books

2012 was a weird reading year for me. I feel like I didn’t read quite as much as I did last year. I read bits of things and more non-fiction than I usually do, there was more grazing than proper book devouring. I still got through a decent number of books. I didn’t, however, keep a proper list so I spent a lot of time staring at my shelves trying to remember if I read things this year or last year. For 2013 I will attempt to keep a proper list.

This is in no way, shape or form a “best of” list. This is stuff I read in 2012 and liked a lot. Most of them were not published this year.

There are two books in here that ended up with my name on them. There are a couple that had been on the to-read shelf for years. There’s a book that I read in its entirety in all of 15 minutes last week. There’s a cocktail book.

And a whole lot of Kate Atkinson.

Here is your visual aid*:

Let’s start with the Kate Atkinson, shall we? My reading year was Atkinson-themed, I’d acquired Case Histories in Canada during my 2011 book tour and I took it on an airplane this year partially because it was a good size to fit in my bag and I got kind of obsessed after that and read all the Jackson Brodie books. I adore the way she writes, and I love a good mystery, and I love a multi-faceted narrative where everything feels disparate at first but then everything connects. They’re my new favorites to push on people, because sadly not nearly enough people in this country have read her books, but I hope that changes.

Rest of the tower, in order from top:

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories is filled with tiny bits of wonderment and delicious illustrations and it only took me 15 minutes (possibly less) to read but I know I will read it again and again.

The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen. First of the two with my name on them, I read this book before it was published in the US, curled up on a February afternoon with a pot of tea. I simply adore it, I’ve pontificated about it before, I recommend it to people whenever I can, book evangelist, etc. LOVE THIS BOOK. Love.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Had been sitting on the to-read shelf far too long, partially because I was avoiding circus books in general while working on The Night Circus. Finally read it and loved it this year, both a little bit sorry that I waited so long and a little bit glad because I think I read it at the right time for me.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. This was given to me by a lovely bookseller at Politics & Prose last year but I didn’t get around to reading it until this year, after several other people had recommended it to me, usually after hearing that I’m working on a fantastical detective-esque book-thing. It is a delightfully surreal detective story, and having spent a great deal of time reading a lot of classic, not-so-surreal detective stories lately I loved it all the more.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. I meant to get to this last year but didn’t actually get a hold of it until it was out in paperback though I am pleased about that because the paperback is such a pretty color. This was one of those books I couldn’t put down and then couldn’t stop thinking about afterward, though it made me oddly melancholy.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. True confession: I have owned it since it came out in paperback but I only finally got around to it because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. People have been recommending this to me for years knowing my taste in books, so I think I expected to like it a bit more than I did. I loved certain sections, I only liked others, but the book as a whole is astonishing. (I liked the movie, too.)

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. As I mentioned, I have been reading a lot of detective stories. I also have apocalypse fatigue. I was primed to not like this book and I loved it. I especially loved the treatment of the impending end of the world, which felt nuanced and real and yet never overwhelmed the mystery, only informed it.

The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan & Chris Gall. I think it is fair to say that I drank more cocktails this year than I read books, but I did also start collecting more cocktail books which should count for something. This is one of my favorites, because beyond having fantastic cocktail recipes it’s an interesting, gorgeously illustrated book.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler & Maira Kalman. The Basic Eight remains one of my all-time favorites, and this book reinforced my belief that Daniel Handler is or has been an adolescent girl, even though I’ve met him and he appears convincingly manly in person. This would be a brilliant, bittersweet story on its own but the Maira Kalman illustrations of the contents of the break-up box turn it into something extraordinary.

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. Read as 2011 turned into 2012 and I said last year it’d likely make the 2012 favorites list and it did, of course. And it has the honor of being the very first book I ever blurbed, which makes it special. Also, it’s shiny. Also also, it truly did give me a raging crush on a fictional lawyer.

 

*Other books I enjoyed in 2012 that are not pictured for various reasons:

Vermilion Sands by J.G. Ballard, lent to me and thus not in the pile. First Ballard I’ve ever read and some of the imagery will be in my head forever, I’m certain.

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer, because I read it before everyone found out he was a lying liar who lies and I loved it then, and I still love a lot of the ideas behind it.

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudspeth. I read a PDF galley and I cannot wait to see the finished book when it comes out next year. Beautiful and macabre, one of my very favorite combinations.

 

I will not say that I have too many books. I would never say that, even if I had All The Books which is probably impossible. Even if I had Most Of The Books, which I’m sure I don’t. But I have a lot of books. And I have a great many that I haven’t managed to read yet.

I did a quick count just to get an estimate, I went around to most of my shelves and counted the books I hadn’t read yet. I stopped at 200, and that wasn’t all the shelves and I didn’t even look at the ever-growing pile of advance copies sitting in the office. I have been accumulating books at a much faster rate than I can read them. They even show up in the mail all unexpected-like. And of course I am almost always incapable of visiting a bookstore without buying a book or five.

I think I’m at the point where 40-50% of the books I own I haven’t read yet. I used to keep them all on one shelf and had aspirations of keeping the to-read books contained to that single shelf but that never really worked and now they’re everywhere. They make me feel slightly less guilty this way, camouflaged in with books I have read.

I need more time to read.

I’m not the fastest reader. I’m not the slowest, either, but it takes me a few days to read a decent-sized book, especially when I’m busy which is pretty much always lately. I’ve become slightly more fond of travelling just because it gives me more time to read.

(Though, as an aside, the travel reading tends to mean that the hardcovers stay unread longer because the paperbacks are more travel-friendly. Yes I am aware that an e-reader would help with this but I have tried and failed at e-reading and I like my paper books with their delicate fibers beneath my fingertips and also I am far too fond of flipping back and forth.)

Since it would have been architecturally dangerous to pile all the to-read books into a proper to-read pile I instead put together a sampling of things that I am really looking forward to but haven’t gotten to read yet because of that pesky time thing. Hopefully all of these will be read in 2013, I should have more reading time next year.

 

I am quite frequently asked about books. Usually about books I like or that I’d recommend and I’ve been meaning to do book posts for the blog for ages, so December is going to have lots of them and this is the first one, featuring a tower of books.

This is not an ideal bookshelf or an all time favorites or any sort of thoughtfully curated list. This is what happened when I wandered around my apartment searching my bookshelves for the books that seemed like they should be in this pile to be blog-shared.

Caveats: there is nothing in this pile that I read in 2012, that post is separate and forthcoming (a preview: I fell in really deep booklove with Kate Atkinson this year). There are a lot of old favorites here, one of them is so old it has my signature inked inside the cover to distinguish it from when I first read it in high school, several have been read many times over. I purposefully did not choose multiple titles by single authors (though Smoke & Mirrors, Fingersmith & all the other Amphigoreys tried really hard to get in on the book tower action).

Also, I’m not going to go on about why I love every book in this pile. For one thing, this post would get far too long, and for another, booklove is a personal sort of thing and it doesn’t always fall easily into short sentences or even words. I hugged my copy of Einstein’s Dreams when I pulled it off the shelf, that’s probably all you need to know.

So here is Erin’s Tower of Books She Loves & Hopes You Might, Too. Presented in easiest-to-stack order and followed by a list of titles & authors.

From top to bottom:

Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

The Litte Stranger by Sarah Waters

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock

Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Amphigorey by Edward Gorey

I am still working on a long post about books that is not post-shaped yet but in the meantime I am delighted that I can finally recommend a book I read months and months ago now and promptly fell in love with and then pouted quite a bit when I realized I wouldn’t be able to push it properly on people until September.

And now it is somehow September, so now you can read The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen.

I’ve had trouble explaining the book to people. I mostly just want to hand it to potential readers and smile and walk away. The Vanishing Act is about a girl named Minou who lives on a small island with her father, along with a man known as Boxman (so dubbed because he builds boxes for magicians, of the sawing-ladies-in-half-variety), a priest and a dog called No Name. A year ago, Minou’s mother disappeared along with the turtle.

It feels like a fable. It has so many of my favorite things on one tiny snow-covered island wrapped in melancholy.

I’m going to share several covers because I can. It has been out in Australia for a while so I was given the Australian version back in February. I made a pot of cherry green tea and curled up in my office and read it in one sitting. I am not a particularly fast reader but it is a perfectly sized one-sitting sort of book. That cover looks like this:

I’ve been getting a lot of books to possibly blurb, you know, those quotes from other authors that boil down to “yay, you should read this!” A lot of them I simply haven’t had the time to read but I’ve also learned from this process that while I like a lot of books the ones I love are fewer. And in order for me to send a quote it has to be a book I both love and wouldn’t mind having my name on, because it seems my name could very well end up on it.

I am delighted and honored to have my name on The Vanishing Act.

This is my entire unedited blurb, for the record:

This book is a precious thing. I want to keep it in a painted box with a raven feather and sea-polished stones, taking it out when I feel the need to visit Minou on her island again. The best stories change you. I am not the same after THE VANISHING ACT as I was before.