The Third Annual Sonnet87.com Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence (or, The 2008 Book Awards)

Time for the 2008 book awards. I know you all were waiting with bated breath to hear my verdicts. Especially since we’re nearly three months into the New Year . . .

Looking over my list for the year, I read more than in 2006 and 2007 (not combined, obvs). What pushed me over the edge was my new-found love of Jasper Fforde (more on him later) and a major book order that IP and I did towards the end of the year.  So what books impressed me, dismayed me, made me want to tear my hair out in complete despair?  Read on!

Best Book of 2008: The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel. What can I say about this novel that I haven’t said already? Innovative, imaginative, hilarious, intelligent, appeals to the English literary snob in all of us . . . it was a magnificent book that led to reading all of Fforde’s canon. I eagerly await his next novel. There are also three more Thursday Next novels on the way, so you can bet I’ll be in line to buy those as soon as they’re released. A successor to the Harry Potter series in terms of creativity, engagement, and humor. That’s not to say it’s like Harry Potter—far removed, actually—but the worlds that Rowling and Fforde create are worlds I can lose myself in immediately. Don’t be surprised if these book are on the 2009 list as re-reads.

Worst Book 0f 2008: Once upon a Quinceañera: Coming of Age in the USA. Dear lord, where do I start? I enjoy Julia Alvarez on the whole, but her recent efforts have been big stinkers. Saving the World, found on the 2006 book list, was a non-starter; the story never seemed to get off the ground. The quinceañera book was an embarrassment because it claims to be social critique, but multiple times Alvarez finds herself saying that she cannot, in good conscience, criticize her own culture. So instead she retells her first novel, already autobiographical in nature, under the Julia identity instead of as Yo from the eponymous novel. Why did I have to relive her first novel? And why wasn’t there more criticism for what the quinceañera truly is—a new wedding industry preying on poor immigrants, complete with bridal gowns in a variety of colors, a ceremony in which a girl is declared as sexually mature with such creepy moments as the gifting of the last doll and her father removing her flats to slip on her new sex-ay heels as she sits on a swing, topped off with a church mass in which the quinceañera declares she’s saving herself until marriage? Given the problems in the young Latina population—dropout and pregnancy rates, drug abuse, and self-esteem issues—why didn’t Alvarez dig a bit deeper and ask how parents can reconcile this ridiculous expense with the reality of the streets their daughters live on everyday? And don’t answer, Ms. Alvarez, the culture—I’m part of that culture, too, and I see nothing positive in reducing a human being solely into her prescribed gender role. Cultures need to pick and choose what rites of passage best serve kids, and the quinceañera does not do that for the Latino cultures’ youth. It undermines them, and doesn’t emphasize what is important—school, family, responsibility—and the ritual instead sets them up with unrealistic expectations: pretty, pretty princess dresses, expensive cakes and a chambelán waiting to do their bidding. To round out the year, I re-read Ms. Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies—a really good book, by the way—and her postscript mentions that she started out writing a biography of the Mirabal sisters instead of a work of fiction. Their personalities, she says, grew and became distinct from truth, so a novel was born. The quinceañera book should’ve been a novel. Ms. Alvarez doesn’t have the chops for sharp social commentary and biographical studies, it seems—it would be best for her to stick to fiction.

Best Non-Fiction: 1776 by David McCullough. As I mentioned in my rather long review of this book, I’ve never found American history to be engaging; even when I first visited IP in D.C., my reaction to the monuments and historical sites was meh. My family is much the same when it comes to American history; it pales in comparison to the dynamic, bloody, and still-struggling history of Mexico. Maybe it’s because that, as Mexicans, we find it harder to identify with Americans, but I find that theory to be bullshit in most cases. After all, I’m a woman who studied the medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern history and literature of England with zeal and enthusiasm. I can only conclude that my grade school teachers sucked when it came to communicating the momentous and interesting periods of American history. Thankfully, books like 1776 rectify this problem.

