I know some of you read, too. I keep talking about my books, what I read, how great of a reader I am, my favorites, books I bought: such is the self-indulgent nature of blogs (really, whaddyagonnado?). But I’d like to know if you read something you liked, too. Please?
AGGHGHGH, that was so hard. me ME memememe I iiii ….ahhhhh, much better.
These are books that I read in 2007, not books that necessarily were published in 2007.
Favorite Novel:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (sorry, sort of anticlimactic, I realize.). It was also the first book I read in 2007.
Favorite Non-Fiction
The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. From my review:
It’s hard for me to discuss this book from any angle without wanting to shout: “This book is awesome! You must read this book!”
From the moment I heard the premise–what would happen to the earth if the human race were suddenly to disappear from it–I knew the notion could be a fascinating one, but Weisman could have screwed this up in any number of ways.
The success of this book is in several places. One, Weisman manages to posit the realm o the relatively unlikely simultaneous cessation of all human life without making it sound morbid or frightening. This book is not a droning lecture about the ills we have caused mother nature, and it doesn’t ever lose its little campfire of hope, burning at the center. [Read More (You'll have to scroll down...no direct link]
Honorable Mention (Fiction)
Honorable Mention (Non-Fiction)
Stinkers (Fiction)
Stinkers (Non-Fiction)
You can read more about why I hated or liked a given book on my reviews page on LibraryThing. Or subscribe to it (RSS).
January 9th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Yeah, given the oft-itinerant nature of blog visitors (at least among us leaves, if you will), it’s a lot easier to talk about one’s self than open the floor for discussion. Also, for several seconds there, I thought you had typed “meme meme”, and I asked myself, “Is discussing favorite books really even a blog meme? Don’t people do that all the time?”
I read pitifully few books in 2007. But one I did like was “If on a winter’s night a traveler” by Italo Calvino. I’d somehow stumbled upon its opening chapter online somewhere and was hooked by its metaness. The book only got weirder from there, it turns out.
I imagine you might like the book much more than I did, since it’s all about books — the act of reading and the act of writing. You likely know more about such things than I.
January 9th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark by Brian Hall
This novel was beautifully written and employed tricks of which I am not usually fond. Such was the talent of this writer, that what might otherwise have seemed gimmick-y was instead moving and engaging. His prose was beautiful and his ability to capture the voice of a women (let alone one who barely spoke the language of the white heathens) was compelling and had veracity I rarely find in men attempting to write in a woman’s voice.
January 10th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I forgot that I read IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER this year! That was pretty terrific. As were the two McCarthy books I read (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN and THE RoAD).
My favorite new discovery (fiction) this year was Paul Auster: so far I have read IN THE COUNTRY OF LAST THINGS and (my first book of 2008) THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS. Very different books, and the latter may be more interesting to a filmmaker than not, but the former is highly recommended post-apocalyptica.
Non-fictionwise, my flatmate gave me Geoff Dyer’s THE ONGOING MOMENT for my birthday and it was an astoundingly terrific meditation on photography and subliminal connections across the work of different photographers.