My year in books

Here are some random thoughts about a few things I read this year.

Best book I read: I’m going to give this one to A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, which is a modern(ish) retelling of King Lear set on a farm in Iowa. It works way better than that sentence suggests. Smiley masterfully creates layer upon layer of small tragedies, giving the novel a truly Shakespearean sense of inevitability and fatalism. And hey, it won the Pulitzer Prize. In 1992.

Worst book I read: Hands down, this dishonour belongs to You Disappear by Christian Jungersen. At book club, I read aloud a list of things I hated about it. How much jam can one Danish family eat?!

Most fun reading experience: I loved reading Michelle Cooper’s Montmaray Journals books, a young adult series that begins in the 1930s and is set on a fictional island kingdom off the coast of Spain. The books follow the ragtag group of teenagers who live alone on the island, having inherited the kingdom from their various dead parents. When World War II breaks out, their lives change forever. The later books in the series go surprisingly dark and feature a fairly chilling portrayal of life in London during the war. For people looking to fill the I Capture the Castle void.

Most disappointing reading experience: Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld, book 4 in The Austen Project, a series of modern-day retellings of Jane Austen novels by different authors. Sittenfeld is an excellent writer, Pride and Prejudice is a great book, but Eligible fails to take off. It doesn’t come out until April 2016, so you have some time to gird your loins. All of the books in this series so far have been very disappointing. No one is taking any risks with the plots or characters so it is, literally, like reading watered-down Jane Austen, with iPhones and university degrees and much less sly, sparkling wit.

Book that still comes up in conversation: The Circle by Dave Eggers. It’s scarily relevant to These Modern Times. (Also my pick for worst sex scenes.)

Books from my list that I read but am not going to blog about: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (really liked this one; will be seeking out her other books); Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (see below); The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (the narration in this is as brilliant as everyone says); Philomena by Martin Sixsmith (boring; the movie was better).

Book that took me the longest to read: Thomas Hardy’s 800-something-page ode to the tragedy of what happens when two fools can’t make up their minds to get married, Jude the Obscure. I began this in Cuba in March, took it to a Lake Huron beach in August, and was still reading it in November during my commute to work. I’m done now, but sometimes I feel like I’m still reading it. It’s really a book only fans of Thomas Hardy could love. And even then…

Book that reminded me strongly of a superior book I read a few years ago: Peter Nichols’s The Rocks has a cover so similar to the wonderful Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter that I can only salute the marketing and art departments who came up with it, because that cover is why I read this book. Beautiful Ruins was a critically acclaimed bestseller and The Rocks was clearly designed to fill the niche of “book set in the Mediterranean featuring doomed romances and secrets that are gradually revealed.” Beautiful Ruins is great; The Rocks is not as great, although the way the plot unfolded in reverse worked well.

Book that was clearly designed to appeal directly to me: First and Then by Emma Mills was marketed as Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights. Shut up and take my money.

Most random book I read this year: I found a copy of Jane Heller’s Name Dropping at my grandparents’ house (I was probably trying to avoid Jude the Obscure) and read it in a few hours. Not the kind of thing I’d normally pick up, but it was pretty entertaining!

Book I put on hold at the library early in 2015 that I am STILL waiting for as of December: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Better by Monica Heisey. It’s finally on its way to me…

Best movie based on a book: Far From the Madding Crowd, based on the book of the same name by that old joker Thomas Hardy. Runner-up: Room, which was extremely faithful to Emma Donoghue’s novel and just as devastating.

Movie based on a book that has kicked off a new reading obsession: I saw In the Heart of the Sea, which was mediocre at best but is based on an by-all-accounts excellent non-fiction book by Nathaniel Philbrick. I am now obsessed with 19th-century whaling. I’m planning to read Moby Dick in 2016 and have also bookmarked some other books on the topic. I wonder if Moby Dick will take less time than Jude the Obscure.

You can see a complete list of what I read in 2015 on Goodreads.  And now, some numbers. In 2015, I read:

• 77 books in total (as I write this mid-December, I’m hoping to squeeze in a few more before 2016);
• 64 books by women, 12 books by men, and 1 book by multiple authors both male and female;
• 52 novels, 18 non-fiction books of various genres, 5 mysteries, and 2 books of short stories;
• 20 books that I classify as “young adult”;
• 8 books primarily about diseases, medicine, and/or health, including a book about vaccines and immunity and one about cholera, a novel about a man with a traumatic brain injury (You Disappear by Christian Jungersen, do not read it), 2 young adult novels about tuberculosis (Queen of Hearts by Martha Brooks and Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider), and 2 books in which a mysterious illness breaks out at an all-girls’ school (Conversion by Katherine Howe and The Fever by Megan Abbott);
• 5 books set at least partially during WWII;
• 5 books by Agatha Christie;
• 4 young adult novels about impoverished families who live in crumbling castles (3 of these were in the same series and 1 was a re-read);
• 2 trilogies (Jane Smiley’s Last Hundred Years and Michelle Cooper’s Montmaray Journals);
• 2 novels inspired by Jane Austen (Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld and Austenland by Shannon Hale);
• 2 books about royal weddings (The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan and Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot);
• 1 Victorian novel, Jude the Obscure;
• … and, to the tune of “and a partridge in a pear tree,” nothing by Jonathan Franzen!

Happy New Year!