Title: Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp
Author: Gwen Roland
Genre: Memoir

It is my custom to read this book and few others every single year. Normally I do so in January but the early part of 2009 was busy and dramatic and all that so I didn’t get to it a few months ago. Finally, yesterday, I was able to spend the afternoon just inhaling this sweet, delicate, inspiring little book. I’m sure eventually I’m going to enjoy this book less but I’ve been reading it at least once a year since 2006 and the pleasure has to diminish. It’s the story of two people living life in the most deliberate of ways, in almost complete seclusion, living off the land and water, basking in a life of their own design and making. They fish and garden, raise chickens, write poetry and take walks, watch the stars and make homemade wine, can and preserve, read and listen. I don’t know that I could ever commit to living in such seclusion but the principles and values they live by are incredibly inspiring to me. And I could definitely see myself someday splitting my time between a small house back home on the farm and Louisville.

I need to just order like 10 copies of this book from Amazon because so frequently I want to give it as a gift but it’s a tiny little book from a university imprint so bookstores never stock it.

Title: Lovesong: Becoming a Jew
Author: Julius Lester
Genre: Memoir, Judaism

I wish I had read this book at the beginning of my conversion journey instead of starting it the day before my mikvah and finishing it the day of my conversion ceremony. Oh well, you can’t have everything you want. If I had read it at the beginning it would have been much easier to verbalize a lot of the things I felt cause I could have just shared passages from this book. Lester speaks so much more eloquently than I was able to about the yearnings of the soul that are particular to converts and a lot of the intangibles that make us find and know our paths. It is a powerful book.

Seriously, I’d love to just paste about two pages worth of quotes in here and then go: “yes, that’s the way I’ve felt and feel now.” But there are copyright issues so go buy your own copy. Or ask to borrow mine and I’ll highlight some passages for you.

Title: It Sucked and Then I Cried
Author: Heather B. Armstrong
Genre: Non-Fiction

I think you either really love Heather Armstrong’s blog Dooce.com or you really, really don’t like it. If you don’t love her blog you won’t love her book. I have loved Dooce forever. It’s a small badge of honor to say that I’ve been reading Dooce since before she got fired for her blog all those years ago. If you read Dooce during Heather’s pregnancy and her postpartum depression there isn’t a lot of new material in the book and I think that’s ok. I enjoyed reading the book very much. It was irreverant, funny and heartbreaking. I think her honesty about her mental illness is so very refreshing and is an absolute public service that she should be thanked for. So, thank you Heather.

Title: The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
Author: Warren Kozak
Genre: Non-Fiction

I am incredibly pleased to have met my goal of reading 40 books during 2008. I cut it quite close to the wire but I did it and am so happy to have done so. I’m raising the bar and setting a goal of 45 books for next year. Wish me well on that endeavor.

I’m very pleased that my last book of 2008 was The Year of Living Biblically. It is a fascinating look at the book(s) that has influenced so much of our world’s culture and development. It’s also really funny. It echoes some tenets that I’ve found to be true as I’ve become more “religious” (not the right word, observant is better). Namely if you pretend like you’re a better person, that is to say you start taking the actions that “better people” take, you will slowly become a better person. If you hold your tongue and don’t gossip you’ll slowly become a person who doesn’t gossip and doesn’t want to gossip. If you focus on making the world a better place each day you’ll do your part to do just that.

And did I mention that it’s funny?

Title: In the Woods
Author: Tana French
Genre: Fiction

I’m not much a fan of mystery novels so you surely will believe how good this book is when I tell you that I absolutely can’t wait to read the author’s second novel featuring some of the same characters from this book, a mystery novel.

Tight prose, interesting characters, mysteries within mysteries, not taking itself too seriously are all reasons this book kept me interested and entertained much more than mysteries normally do.

Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
Author: Michael Chabon
Genre: Fiction

I don’t think I loved this book as much as everyone else in the world seems to but I did love it. I read it at night in the ICU with my uncle while everyone else slept and it definitely wasn’t hard to stay awake to. Then I read it after I came home and was heart sick. Then I read it after evenings at the funeral home. It’s a long book. Did you pick up on that?

Having read three Michael Chabon books this year I’m amazed by the differences and the similarities in the three works. Without gushing too much I’ll just say that it’s very easy to see what he is probably our most rightfully praised contemporary American author.

Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Díaz
Genre: Fiction

Three word review: Bad ass book.

What? You need more. Sucker. Alright. This is maybe the book of my generation and if not my generation then it’s the book of My People. It mixes languages, genres, styles, influences, fact and fiction, history and future, science and supernatural. It’s like us. It’s fantastic. Also like us.

Note: I wrote the above text last week immediately before entering family crisis mode. I planned to write more about how much I loved Oscar Wao but that’s going to have to suffice. Believe me when I tell you to buy and read this book now. Particularly if you are one of my people. 

Title: The Year of Magical Thinking
Author: Joan Didion
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction

I think perhaps that it’s wrong to say I love a book that is so filled with a real person’s real pain. To love, and therefore enjoy, such a book seems selfish and yet I cannot help but say that I deeply loved this book. Didion’s prose is straightforward and direct, not flowery but not quite Hemingway stark either. The tone ranges from slightly detached and clinical to deeply emotional, though still restrained. 

The book is completely and totally about the author and her responses to her husband’s death and the serious illness of her adult child. It’s all her and it is deeply honest, true and emotionally raw. I was tremendously moved.

I read a passage out loud to B where Didion is examining different kinds of bereavement. Pathological is the worst type, it’s most difficult to deal with and recover from. It’s also known as “complicated grief.” Specifically I read to B where Didion learns from medical texts that this complicated grief frequently occurs when “the survivor and the deceased had been unusually dependent on one another.”

Didion quotes a medical text: ” Was the bereaved actually very dependent upon the deceased person for pleasure support or esteem? Did the bereaved feel helpless without the lost person when enforced separations occurred?”

Reflecting on this quote I said to B “we’re fucked.” She said “Yep. I happily acknowledged our co-dependence many years ago and we’ll deal with the dramatic grief that will bring later on.”

Title: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Genre: Non-Fiction

Will any of the information from the book ever be useful to me in either my business or personal life? I’m uncertain. That’s ok though because the information in this book is totally interesting and that alone makes it worth knowing.

Really fascinating stuff including a lot of info and history on the children’s televisions programs Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues. Most interesting perhaps though was the stuff about the Broken Windows Theory as applied to NY subways and crime in NY in general.

The book can be a little dry in parts but it’s very well worth it if you can stick with it for the whole thing.

Title: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Author: Michael Chabon
Genre: Fiction

I can’t recall the last book I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I’ve always like Chabon’s work so it’s not really surprising that I love this book. But this book is a hard boiled detective story, think Raymond Chandler. Those kind of detective stories are not usually my bag at all but this one so was. I couldn’t wait to get back to the book every single time I had to put it down. I’ve been sick the past couple days and this book was my comfort. When my brain was too fuzzy to do actual work I’d hunker down with this book and a box of Kleenex and start to feel a little better. Seriously, I just loved this book.

Loving this book so much has inspired me to re-read all of Chabon’s novels. I read The Final Solution when it came out but his other YA novel didn’t appeal to me nor did the serialized novel from last year but maybe I should give them a shot. I’m thinking I’ll go in chronological order and start with The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.