2010: The year in books

I started keeping track of books that I read in 2009 and kept the practice going this year. So, here's the completed list. 52 new (to me) books, 8 old friends.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Love the One Your With

The Johnstown Flood

Born to Run

Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three

Widow’s Web

Love the One You’re With

Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Avonlea

Anne of the Island

Anne’s House of Dreams

Rainbow Valley

Under the Banner of Heaven

In Cold Blood

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Jacob Have I Loved

The 19^th Wife

Outlander

Dragonfly in Amber

Voyager

Let the Great World Spin

Drums of Autumn

Solitude of Prime Numbers

The Opposite of Love

The Fiery Cross

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

The Hunger Games

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Echo in the Bone

The Best of Everything

Both Ways Is The Only Way I Want It

Never Let Me Go

Oprah

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The Book Thief

One Day

Passing Strange: A Guilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest

Game Change

Room: A Novel

Water for Elephants

Fundraising the Dead

Mini Shopaholic: A Novel

John Adams

A. Lincoln

Sarah’s Key

The American Way of Death, Revisisted

The Kids Are All Right

Re-read:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

To Kill a Mockingbird

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of A

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

The Help

The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford

The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford

Nothing to get you in the Christmas spirit like thinking about your ultimate demise, right?

This book is not available for Kindle or audiobook (gasp). So, I went to the library and checked out a hardcover (something I've only been doing as of late for cookbooks and archival/history-related texts). Hardcovers seem so much heavier to carry around after toting my Kindle for the last (almost) year. I digress.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who plans on dying or knows someone who will die. So, everyone. Americans have a unique funeral culture, one that I've never been entirely comfortable with, and this book helped me know why (and be even more uncomfortable with it -- hooray!). I've never needed the viewing after a family member has died and have always hated hearing "oh, they look so natural." They don't look natural; they are dead! I would much prefer to remember the living, vibrant person I knew in life, not their remains. The funeral industry is a business and wants to sell you the most expensive funeral possible. And they get you right when you are most vulnerable and make you think that the way to really show how much you loved your "loved one" is to spend a ridiculous amount of money for their funeral. They take advantage of the guilt and remorse of your mourning.

Things that this book made me realize or reinforced previous feelings:
1) I do NOT want an open casket funeral or any viewing of my remains. If my immediate family members would like a peak, fine, but please do not put me on display for everyone to have to comment on how "natural" I look.

2) I do not want to be embalmed. (Side note: Listen to the author when she forewarns that things are a little difficult to read. I thought that after reading all about death rituals in college, I'd be fine with this chapter right before bed. I wasn't. Just read with caution).

3) I'm pretty sure I want to be cremated. I like the idea of being buried in a cemetery (particularly because great-great-grandparents, great-grandparents, grandparents, and cousin are all buried at a cemetery that I nominated for the National Register. I'd like to end up there), but that doesn't mean I can't have my cremated remains buried there.

4) Don't get an expensive casket (or a casket at all, if possible). Seriously. I get that I'm awesome and you love me, but please don't spend thousands of dollars on a box. And don't get a vault. Spend the money on some musicians for the memorial service or go buy yourself a new purse. Seriously.

This book is a bit dense, but even if you don't get through the whole thing, or pick and choose the chapters, absolutely check it out. I will probably have to pick out a casket, etc. at some point in life and feel much more prepared.

What I'm reading right now

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

This is my 2nd time, so I can go ahead and highly recommend it. The film version will be released next summer, so go ahead and read it now. I think this is one of my top five favorite books; yes, that good. Go!

The American Way of Death Revisited, by Jessica Mitford

I'm only on the first chapter, but I am already so excited about this book club selection. No Kindle or audio version, had to get a hardback from the library. Yes, they do still let you borrow materials even if you get a Kindle.

Reference Services for Archives and Manuscripts, ed. Laura B. Cohen

Unless you are thinking about sitting for the Certified Archivist exam with me in August, or you want to learn more about reference services, you have no reason to pick up this book. I only included it to explain the inevitable reduction in reading for pleasure. Wha wha.

A new museum series: Get down from the soapbox

Fundraising the Dead, by Shelia Connolly

So, is this how physicians feel watching Grey's Anatomy? Simply horrified by the portrayal of their profession? Set in a "antiquarian society," this book had quite a few "oh my God, it's just like in National Treasure when they take out a freakin' hairdryer to blast the back of the Declaration of Independence" moments. I enjoyed the story -- the mystery is intriguing and I wanted to see what happened, but there were so many details that drove me CRAZY.

From Publishers Weekly: "Old families, old papers, and the old demons of sex and money shape Connolly's cozy series launch, which will appeal to fans of her Orchard and (as Sarah Atwell) Glassblowing mysteries. The venerable and cliquish Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society has a security problem. Documents worth millions are missing, and the staffer who uncovers the losses is found dead in the stacks. Nell Pratt, the society's director of development, is instructed by board member Marty Terwilliger to account for the absence of Marty's ancestor's correspondence with George Washington. It's a rare improbability--why ask the fund-raiser and not the director of collections or the board itself?--in an otherwise sturdily constructed plot. There are no real surprises, but the archival milieu and the foibles of the characters are intriguing, and it's refreshing to encounter an FBI man who is human, competent, and essential to the plot."

1. The PW synopsis addresses the main problem with this novel. Why the hell is the development director tasked with hunting down missing collection items? Why would she meet the board member/donor to go through document boxes without collection staff members present? Or without even notifying them? And how would she not recognize that she is part of the larger problem that lead to items going missing?

2. I have a very visceral reaction to managers referring to staff members as "my employees," "my troops," or minions. Power trip much? If you aren't signing the paycheck, your co-workers work for the same entity that you do; they do not work for you. And they are people (maybe even professionals?), not minions.

3. And what makes the same woman think that she can sneak into collections storage and handle fragile collection items during her lunch hour without telling anyone? What is wrong with (fictional) people?

The author, apparently, worked at a museum at some point in life and consulted with current museum professionals regarding protocol and policy. I do wish she hadn't let her readers believe these actions are appropriate. And I didn't even mention that she was sleeping with her boss. Of course she was. Ridiculous.

This is the first in a series that I'm not sure I will continue reading. Is ranting about all the inaccuracies super fun? Yes, but there are so many better books out there.

Sarah, Liesel, and the Nazis

Sarah's Key, by Tatiana de Rosnay
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

I don't like books about the Holocaust. I have yet to read a Holocaust book that really made a big impression on me.* There, I said it. I have no soul.

So, I don't even know how it happened that BOTH of my book clubs selected Holocaust books last month. How did I let this happen? If I had to recommend one of these novels, it would be Sarah's Key.

From Publishers Weekly: "De Rosnay's U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups. Julia soon learns that the apartment she and Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand's family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before. She resolves to find out what happened to the former occupants: Wladyslaw and Rywka Starzynski, parents of 10-year-old Sarah and four-year-old Michel. The more Julia discovers—especially about Sarah, the only member of the Starzynski family to survive—the more she uncovers about Bertrand's family, about France and, finally, herself. Already translated into 15 languages, the novel is De Rosnay's 10th (but her first written in English, her first language). It beautifully conveys Julia's conflicting loyalties, and makes Sarah's trials so riveting, her innocence so absorbing, that the book is hard to put down."

I listened to this book, which helped with some of the French pronunciations. I probably cared more about the Julia character because of how other people treated her and despite her actions. That is a tough sell for a heroine.

The Book Thief is a young adult novel that sounded promising from the description, but was just so disappointing.

From School Library Journal: "Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.–Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA "

I didn't like Death as the narrator. I sometimes felt like the story was going to go in a weird, inappropriate place (though perhaps that says more about me than the book), but then it would step back. I think my main gripe is that Death would tell you what happens and then go back and tell you how it happened. I enjoy that type of story telling (in How I Met Your Mother), but for me, it just did not work for this book.

Kindle edition notes: The book contains quite a few illustrations that translate well to the Kindle version.

* Please do not interpret this declaration as an invitation to suggest Holocaust books that I might like. I've read a lot. It's too late for me.

Em and Dex, Dex and Em

One Day, by David Nicholls

We meet Emma and Dexter in the early morning hours following their university graduation day. Each subsequent chapter checks in with these friends on July 15 for the next twenty or so years. Careers and love life struggles -- all the template twenty and thirty-something problems -- ensue. Will they or won't they? Should they?

As a college student "When Harry Met Sally" was absolutely my favorite movie. One Day is a similar story, but doesn't try to answer the old question: can (straight) men and women be friends? (It doesn't even address all the other possibilities, but I digress). Maybe it helps answer if good friends make good lovers.

This book is highly recommended by the majority of my fellow book club members (even those that didn't quite finish :). This book surprised me, and that's a good thing.

Beep beep

Room: A Novel, by Emma Donoghue

Room is told from the point of view of Jack, a five-year-old boy who lives in "room" with his Ma and has never left this place where a stain from his birth still marks the rug. Jack is advanced in many ways and yet has never been farther than across a room from his mother. His entire understanding of existence is entirely shaped on his mother's explanation of the world outside room and "Old Nick," the man who visits room at 9 o'clock most nights.

This was not a relaxing read -- it stressed me out, but it is a really good book. We've all heard stories of people (usually women) held captive, hidden away in plain sight. People are held prisoner in basements, or in this story, a soundproof garden shed in a backyard, surrounded by a neighborhood, and the neighbors never suspect a thing.

I particularly recommend this novel as an audiobook. Three voice actors take on the characters, and the actor portraying Jack is excellent. I was emotionally invested in the outcome for Jack and his Ma. The print version includes a floor plan of "room," but I didn't feel I missed too much by not seeing the illustration.

I hesitate to say much more for fear I might ruin a plot twist. If you are looking for a light read, this probably isn't your best bet. I'm not sure that I've read another book quite like this one, and I'm glad I did.

Goodnight room. Goodnight and goodbye, Jack.