Lakenheath Old Boys

We are all former students at Lakenheath High School and other public schools in East Anglia. We were in school in the 70s and 80s and drank deeply from the well of British culture of those decades - the pints, the telly, and of course the footie!

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Books of 2009

Every year around this time, we at LOB take stock of our favorite cultural moments of the past year. I'll start us off modestly with my favorite reads of 2009. I particularly enjoyed sharing three books with you here and I hope we'll do the same in the future when we're able to steal a few moments from work to dive into something tasty. These are the ones that kept me turning the pages this year:

1. Ethan Canin – America, America: My favorite novel of the year is an old-fashioned grand narrative about the intertwining lives of a working class kid and the Robber Baron family that takes him in, all with the backdrop of the 1972 Presidential election.

2. Rob Sheffield – Life is a Mix Tape: The Rolling Stone critic steps outside his usual snarky self for a beautiful and moving portrait of a lives of two married music geeks living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

3. Smith, Mayer and Fritschler – Closed Minds? I recently reviewed this valuable book on academic bias for a social studies journal. I found it a useful rebuttal to the most hysterical criticisms of academia.

4. Richard Price – Lush Life: Price is well known for writing gritty policiers such as “Clockers” and the scripts for HBO’s "The Wire series." In his latest novel, he dissects the Lower East side in a gripping procedural that proceeds at a snail’s pace and looks under every rock in the neighborhood on the way toward it’s inevitable and cataclysmic conclusion.

5. Patrick Humphries - The Life and Times of Tom Waits: I’ve been on a real Tom Waits kick recently and Humphries’s book has only increased my appreciation. I particularly enjoyed reading about his early boho career in LA, palling around with Rickie Lee Jones and the immortal Chuck E Weiss.

6. Russell Banks – The Reserve: Banks’s latest novel pulls the reader straight in with a mystery surrounding a group of the landed gentry summering in the Adirondacks.

7. James Montague – When Friday Comes: A fascinating look at Middle Eastern football. While promoting the idea of footballing progress, Montague inadvertently points out why no Middle Eastern country will be winning the World Cup any time soon.

8. Diana Hess – Controversy in the Classroom: Diana Hess’s discourse on teaching controversy is destined to become the definitive work on the topic.

9. Monica Ali – In the Kitchen: Monica Ali’s third novel concerns the inner workings of a hotel restaurant presided over by chef Gabe, who’s having a bit of an existential meltdown.

10. Nick Hornby – Juliet, Naked: My favorite novelist is back on the safe terrain of pop music and relationships in his latest. I loved the material on the reclusive 80s pop star and his obsessive Internet following. I wasn’t really in the mood for the material on the hopelessness of relationships.

Notable Others:
* Kate Summerscale - The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher - a 19th century true crime book in style of Wilkie Collins.
* Joe Bageant - Deer Hunting with Jesus - a passionate call for a left populist surge.
* Dean Baker - Plunder and Blunder - a useful dissection of the causes of the current economic crisis.
* Michael Pollan - In Defense of Food - another searching critique of the food industry by Pollan.
* Bill Bishop - The Big Sort - a look at the fragmentation of American politics.
* Jennifer Burns - Goddess of the Market - an academic biography of Ayn Rand.

So, what were the rest of you reading and enjoying (or not enjoying) this year?

8 Comments:

Blogger Someone Said said...

My full list will be posted in a week or two. I've started the 1,000 page Stephen King book and suspect that will be the last book I'll this year, possibly the first book I'll finish in 2010.

A couple I did like were Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, Colombine by Dave Cullen and A Boy Alone: A Brother's Memoir by Karl Taro Greenfeld.

8:21 PM  
Blogger The Blue Devil said...

Thanks, lads. I'll look forward to hearing more from you on this thread.

10:10 AM  
Blogger gooner71 said...

Lush Life was great for me because of Price’s genius ear for language. But I too lost interest when Nick stopped poking fun at the obsessive male music nerd in Juliet, Naked.

Here's the rest of my list.

White Tiger – Aravand Adiga
The Ghost In Love – Jonathan Carroll
Breathe – Tim Winton
Dirt Music – Tim Winton
Natsuo Kirino – Out
Asa Larsson – Sun Storm
Henning Mankell – Italian Shoes
Jon Ronson – Out of the Ordinary – Grant Wahl – The Beckham Experiment

4:16 PM  
Blogger West Ham Rising said...

Ooh . . . I used to love reading Jonathan Carroll when I was in law school . . . I'm going to get that one . . . I read exactly eighteen books this year . . . (yes, I kept a list finally) . . . Only a few were published in 2009. . .

Charlotte’s Web
The Outliers
Breakfast of Champions
Tale of Desperaux
Tiger Rising
Eduard Tulane
The Believers
A Team of Rivals
What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal)
The World Without Us
The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo
Midnight Tiger
Karl Marx bio
The Book Thief
Little Bee
The Girl Who Played With Fire
Warren Buffett: The Snowball
Into the Wild

11:02 AM  
Blogger The Blue Devil said...

My wish list is filling up - thanks lads!

8:52 PM  
Blogger The Blue Devil said...

Someone Said is right that it's always difficult to get these lists together as we're always in the midst of reading another one that might have made the list. For example, I've just started Dave Eggers's latest "Zeitoun," which deals with Hurricane Katrina. If I'd read it earlier, I'd have probably had to bump one of mine down to "Notable Reads."

10:50 AM  
Blogger Someone Said said...

West Ham Rising noted The Book Thief, which is an outstanding book. I was sobbing several times while reading it. Very intense and profound. It was marketed as a Young Adult novel but older people will get a lot out of it too.

Still in the midst of the Stephen King. Then I have to read the latest from Denise Mina, which is not being published in the U.S. until March. My sister in law brought me a copy when she visited in October.

Also in the pile is an interesting looking biography of Satchel Paige.

10:55 AM  
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