Books

It’s the end of the year and I’m feeling somewhat listy and I know y’all are flush with gift card moolah so here are my 15 favorite books published in 2007 (for a complete look at what these are culled from you can browse the Reading List 2007 sidebar down and to the right). Note that I’m not saying best, I’m saying favorite. This list was done in a very cursory way, and I know I’ll be kicking myself over stuff not on here that should be . . . and, and, and yet I choose to resist the effort to be completist. I will, however, mark which ones are YA, to ease the finding of them in bookshops.

Dreamquake (Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet), Elizabeth Knox (YA)
Always and And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life, Nicola Griffith
Bad Monkeys, Matt Ruff
How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time, Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer
Generation Loss, Elizabeth Hand
The Off Season, Catherine Murdock (YA)
The Red Shoe, Ursula Dubosarsky (YA/Middle Grade)
The Arrival, Shaun Tan (YA, etc.)
The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Peter Cameron (YA)
Ironside, Holly Black (YA)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick (YA/Middle Grade)
Beige, Cecil Castellucci (YA)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, Ysabeau Wilce (YA/Middle Grade)

And bonus: My favorite short story is, hands down, Kij Johnson’s "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" from the Coyote Road anthology (YA). You people who can do such things need to start recommending this for awards, stat.

I’ve been a bit disappointed that the very good reviews for Molly Gloss’s latest thrillingly great novel, The Hearts of Horses, haven’t seemed to recognize the full achievement of the book. I feel it is being marginalized a bit as a Western–which it is–when it’s also deserving of a much broader audience.

In this week’s Washington Post Book World, Ron Charles nails my feelings about this novel in a lovely, insightful review that winds up thus:

That sounds corny, but there isn’t a false move in this poignant novel, which demonstrates as much insight into the hearts of men and women as into the hearts of horses. Books like this are easy to overlook, but there’s someone on your holiday list who will feel blessed by Gloss’s gentle story.

Read the whole review and then seek out this wonderful book.

The New Yorker’s hosting online images of some of the striking art work that’s being exhibited at the Metropolitan Opera House’s gallery in honor of a new "Hansel and Gretel" production. I’m not a huge Wegman fan (or at all, actually), but this one is just creepy enough to drag me in.

Link via the lovely Betsy at Fuse, who also has a review today of Tim Wynne-Jones’ wonderful novel, Rex Zero and the End of the World. And now back to researching Pie Town, N.M.

So, whether you buy the arguments in the latest NEA report about the state of reading or not, I find this question by Dana Gioia as posed in the relevant Washington Post article to be a good one:

"What we’re trying to do is say: These are the facts. This is a framework to understand the issues. Let’s talk about it," Gioia said. And the key question is: What are the consequences if America becomes "a nation in which reading is a minority activity?"

My answer in a word would be: BAD. But that’s only because I’m too busy to rattle on. What do you guys think?

Oh, happy day redux. Subterranean has announced that they’re going to put all Lew Shiner’s work back in print AND start with his new novel, Black & White, which sounds abso-mo-lutely brill. Here’s the description from the announcement:

When Michael follows his dying father to North Carolina, a lifetime of lies begins to unravel. His pursuit of his father’s past–haunted by voodoo, adultery and murder–takes him to a place called Hayti, once the most prosperous black community in the South. Now the mysteries of Michael’s own heritage become a matter of life and death, as racial conflicts barely restrained since the 1960s erupt again.

Rooted in the true story of the US government’s urban renewal policy and its disastrous aftermath, Black & White is a literary thriller, a family saga, and a searing portrait of institutionalized hatred.

Jonathan Lethem compares it to the work of George Pelecanos and Richard Price in a blurb.

In the meantime, don’t forget about Shiner’s Fiction Liberation Front site, where you can read lots of free, wonderful stories by this wholly underrated writer.

If she hasn’t updated in awhile, Jincy Willett has a blog. Oh, happy day.

(Psst: Check out the Novel Hybrids post, which begins with a description of Gentle Ben Hur.)

(And ooooh: The prologue for her next novel, The Writing Class, which appears to be AWESOME and coming out in June 2008 from Thomas Dunne Books.)

I should have subscribed to The Horn Book ages ago. The November/December issue has Richard Peck’s thoughtful, provocative Zena Sutherland Lecture, "And Still the Story." This part kills me (in the good way, the Southern way):

But revolutions always create new literatures–as well as fewer freedoms than before–and that one created the young adult novel. Robert Cormier wrote The Chocolate War, and I quit my job. But then, the only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.

Unrelatedly:

(Via Maureen.)

Some brief notes on recent good reading, in the interest of catch-up.

I admit to the slightest trepidation going into Pat Murphy’s new middle grade novel The Wild Girls after the little dust-up (which Colleen sums up best here, if you missed it); I was afraid it would disappoint. I need not have worried. Heartwarming isn’t usually a positive descriptor–coming from me, anyway–but this novel is the good kind of heartwarming. It’s about two girls becoming friends and the identities they take on in the forest–Sarah aka Fox, Queen of the Foxes, and Joan aka Newt–and the ones they forge in the larger world. Over a summer together in 1972 California, the girls grapple with their respective family troubles (Fox’s mother abandoned her and her science fiction writer father several years ago; Joan’s mother and father are seemingly en route to divorce) and discover their creative writing voices. Murphy effortlessly conjures the period, including the changing roles of women in the household during this period and the scene in Berkeley when the girls travel to their writing classes. While there’s no shortage of conflict, it’s perhaps a bit light in terms of how easily certain things are resolved, and the essential goodness of the two girls–but that’s okay. It’s refreshing, actually, to see so little angst, and the young voices struck me as true. Murphy manages to capture the dynamics of real famililial upheaval and its impact on kids, without ever leaning on cliches. While this is a solidly realistic novel, there are flourishes and sidenotes that may appeal to genre readers as well–I particularly enjoyed the type of writing that Fox and Newt do together, the fantasy stories they base on their real lives, and the reaction they get from the adults around them as a result. And there’s a beautiful recurring metaphor involving Fox’s vanished mother having turned into a fox. A gentle, delightful novel. See also: Colleen’s more detailed take here.

Laura Ruby’s The Wall and the Wing—could it be a standalone fantasy novel, that rarest of beasts? Well, it turns out no, there’s a sequel that came out last May (which sounds great, actually), but the key thing is that it can be read that way. This is a self-contained, quirky, charming story of a world where most people can fly (but not very well) and one girl, a forgotten orphan in a miserable orphanage (is there any other kind?), discovers she can turn invisible. There’s a heavy who can unzip his face, a boy with a mysterious past who can fly really well (sometimes), mobsters,  and a mad professor with a bazillion cats. You get the picture. The world is extremely well-developed and I loved the sense of fun. Check it out if you like light but not shallow fantasy. See also: The SBBT featured some very good interviews with Ruby.

My favorite read of the month has to be Deborah Noyes’ One Kingdom: Our Lives With Animals: The Human-Animal Bond in Myth, History, Science and Story. It’s a mix of photos and creative nonfiction, the type of book that would be at home in that catch-all the sociology section but thankfully isn’t consigned to that purgatory. It’s for kids, but would definitely have cross-over adult appeal, and I’d even put it at the older age range for kids. The text is thoughtful and the prose finely tuned. The mix of myth with science and personal essay on the practically endless subject of the relationship between humans and animals is just right. This is really an example of my favorite type of nonfiction book, a sort of focused miscellany or catch-all meditation, and I hope she does another like it. See also: Cynthia Leitich Smith’s interview with Noyes.

The NYT selects the best illustrated children’s books of the year, and there’s a pretty slideshow to go along. (Thanks to Julie for the heads up!)

There’s lots more in the fall children’s NYTBR issue as well — including a gushing James Hynes review of Scott’s Uglies trilogy and Extras.