One day, Rhoda, the owner of the shop, heard Jennifer
urging Percy to leave the yard of the shop. "Come on! Percy,
now!" Jennifer cried. Rhoda thought that an eccentric (and
somewhat poorly mannered) customer was calling for curbside assistance
and came running out with a bag full of Walker Percy's books. They
quickly cleared up the confusion, but Rhoda saw it as a sign and
offered Jennifer a job on the spot. After a little haggling over
visitation rights for Percy, Jennifer accepted.
How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel
by Alain de Botton (humor? essay? fiction? self-help?)
Alain de Botton is one of my all-time favorite writers. I love everything
he's written, particularly this one. All of his books could take
on the subtitle "not a novel." They all are of a different
sort of book. They incorporate elements of the personal essay, and
they use wit, drawings, graphs and illustrations. The chapter titles
of this book include, "How to Suffer Successfully" and
"How to Put Books Down." Smooth prose, great insights.
He never disappoints. You don't have to know or like Proust to love
this book.
True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey (fiction)
Carey won his second Booker Prize for this exciting and emotional
fictionalization of the life and death of Ned Kelly, Australia's
most famous and revered outlaw. Told as a series of memories to
his unborn daughter, this novel is touching, hilarious, and as good
as Carey's best, which is saying quite a lot.
Audubon's Watch by John Gregory
Brown (fiction)
It's difficult to pin down in a few words why this book is fantastic
and why you should read it. Though hardly more than two hundred
pages, it is dense with the parallel stories of John James Audubon,
the famous artist and ornithologist, and New Orleans physician and
anatomist Emile Gautreaux. The two men are forever linked and haunted
by the death of the physician's young, beautiful wife in 1821. I've
loved and admired Brown's previous two novels, but this one may
be even more spectacular. It's worth the read if only for his descriptions
of hapless slaves forced to chop sugar cane during a devastating
storm. An amazing book that demands to be read again.
History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
by Julian Barnes (fiction)
In these loosely connected ten (yes, and a half) chapters, Barnes
takes the reader from Noah's Ark to international terrorism. Don't
be alarmed of you're not a history buff–no history scholar
would put this novel on his essential reading list (well, maybe
just for fun). Barnes, as (almost) always, is terribly funny and
delightful to spend time with.
Headlong by Michael Frayn (fiction)
This is one of my favorite books of the year. I'd follow this narrator
anywhere. He's an uptight, pretentious academic who has gone to
the country for a few months with his wife and baby to complete
his book. But on the farm, he gets distracted from his task by his
mysterious but dim-witted neighbors. He's led on an all-emcompassing
quest by something he thinks he might have seen in the neighbors'
house, forcing him to risk his marriage, his livelihood, his entire
bank account, his sanity, everything, for what he might have glimpsed.
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Birds of America: Stories
by Lorrie Moore (fiction)
Lorrie Moore is one of the best short story writers penning characters
today. And her novels are great, too. She has a dark, dry humor
and an uncanny ability to really know the characters she writes
about.
Love Warps the Mind a Little by
John Dufresne (fiction)
An unemployed aspiring writer, his dog and his typewriter are thrown
out of the house when his wife realizes he's having an affair. Again.
He moves in with his mistress, but is always on the prowl for a
girlfriend. Witty, touching and, ultimately, a redemptive story.
Big Bad Love by Larry Brown (fiction)
Larry Brown knows how to tell a story. These drunk skirt-chasers
are not characters you'd think you'd like. But you will.
Anagrams by Lorrie Moore (fiction)
I want to have written this book.
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
by Anne Fadiman (essay)
This is a necessity for anyone who loves books. And it doesn't hurt
to be fanatical about grammar. As Cynthia Ozick says, Fadiman's
essays "carry the golden weight of art."
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin
(armchair travel)
Strange and charming. Nobody writes like Chatwin. This story begins
with his hunt for a piece of Brontosaurus skin like the one his
grandmother had when he was little. He is serious.
The Archivist by Martha Cooley
(fiction)
This was my favorite novel of summer '98, and I think about it often.
It is a beautiful and sad story of preservation, lost love and mental
illness.
Life Is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera
(fiction)
Read this. Read him. Read anything by him. Read everything by him.
This is what fiction should be.
Revolutionary Road by
Richard Yates (fiction)
I never dreamed of reading this book until author after author (Richard
Ford, Richard Bausch–maybe it's the name!) that I heard speak
kept recommending it. At a talk he gave in New Orleans, Richard
Ford said over and over, "Read Dick Yates." I read him.
They were right. What a good book!
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood
by Mary McCarthy (essay/memoir)
On a national radio broadcast, Lillian Hellman said of Mary McCarthy,
"Every word she writes is a lie, including "and"
and "the." Regardless, the essays are well-written and
intriguing.
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