{"id":3279,"date":"2008-12-31T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-31T18:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3279"},"modified":"2008-12-31T13:23:39","modified_gmt":"2008-12-31T18:23:39","slug":"books-of-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3279","title":{"rendered":"Books of 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\">My favorites are, in the order they were read:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><i>The Botany of Desire<\/i> by Michael Pollan<\/strong> &#8212; Never as good as <i>The Omnivore&#8217;s Dilemma<\/i> (his follow-up, which I actually read first, in 2007), and I don&#8217;t think Pollan <i>quite<\/i> proves his central thesis, but the book is never dull, full of valuable insights and interesting facts.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>The Terror<\/i> by Dan Simmons<\/strong> &#8212; A book I was genuinely sorry to put down when I was finished. Which, given the length, is saying something. Easily the scariest book I read all year.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Spaceman Blues<\/i> by Brian Franics Slattery<\/strong> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/mumpsimus.blogspot.com\/2007\/06\/spaceman-blues-by-brian-francis.html\">Matt Cheney called it<\/a> &#8220;songs of all sorts, entire arias and symphonies, and it sings visions, and the visions are both full and fulfilling&#8230;&#8221; He ain&#8217;t wrong, that&#8217;s for sure.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Logorrhea<\/i> edited by John Klima<\/strong> &#8212; I have never really understood the mass appeal of spelling bees. I remember participating in one or two back in grade school, but the recent fascination with what&#8217;s essentially just a trick of good memory has me a little dumbfounded. Maybe I need to get around to finally watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0334405\/\">Spellbound<\/a> on DVD. I was skeptical of John Klima&#8217;s anthology &#8212; each story inspired by a winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee &#8212; but the stories speak for themselves. Most are fantasy or science fiction &#8212; not surprising given <a href=\"http:\/\/www.electricvelocipede.com\/\">Klima&#8217;s background<\/a> &#8212; and almost without exception excellent.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>The Yiddish Policeman&#8217;s Union<\/i> by Michael Chabon<\/strong> &#8212; I don&#8217;t think Chabon&#8217;s disappointed me yet with one of his novels. His short stories and novellas are sometimes a tougher sell, but he&#8217;s in top form here.<\/li>\n<p><strong><\/p>\n<li><i>Grey<\/i> by Jon Armstrong<\/strong> &#8212; Delightfully weird.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Soon I Will Be Invincible<\/i> by Austin Grossman<\/strong> &#8212; This could have easily been a one-joke book. Many of the real-world superhero stories we&#8217;ve seen since <i>Watchmen<\/i> have been. But Grossman&#8217;s novel is by turns both funny and touching.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>The Trouble with Poetry<\/i> by Billy Collins<\/strong> &#8212; Outside of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kaleidotrope.net\/\">Kaleidotrope<\/a> submissions, I don&#8217;t read enough poetry. I&#8217;m really glad I picked Collins&#8217; book as my first step in remedying that.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Disgrace<\/i> by J.M. Coetzee<\/strong> &#8212; Makes me wonder why I&#8217;ve not read more of his books. I wonder if I still have my copy of <i>Waiting for the Barbarians<\/i> lying around anywhere&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>The King&#8217;s Last Song<\/i> by Geoff Ryman<\/strong> &#8212; A sweeping story of Cambodia&#8217;s ancient (and more recent) past. I&#8217;m particularly glad I picked up the <a href=\"http:\/\/lcrw.net\/ryman\/index.htm\">Small Beer Press edition<\/a>, which includes Ryman&#8217;s sources and notes on where his story by necessity diverged from historical fact.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the biggest disappointments of the year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><i>A Confederacy of Dunces<\/i> by John Kennedy Toole<\/strong> &#8212; Ultimately, I think it&#8217;s just too dated to still be really funny.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Wanted<\/i> by Mark Millar et al.<\/strong> &#8212; Misognyistic and at least borderline racist, it&#8217;s little more than a repellent power fantasy that ruins what could have been an interesting &#8220;what if we killed off all the superheroes?&#8221; story. I didn&#8217;t much like the movie either.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>You Don&#8217;t Love Me Yet<\/i> by Jonathan Lethem<\/strong> &#8212; Ultimately a lousy book by a terrific writer; &#8220;lesser Lethem&#8221; might be the most charitable description. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.avclub.com\/content\/words\/you_dont_love_me_yet\">as Donna Bowman wrote<\/a> for the AV Club, &#8220;The man [was] due for a letdown.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Crooked Little Vein<\/i> by Warren Ellis<\/strong> &#8212; A little like watered-down, or warmed-over, Ellis. It&#8217;s not awful, but I didn&#8217;t see anything in it to suggest Ellis has a career as a prose novelist. It&#8217;s a story that might have worked considerably better on the comics page. (I also wasn&#8217;t too impressed with his graphic novel <i>Blackgas<\/i>, though.)<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>A Wrinkle in Time<\/i> by Madeline L&#8217;Engle<\/strong> &#8212; I think if I&#8217;d read this growing up, it might be a cherished childhood classic. Then again, maybe not. It was a quick read, but I&#8217;m not in any rush to read the remaining books in L&#8217;Engle&#8217;s quartet.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Farthing<\/i> by Jo Walton<\/strong> &#8212; Likable characters and a quick read &#8212; I read this on the plane ride to LA in August &#8212; it&#8217;s only up here because its alternate-universe premise is pretty shallow, and the whole thing sort of falls apart in the end.<\/li>\n<li><strong><i>Man in the Dark<\/i> by Paul Auster<\/i><\/strong> &#8212; For a novelist who used to be among my very favorites, Auster&#8217;s had a whole lot of disappointments lately. This reads as very slight, barely qualifying as a story (much less a short novel), and it makes pine for earlier (much better) Auster novels. The so-called political twist, like so much else in the book, is barely examined. I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s a more worrisome thought: that he just isn&#8217;t trying anymore&#8230;or that he is, and this is the result.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My favorites are, in the order they were read: The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan &#8212; Never as good as The Omnivore&#8217;s Dilemma (his follow-up, which I actually read first, in 2007), and I don&#8217;t think Pollan quite proves his central thesis, but the book is never dull, full of valuable insights and interesting &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=3279\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-3279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}