Mumble Herder

I read 116 books, which does not count books that I started and gave up on or books that I read only portions of (sometimes large ones) for research. It also largely excludes my online and magazine-based short fiction reading, since the idea of discussing every short story I read in any sort of detail is overwhelming. Since I've never kept track of my reading like this, I have no idea whether that's a lot or not. I've noticed some folks on my f-list who've gotten through about half that, and then again I've noticed some who've gone through three times that.

I can tell you that I still have a lot of books here that I wish I had been able to read this year, and a lot of them will still be here next year when I write this summation. Books > time and all that. I notice, particularly, that I didn't read that many classics this year--I had hoped to get through another Dickens, and the Edith Grossman translation of the Quixote. Both of those will happen this year.

In my first-half summation post I listed my ten favorite books so far. They were:

The Adventures of Amir Hamza, Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction, by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami, translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of Saint Paul's Historic Black Community, gathered and edited by Kate Cavett (Hand in Hand Productions)
Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart (Part One of the Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox)
Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn
On Revolution by Hannah Arendt
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach, translated by Doryl Jensen
The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang
White Butterfly by Walter Mosley
Hmong and American: Stories of Transition to a Strange Land by Sue Murphy Mote

For the second half of the year, these were the books that stood out:

Flora's Dare by Ysabeau Wilce
The Riddle-Master of Hed (full trilogy) by Patricia McKillip
Essential Fantastic Four Volume 1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 by Michael Azerrad
The Hunger Games (and Catching Fire, the sequel) by Suzanne Collins
Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Brown Harvest by Jay Russell
The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak

The idea of actually picking the best book I read this year is intimidating, but before I think about it too much I'd place The Magic Toyshop, The Carpet Makers, The Latehomecomer, Wizard of the Crow and The Adventures of Amir Hamza in the top five.

Anyway, on to 2010.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
Books 101-110.
111. Slaves of Spiegel by Daniel Pinkwater.
112. Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak.
113. The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater.
114. His Eye Is on the Sparrow: An Autobiography by Ethel Waters (with Charles Samuels).

115. Love and Rockets, No. 2: New Stories by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez. Second of the now-annual continuations of the hope-they-never-end stories of Maggie, Palomar, et al. Jaime's contribution is the conclusion of the Penny-Century-actually-gets-superpowers storyline, which is weirder than the usual Locas stuff--more meta, more fragmented, and with an ending that answers the most immediate questions while raising other, more intriguing ones. Also, Boot Angel may be my new favorite character. Gilbert offers up "Sad Girl," a short love-gone-wrong murder mystery, and "Hypnotwist," an enjoyable and enigmatic dream-story, complete with Freud cameo. Long live Los Bros!

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
Books 101-110.
111. Slaves of Spiegel by Daniel Pinkwater.
112. Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Delia Sherman and Christopher Barzak.

113. The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater. What I'm noticing about Pinkwater's books is how liberated they are from the usual expectations of plot and character. Pinkwater's characters are not taught moral or personal lessons, and there is essentially no formal patterning; the story has a shape, but it can't be circumscribed as it is being read--even the title misleads, although it's damn catchy. Overall, this works better than I would have expected, mostly because Pinkwater is really damned funny and weird.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
Books 101-110.

111. Slaves of Spiegel by Daniel Pinkwater. Funnier than Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, half as long, and goofier; Sargon the Great, junk food pirate king of the planet Spiegel, concocts a cooking contest in which earthlings Steve and Norman, owner and assistant chef of the Magic Moscow--the most popular restaurant in Hoboken--are among the abductee contestants. There aren't really any twists here, but that's OK because Pinkwater gives planets names like Fred and Schwartz. I mean, that's not the only reason to like this book, but it's a good one.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.
104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam.
105. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter.
106. Black Betty by Walter Mosley.
107. She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea by Joan Druett.
108. Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel Pinkwater.

109. Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock (Reread). It's dangerous to revisit books that loom large in one's mind--there is always the danger that a second look will reveal flaws that one had not suspected. For the most part, that isn't true of this book. Just yesterday this post reminded me of something I'm not sure I ever knew--Holdstock was a science fiction writer before he became interested in the concepts that suffuse Mythago Wood and its descendants. It makes perfect sense. This is a fantasy novel with an SFnal approach: in Part 1 a concept is introduced, in Part 2 it is made manifest, and in Part 3 the protagonist and the reader are carried inside it. That it's not science, exactly, but Jungian theory melded with a sort of deeply speculative anthropology--really, the "leaf-mold of the mind" that Tolkien spoke of--is what makes this book feel at once so rigorous and so richly fantastic; Ryhope Wood and the phenomena that surround it begin to seem not just wondrous but somehow enchantingly, horribly plausible.

If there's a caveat, it's that this story is very much out of the boy's-adventure-tale tradition, and while the outsider/conqueror/colonist dynamic is subverted at least in part, the gender dynamic is problematic in a way that's never really explored. Guiwenneth is a construct of Steven's or Christopher's or both, a literal dream girl, and yet the implications of this with regards to her own identity and their relationships are almost entirely ignored. Still, as Justine has recently discussed, it is possible to love something and accept that it's flawed. After all, a perfect novel may well be an impossibility; maybe it shouldn't even be the goal.

It's a bit unsettling for me to think back to when I first encountered this book--somewhere around the mid-'90s--and realize that I remember very little of it, not even why precisely I liked it so much. I was absolutely a less critical and less cognizant reader back then, and yet Mythago Wood hit me at a time when I was slipping out of the grasp of trilogy fantasy, looking for something more substantive and interesting; if I hadn't found this and books like it I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't have moved out of the genre entirely, at least for a time. I wish I had had the opportunity to thank Mr. Holdstock for his books while he was still alive.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.
104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam.
105. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter.
106. Black Betty by Walter Mosley.

107. She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea by Joan Druett. I was hoping for a lot from this book, so perhaps it's not surprising that my expectations were not entirely met. It's a combination of factors, I think: Druett's style, which is very just-the-facts, sometimes at the expense of a satisfying narrative; the understandable but frustrating fact that her stories are overwhelmingly of women from the English-speaking world; and the fact that so many of the women she profiles were not actually sailors, but sailor's wives or mistresses, lighthouse-keepers, and women with even more tenuous connections to the sea. It doesn't help that three chapters are devoted to the romantic shenanigans of Lord Nelson and his officers, which nearly ends up turning the premise here on its head. There are, of course, accounts of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, explorers like Louise Arner Boyd, and some (almost inadvertently) fascinating reflections on collective ship ownership in the 1800s. Occasionally fascinating, but overall disappointing.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.
103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor.
104. Summer of '49 by David Halberstam.

105. The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter. I have come somewhat late to Carter; up to this point I have only read a bit of her short fiction. Her writing scares me in a way similar to the way Samuel R. Delany's does--her control of her imagery and the precision of her language speak of a frightening intelligence behind it all. Somewhere along the way someone told me that Carter's novels were not as good as her short stories, but they were wrong. This is a deliriously good book, gorgeous and horrifying and mythic and firmly grounded in the real, a coming of age story with a fairy tale wound uncomfortably tight around it. If anything outside of Latin America deserves to be called Magical Realism, this would be it. Highest recommendation; those last five pages will stay with for a long time.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
102. Brown Harvest by Jay Russell.

103. Dab Neeg Hmoob: Myths, Legends and Folk Tales from the Hmong of Laos, Charles Johnson, editor and Se Yang, associate editor. I'd been looking for something like this for a while, and stumbled across it in the bibliography to The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. (Something very cool and/or maddening about research is that books lead to more books.) Twenty-seven stories, ranging from origin tales to pourquoi stories. Also contains multiple variations on an ur-tale concerning the Orphan--an unlikely culture hero, given the strength of the extended family in Hmong culture--and his wife, a youngest sister who is smarter and more worthy than him and is usually named Nia Ngao Zhua Pa. Some great stuff here.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.

101. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman. The illness of a young child becomes a prism for talking about culture clash, as her Hmong immigrant parents and her American doctors butt heads, talk past one another, and finally give any attempt at communication. In the meantime, Lia Lee goes from a lively and loving child to a brain-dead invalid. Without explicitly laying blame, Fadiman makes it clear that her sympathies lie with Lia's parents, and takes pains to show the reader their point of view of a medical system which could not communicate with them, took no interest in their own wishes for their daughter's treatment, and did not take the health of Lia's soul into account. The doctors, for their part, saw the Lees as uncooperative, irrational, and stubborn, which--Fadiman convincingly argues--is just what their medical training taught them to see. Fadiman's account is well-researched, giving cultural details I haven't seen elsewhere; at the same time, there are points where her descriptions of the Hmong take on a sort of condescendingly amused tone, as if to say Aren't they quaint and adorable? Despite this caveat, in the end this is a well-done and heartbreaking look at two deeply ingrained worldviews crashing together.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. The Non-Adventures of Wonderella: Everybody Ever Forever by Justin Pierce.
92. Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin.
93. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.
94. Strip Jack by Ian Rankin.
95. Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
96. Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn.
97. Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton by Bobby Seale.
98. The Black Book by Ian Rankin.

99. Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson. For those unfamiliar, Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica and grew up there and in Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada, where she lives now; as such her work is steeped in Caribbean folklore and language, as well as matters of race and sexuality. This is her only short story collection to date, so far as I'm aware. I enjoyed her first novel, Brown Girl In the Ring, when I read it about ten years ago, but it's been long enough that I can't compare my reaction to the novel to these stories. My faves in this collection included "A Habit of Waste," "Fisherman," and "Ganger (Ball Lightning)"--the last in part because it made me uncomfortable.