2010: a good year for words

these were my favorites!

The (Diblos) Notebook, James Merrill

A friend lent me this book and made me promise to return it when I was done. Instead, I moved to Chicago. hahahaha take THAT, friend! Merrill is first and foremost a poet. It shows. Done in the style of a novelist's notebook, Merrill uses telegraphic jottings, real-life reminiscences, crossed-out paragraphs, lists and fragments to create his story. Together, these impressions create a tale all the more complete for its shattered telling.

Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier

Maybe it's cheating to include this one since I'm not finished with it yet. But so far it's really good!! Frazier shares his obsession with, and travels in, the Russian continent. He also remixes a fair amount of Siberian history without coming across too droney. I'm confused, though. Why is it taking me so long to finish this book? I've seriously been at it for weeks. Maybe Frazier wants to replicate the experience of traveling in Siberia through his prose?? If so: I'm onto you, you sneaky fuck.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel

Sometimes, halfway through a book, you realize you're reading too quickly. You don't want it to end, so you start to slooowwwww dooowwwnnn. Lingering on every word. Pausing between sentences to stare out the window. Setting the book aside for hours. Wandering around your house. Resisting its gravitational pull. This was like that for me.

Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, Mark J. Plotkin, Ph.D.

Some notes from my envelope bookmark: "Alkaloids in plants manifest as bitterness. This astringency clues people in to a compound's medicinal and poisonous properties." "Often the only difference between a medicine and a poison is dosage." "Medieval witches used broomsticks to apply alkaloid-rich substances to body parts with high concentrations of nerve endings and blood vessels. People who said that witches 'flew' were probably referring obliquely to them tripping." "A Tirio shaman: 'At night I slept underwater and made love to the spirit of the river.'" You probably already know if this shit sounds cool to you.

Doubt, Jennifer Michael Hecht

[This book has nothing to do with that movie.] A history of religious doubt, from the early Greeks to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. For real, fucking EXHAUSTIVE. Felt like I'd run a marathon after. I was also totally smitten, and even considered writing a fangirl letter. To a religious scholar. Hecht was only, like, 25 when she wrote this. Twenty. Five. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?????

After the Quake, Haruki Murakami

My friend sent me this book! A collection of short stories set in various parts of Japan after the Kobe earthquake, focusing less on the details of the disaster than on its emotional aftershocks. As his characters stare into the fissures cracked open by the quake, they learn surprising things about suffering and human nature. Written with Murakami's typical spare elegance and taste for the surreal.

Alfred & Emily, Doris Lessing

On the real, Doris Lessing does not give a FUCK. I'm still drumming up the courage to write about my family for serious. She transcended that anxiety decades ago. Now she's on some new new, inventing lives for her parents in a more perfect, imaginary universe where World War I never happened, her parents never married, she was never born. That's the first part. The second part is her childhood, the bugs that lived in their house in South Africa, and the terrible things she and her mother did to each other. Actually too raw.

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

BEST BOOK I READ ALL YEAR I WOULD RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY TO EVERY SINGLE PERSON I KNOW BIG AND SMALL YOUNG AND OLD LIVING AND DEAD DO NOT BE EMBARRASSED CARRYING AROUND A BOOK WITH THIS TITLE PEOPLE WHO KNOW WHAT'S UP WILL KNOW WHAT'S UP AND PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT'S UP BETTER RECOGNIZE.

Heat, Bill Buford

I don't like cooking. But I love reading about cooking. Dude works as a kitchen apprentice for chefs even crazier than he is. He learns how restaurants work, how cooking works and how butchering works. Then he teaches us. BONUS: If you read this book, all your cooking friends will think better of you.

The Years, Virginia Woolf

Have you read any Virginia Woolf? If no, don't start with this book. If yes, do you like her? Or do you LOVE her? People in <3 with Virginia Woolf, or people who wanna learn to become the best novelist in the history of the world, should read The Years. It's like watching someone learn to become the best novelist in the history of the world. By the end, nothing really has happened but you feel like you've gained a whole new family that makes much more sense than your real family.

I AM PRO AT BOOK REVIEWS.

Howards End, E.M. Forster

Whoa, holy shit you guys, all the hype about E. M. Forster was actually true! Don't you love that? To tell you specifically what happens in this book is to short-change it. (Sisters grow up, get married, and talk about love & life & art. They move to the country, which is actually a metaphor for England. Somebody dies.) Tiny revelations flash on you like raindrops and you're constantly looking around at people on the train smiling like, 'aren't you guys totally in love with life right now? because i'm totally in love with life right now!!!!' Howards End makes you feel like a crazy person in the most joyful way. Also (and I'm too lazy to look this up, but I'm about 85% sure it's true) Forster and Woolf must've been contemporaries because they're concerned with the similar thing and they write about it in the similar way. ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Decoded, Jay-Z

This book is also cheating, since I didn't actually finish it - read about 100 pages waiting for my brother to get a haircut the other day. Still one of my favorite books of 2010! Not that I didn't know this already, but yo: Jay-Z is fucking brill. His ruminations on hip hop history add depth and context to your music appreciation. His thoughts on poetry are as enlightening as your best English teacher's. The explication of his most famous lyrics is just a delectable add-on.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin

OH MY GOD THIS IS TAKING FOREVER! Okay, this book. Not terribly fun when you're reading it, and you wonder why you keep going, but somehow you know it's gonna be good for you. Then when you're finished it keeps growing in your head like a sponge soaked in water until it's kind of all you can think about, and more than once a week it forces you to reevaluate your stance toward life and the essence of human experience and gender and etc. etc. And you find yourself explaining this book all the time to your friends, but doing it poorly, but instead of explaining it you should just make them go ahead and read the book they goddamn self already so you can stop talking about it so ineptly all the time!

Lunch Poems, Frank O'Hara

O'Hara's been a favorite for a minute, and I'd read many of these poems before, but this was the first year I sat down and read it cover to cover. Recommended reading environment: on a sunny carpet with a slice of leftover cake and a half-cup of cooling tea. Preferrably if you think you're slightly in love but don't know for sure. If you don't rise from that rug newly enamored of life and whomever you think you're slightly in love with, I'll refund all your time & money. No refund on the cake, though. That's your problem.

Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

Oh hey, I actually did read a book published in 2010 in 2010! Neat! Other people have written about this one a lot better than I'm gonna. Six or so lives on one day in New York. Some of them connect. Some of them don't. Heart-breaking, lucid, hot, fluid, soul-expanding. If you're one of those people who cares about the literary scene, this book is probably sitting in a stack on your nightstand. Shuffle it to the top.

Promethea, Alan Moore

Alan Moore looked around and thought, "Yo, I'm pretty much the best in the game right now. Time for Phase 3: unleashing the full brunt of my insanity on the world." So he wrote Promethea to explain his belief in magic and the kabbalah. And you know? It's incredible. You don't have to agree with his interpretation of some of the most prominent symbols of Western society, but you probably won't be able to look at a cup or a caduceus the same way again, and one sex scene in particular will definitely flash on your brain at the most awkward moments. Further, in terms of technical mastery, a coupla pages in this shits are the most brilliantly-paneled I've ever seen.

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

Come to think of it, I read this in 2009. Don't matter. Didion's my girl. If you don't know her yet, I don't know what your problem is. You need to get on that.

NUMBERS ABOUT WORDS - 

Fiction-ish books: 8

Non-fiction-ish books: 8 (whoa!)

Poetry-ish books: 2

Graphic novels: 2

Books written by ex-New Yorker essayists: 2

Books written by women: 7

Books written by non-white people: 2 (shit)

Science fiction-ish books: 3

Books I would recommend: FUCKING ALL OF THEM, WEREN"T YOU LISTENING??

OKAY! THAT WAS FUN BUT I"M NEVER DOING IT AGAIN! HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOURSELF! LET ME KNOW IF THESE BLURBS ACTUALLY ENCOURAGED YOU TO PICK UP ONE OF THESE BOOKS AND I WILL BE SHOCKED! and of course pleased. BUT MOSTLY VERY SHOCKED!!!!!!!