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Best of 2007, Part Three of Four ~ Books

February 14, 2008 in adrian tomine, book reviews, books, dave eggers, junot diaz, mcsweeney's, the road, the walking dead, x-men | 10 comments

Best Books READ of 2007 (fiction)

It turns out that 5 of my 10 best books of 2007 were in fact published in 2007, and an additional 2 were paperbacks which were released in 2007…so this list has more validity than I expected. Yay for me!…

You can also read Part One and Part Two if you’re feeling left out.

10. Lady Into Fox, By David Garnett. Originally published in 1922, Reprinted by McSweeney’s in 2004.

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I’m hesitant to write complicated reviews of each of these books, since I’ve already done that in review format over the year, so I’m just going to link to them here and add a sentence or two if I feel so moved…okay? Great. So Lady Into Fox really surprised the hell out of me. It’s never a book I would have expected to make a top for the year list for me, but I really ended up loving this bizarre story of love and loss…it’s a great creative metaphor for a lot of other things in life. Read more about Lady Into Fox here.

09. Water For Elephants, By Sara Gruen. Published in 2006 (the softcover – which I read – 2007).

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Water For Elephants surprised me as well, if only because I don’t consider myself a NY Times Bestseller reader in general, but this book was really beautiful and well conceived. I finished it quickly, which is always a great compliment. Read more about Water For Elephants here.

08. Midnight At the Dragon Cafe, By Judy Fong Bates. Published in 2004 (the softcover – which I read – 2005).

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I adored China Dog, Bates book of short fiction, and didn’t figure Midnight At The Dragon Cafe could live up, but I loved this as well. Bates has a brilliant way of turning a story on its ear, just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, read more about Dragon Cafe here.

07. Astonishing X-Men #1 – #22, By Joss Whedon & John Cassaday. Published in issues 2006 – 2007.

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I can’t say enough good things about this collection, and my only complaint is that it’s ending soon. The last issue of this arc is due to come out soon, and it will signal the end of the Whedon/Cassaday team up. I’m very sad about it, although maybe it means Planetary will someday get finished? One can only hope. Read more here.

06. St. Lucy’s Home For Girl’s Raised By Wolves, By Karen Russel. Published in 2006 (the softcover – which I read – 2007).

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This was a great and really creative collection. The title really beautifully summarized what I should expect and it totally delivered. Read more about St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves here.

05. Shortcomings, By Adrian Tomine. Published in collected hardcover format, in 2007.

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I’m a huge Tomine fan and Shortcomings is just a beautiful beautiful work. Read more here.

04. One Hundred And Forty-Five Stories In A Small Box, By Dave Eggers, Sarah Manguso, and Deb Olin Unferth. Published in 2007.

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I knew this was going to be great, with the creative format and the brilliant ideas that McSweeney’s is always swinging around, but I was unprepared for how much I was going to love both Eggers and Manguso’s books. Manguso’s collection stands out particularly as wildly creative and heartbreaking, although Eggers has my favorite piece overall. Read more here.

03. Famous Father’s Other Stories, By Pia Z. Ehrhardt. Published in 2007.

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Ehrhardt was a new author for me and I was incredibly impressed. A wonderful collection. Read more about Famous Fathers & Other Stories here.

02. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, By Junot Diaz. Published in 2007.

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I freaking LOVED this book. It blew me away, and was an excellent way to end the year. I had been anxiously awaiting Diaz’s follow up novel (like everyone else) after I was shocked by his wonderful first book Drown, a collection of short stories. This far surpasses Drown in so many ways. I don’t care how long I have to wait for the next one, so long as it is as good. Read more about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao here.

01. The Road, By Cormac McCarthy. Published in 2006.

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What can I say? You don’t win the Pulitzer for writing a mediocre book. I haven’t ready any of McCarthy’s other works, and I’m very intrigued as I love his style, but I suspect he won’t ever be able to hit closer to home for me than he did with this book. Reading The Road was a singular experience that I will always cherish, and sadly, probably never duplicate…but I’ll spend my life trying. Read more about The Road here.

Honorable Mentions: You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am – Tao Lin (Poetry); Tell Me Why – Clare Jacobsen (Non-Fiction); Superbad – Ben Greenman (Short Fiction); No One Belongs Here More Than You – Miranda July (Short Fiction); Transparency – Frances Hwang (Short Fiction); and The Walking Dead – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard (Graphic Fiction/Comic Book Series).

Worst Book Of The Year: I’m not going to say. I know that’s a cop out, but it’s easier than explaining why it is the worst book I read this year. And words like “bitter” would surely be tossed around in the comments section and y’know what? I don’t need that. :0

Cheating

November 19, 2007 in books, cheating, christopher pike, sweet valley high, the road | 7 comments

Okay, four things happened in the last week that are causing me to pseudo-cheat on my 52 books in a year goal.  Here they are, in order…

1.  I found an amazing blog called The Dairi Burger, which brilliantly ridicules books I used to read as pre-teen called Sweet Valley High books (you can read more about that here).  This caused me to think about what books I really did love as a teen and what it was about them that was so great…the kind of books that in my mind still manage to seem good and that I suspect will at least hold up partially over time (note: this would NOT include the SVH books).

2.  I wrote a book…a while ago.  It’s not a bad little book, but it’s not the great American novel that I (and everyone else it seems) so desperately wants to write.  I’ve had to accept that maybe this book (and the two parts that go with it – yes, it’s a trilogy, *sigh*) just is what it is,.  And maybe that it is just a middle ground between the young adult books that were a bit above the norm and and quite a bit below the great American novel that I’d like to write someday.  Maybe I’m just not ready to write the great American novel…maybe I never will be.  But perhaps I should go back and re-read some of this YA material and see if I’m nuts, or if it really does hold up pretty well?

3.  I read I Am Legend this past weekend and really enjoyed it.  I would consider it the middle ground of which I speak above.  It is certainly more intelligent than a young adult novel and has more ramifications and themes behind it, but it is certainly too “pop” by today’s standards to be considered a “Great American Novel” whatever the hell that even means.  Although written in 1954 it was certainly pretty revolutionary for its time and would probably not have been called ‘pop’, but we live now, so I’ll deal with now.  So this is maybe the vague middle ground that I am looking for.  I read it in a few hours, which makes me feel like it cannot be so important, but I read The Road  by Cormac McCarthy in a few hours and I not only thought that was brilliant but it won the damn Pulitzer Prize!  Perhaps the real problem here is that I need to redefine my definition of “Great American Novel”.   More on that later, back to the point at hand…

4.  I found (and by found I mean located on the internet and purchased very deliberately) a few of my long lost favorite young adult novels.  I plan to re-read them as “research & development” and if it helps me toward my 52 book goal because they each only take two hours to read then so be it!  Yea me!  Anyone want to argue with my well documented justification here?  Go ahead, give it a shot…

As a compromise, I promise not to count any more than 6 of these books, as that is officially how many books I am behind in my book a week goals…deal?  Here’s a little teaser preview…

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the best thing you will read this week…

August 27, 2007 in brett ratner, hack, mcsweeney's, the road | 2 comments

…is not on this blog, but i’m going to link to it…

let me first preface this link by saying that Brett Ratner is the definition of a hack.  seriously, if you go to my dictionary, under the word hack it says Brett Ratner and there is a little picture.  yes, i wrote it in and drew a cartoon of him in sharpie on the page, but still, i’d trust it.  someday all your dictionaries will be as advanced as mine.  in the meantime, you can read this absolutely hilarious bit from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:

http://mcsweeneys.net/2007/8/24molyneux.html

ps: McCarthy’s The Road was the best book i’ve read so far this year.  if you haven’t read it yet, read it now, even though if you a buy a copy now it has that tell tale Oprah sticker on it, which annoys the hell out of me.  it’s still worth it.