Book List!

Book list! These are all of the books I read from May '09 to May '10. This year's list totals 29 which is four less than last year. This can be attributed partly to the fact that I've been super busy this year and partly to the fact that I tackled a few more classics this year that took me for fucking ever to get through. I'm looking at you Out of Africa and Sons and Lovers.

Looking over my list, I have a few thoughts. The first one being that Anagrams is amazing and what happened to Lorrie Moore? Lorrie Moore is one of my favorite writers ever, and Anagrams is firmly in my top ten favorite books of all time. That said, A Gate at the Stairs is one of the most overrated books I have ever read. It is seriously, objectively, awful, yet somehow I was only able to find one review that said it was anything less than amazing. I wanted to make-out with Stephanie Zacherek after reading this:

"This is a case of a writer's working too hard. She doesn't allow enough air around her sentences -- there's no space for the gags to breathe, and her brainy contemplations continue to stack up until they resemble piles of clutter . . . there's so much tap-dancing, sky-diving, bungee-jumping and unicycling in "A Gate at the Stairs" that Moore's greater goal just seems like an afterthought."

YES Stephanie Zacherek. YES. The book also features characters that are completely unbelievable and plot twists that make no sense. At one point I actually put the book down and shouted "Oh come on!" So why then were all of the other reviews I read glowing? And why is Lorrie Moore now nominated for the Orange Prize? I don't know, but I do have a few theories.

After twenty years of writing short stories and short, weirdly structured novels, Lorrie Moore probably felt pressure to deliver something heftier, both physically and thematically. At 336 pages, A Gate at the Stairs is one hundred pages longer than her last novel, and isn't split up into different sections the way Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams are. Whereas Moore's other work largely centers around the complicated emotional lives of her eccentric female characters, A Gate at the Stairs struggles for a more timely and weighty social relevance. The novel tackles everything from Terrorism to Racism to the War In Iraq in a way that feels clumsy and unnatural.

It's not like Moore hasn't written about difficult topics before. "People Like That Are the Only People Here," is a story about a first time mother discovering her baby has cancer and "Terrific Mother" is about a woman who has an accident that kills her friend's infant. Both of these stories, like much of Moore's work, are heartbreaking. Both stories are also infinitely better crafted and more moving than the best parts of A Gate at the Stairs. I guess this doesn't matter though. Because while writing about the personal struggles of individual women, whether they are facing the loss of a child or suffering through an affair with a married man, is important, writing about the crisis facing our nation after September 11th is Important. The good reviews and prize nominations are Moore's reward, not for writing a good book, but for writing an Important one. One that involves hand puppets instead of characters, and Plot Twists instead of believable conflicts.

In summary, if you want to read something by Lorrie Moore pick up Anagrams. Or Self-Help. Or Like Life. Or really anything other than A Gate at the stupid Stairs.

Now that I've finished ranting, here is my book list for 2009-2010. Favorites are in pink. Super favorites also get a smiley face.

• Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
• Two Women Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill
• Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
• Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford
• Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
• Drown by Junot Diaz
• The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Conner
• Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
• Homicide by David Simon
• Anne Frank by Francine Prose
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
• The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
• Notable American Women by Ben Marcus
• Cheap by Ellen Ruppel Shell
• Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurly Brown :)
  
• Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut
• Nekropolis by Maureen McHugh
• Anagrams by Lorrie Moore :)
  
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson :)
  
• Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
• Venus in Furs by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch
• Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill :)
• Delicate Edible Birds by Laura Groff
• Nothing Right by Antonya Nelson
• Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill
• Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
• Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence