.

6. The Song is You by Megan Abbott
Based on the unsolved disappearance of Hollywood bit player Jean Spangler in 1949, Abbott's second novel is pulpy, thrilling, pitch perfect L.A. noir.

7. Them by Nathan McCall
McCall's thought-provoking novel about the impact of gentrification on Atlanta's Fourth Ward never shies away from uncomfortable truths, even though its characters do -- sometimes with tragic results.

8. Dancing to 'Almendra' by Mayra Montero
Not technically a 2007 release, since it was published in Spanish in 2005; however, Montero's story of a young Cuban reporter tracking down the connections between a gangster gunned down in a New York barber shop and a hippo gunned down in a Havana zoo is too good to leave off the list.

9. Bitter Sweets by Roopa Farooki
In addition to medieval soap operas, I'm also a sucker for big messy family sagas. Farooki's story of a Bangladeshi-Pakistani family bound together by an almost congenital penchant for deception and betrayal delivers big drama with a light, almost whimsical touch.

10. Beige by Cecil Castellucci
The bland, shy Katy is shipped to Los Angeles for the summer to live with her ex-junkie punk rock dad, and big city hijinks, unlikely friendships, and un-lame personal growth ensue. Why were young adult novels not this cool when I was growing up?

Next week, the best nonfiction of 2007.

Two Completely Unrelated Things

A) It is lunatic night on our street, apparently. Also, it seems that "directly outside our window" is a really good place to have extended, loud, group arguments. At least, it must be, because there's been about four in the last hour and a half. If it keeps up, next week I'm putting up a velvet rope and charging a ten dollar cover.

B) It's not important why I was looking up Civil War-era slang a few weeks ago. It only matters that I was.

Because now I'm going to share it with you.

Words/Phrases I'd never heard before:
-grab a root (have dinner)
-desecrated vegetables (dehydrated veggies)
-paper collar man (rich guy)

Words/Phrases I had no idea were from that era:
-sawbones (doctor, as in Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy)
-snug as a bug (I'm guessing "in a rug" came later.)
-tuckered out (ditto for "plum-")

Words/Phrases that amuse me:
-"mustered out" (done got killed, used ironically, hence the ironyquotes (tm), natch)
-scarce as hens' teeth (pretty much what it sounds like, which is "rare")
-see the elephant (combat or, er, some of the other things soldiers tend to get up to, nudge nudge, wink wink)

5 Great Books About or Involving Libraries

1. Matilda by Roald Dahl: I know Matilda has a really awful home life in this book, but I love that at the age of 4, this genius child toddles down to her local library to read Hemingway.

2. The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken: This bittersweet tale of the romance between a librarian and teenage giant is affecting, and not as "ripped from the Fark headlines" as it sounds.

3. Help! I'm a Prisoner in the Library by Eth Clifford: Again, as a child, the idea of being locked overnight in a public library sounded like absolute heaven. Now, if it was the L.A. Central Library, that probably would have freaked me out a little, but a nice small town library... what better place to be stranded in a snow storm?

4. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith: Francie is a bookish child who spends a lot of time at the Brooklyn Library, and the passages about her visits there should be read by every librarian as instruction on how NOT to do the job.

5. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: Now, I haven't read this one, but I intend to and I feel like, since it's Murakami, it's a pretty safe bet to recommend. Besides, check this out:

"The novel, Murakami's 10th and his first big one since The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in 1997, features a 15-year-old boy who runs away from his Tokyo home shortly before his father's body is discovered in a pool of blood and heads for distant Takamatsu. There he meets a mysterious librarian, who may or may not be his long-lost mother, and a sexy hairdresser, who may or may not be his vanished elder sister. Filling out the cast is an old man who lost his memory in an apparent UFO encounter but gained the power to converse with cats." (from Time magazine review)

That sounds like good readin' to me.

I Liked Atreyu Before It Was Cool To Like Atreyu

I'm putting together a snazzy little display of books that were adapted for the screen at my library, and have come upon quite a number of titles that I never knew existed in book form.

While none of these titles will strike you as the least bit obscure, some of their original authors might. And while a couple of these don't meet the Zombie Summer Reading Program "40 years old" rule, I was just so darn startled to find them that I felt compelled to share.

Rashomon by Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1952)
The Asphalt Jungle by W.R. Burnett (1949)
Johnny Guitar by Roy Chanslor (1953)
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende (originally published in German, 1979)
Wild At Heart by Barry Gifford (1990)
Midnight Cowboy by James Herlihy (1965)
MASH by Richard Hooker (1968)
The Blackboard Jungle by Evan Hunter (1954)
The Searchers by Alan LeMay (1954)
The Graduate by Charles Webb (1963)

I'm so reading Wild At Heart. And upon further reflection, I admit that it was never cool to like Atreyu.

Beach Reading Stand-bys

Some people use the summer to catch up on all the big fat classics and IMPORTANT books, but my reading tastes get pretty populist in the heat. Right now, I'm reading Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman, and I think it rocks. Plus, there was no waiting list for it at the library, and there's something to be said for getting what you want immediately without having to pay for it.

If you've resigned yourself to the fact that you're not getting The Yiddish Policemen's Union in time for your trip to Destin, here are a few good stand-bys to take on the plane with you, with reviews in ten words or less. No waiting, guaranteed.

Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison
Overlooked gem by the author of Bastard Out of Carolina.

Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916 by Michael Capuzzo
There's a shark in the children's swimming hole! Holy crap!

Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen
Artificial sweetener, betrayal, and the mob, in one tasty package.

Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl
Never have I been so captivated or skeeved out.

Revenge by Stephen Fry
Like The Count of Monte Cristo, only modern and shorter.

Different Seasons by Stephen King
By turns, hilarious and sad. Also includes the Lardass story.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderios de Laclos
As juicy as the movie. Juicier, in fact.

The Lies of Locke Lamora
Like Ocean's Eleven in fantasy novel form.

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil
Iggy Pop gets the clap! Heroin everywhere!

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
You should look away, but you won't.

In the Devil's Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 by Mary Beth Norton
Hmmm... a lot of those women owned land. Interesting.

The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett
Patchett came up with this story while working at TGIFriday's.

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok
Hasidic boy wrestles with the sacred and the profane.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
My whole book club liked it, even the boys.

Lunchtime Poll

As Mary noted below, I'm in the thick of diss proposal writing. So - late for work and lacking the time for a proper review - here's my stab at Internet Meme Immortality (tm), in which I rely upon you, Dear Reader, to write this post for me. But I was thinking about this last night as I browsed the shelves at the local megabookstore and literature emporium:*

If you could change one thing about your reading habits, what would it be?

I ask because I had this horrible realization last night that I have almost zero interest in reading quote-unquote Literary novels. I blame the Iowa Creative Writing Workshop for most of this, perhaps unfairly, but there you go. I used to love the modern American novel, but lately I'm tired of the small victories of soul-deadened suburbanites and would much rather read something where, I dunno, stuff happens.

(This also probably has something to do with the heroin-like pulp habit I've picked up since moving to L.A.)

Anyways: comment, forward, link, discuss.

EDIT: Mary tells me I shouldn't blame Iowa for my issues with contemporary American fiction. Poetry, sure, but not prose.

-------------------------

*Yes, yes, shame on me, but they were open, and my fave mom and pop stores weren't.

They Say It Can't Be Done

ScreenHead posted this list of the Top 13 Unfilmable Novels a few days ago, so enjoy if you haven't already.

In addition to the books, they also name the director who might could pull it off, for example:

Unfilmable: Catcher in the Rye
If Anyone Can Do It: Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach

Not to quibble with them, but I think I'd pick David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls) over the Coen Brothers for Dunces. That's just me.

And As Promised... The Best of 2006

2006 will stand in my memory as the year I finally stopped worrying and learned to love the genre fiction. This turned out to be a happy discovery, considering that so much of this year's literary fiction let me down (The Thin Place*, The End of Mr. Y), bored me silly (Wickett's Remedy), and/or annoyed me to the very core (Special Topics in Calamity Physics).

