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Of all
the books I read this year, here — alphabetically by
title — are my 10 favorites, those that most stuck
with me, that reframed how I think about the world.
“1Q84”
by Haruki Murakami (Alfred A. Knopf, $30.50).
Murakami’s magnum opus more than lives up to its
billing, immersing us in a slightly altered universe to
tell what is, in the end, the most traditional of
stories: Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.
“Binocular
Vision: New and Selected Stories” by Edith Pearlman
(Lookout Books, $18.95 paper). How could I have not
known of Edith Pearlman? The author of three previous
books of short fiction, she writes like the literary
love child of Alice Munro and Deborah Eisenberg:
piercing, subtle, and so pointed that every one of the
34 stories in this collection cannot help but break your
heart.
“The
Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.” by Jonathan
Lethem (Doubleday, $27.95). Inspired by Norman
Mailer’s “Advertisements for Myself,” this is
Lethem’s homage to the inner life. Intentionally
baggy, moving back and forth from subject to subject,
time period to time period, it works because of its
relentless sense of influence, its understanding that
the art and literature and music we love not only
inspire us but in a very real way make us who we are.
“The
Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood” by James
Gleick (Pantheon, $29.95). The information age, Gleick
tells us in this magnificent history of data and how we
interact with it, did not begin with the computer;
rather, it started the first time we sought to interpret
our world. Connecting a dizzying array of topics, from
the telegraph to talking drums, theoretical mathematics
to the library of Alexandria, this elegant, insightful
study reminds us that we have always been adrift in an
incomprehensible universe.
“Otherwise
Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and
Reviews” by Geoff Dyer (Graywolf, $18 paper). Perhaps
the finest critical essayist working, Dyer takes us on a
tour of his enthusiasms: jazz, literature, photography,
house music, history. What links this material? Nothing,
except for his erudite and idiosyncratic intelligence,
and a voice as smooth as any that’s in print.
“Out of
the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music,” edited
by Nona Willis Aronowitz (University of Minnesota Press,
$22.95 paper). Willis — who died in 2006 at age 64 —
was a trailblazer, one of the early female rock writers
and the first pop music critic at the New Yorker. This
collection, which gathers 59 of her pieces, showcases
her fierce intelligence and her political and cultural
engagement as well as her recognition of the abiding
contradictions of the music that she loved.
“Stone
Arabia” by Dana Spiotta (Scribner, $24). On the
surface, this novel — which revolves around a
middle-aged wannabe rocker and his fantasies of stardom
— appears to be about the lies we tell ourselves. Its
genius, though, resides in the way Spiotta turns that
idea around on us, revealing her protagonist’s dreams
as more authentic than his daily existence, highlighting
the at-times unbridgeable gap between imagination and
reality.
“Train
Dreams” by Denis Johnson (FSG, $18). A nearly perfect
short novel from the most essential writer of his
generation: the story of a laborer in the rural West,
and his journey — physical, emotional, spiritual and
even mystical — through the first half of the 20th
century.
“A
Widow’s Story: A Memoir” by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco,
$27.99). I’ve never been an Oates fan particularly,
but this memoir — a close, almost claustrophobic
portrait of the months after her husband’s sudden
death from pneumonia — is exquisite, expertly and
desperately parsing the landscape of grief and loss,
while never once flinching or looking away.
“You
Think That’s Bad: Stories” by Jim Shepard (Alfred A.
Knopf, $24.95). Shepard is a short-fiction master, and
here he pushes into new territory, giving us 11 stories
about characters at the end of their endurance:
contradictory, foolishly brave (or bravely foolish),
clinging to hope beyond the point that hope is any
longer a reasonable alternative.
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