The 2010 Book List
Are you ready for it? For my annual list of books? Here we go!
In 2009, I read 48 books. Not bad, although my goal had been 50. In 2010—the year of my daughter’s birth—I read a whopping 24 books. Exactly half of last year. Sigh. Obviously, a newborn/baby/toddler-to-be (not to mention moving) leaves scarce time for such luxuries as reading. And these days, reading truly is a luxury. With so little time to read, I found myself quite irritated when a book’s plot needlessly meandered or pointless detail was added, and I was downright peeved when a book was just plain bad. Only one book reached all five stars: Elizabeth Strout’s Abide With Me, which I highly, highly recommend. (You can read more about my rating system here in my post about 2009 books.)
A couple other books stood out—Silent in the Sanctuary, a gothic bodice-busting mystery, provided me with a very welcome mental escape during the newborn days in which I was trapped in an apartment with Charlotte and nearly losing my mind. I read all of The Secret Life of Bees while breastfeeding—holding Charlotte in one arm, and the book in the other hand. Nadia Gordon’s Napa Valley mysteries are always escapist fun for me. And The Unlikely Disciple knocked my socks off as far as entertaining me and making me think. So without further ado, here’s the list of 2010’s books, in the order in which they were read:
1. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Set in New England, a classic adventure story á la Oliver Twist, featuring a scrappy orphan named Ren who is missing his left hand. He gets plucked from the orphanage by a bandit and encounters all sorts of charming hooligans. Darling book, destined to become a classic, methinks.
2. The New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding by American Academy of Pediatrics (parenting) Rating: 2 The hospital gave me this book as I was discharged, and I hated it. It sets up impossible standards for breastfeeding, including exclusively breastfeeding when you return to work, breastfeeding for AT LEAST a full year (yes, after your baby has TEETH), and no medical condition short of HIV/AIDS (this includes cancer or stomach flu) gets you off the hook to miss a single feeding. What’s worse is that you read this while totally sleep-deprived, exhausted, hormonal, and sooooo worried about screwing up your kid. The book makes you feel like an failure because you already know you won’t breastfeed for a year. You also already know you’ll do your best pumping at work, but formula is eventually going to help out. The book’s tone is judgmental and downright rude—there’s an overall attitude of “no amount of work or sacrifice is too much for the most sacred goal of exclusively breastfeeding until your kid is 25. If you try hard enough (read: love your baby enough), you can—and should—do it.” I bumped the rating up to two stars for the ONE chapter of practical information.
3. Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn (mystery) Rating: 4 This fun little mystery is Raybourn’s sequel to Silent in the Grave, which I also enjoyed. It takes place in an old abbey-turned-sprawling-estate in Victorian England, with oodles of characters (i.e., suspects) for a murder. My only complaint is that it takes something like 200 pages for the murder to take place. Raybourn spends an eternity setting the stage, but she does so in an entertaining enough way that this little flaw is easily overlooked.
4. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (contemporary literature) Rating: 4.5 A group of women (plus one dude) start a book club to read and discuss Jane Austen’s six novels. I loved this book. Fowler’s prose is crisp, to the point, and funny, and she clearly reveres the unmatched genius of Austen. The most fun part of this book is aligning the plots and characters of Austen’s novels with Fowler’s, but you do not need to have read Austen to enjoy this novel.
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (contemporary literature) Rating: 4.5 A coming-of-age story of a white Southern girl, Lily, under the tyrannical thumb of her father, whose nanny, Rosaleen, gets beat up by a group of white men on her way to registering to vote in the 1960s. The two flee, ending up at a bee farm while Lily tries to get some closure on her mother’s death, which apparently she caused as a young child. Lily is a likable, unique narrator and the plot avoids the clichéd or tiresome, apologetic “white-helps-black” trappings of books set in the Civil Rights era with a white narrator or point of view. Quite enjoyable.
6. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (contemporary literature) Rating 3.5 The classic Chicano tale set in New Mexico 50 or 60 years ago or so. Ultima, an old curandera (i.e., supernatural healer) comes to live with our narrator, Antonio. She heals some, and others think she’s a witch. Mythology mixes with Catholicism, which generates the majority of the conflict in the plot. I wasn’t too amazed by this book and had trouble getting into it, but it was okay overall.
7. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth (parenting) Rating: 3.5 Charlotte’s pediatrician strongly recommended this book, and it’s an important read for understanding sleep and babies. I docked one point because, like most parenting books, it has a judgmental tone—every single problem is due to parental mismanagement, neglect, stupidity, or selfishness. A sentence or two acknowledging that we parental dipshits do the best we can with the experience and information we have would have been nice. I docked an additional half point because it’s often difficult to figure out exactly what age of child he’s talking about with certain methods. This is a fairly significant flaw because you don’t want to subject a 2-month-old to something designed for a 9-month-old. The book is, however, exceptionally good at illustrating how important sleep is for a child and it really pushes (guilts) you into making sure you prioritize your baby’s sleep needs. For that, it’s definitely worth reading if you have a baby or toddler.
8. The Illuminated Soul by Aryeh Lev Stollman (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Set (for the most part, anyway) in post-WWII Canada, a Jewish family gets a visitor with a rare 15-century manuscript. Steeped in Jewish history, literature, and theology, this lovely novel depicts the tension between the earthly (that is, the rare and valuable manuscript that people had died protecting) and the transcendent (that is, the soul). Stollman’s writing style is succinct but also quite unique; he gets a lot of mileage with every carefully chosen word. Enjoyed it, recommend it.
9. Pure by Terra Elan McVoy (young adult) Rating: 3.5 A group of very Christian high school girls take purity pledges (heh), get engagement-esque rings to seal the deal, and then one of the girls is a bad, bad girl and does the dirty deed. Unfortunately, the Bad Girl is not the main character—that would have made for a far more interesting read. As it is, the plot meanders forever. An odd book. Good in some ways—not too preachy; annoying in other ways—umm, sometimes preachy. And it’s just SO obvious that an Adult Author is trying to be, like, young and hip and , like, oh so cool while sneakily working in a Be a Good Girl message. It’s so, like, totally obvious. The other annoying thing? These girls say “Oh my gah.” Constantly. They can’t say “god” (they're good girls, rember?), so they cut it short. Drove me batty throughout the whole book. Still, there was a lot of insight, I thought. Oh, and the youth director was pegged as a kind of controlling turd, which GREATLY appealed to me and was sort of a ballsy move on the author’s part. Obviously, I’m conflicted and on the fence on this one. Verdict? Not spectacular, but not too shabby.
10. Sharp Shooter by Nadia Gordon (mystery) Rating: 4 I heart Nadia Gordon’s Napa Valley mystery books. They center on wine, so I couldn’t read her books while pregnant because you just crave a big fat red wine to drink while reading. The plot is your typical whodunit, with a subplot of an insect threatening all the vineyard crops. As usual, Gordon does a swell job giving a strong sense of place, and it’s just fun. A light, witty, non-cheesy read.
11. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose (Religion/Current Events) Rating: 4.5 This is a great book. Roose, a student at Brown University who grew up in an ultra-liberal, progressive household, transfers to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for a semester (in an undercover journalist sort of way). Liberty, founded by Jerry Falwell (of “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” fame), is a SUPER conservative, religious university with lots ‘o rules, mostly aimed at (1) not being gay, (2) not having sex, and (3) not thinking about sex. See a theme? Also, no drinking, no partying, and so on. Roose gives an amazingly honest, compassionate view of the students, faculty, and Falwell (Roose did the last printed interview of Falwell before he died). The book shifts between disturbing, hilarious, depressing, and uplifting—all at freaking once. As someone with a foot in both worlds (grew up within the conservative Christian culture then went to one of the most liberal colleges in the country and majored in women’s studies), I really appreciated Roose’s extraordinarily insightful perspective and his acknowledgement that neither the far left or far right is as easily pigeonholed as we might think. I docked a half point because he merely hints at the gender dynamics (“My wife will stay at home where she belongs!” his classmates say) and befriends one feminist (oh yes, on campus!), which I find so fascinating, but he didn’t discuss the gender stuff enough. Still, HIGHLY recommended.