Best Fiction: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This book came as a recommendation from the same friend who recommended Fforde’s novels. Our tastes seem to run together for a bit, then diverge wildly; she strays into Shopaholic territory while I wander back to re-read The Second Shepherd’s Play. This novel was one in which our tastes ran closely together. An absolute heart breaker of a story, The Book Thief is a young adult novel set in Nazi Germany. It serves to remind the reader that a population is not monolithic when it comes to beliefs, ideals and actions; the story tells the tale of one family’s resistance to the evils of Nazi Germany and the dangers they faced in doing so. The book is written from the point of view of Death, an interesting narrator if there ever was one (and one who was, he notes, much too busy during this time period in the world’s history). It may be a story for young adults, but I highly recommend it. It’s both depressing and uplifting as it approaches its end.

Worst Non-Fiction: I Was Told There’d be Cake. I have no words. Sloane Crosley has to be one of the worst essayists I’ve had the misfortune to encounter. Sarah Vowell she ain’t. There is no depth to her writing, no self-realization, no awareness of the world around her. It’s basically a bunch of essays by an affluent young woman lucky enough to know publishing friends, trying to view her privileged life ironically, and it falls terribly flat.

Worst Fiction: Twilight. Bella is boring. Edward is a stalker. The movie was infinitely better than the book, but even that’s not saying much. The obsession with true love at the age of 17 is a common theme in young adult literature, but Stephenie Meyer tries to make it more complex with the addition of the undead as a source of conflict. But Bella has no conflict; she’s willing to ditch her family in a (last) heartbeat. Single-minded commitment to men turns me off as a reader. If you want to know what happens in this book and the subsequent ones, pop some popcorn, got to Wikipedia, and read it all there. Or better yet, read the commentary by Cleolinda. At least you’ll be guaranteed some laughs if you do the former and latter.  And honestly, if you’re going to write about the undead, zombies are much more interesting than vampires.  Sure, you can’t have a love story between a zombie and human, but at least you can have some good action sequences, some gore, and a truly desperate fight for survival (aren’t apocalyptic stories the greatest!?).

Best Discovery: Jasper Fforde. I am so impressed and excited by this author. I have rarely seen the level of gusto, creativity, complexity, and entertainment that Fforde brings to every story I’ve read by him. Be it Thursday Next or Jack Spratt, I am thoroughly engrossed when picking up a Fforde tome. I look forward to many, many years of enjoying Fforde’s quirky sense of humor, his parallel universes that make me wish our world were a bit more like his, the wordplay that makes every sentence in his stories enjoyable, his obvious love of literature and his ability to take that love and make a genuinely intelligent and pleasurable story out of it. Kudos to Fforde and kudos to my friend who recommended his works.

That is it for 2008. Rest assured that I have been reading in 2009, but it has been slow going. The 2009 book list will be started in short order. Since I never produced a final book list for the year, I’m including it in this post.

Onto the final 2008 book list:

Finished:

1) Flesh and Spirit: Private Life in Early Modern Germany by Steven E. Ozment
2) Women at the Beginning – Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary by Patrick J. Geary
3) Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
4) A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts by Robert Bolt
5) Lisey’s Story by Stephen King
6) 1776 by David McCullough
7) The Savage Detectives: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño (Translation by Natasha Wimmer)
8) The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
9) Duma Key by Stephen King
10) The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
11) Me by Katharine Hepburn
12) The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A. J. Jacobs
13) The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
14) Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
15) Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
16) The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde
17) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
18) I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
19) Lost in a Good Book: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde
20) The Well of Lost Plots: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde
21) Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde
22) Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde
23) The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde
24) The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde
25) Blaze: A Posthumous Novel by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman
26) The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
27) The October Country by Ray Bradbury
28) Once upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA by Julia Alvarez
29) Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
30) The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King and Heidi Pitlor
31) Just after Sunset by Stephen King
32) Serena by Ron Rash
33) The Tales of Beedle the Bard by JK Rowling

Re-read:

1) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

Currently Reading:

1) Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes by Eamon Duffy
2) The Aeneid by Virgil (Translation by Robert Fagles)

Waiting To Be Read (Already Purchased, Got as Gifts, Borrowed from My Boyfriend, or Otherwise Accessible without the Use of Funds, But Not an Assurance That I Will Read These Before I Buy More Books):

1) People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
2) Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann