Books I Read in 2009

Booking Through Thursday Question: What were your favorite books of the year?

I have a friend who is a poet and artist. Years ago she told me that when she had her son, she could no longer write or paint. So when I became pregnant I expected that I would stop writing for a time. What devastated me is that I actually stopped reading too. I can’t pinpoint the reason. It’s not that I didn’t have time, though I do obviously have much less of it. But it took months after my daughter was born this past May for me to actually start reading books again.

Happily I am back to reading and loving it (the challenge now is stopping my 7 month old from eating the books). Hopefully one day I can start writing again as well. In the meantime, here are a few of the best books I read in 2009 and a look toward 2010.

Fiction:
- Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (heartbreaking, but beautiful)
- Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan (I always like Amy Tan)
- The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (I read this after becoming a mother and that made a big difference in how I felt about it)

Nonfiction:
- Live Through This by Debra Gwartney (Portland, OR local author)

Young Adult and Children’s:
- The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (this year’s well deserved Newbery winner)
- When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
- Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (I jumped on the Shannon Hale bandwagon—review to follow soon)
- Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales by Lucy Cousins

I don’t usually make New Year’s Resolutions, but I don’t mind setting a few challenges for myself that are book related.

1) Finish reading all the Newbery Award Winning books (this has been a goal of mine for years now, and I’ve been stuck with a handful of particularly boring looking ones).

2) Read more local authors. I love to support local bookstores (it’s easy when you live near a Powell’s), but I’d like to seek out and read more local authors too.

3) I joined a challenge to read 100+ books in 2010. I fell far short of that in 2009, but if you don’t make the goal, you can’t get there.

Online Chapbook

A teacher and friend of mine from PSU and Ooligan Press just published an online chapbook of poems chronicling his weight loss. The poems are snapshots of his journey to finding the man behind the fat. I recommend this quick and entertaining read for anyone--whether you want to be inspired to your own weight loss goals or are in perfect physical shape. Click on the link below to be taken to his website where you can download the chapbook for free.

Tales of Contraction
by Vinnie Kinsella

Buy a Book, Give a Book

Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

“Misunderstanding a culture’s symbols is a common root of prejudice.” –Robert Langdon in The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

I used to be a book snob. Still am to some degree. As an English major, I felt I should only spend my time reading what I considered good literature—good story, good character development, and most important of all, good writing. Then I entered a graduate publishing program and realized that my English Lit background did me little good there. I may have known Faulkner, but Faulkner is dead and I had no idea what people were actually writing and publishing today. So I swallowed my pride and began venturing out into the world of popular fiction.

Today I finished reading Dan Brown’s latest thriller, The Lost Symbol. Having read and seen the movie versions of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, the common protagonist, Robert Langdon, was much more concrete in mind while reading his most current offering. In fact, Langdon was Tom Hanks. But there are far worse things than having a figure as comforting and familiar as Tom Hanks in your head for a few days.

The Lost Symbol is another strange mix of history, science, and religion, of fact and fantasy. The characters range from the fanatic to the realist, the scientist to the priest. My favorite character was Langdon’s newest female sidekick, Katherine Solomon. She’s beautiful and rich so you want to hate her, but she’s also real, smart, and ingenious, so you admire her.

Once again, one of Brown’s antagonists is an odd-looking man who likes to hang out naked (remember the albino?). Not titillating naked—scary naked. It made me wonder about Brown’s penchant for bad guys who walk around naked. But then, as an English major, I’m sure I could come up with some critical explanation for it. Let’s go with something about the villains hiding nothing about their evil natures from us.

It’s a lengthy novel, of course. And the resolution was a little long and redundant. It took fifty pages for Brown to wrap things up after the climax. Even in a book this long, that accounted for 10% of the book. I found myself skimming the end because I already knew what happened in the end (and that’s the point of a Dan Brown novel, finding out what happens next), and it was repeating a lot of the same ideas that had been presented throughout the book. But the chapters are short, and the narrative moves quickly, so it’s a fast read.

If you liked Brown’s other novels, The Lost Symbol will not disappoint. It’s full of twists and turns that range from predictable to surprising, but they’re all fun. Though he was a little melodramatic in some places (“The bowl contained one inch of thick crimson liquid. ... The liquid was _______’s blood.”), there was one major plot twist that I can honestly say I didn’t see coming. Of course, I can’t tell you about it or it would ruin the book.

The Lost Symbol is great escapist literature. And considering his popularity, a Dan Brown novel may one day grace the syllabus of an American Novels course.


The Lost Symbol
By Dan Brown
Doubleday, 2009
$29.95

Book Review: Yummy

Though I've never read Lucy Cousins's most well-known books starring a mouse named Maisy, I was intrigued by the title of her book of retold fairy tales. Yummy is an appropriate title for a book of fairy tales where something--or someone--is eaten in every story.

This collection features enduring classics like "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" as well as a couple that I didn't know as well like "The Enormous Turnip" and "The Musicians of Bremen." I was surprised when the first two pigs of "The Three Little Pigs" were simply eaten by the wolf, but the bluntness of Cousins's language made me laugh at the gruesomeness that always accompanies fairy tales that are true to the original.

My favorite lines in the book were from "The Three Billy Goats Gruff":

"Who's that stomping over my bridge?" roared the troll.

"It's me," said Big Billy Goat Gruff in his great big voice.

"I'm going to gobble you up," said the troll.

"Then I'll bash you to bits," said Big Billy Goat Gruff.

I loved the simple lines and bright colors of the illustrations, as well as the boldness and simplicity of the language in the retelling of these classic fairy tales. I would buy this book for myself, but am happy to have a daughter so I have an excuse to buy it and read it over and over again. With hundreds of collections of fairy tales to choose from, this one tops my list. Check it out for yourself--whether you have children or not.

Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales
by Lucy Cousins
Candlewick Press, 2009
$18.99