It was a year of Dashiell Hammett and Ross MacDonald and Megan Abbott, whose remarkable L.A. noir Die a Little would surely have made this list had it not been published in 2005. So, in keeping with that spirit, this list includes two murder mysteries, a fantasy, and a boxing novel. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

And in the spirit of one of my favorite book blogs of 2006, I'm keeping it short.

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril: I've found it impossible to describe this book to anyone without including the phrases "crackerjack tale" or "ripping good yarn" in the voice of a 1930s radio announcer.

Pound for Pound: F.X. Toole spent years working as a boxing cut man, secretly writing stories and sending them off. After 40 years of rejection letters, he publishes Rope Burns. Then, just as his writing career is taking off, he drops dead, which is exactly the kind of thing that would have happened to one of his characters. But check this one out - gripping fight scenes and a surprisingly big-hearted story.

Sharp Objects: Creepy, twisty, bleak, and impossible to put down.

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast: Salon tore this book a new one, but well, they were wrong. A balanced and astonishingly detailed account of how it all went so wrong, who was to blame, and who stepped up.


Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!: I'm serious - it belongs here. Why? Because it's not every day that a book about a television game show gets you choked up on an airplane.

The Lies of Locke Lamora: A fantasy novel involving several nifty long cons. Intricate, dazzling plotting.

The Night Gardener: Like watching an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets. Like, one of the ones from season 3.

Happy reading in 2007, my dears. And if you find anything good, tell me about it. Ta.
_________________
* Which I realize was loved by everyone but me.

G.I.F.T. Challenge: 1 Naughty, 3 Nice

Carl at Stainless Steel Droppings has issued a Christmas challenge which I could not resist. A Yankee living in Los Angeles needs all the help she can get to fortify her Christmas spirit. The challenge is as follows: partake of 4 Christmas-type things, including movies, novels, short stories, poems, traditions, and memories, then post about them. Here's what I came up with:

1. Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban
As a child, this Jim Henson Christmas special was one of my very favorites, but I only learned recently that it was actually adapted from a children's book by Russell Hoban, the man responsible for another of my childhood favorites, Frances the Badger. The illustrations are adorable with with the power of a thousand suns, and the story has a hint of Gift of the Magi about it, so all the elements of a perfect Christmas warm fuzzy are right here. Plus, the book contains the completely unexpected and awesome-for-grown-ups line: "We never had much even when Pa was alive, what with him being a traveling man."

2. "The Birds for Christmas" by Mark Richard (in Charity)
"Fuck Frosty," Michael Christian said to me. "I see that a hunrett times. I want to see "The Birds," man. I want to see those birds get all up in them people's hair. That's some real Christmas TV to me." This story of two hospitalized, abandoned, and unloved boys who want to watch a Hitchcock movie on Christmas Eve is a downer, but incredibly memorable and affecting.

3. "Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor" by John Cheever (in The Collected Stories of John Cheever)
A story of Christmas hospitality gone horribly awry. I hadn't read this story in about ten years, and realize now that much as I like Cheever, his writing is better when it's about the disaffected and alienated upper classes.

4. A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
Several years ago, I went on a huge Truman Capote bender. Read every book and biography I could get my hands on. And as interesting as it was to read about his exclusive parties and hobnobbing with Manhattan socialites, I'm partial to little Truman's early years, when he lived in Monroeville, Alabama, raised by a flock of eccentric maiden aunts. Two of his best stories draw a little from this period of his life. One is "The Grass Harp," and the other is this one. A genuinely touching story about the friendship between a little boy and his elderly aunt.

Bonus: a family tradition since I was wee - the viewing of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. Accept no substitutions.

Go Buy Things

Everyone is already doing their Best of 2006 lists. I am waiting until mid-December, like a decent person would.

It is not too early, however, to do a holiday shopping guide, or to be more truthful, a list of things I want for myself. But surely something on this list will appeal to the book nerd in your life.

1. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris
Graceful entertaining with Amy Sedaris? That sounds like everything I want to be a part of.

2. Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 by Neil Gaiman
Pricey. But so wonderfully, wonderfully pretty.

3. The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
One of those books I'd like to own, but since I've already read it, can never justify buying when I have some precious Borders money to blow on shiny new hardbacks.

4. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
The waiting list at my library is long for this one. And despite the fact that I work there, I've never been like those patrons who, puma-like, stalk the online catalog holdings as if they were a troop of well-fed Boy Scouts. As a result, I'm something like 112 on the list and I don't think I can wait that long.

5. No One May Ever Have the Same Knowledge Again: Letters to Mount Wilson Observatory 1915-1935
There is a place in Los Angeles called The Museum of Jurassic Technology. It is the kind of museum where you might expect to see a narwhal skeleton or a man with a waxed mustache shouting, "For God's sake, man, cover the cage! There are women and children present!" Based on an exhibit here, this book contains letters from very sincere quacks about how they have uncovered the mysteries of the universe, and why the scientists must believe them.

The fate of the world may hang upon it.

For Your Post-Election Hangover

Watching the election night results come in used to be like Superbowl Sunday to me. Then I moved to Calfornia, where the propositions are invariably more interesting than the candidates, yet somehow, everybody from the Insurance Commissioner to the Green Party State Assembly candidate seems vaguely awash in corruption or minor sleaze. I remember the days when I could go down to my polling place at the Madison Public Library and vote for Russ Feingold. Those were simpler times.

But for those of you who live in more politically interesting areas than I do, and need another month or so to come down from the effects of that alternately sweet and bitter drug called democracy, here is some reading to round out the end of your year.

I felt no need to reinvent the wheel on political fiction book lists, as there are many fine ones out there on this subject. Here are two of the best:

Nancy Pearl's "The Best in Political Fiction" for NPR
Political Fiction on Overbooked

And some of the most interesting-looking political nonfiction to come out this year:

The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality by Nick Bryant
While something like 17,572 biographies of JFK were published in 2006, this one stands out from the pack by focusing on Kennedy's approach to civil rights, an approach that mainly entailed courting the black vote, then standing idly by.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg
Between the excerpt from this and that feature on grunge fundamentalists, Salon has been chilling me to the bone of late.

Decade of Nightmares: The End of the Sixties and the Making of Eighties America by Philip Jenkins
Everybody knows it - the 70s were a dark, ugly time. A look at how the hippies lost their idealism and became neo-cons terrified of everything from Communists to Satanic cults, this book seems wonderfully bleak and interesting.

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction by David Kuo
Kuo came to work at Bush's controversial Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, convinced he could use his Christian faith to make a difference in how politics was done. This did not turn out to be the case. I saw an interview with Kuo on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and he was so darn sincere both about his belief in God and in the U.S. government that I can't even imagine what must have happened to break him.

Conservatize Me: How I Tried to Become a Righty with the Help of Richard Nixon, Sean Hannity, Toby Keith, and Beef Jerky by John Moe
Somehow, I doubt this book is anything approaching subtle. Still, its premise has that appealing Morgan Spurlock 30 Days vibe, rather than that annoying Morgan Spurlock Don't Eat This Book vibe.

Fat Books

In preparation for my recent camping trip to the Sequoia National Forest, I checked out some library books on the subject, mainly because I was sort of terrified of being devoured by a bear or a mountain lion.

One of the camping books I picked up from the library offered some unusual advice about reading in the wild. The authors suggested bringing along one really long book and burning pages as you read so you don't have to carry the weight of the book on your expedition. While the latter hunk of advice seemed extreme, not to mention distasteful, I was intrigued by the idea of bringing one big, fat book on the trip.

For the record, Neil Gaiman's American Gods is A-1, primo reading for a camping trip. It's about a man who finds himself in the middle of a war between the old gods carried over to the United States by immigrants and the newer, slicker American gods. And when you're on top of a mountain with no electricity, it is surprisingly easy to get behind the idea of Odin and Anansi running around wreaking havoc.

The fat books advice probably also applies to long plane rides, jury duty, road trips, and sick days. Here are a few others to look up, should you find yourself in any of these situations:

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova