The Booker Bridesmaid

Oh, Booker Prize, you do love your little mini-contests, don't you? We've had the Booker of Bookers, the Lost Booker Prize, and now the Best of Beryl. You see, poor Beryl Bainbridge was shortlisted five times and never won, and now that she's died she never will. (The greatest disadvantage of death, of course, is that one will now never win the Booker Prize.) (But seriously, imagine how much it must suck to be Beryl Bainbridge and know that DBC Pierre and Yann Martel and Aravind Adiga have all won the Booker Prize and you haven't. It's really rather sad when you think of it that way. Yann Martel.)

So the Booker gods have decided that the way to make this all okay is to invent a new prize called the Best of Beryl (I originally thought they were calling it the "Booker Bridesmaid," which thank God they did have the good sense to avoid) and let the public decide which of Bainbridge's five shortlisted books should take home this august honor. I can't decide whether this is sweet or weirdly condescending. Most likely, it is both. However, it is a nifty excuse to link to and exhort you to read the five books:

• An Awfully Big Adventure
  
• The Bottle Factory Outing
  
• The Dressmaker
  
• Every Man for Himself (Bainbridge, Beryl)
  
• Master Georgie
  

The Best Thing I Read Today

"The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance."

Anthony Powell
A Question of Upbringing
Volume 1 of A Dance to the Music of Time

Top Ten Books of 2010

I didn't think it was a fantastic year for books, to be honest. Lots of disappointments: Writers like Ian McEwan and Jon McGregor turned out clunkers, and all of the prize lists were pretty lackluster. But there were definitely some winners as well.

My favorite work of fiction in 2010 was Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist. That was probably my favorite book of all, and I can't really put my finger on what I liked so much about it. A healthy Big Love obsession helps. But I also liked the old-fashioned storytelling feel that this book has. And I got really attached to some of the characters. I really had a hard time putting this one down while I was reading it, and putting it aside when I was done.

My favorite work of non-fiction in 2010 was Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. This book is also heavy on narrative, and also really made me care about its subjects. I was really impressed with Demick's research. This book was as haunting as anything I read in 2010. Demick should have won the National Book Award for this book, and I was so disappointed that she didn't.

The rest of my list, in no particular order:

• Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
• Kings of the Earth, Jon Clinch
• Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
• A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
• The Surrendered, Chang-Rae Lee
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson
• Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories, Yiyun Li

Five men and five women (I swear I didn't do that on purpose). Seven novels, two non-fiction books, one short story collection. Also, I seem to have been unusually interested in Asia this year.

Meanwhile, On the Internet

Tomorrow, my list of my favorite reads of 2010.

Meanwhile, lots of interesting links:

• At Perpetual Folly, Claire Foster's story "Foster" has been christened the best New Yorker story of 2010. I am woefully behind on my New Yorker reading, so can't comment.
  
• Many, many 2011 previews. Here are three: The Millions, the Guardian, and the Telegraph. I am ridiculously excited about Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens. Also: a new Edward St. Aubyn, a new Ali Smith, and sadly, the last Beryl Bainbridge.
  
• The January issue of Open Letters Monthly is live. Of greatest interest (to me at least): Honoria St. Cyr reviews the memoir of Deborah Mitford, the last of the Mitford sisters; Sam Sacks tackles Joshua Cohen's novel Witz; and Greg Waldman covers Mark Feldstein's book Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture. (I have a tiny little Nixon obsession.)
  
• Last but not least, here is Keith Staskiewicz (writing for EW's Shelf Life blog) on the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that omits both "Injun" and the n-word:
  
  

  Twain’s book has been one of the most often misunderstood novels of all time, continuously being accused of perpetuating the prejudiced attitudes it is criticizing, and it’s a little disheartening to see a cave-in to those who would ban a book simply because it requires context. On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge. It’s unfortunate, but is it really any more catastrophic than a TBS-friendly re-edit of The Godfather, you down-and-dirty melon farmer?

  Personally, I don't like the "TBS-friendly re-edits" of movies (or TV shows like The Sopranos), and when I run the world they will not happen. So perhaps I'm not the best person to ask. But yes, I think this is worse.
  
  

Worst Books of 2010

I'm not ready to list the best books I read this year, but I do have a list of the worst books. Hopefully in the next six days I won't read anything else that belongs on this list!

1. Even the Dogs, Jon McGregor. I love everything else McGregor has written. But this was a mess.

2. The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson. The Booker judges and I are so rarely on the same wavelength.

3. Black Mamba Boy, Nadifa Mohamed. Just really, really boring.

4. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, Elif Batuman. Okay, I know everyone else loved this book. To me, it was as if a precocious child who has been told once too often that she is precocious was standing in the middle of the room trying to prove to me how precocious she is.

5. One Day, David Nicholls. I didn't like the characters, I didn't believe their relationship, I thought the ending was overwrought and hackneyed and too long. Yikes. Hated it.

Seasonal Reading Challenge: Day 3

It is Day 3, and I feel hopelessly behind. I have finished one book (Liar's Poker, good for Part B of Task 30.2), and started three others. (Apparently I have a touch of ADD--it is nearly impossible for me to limit myself to one book at a time unless it is really, really compelling.)

I am up to 5 points. Bonus: the book for which I was awarded my 5 points is Genesis, it is really fabulous, and I might not have read it for months were it not for this challenge. (The task for which I read this book required us to find the shortest book on our TBR list.)

I'm a little concerned about the NBCC list, which will come out in January. I usually try to read the fiction and non-fiction nominees. Whatever will I do if I can't fit them into my remaining categories?

Currently I have 70 (70!) books on my TBR list for between now and February 28 and some of the tasks haven't been released yet. The question comes to mind: am I a crazy person?

The Seasoned Reader

Finding myself at loose ends after quitting my job, with nothing to do but raise three children, run my husband's Website, and plan my daughter's bat mitzvah, I decided to join the GoodReads Seasonal Reading Challenge.

What, you may ask, is the GoodReads Seasonal Reading Challenge? It sounds so innocent. It is diabolically complicated, just the sort of thing that might appeal to someone who was most recently employed as a Medicare actuary. And let me tell you, the rules of this challenge put the government's Medicare Advantage guidance to shame. The rules of this challenge are so complex, Byzantine, and detailed that the rabbis who developed the Talmud would read them, stroke their beards, and mutter, "A little nitpicky, no?"

Frankly, the fact that I am attempting to read A Suitable Boy during this challenge makes me feel like I am not really getting into the spirit of things. To be properly competitive, shouldn't I be going for novellas instead of the longest novel ever written? (I don't know whether it is actually the longest novel ever written. That might be hyperbole. It is, however, definitely the longest novel on my shelves, and I have a lot of shelves.)

Margaret Atwood: She Knits!

On the occasion of the publication of her latest book, The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood sits down for an interview with the National Post:

Yet her compulsion to prophesy is real. As anyone who knows their mythology is aware (and if anyone knows their mythology, it's Margaret Atwood), the thing about being an oracle is that you don't get to choose your visions.

"The moment you get into [writing] something, there really isn't something else you could have done. Otherwise, you would actually have done it," she says. "The books I end up writing are the ones that I would rather dodge altogether, but those are really the only ones I can write, because those are the ones I'm obsessed by. It would be so much easier to write an update of Pride and Prejudice and have everything turn out happily. If you don't have conviction about it, you can't do it." Then she laughs. "I can always knit to pass the time. There are other things that I could do. I don't have to be writing a book." Pause. "I could play solitaire."

The most important revelation for those of us who are yarn-obsessed: she knits! I knew she was good people.