12. Honolulu by Alan Brennert (contemporary literature) Rating: 3.5 Honolulu starts out slowly, gets pretty good, and then takes 150 more pages to wrap up. The premise is that a Korean girl travels to Hawaii as a picture bride in 1915, and there she must build some sort of life. The voice of the narrator is dull, but the plot moves along okay for awhile. Then too many subplots with too many characters I didn’t give a hoot about dragged down this novel—and it just went on and on. Honolulu clearly suffers from an author who did oodles of research on Hawaiian and immigration history and Korean culture, and then felt absolutely compelled to include ALL of it so the reader would be impressed with its realism. Still, a good third of it was perfectly entertaining, and it does indeed give you a glimpse into the colonization and culture of Hawaii’s early days.
13. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 The plot centers on a couple’s fanatic obsession with a now-obsolete rock star from the 1980s. The plot is so weird and twisted in classic Hornby style that it’s pointless to try to describe it here, but the characters are unflinchingly honest and complex as they all grapple with, well, getting old and regretting what they never did or could have done. Not as good as How To Be Good, my favorite Hornby book, but good.
14. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Premise: Woman gives birth to twins in the middle of a snowy night. One of them is born with Down’s syndrome, so the dad sends that baby away and tells his wife that the baby died. The rest of the book deals with 30+ years of that action's ramifications. A good solid book, but I expected to be more blown away than I was. I was adequately entertained, I guess, but I didn’t really care for any of the characters and thus I didn’t particularly care how they fared.
15. Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout (contemporary literature) Rating: 5 The only“5” of the year! And it took 15 books to get here! Abide With Me is a gem of a book, set in the 1960s in a small New England town. There, a youngish minister of a small church copes with the death of his wife (as does his “odd” young daughter) and the congregation gets a bit snotty. Strout has a voice that was delightfully new to me—simultaneously chatty, ironic, and simple. I loved it. Particularly well done was the way in which she occasionally took on the little girl’s point of view—Strout absolutely nailed the quirky, irrational way in which kids think. I found this novel very moving and beautiful—I adored it.
16. Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter (parenting) Rating: 4.5 Our pediatrician recommended this book, and hell, I now recommend this book. Satter takes food and feeding out of our obesity-fearing (yet overweight) cultural context and places them squarely in the hands of the kiddo. That’s right. You get to toss out all those pamphlets and books and internet sources, and just let your baby determine whether she eats and how much to eat. She gives good practical guidance on how to help your baby become a more independent eater without being pushy. She also really encourages you to adapt what you (the grown-ups) are eating so your baby takes part in your meal. I found this book very freeing—the gist is to trust your baby to drive the feeding bus and avoid making meal times into a power struggle.
17. A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 On the Oregon Trail, a young mother and a guy “with a past” start a little romance. The novel has garnered a lot of literary praise, and certain aspects of it are truly extraordinary, such as the details of trying to keep entire families clean and fed on that looooooong trail—when you never wanted to set out in the first place. Fisher shines as she conveys the understated resentment and sheer work that so many women must have faced: Keeping your milk supply up for your infant as you trek across the whole damn country! The terror and helplessness when your baby becomes very sick, she wants to nurse for comfort, and there’s nothing there! Having to part with you precious dishes because of weight, but of course your husband keeps everything he wants. Screw river crossings, these daily trials are the details and events that fascinated me. Much of the book, however, dwelled too much on the love interest and his shady history, and his story meandered all over the place. I just couldn’t get invested in it. Overall, the book wasn’t as cohesive and smooth as I thought it aimed to be, and, like the Oregon Trail, parts of it seemed very, very long. Still, it’s worth a read.
18. The Owl & Moon Café by Jo-Ann Mapson (contemporary literature) Rating: 2 LAME. This book is beyond cheesy. The dialogue is forced, the characters are bland caricatures, and there really isn’t any plot. And believe me, Mapson is not talented enough with the pen to lack plot—her writing is just bland bland bland. Too many details unrelated to plot or character development made the book drag, and the book should have been a good 100 pages shorter.
19. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Waters can set a mood and she brilliantly builds tension in this tale. In post-WWII England, a bachelor doctor gets involved with a bizarre, previously wealthy family and their apparently haunted mansion. And really, who doesn’t love a story about a haunted mansion? I really enjoyed this novel, but I found the ending to be too (albeit deliberately) vague.
20. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (historical fiction) Rating: 4 Clocking in at 972 pages, I had to check this out from the library several times before I finished it. The book took me almost a year to read—for example, I had it with me at the hospital when I delivered Charlotte in January, and I was still reading it and had it with me again at the hospital when Charlotte was admitted at the end of October. Originally published (and bestselling yet banned) in the 1940s, we follow a little hussy named Amber through about a decade or two of stellar decision-making in the late 1600s. A country girl who finds herself knocked up as a young teen, she uses her wit and beauty to sleep with (and swindle) rich men, married men, noblemen, the king, and so on, but remains inexplicably in love with the original guy who got her pregnant. Still, I found myself rooting for the little tramp, and Winsor proves quite a point in 972 pages—how else could an uneducated, single mother make it when she has no rights or any other way of earning an income?
21. A Darker Shade of Crimson by Pamela Thomas-Graham (mystery) Rating: 3.5 This smart mystery takes place at Harvard, and a black economics professor finds herself mired in a kind of, sort of, but not really racially motivated murder on campus. The book is well-plotted, clever, and well-written, but I found myself irritated and distracted by needlessly barbed comments by the “heroine” (read: author) that made her quite unlikable. This was annoying because I was really trying to root for her, to LIKE her. Although the author successfully conveyed complicated race dynamics on an ivy league campus, the novel had a snotty edge to it that simply detracted from the story.
22. What to Expect the First Year by Heidi Murkoff (parenting) Rating: 3 By the same author (and publisher) of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Murkoff gives us a whole new year of parental paranoia. The book is useful to a point—it gives the clueless parent (me) some guidance as to when to expect certain developmental milestones and when to introduce certain things, like sippy cups. Too much space was devoted to “breast is best” rhetoric, but that’s a pet peeve of mine. The book loses value as time goes by, and you can practically sense the author grasping for crap to discuss by months 9, 10, 11, and 12. The text also has a preachy-yet-cutesy tone that talks down to the reader, which drove me nuts. There have to be better first-year baby books out there.
23. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Victorian literature) Rating: 4 We’ve all seen a half-dozen film versions of the Dickens classic (I grew up loving the Mickey Mouse and Muppets versions), but have we read the book? I very much enjoyed reading the original, although I may have still pictured Cratchit as Mickey Mouse and Marley as Goofy. A fun Christmastime read.
24. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (young adult) Rating: 4 Princess Academy follows a girl, Miri, who, along with the majority of the young girls in her mountain village, must attend school to make them worthy of potentially becoming a princess. Hale does a lot of good things in the book, including creating a charming little mythical world, and the story is quite feminist. My one quibble is that the plot wasn’t quite tight enough for me—our heroine, however likable, didn’t have an overarching goal, just lots of short ambitions that kept me wondering what exactly it was that she wanted, and where exactly we were going with this story. And there you have it! 2010's books. Here's hoping that 2011 allows more reading time (ha!) and better books than 2010. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do . . . .
In 2009, I read 48 books. Not bad, although my goal had been 50. In 2010—the year of my daughter’s birth—I read a whopping 24 books. Exactly half of last year. Sigh. Obviously, a newborn/baby/toddler-to-be (not to mention moving) leaves scarce time for such luxuries as reading. And these days, reading truly is a luxury. With so little time to read, I found myself quite irritated when a book’s plot needlessly meandered or pointless detail was added, and I was downright peeved when a book was just plain bad. Only one book reached all five stars: Elizabeth Strout’s Abide With Me, which I highly, highly recommend. (You can read more about my rating system here in my post about 2009 books.)
A couple other books stood out—Silent in the Sanctuary, a gothic bodice-busting mystery, provided me with a very welcome mental escape during the newborn days in which I was trapped in an apartment with Charlotte and nearly losing my mind. I read all of The Secret Life of Bees while breastfeeding—holding Charlotte in one arm, and the book in the other hand. Nadia Gordon’s Napa Valley mysteries are always escapist fun for me. And The Unlikely Disciple knocked my socks off as far as entertaining me and making me think. So without further ado, here’s the list of 2010’s books, in the order in which they were read:
1. The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Set in New England, a classic adventure story á la Oliver Twist, featuring a scrappy orphan named Ren who is missing his left hand. He gets plucked from the orphanage by a bandit and encounters all sorts of charming hooligans. Darling book, destined to become a classic, methinks.
2. The New Mother’s Guide to Breastfeeding by American Academy of Pediatrics (parenting) Rating: 2 The hospital gave me this book as I was discharged, and I hated it. It sets up impossible standards for breastfeeding, including exclusively breastfeeding when you return to work, breastfeeding for AT LEAST a full year (yes, after your baby has TEETH), and no medical condition short of HIV/AIDS (this includes cancer or stomach flu) gets you off the hook to miss a single feeding. What’s worse is that you read this while totally sleep-deprived, exhausted, hormonal, and sooooo worried about screwing up your kid. The book makes you feel like an failure because you already know you won’t breastfeed for a year. You also already know you’ll do your best pumping at work, but formula is eventually going to help out. The book’s tone is judgmental and downright rude—there’s an overall attitude of “no amount of work or sacrifice is too much for the most sacred goal of exclusively breastfeeding until your kid is 25. If you try hard enough (read: love your baby enough), you can—and should—do it.” I bumped the rating up to two stars for the ONE chapter of practical information.
3. Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn (mystery) Rating: 4 This fun little mystery is Raybourn’s sequel to Silent in the Grave, which I also enjoyed. It takes place in an old abbey-turned-sprawling-estate in Victorian England, with oodles of characters (i.e., suspects) for a murder. My only complaint is that it takes something like 200 pages for the murder to take place. Raybourn spends an eternity setting the stage, but she does so in an entertaining enough way that this little flaw is easily overlooked.
4. The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (contemporary literature) Rating: 4.5 A group of women (plus one dude) start a book club to read and discuss Jane Austen’s six novels. I loved this book. Fowler’s prose is crisp, to the point, and funny, and she clearly reveres the unmatched genius of Austen. The most fun part of this book is aligning the plots and characters of Austen’s novels with Fowler’s, but you do not need to have read Austen to enjoy this novel.
5. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (contemporary literature) Rating: 4.5 A coming-of-age story of a white Southern girl, Lily, under the tyrannical thumb of her father, whose nanny, Rosaleen, gets beat up by a group of white men on her way to registering to vote in the 1960s. The two flee, ending up at a bee farm while Lily tries to get some closure on her mother’s death, which apparently she caused as a young child. Lily is a likable, unique narrator and the plot avoids the clichéd or tiresome, apologetic “white-helps-black” trappings of books set in the Civil Rights era with a white narrator or point of view. Quite enjoyable.
6. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (contemporary literature) Rating 3.5 The classic Chicano tale set in New Mexico 50 or 60 years ago or so. Ultima, an old curandera (i.e., supernatural healer) comes to live with our narrator, Antonio. She heals some, and others think she’s a witch. Mythology mixes with Catholicism, which generates the majority of the conflict in the plot. I wasn’t too amazed by this book and had trouble getting into it, but it was okay overall.
7. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth (parenting) Rating: 3.5 Charlotte’s pediatrician strongly recommended this book, and it’s an important read for understanding sleep and babies. I docked one point because, like most parenting books, it has a judgmental tone—every single problem is due to parental mismanagement, neglect, stupidity, or selfishness. A sentence or two acknowledging that we parental dipshits do the best we can with the experience and information we have would have been nice. I docked an additional half point because it’s often difficult to figure out exactly what age of child he’s talking about with certain methods. This is a fairly significant flaw because you don’t want to subject a 2-month-old to something designed for a 9-month-old. The book is, however, exceptionally good at illustrating how important sleep is for a child and it really pushes (guilts) you into making sure you prioritize your baby’s sleep needs. For that, it’s definitely worth reading if you have a baby or toddler.
8. The Illuminated Soul by Aryeh Lev Stollman (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Set (for the most part, anyway) in post-WWII Canada, a Jewish family gets a visitor with a rare 15-century manuscript. Steeped in Jewish history, literature, and theology, this lovely novel depicts the tension between the earthly (that is, the rare and valuable manuscript that people had died protecting) and the transcendent (that is, the soul). Stollman’s writing style is succinct but also quite unique; he gets a lot of mileage with every carefully chosen word. Enjoyed it, recommend it.
9. Pure by Terra Elan McVoy (young adult) Rating: 3.5 A group of very Christian high school girls take purity pledges (heh), get engagement-esque rings to seal the deal, and then one of the girls is a bad, bad girl and does the dirty deed. Unfortunately, the Bad Girl is not the main character—that would have made for a far more interesting read. As it is, the plot meanders forever. An odd book. Good in some ways—not too preachy; annoying in other ways—umm, sometimes preachy. And it’s just SO obvious that an Adult Author is trying to be, like, young and hip and , like, oh so cool while sneakily working in a Be a Good Girl message. It’s so, like, totally obvious. The other annoying thing? These girls say “Oh my gah.” Constantly. They can’t say “god” (they're good girls, rember?), so they cut it short. Drove me batty throughout the whole book. Still, there was a lot of insight, I thought. Oh, and the youth director was pegged as a kind of controlling turd, which GREATLY appealed to me and was sort of a ballsy move on the author’s part. Obviously, I’m conflicted and on the fence on this one. Verdict? Not spectacular, but not too shabby.
10. Sharp Shooter by Nadia Gordon (mystery) Rating: 4 I heart Nadia Gordon’s Napa Valley mystery books. They center on wine, so I couldn’t read her books while pregnant because you just crave a big fat red wine to drink while reading. The plot is your typical whodunit, with a subplot of an insect threatening all the vineyard crops. As usual, Gordon does a swell job giving a strong sense of place, and it’s just fun. A light, witty, non-cheesy read.
11. The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose (Religion/Current Events) Rating: 4.5 This is a great book. Roose, a student at Brown University who grew up in an ultra-liberal, progressive household, transfers to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for a semester (in an undercover journalist sort of way). Liberty, founded by Jerry Falwell (of “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” fame), is a SUPER conservative, religious university with lots ‘o rules, mostly aimed at (1) not being gay, (2) not having sex, and (3) not thinking about sex. See a theme? Also, no drinking, no partying, and so on. Roose gives an amazingly honest, compassionate view of the students, faculty, and Falwell (Roose did the last printed interview of Falwell before he died). The book shifts between disturbing, hilarious, depressing, and uplifting—all at freaking once. As someone with a foot in both worlds (grew up within the conservative Christian culture then went to one of the most liberal colleges in the country and majored in women’s studies), I really appreciated Roose’s extraordinarily insightful perspective and his acknowledgement that neither the far left or far right is as easily pigeonholed as we might think. I docked a half point because he merely hints at the gender dynamics (“My wife will stay at home where she belongs!” his classmates say) and befriends one feminist (oh yes, on campus!), which I find so fascinating, but he didn’t discuss the gender stuff enough. Still, HIGHLY recommended.
12. Honolulu by Alan Brennert (contemporary literature) Rating: 3.5 Honolulu starts out slowly, gets pretty good, and then takes 150 more pages to wrap up. The premise is that a Korean girl travels to Hawaii as a picture bride in 1915, and there she must build some sort of life. The voice of the narrator is dull, but the plot moves along okay for awhile. Then too many subplots with too many characters I didn’t give a hoot about dragged down this novel—and it just went on and on. Honolulu clearly suffers from an author who did oodles of research on Hawaiian and immigration history and Korean culture, and then felt absolutely compelled to include ALL of it so the reader would be impressed with its realism. Still, a good third of it was perfectly entertaining, and it does indeed give you a glimpse into the colonization and culture of Hawaii’s early days.
13. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 The plot centers on a couple’s fanatic obsession with a now-obsolete rock star from the 1980s. The plot is so weird and twisted in classic Hornby style that it’s pointless to try to describe it here, but the characters are unflinchingly honest and complex as they all grapple with, well, getting old and regretting what they never did or could have done. Not as good as How To Be Good, my favorite Hornby book, but good.
14. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Premise: Woman gives birth to twins in the middle of a snowy night. One of them is born with Down’s syndrome, so the dad sends that baby away and tells his wife that the baby died. The rest of the book deals with 30+ years of that action's ramifications. A good solid book, but I expected to be more blown away than I was. I was adequately entertained, I guess, but I didn’t really care for any of the characters and thus I didn’t particularly care how they fared.
15. Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout (contemporary literature) Rating: 5 The only“5” of the year! And it took 15 books to get here! Abide With Me is a gem of a book, set in the 1960s in a small New England town. There, a youngish minister of a small church copes with the death of his wife (as does his “odd” young daughter) and the congregation gets a bit snotty. Strout has a voice that was delightfully new to me—simultaneously chatty, ironic, and simple. I loved it. Particularly well done was the way in which she occasionally took on the little girl’s point of view—Strout absolutely nailed the quirky, irrational way in which kids think. I found this novel very moving and beautiful—I adored it.
16. Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter (parenting) Rating: 4.5 Our pediatrician recommended this book, and hell, I now recommend this book. Satter takes food and feeding out of our obesity-fearing (yet overweight) cultural context and places them squarely in the hands of the kiddo. That’s right. You get to toss out all those pamphlets and books and internet sources, and just let your baby determine whether she eats and how much to eat. She gives good practical guidance on how to help your baby become a more independent eater without being pushy. She also really encourages you to adapt what you (the grown-ups) are eating so your baby takes part in your meal. I found this book very freeing—the gist is to trust your baby to drive the feeding bus and avoid making meal times into a power struggle.
17. A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 On the Oregon Trail, a young mother and a guy “with a past” start a little romance. The novel has garnered a lot of literary praise, and certain aspects of it are truly extraordinary, such as the details of trying to keep entire families clean and fed on that looooooong trail—when you never wanted to set out in the first place. Fisher shines as she conveys the understated resentment and sheer work that so many women must have faced: Keeping your milk supply up for your infant as you trek across the whole damn country! The terror and helplessness when your baby becomes very sick, she wants to nurse for comfort, and there’s nothing there! Having to part with you precious dishes because of weight, but of course your husband keeps everything he wants. Screw river crossings, these daily trials are the details and events that fascinated me. Much of the book, however, dwelled too much on the love interest and his shady history, and his story meandered all over the place. I just couldn’t get invested in it. Overall, the book wasn’t as cohesive and smooth as I thought it aimed to be, and, like the Oregon Trail, parts of it seemed very, very long. Still, it’s worth a read.
18. The Owl & Moon Café by Jo-Ann Mapson (contemporary literature) Rating: 2 LAME. This book is beyond cheesy. The dialogue is forced, the characters are bland caricatures, and there really isn’t any plot. And believe me, Mapson is not talented enough with the pen to lack plot—her writing is just bland bland bland. Too many details unrelated to plot or character development made the book drag, and the book should have been a good 100 pages shorter.
19. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (contemporary literature) Rating: 4 Waters can set a mood and she brilliantly builds tension in this tale. In post-WWII England, a bachelor doctor gets involved with a bizarre, previously wealthy family and their apparently haunted mansion. And really, who doesn’t love a story about a haunted mansion? I really enjoyed this novel, but I found the ending to be too (albeit deliberately) vague.
20. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor (historical fiction) Rating: 4 Clocking in at 972 pages, I had to check this out from the library several times before I finished it. The book took me almost a year to read—for example, I had it with me at the hospital when I delivered Charlotte in January, and I was still reading it and had it with me again at the hospital when Charlotte was admitted at the end of October. Originally published (and bestselling yet banned) in the 1940s, we follow a little hussy named Amber through about a decade or two of stellar decision-making in the late 1600s. A country girl who finds herself knocked up as a young teen, she uses her wit and beauty to sleep with (and swindle) rich men, married men, noblemen, the king, and so on, but remains inexplicably in love with the original guy who got her pregnant. Still, I found myself rooting for the little tramp, and Winsor proves quite a point in 972 pages—how else could an uneducated, single mother make it when she has no rights or any other way of earning an income?
21. A Darker Shade of Crimson by Pamela Thomas-Graham (mystery) Rating: 3.5 This smart mystery takes place at Harvard, and a black economics professor finds herself mired in a kind of, sort of, but not really racially motivated murder on campus. The book is well-plotted, clever, and well-written, but I found myself irritated and distracted by needlessly barbed comments by the “heroine” (read: author) that made her quite unlikable. This was annoying because I was really trying to root for her, to LIKE her. Although the author successfully conveyed complicated race dynamics on an ivy league campus, the novel had a snotty edge to it that simply detracted from the story.
22. What to Expect the First Year by Heidi Murkoff (parenting) Rating: 3 By the same author (and publisher) of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Murkoff gives us a whole new year of parental paranoia. The book is useful to a point—it gives the clueless parent (me) some guidance as to when to expect certain developmental milestones and when to introduce certain things, like sippy cups. Too much space was devoted to “breast is best” rhetoric, but that’s a pet peeve of mine. The book loses value as time goes by, and you can practically sense the author grasping for crap to discuss by months 9, 10, 11, and 12. The text also has a preachy-yet-cutesy tone that talks down to the reader, which drove me nuts. There have to be better first-year baby books out there.
23. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Victorian literature) Rating: 4 We’ve all seen a half-dozen film versions of the Dickens classic (I grew up loving the Mickey Mouse and Muppets versions), but have we read the book? I very much enjoyed reading the original, although I may have still pictured Cratchit as Mickey Mouse and Marley as Goofy. A fun Christmastime read.
24. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (young adult) Rating: 4 Princess Academy follows a girl, Miri, who, along with the majority of the young girls in her mountain village, must attend school to make them worthy of potentially becoming a princess. Hale does a lot of good things in the book, including creating a charming little mythical world, and the story is quite feminist. My one quibble is that the plot wasn’t quite tight enough for me—our heroine, however likable, didn’t have an overarching goal, just lots of short ambitions that kept me wondering what exactly it was that she wanted, and where exactly we were going with this story. And there you have it! 2010's books. Here's hoping that 2011 allows more reading time (ha!) and better books than 2010. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do . . . .
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