December. The days get shorter. The lists get longer. The best-of lists, that is. I always greet the end-of-the-year best-of-books lists with trepidation. Did these reviewers really read all those books? Really? What was I doing while they were reading newly released hardcovers every week? (Oh yeah, that's right...I was reading student novels-in-progress, and rereading classics to teach for my lit class, not to mention editing all those own drafts of that manuscript of mine that's due any day now...)
Mostly I like best-of lists so I can figure out what to read next year. I'm always a year behind. I just started Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke, which was everyone's end-of-year favorite in 2007. He's the guy who wrote Jesus' Son, and this is his big fat scary Vietnam novel. A soldier shoots a monkey for no good reason on p. 1. Nice hook, Mr. Johnson.
Books I read this year that you might want to are below. They're all by gay writers, because, no secret, when I read for pleasure, that's what I like to read. Not that any of these books are anything like any of the others. I'm not that programmatic. Plus, when do those mainstream reviewers ever give gay writers more than token attention? Am I right or am I right?
Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer. He wrote the Confessions of Max Tivoli, about the guy born old who ages backwards and dies a baby. This new novel is less conceptual, but it has a few tricks up its sleeves. Mostly, it's full of believable people forced make tough choices. It's set in San Francisco in the 1950's. You think you know what's going to happen, and then you're wrong. Sentence by sentence, it's beauteous.
The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine. "Listen. Allow me to be your god. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story." That's just the first paragraph. Myths, magic and family drama ensue. Ever been to Lebanon? Me neither. You should listen.
King of Shadows by Aaron Shurin. Essays that take small moments and blow them up into epic lyrical insight. Or that take big transformations and focus them down to the telling details. My favorite piece is called "In the Bars of Heaven and Hell" and it's about coming out in Berkeley in the late '60s. Every memoir should transport you like this. Buy it.
The Sixth Form by Tom Dolby. Take the Hansel and Gretel myth and relocate it on the campus of a New England prep school, with two boys, best friends, and their attentive but ultimately creepy teacher. Those college years are painful indeed, and Tom makes it all so real. I gobbled this one up in a day.
The Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara. Edited by Mark Ford. There was already an O'Hara "selected poems," and a "collected poems," plus "Poems Retrieved" and a few other volumes. But this one got the full hardcover treatment from Borzoi Books, with a dreamy cover photo and the New Yorker and NY Times weighing in. I've loved O'Hara for years and wonder if all this highbrow attention is going to turn him into just another boring canonical figure. Please, God, no! He was an out flaming queen in the McCarthy era. And he's still my all-time all time favorite poet of art and love.
You can see the NY Times 2008 favorites here. Salon's here. Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan weighed in with some recession-priced paperbacks. And Amazon does a gay books list that puts David Sedaris at the top.
I'm sure you have your own opinion...
Comments