Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel

This is another of those occasions where I read a book in January and predict with great confidence that it will be on my Top Ten list at the end of the year.  A lot of unexpected things may happen to me in 2010, but the chances that I’d read 10 books better than Wolf Hall? Never gonna happen, my friend.

You all know I love historical fiction.  If I had to name the best historical novels I’ve ever read in my life, I’d list Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour, Margaret George’s The Autobiography of Henry VIII … and now, Wolf Hall. 

Wolf Hall has achieved something that rarely happens to big, blockbuster historical novels: it won the Man Booker prize.  It’s a novel that has managed to transcend the conventions of the historical fiction genre and the lack of respect that genre often gets in literary circles, to win arguably the most significant prize in English literature.  Now, just because a book won the Booker doesn’t guarantee I’m going to love it.  One year I tried to read every book on the Booker longlist and didn’t exactly emerge with a new list of favourites. But Wolf Hall combines all the best of historical and literary fiction — it’s a huge, sprawling, completely engrossing novel where brilliant, finely tuned language is used to build characterization in a way few other novels I’ve ever read can equal.

Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert

And now, while we’re on the topic of those “my amazing year” memoirs, let’s turn to another giant of the genre, Elizabeth Gilbert, whose Eat, Pray, Love was such a runaway hit (and a book I absolutely loved).  It’s a hard act to follow, which Gilbert seems very much aware of.  Instead of setting out on another interesting year-long odyssey, she writes about the bizarre situation in which she finds herself — although she throws in some research along the way to make her intensely personal reflections more universal.

Gilbert and her partner Felipe, the Brazilian hottie she met at the end of Eat, Pray, Love, are happily living outside the bonds of holy matrimony — which neither of them wants to re-enter — until the U.S. Department of Immigration intervenes and tells them Felipe won’t be allowed back in the country unless they get married.  Since Liz doesn’t want to live outside the U.S., this poses a problem.  The couple goes wandering off through Southeast Asia while the U.S. government ploughs through their paperwork. While bureaucrats decide whether they are allowed to get married, Elizabeth has to decide whether she wants to.

The Whole Five Feet, by Christopher Beha

Yet another entry in the “I picked a random challenge for a year and got a book deal out of it” series of memoirs.  I really have to get on this bandwagon!!

Christopher Beha, a young New York writer, decided while at a low point in his career and personal life that he was going to read through all the volumes of the Harvard Classics,  a series of books published about a hundred years ago with the lofty aim of introducing average readers to the classics of western literature.

It’s an eclectic collection, and Beha spends as much time reflecting on the purpose of the collection and the role of these “classics” in shaping culture.  Perhaps it’s an antiquated idea, that people without the benefit of a liberal arts university education can be self-educated by reading “Great Books” such as the classics of Greece and Rome and more modern writers as diverse as Dante and Darwin.

Crocodile on the Sandbank, by Elizabeth Peters

I’ve been wanting to read Elizabeth Peters’ series of Amelia Peabody mysteries, set amongst archeologists in Egypt in the late nineteenth century, for some time, but waited till I could get the earliest books, since there are many in the series and I wanted to read them in order.  The Crocodile on the Sandbank was well worth the wait.

Amelia, an independent-minded woman who chafes against the restrictions of a woman’s role, is a wonderful narrator.  She’s funny, strident, and extremely perceptive about many things while still managing to have huge blind spots about areas of her own life — like her attraction to the irascible archeologist, Radcliffe Emerson.

The mystery in this particular novel is actually a bit weak, since it has a plot hole you could sail a dabeeyah through (that’s one of the luxurious houseboats that Amelia, like other tourists, rents to travel down the Nile and I want one … because after reading these novels, not only do I want to go to Egypt, I want to go to Egypt in 1880!!).  I’m now on the third novel of the series and I’m happy to say that the mysteries get better and more tightly plotted as they go along.  The narrative voice and the sense of place and time is so vivid and so much fun that I’m glad there are many, many more Amelia Peabody books still ahead of me!

Nanny Returns, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Last year I was pleasantly surprised by Kraus and McLaughlin’s wildly popular The Nanny Diaries, which was both funnier and more poignant than I expected it to be.  Nanny  Returns is their sequel, picking up the story of Nanny and the horrible X family twelve years later.  Nanny is now married, mired in renovating a house and starting a business, when the now-teenage Grayer X, her former charge, bursts into her life again.

The X family is as dysfunctional as ever, and the satire of upper class New York families who have children as status symbols but have no intention of ever caring for them, is as sharp as ever.  An additional layer is added here as Nan finds work as a human-resources consultant at an upscale private school and uncovers even more levels of crazy rich-family horror.

God Is, by David Adams Richards

Given my own proclivities, it’s inevitable I would want to read a book about faith by a critically-acclaimed Canadian novelist, so of course I got a copy of David Adams Richards’s God Is just as soon as the library was able to get it into my hands. 

The biggest problem I had with God Is is that I was never quite sure what kind of book I was reading.  The title suggests a work of apologetics; the subtitle (“My Search for Faith in a Secular World”) suggests a spiritual memoir, but the book is really neither of these. Bits of Richards’ autobiography creep in, but seemingly almost by accident.  And his declaration that God is, and that faith is meaningful in today’s world, is not the stance of an apologist who is building an argument to convince others.

Perhaps it’s best to say this book is just David Adams Richards’s meditation on the subject of faith — his own faith, and religious faith in general.  There were points here I strongly agreed with — such as the fact that there is an very strong element of anti-Christian snobbery in the Canadian academic and literary establishment. But his response to that verges on the hyper-defensive at times, which I found unappealing.  I think the biggest problem for me is that this book probably has to be read in the context of Richards’s novels, which I have not read.  Without that context, it was hard for me to get engaged with this nonfiction work, even with the most engaging of subject matter.

Contest Results

My book giveaway contest ended a few days ago, but this is the first chance I’ve had to post the results. Here are my actual top ten books of the year:

1. Galore by Michael Crummey

2. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

3. Bringing Up Geeks by Marybeth Hicks

4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

5. Justice in the Burbs by Will and Lisa Samson

6. Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott

7. Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

8. Salvation on the Small Screen? by Nadia Bolz-Weber

9. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

10. The Unlikely Disciple by Kevin Roose

Congratulations to the winners: Diana, Dara, Mojgan, Jacqueline and Jacquie.  Your books will be on their way to you shortly!! Thanks for playing!

The Year-end Top Ten List and Contest … With a Twist!

For the last few years I’ve had a tradition of listing my Top Ten favourite books of the year (usually based on what leaves the most lasting impression on me, looking back over a year’s worth of reading) and having a contest in which readers have the oppoturnity to win one of the books on the list. 

I’m doing that again this year, but with a twist. Instead of posting my list and then a quiz, the quiz IS the list.  I’m going to post clues to what my Top Ten favourite books were this year, and based on your own amazing knowledge of books, or simply looking back through the books I’ve reviewed here, you have to guess what they are.

When you think you have the list assembled, email it to me at trudyj65@hotmail.com (I’ve closed comments on this entry so you won’t  post your list in the comments, which gives it away for others).  In your email, also indicate which one of these books you’d like to have if you’re a winner.

I will select FIVE winners from the correct entries that come in to me before midnight, NST, on January 6, 2010, and each of those five winners will receive the book of their choice.  I may also have some runner-up prizes but I’ll update you on that when I see how many entries I get.

So, without further ado, this year’s list … the top ten best, or at least most memorable, of the 98 books (58  novels; 40 nonfiction) I read and reviewed in 2010:

1. A novel that truly deserves to be called “epic” — this is a whale of a tale in every sense.

2. A memoir by someone whose young-adult wanderings around the world in the mid-80s were far more epic than mine, and included an ill-fated trip to China.

3. A parenting philosophy I can totally get on board with — even though my kids hate the book’s title!

4. It’s billed as a young-adult novel, but it’s definitely not light reading: a serious and moving story about how reading saves a young girl’s sanity in World War Two Germany.

5. A realistic guide to social justice for middle-class evangelical Christians.

6. My favourite Canada Reads selection!

7. A fascinating glimpse into sixteenth-century convent life.

8. Some writers set themselves  a quirky challenge for a year and write a book about it.  This writer did it all in one day — but what a day it was!

9. I wrote a short story about her, but this author wrote a whole book!

10. I could have been annoyed at the author for deceiving his friends for a whole year, but he managed to come off as a pretty nice guy all the same.

Christianus Sum, by Shawn J. Pollett

If you follow this blog at all, you know that there are certain things that never fail to delight me: one is Christian fiction that’s actually well-written and engaging; another is historical fiction that gives me a glimpse into an era I didn’t know much about before.  Christianus Sum offers both.

This novel takes place in Rome in the third century, as an emperor named Decius ascends the imperial throne and begins persecuting Christians.  Although I’ve done some reading in the last few years about Rome in the time of Julius and Augustus Caesar, I knew almost nothing about third-century Rome, and hadn’t realized what an utterly chaotic period this was in the Empire.  Pollett captures the imperial power struggles of this era very well, while his main focus is on the lives of Christians in this period.

Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby

Juliet, Naked is the kind of thoroughly enjoyable read I’ve come to count on Nick Hornby for.  He rarely lets me down, and I love that in a writer — when you can open a book and just know you’re going to enjoy what’s inside.

Juliet, Naked explores the murky world of fame and celebrity obsession in the Age of Internet. As most of  us who spend far too much time online know, we live in an era in which a failed musician who hasn’t recorded anything in twenty years can be the subject of intense fascination and minute scrutiny by rabid fans on website who analyze and deconstruct every lyric till they are far more “expert” on the artist’s work than even the artist himself.

And that’s pretty much what has happened to non-practicing American musician Tucker Crowe, a minor musical postscript who has become a cult icon to devoted fans on the internet long after he stopped recording.  One of the most obsessed of those fans is Duncan, a middle-aged British geek who makes his living teaching college classes but whose real claim to fame (in his own mind anyway) is that he’s one of the world’s leading experts on the music of Tucker Crowe.