Time for the annual round-up. Our designated readers list their favorite books of 2008 (they need not have been published in 2008).
Reader: Me
Early reading: The Old Testament, Nancy Drew
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. John Updike, Don DeLillo, Ian McEwan, many literary luminaries have tried to write the 9/11 novel, and this one outshines them all. A great American novel, by an Irish barrister.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Makes you realize that more than shared colonial histories, more than the diaspora, it is geekiness that binds us.
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith. A policeman hunts down a serial killer in Stalinist Russia, where to say that crime exists is to question the State, and to question the State gets you thrown into the gulag.
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. Are monsters born or created? Josef Stalin is one fascinating monster.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Sure he’s full of himself, and the great financial wipeout of 2008 proves that he’s right.
The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig. In Austria between the two world wars, a postal employee gets a taste of the glamourous life, realizes how bleak her own life is, and decides that something must change. An unexpectedly tough novel by the author of Letter From An Unknown Woman.
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley. This 1953 novel is the template for Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Cricket also figures in it (see Netherland).
Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori. The most charming narrator, the most disturbing thoughts.
Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories by Tobias Wolff. Amazing stories.
How Fiction Works by James Wood. The critic explains why some novels leave you cold and some turn into voices in your head.
Plus:
Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett. With each new novel, Burdett’s Bangkok series gets weirder and wackier. I don’t know how he’s going to top this.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolboy; and Smiley’s People by John Le Carre. So tense, your muscles are toned for days afterwards.
*****
Reader: Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala
Early reading: Biggles
The Private Patient by PD James. Anything new by PD James is always a pleasure. One of the finest crime writers out there. Thoughtful, intelligent, perceptive and human. Commander Dagliesh, her detective throughout many of her novels, is always an interesting and complex character. Isolated manor in the English countryside, murder, complex cast of characters… you feel like sitting by a fireplace and reading this in one go.
Breath by Tim Winton. I am a big fan of Winton. A young Australian novelist on the cusp of being recognized by the Booker Prize judges. This is a coming of age story in rural Australia that revolves around surfing. His prose is magnificent and lyrical, as always. Haunting story. Wrenches the emotions out of you. His prose verges on poetry.
The White Rock by Hugh Thomson. I picked this up in the airport while visiting Machu Picchu this summer. Wonderful real story of a modern day explorer. Sets out to learn more about the Incas after a round of beer at his local pub in England and ends up becoming an expert on Inca history and archaeology. It is a meditation on exploration, discovery, travel and an entertaining and enlightening history of the Incas. He has a great sense of humor.
The Terror by Dan Simmons. A fat tome, loosely based on the doomed polar expedition led by Sir John Franklin in 1845. If you like arctic adventure laced with gothic horror and the macabre… this is for you. Unusual and heavily laden with esoteric 19th Century sailing details. I found it appealing, despite its length, in that it reaches a higher level of enlightenment towards the end that raises it above the level of the average horror story.
The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson. Fabulous and entertaining Harvard based historian. Traces the history of money and commerce. Always intelligent and enlightening.
When Markets Collide by Mohammed El-Erian. Finance experts do not come any smarter. Slightly heavy going but he does give good suggestions on how to survive this financial turmoil. He ran the Harvard University endowment successfully for a couple of years and it lost 20 % of its value after he left.
The Death of the Banker by Ron Chernow. This light (in terms of volume) work came about from a series of lectures he gave on merchant banking through the ages with an emphasis on the 19th Century. Covers wonderful names like the Warburgs, JP Morgan and the Rothschilds. Elegant, illuminating and entertaining guide to finance over the last two centuries.
Effi Briest by Theodore Fontane. Just started reading this. Good so far. Set in Germany at the time of Bismarck. One of Thomas Mann’s favorite novels. Supposedly a classic.
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Thought provoking book on the unpredictability of forecasting. He and Niall Ferguson (see above) feed off each other. He thinks a bit too much of himself but he does have some interesting ideas.
*****
Reader: Din Atienza
Early reading: The comic books section of the old Makati Supermart
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer. The first book of the Riverworld saga. Everyone who has ever lived on Earth discovers that they’ve been resurrected on the banks of a planet-spanning river, miraculously provided with food. Sir Richard Burton, Alice Pleasance Liddell Hargreaves (the Victorian girl who was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), an English-speaking Neanderthal, a WWII Holocaust survivor, and a wise extraterrestrial set off to find the source of the river and the true purpose of Riverworld.
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. What if Alaska, not Israel, had become the homeland for the Jews after World War II? In Sitka, where Orthodox gangs (with dreadlocks and knee breeches) roam the streets, Detective Meyer Landsman must solve the murder of a heroin-addled chess prodigy. Told as 40’s noir; explores identity, home and faith.
The Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison. Thoughtful, muscular short stories from a writer who’s won enough Hugos to make a picket fence. Adrift Off the Islets of Langerhans. Basilisk. No clunkers.
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Re-read it, prepping for the movie.
Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 3 (2007) edited by Dean Francis Alfar & Nikki Alfar
Objects in Mind by Sherry Turkle. Essays on science, technology and love; what role do objects play in the creative development of a scientist? Can a favorite toy (bubbles, prisms, sand castles, magnets) lead to a career in science?
The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS by Elizabeth Pisani. An account of the pale underbelly of international AIDS research, “a world of money and votes, a world of medical enquiry and lobbyists, of pharmaceutical manufacturing and environmental activism and religions and political ideologies. … ” She tells of her realization in graduate school that “we could save more lives with good science if we spent less time worrying about publishing the perfect paper and more time lobbying, more time schmoozing the press, more time speaking in the language that voters and politicians understand.”
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolt Taylor. A neuroanatomist’s blow-by-blow description of her own massive stroke. She observed her own mind completely deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life, within four hours. Now fully recovered, she is an activist for stroke rehabilitation. First learned of it on TED.com, which hosts short videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design.
*****
To be updated. Readers, please pass your papers.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
