Best books of 2009

Out of the 50 books I read in 2009, the top 5 are as follows (I am not including American Gods: A Novel
only because reading in 2009 was about the third time I've read it, so I think I should devote time to books I haven't gushed about before! This also means a few others are disqualified by my standards as well, such as Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face):

1.

Maus : A Survivor's Tale : My Father Bleeds History/Here My Troubles Began



Despite being a huge dork and gushing about Neil Gaiman all the time, I've never been a comics fan. I chalk this up to the fact that when I was about 10, my brothers and I went to a comics store and got some comics at the urging of my dad. Okay, cool. Except that they were the most random comics ever, one was a Robin story about Robin turning into a robot or something, another was about Superman being evil, and they were just so utterly random that I had NO IDEA what went on in the issues before, so I was at a total loss, and viewed comics as things just out there in a sea of bizarre. Naturally I realized as I got a little older that my view on the matter was mainly because I was dumped into a comic story in the middle and didn't start anyplace smart, but the simple fact remained that I wasn't drawn to comics at all after my initial introduction.

Maus changed my opinion about comics being a less important medium, and changed my opinion of "meh" to an opinion of "oh my god, you can tell a really moving, serious story with comics." (This opinion was furthered by reading Persepolis which I also highly, highly recommend.) Which is old news for other nerds everywhere, but I'd simply never read any comic presented like this before. It's daring, it's heartbreaking, it's subtle, it's a masterpiece, and I've found myself time and time again defending its comic medium in the library to patrons who raise eyebrows. It's a Pulitzer winner, and rightfully so. Spiegelman's work is one in which he is often "trying to express the inexpressible" -- and he succeeds. Stunningly. Read it.


2.

Columbine


Columbine is unlike any story I've read before regarding Columbine. Perhaps this is because Cullen presents not a short overview, or a glossy summary, or a pointing finger. Cullen presents the reader with a lengthy, deep picture, one that fills in edges that we may not have seen before. Myths (such as the Trench Coat Mafia one, the idea that the boys were abused, angry, friendless kids, that they were both filled with nothing but rage and hate -- one last diary entry is surprisingly about the beauty of love --, that Cassie Bernall said "Yes") are carefully and thoughtfully dispelled, and a sharper image appears in the wake of the fog. It is heartbreaking to read. Perhaps it's all the more heartbreaking to read because in clearing away the fog, Cullen paints clearer portraits of both Eric and Dylan, and in doing so, a reader is forced to look at them in a different, closer light. There are also the stories of the crosses erected (you'll be surprised to learn a little more about the financial history of those), the county politics in the wake of the events, and many other things that the media didn't pay as much attention to. And of course, information about the media itself, such as its idea to assume all people in the school were eyewitnesses and reliable interviewees (thus creating some of the largest myths surrounding the events).

This book will break your heart. But it's worth reading, particularly as school shootings continue (such as VA Tech), and myths from Columbine are still believed (which can hurt progress in combating the true nature of such events).

3.

The Hunger Games


Yes, yes, everyone's read or at least heard of The Hunger Games by now. It's good. Really, really, really good. My longer review is here. You should go buy this, and be sure to pick up Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) too because I know I went nuts just waiting to get my hands on it when I was finished with The Hunger Games. And just as a note, the audiobook is fantastic; I bought the hardback of the second book, and the whole time I read it, I was hearing the audiobook's reader in my head. Read it. Read them both. If you liked Ender's Game, I can pretty much promise you you won't put this down.

2.

Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian


If you're like me and love libraries and want to go to grad school to become a librarian, you'll love this book. If you aren't one of us quirky folks though, you may be less interested by the tales of snarky coworkers who climb the ladder, remodeling woes, story hour horrors and delights, improper internet usage by patrons, the homeless guy who accuses Douglas of stealing his bags of stuff, the teenagers who threaten to kill him when he says they can't use the computers because they've hacked the system...and of course how the nextdoor firefighters are kind of like the jocks in the world of public servants. Sounds exciting, I know, but it's such a delightful, quirky read! Douglas recounts tales of being drawn to a profession he didn't know he'd ever enjoy.

1.

Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran


This book by Fatemeh Keshavarz gave me a very different view of the literary world than Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
did when I read that in 2008. While RLIT narrows in on censorship, JAS broadens the focus, and criticizes (systematically and carefully) some of the tactics used in RLIT, such as omitting any mention of women writers who have for years been writing and publishing fantastic works in their own countries -- a fact omitted in RLIT so cleanly that as JAS author Keshavarz points out, one would never guess that authors such as Shahrnush Parsipur (author of Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran, a magical realism tale of several Iranian women who go on journeys to a mythical garden where they meet) and famous poet Forough Farrokhzad exist. It does a great disservice to all writers in Iran, and a disservice to those who are trying to learn about Iran in general to omit such movements for the sake of what Keshavarz calls "New Orientalism" -- the practice of relying more on stereotypes and dumbing down for audiences unfamiliar with a culture, in this case Iran. It was an eye-opening read, and prompted me to purchase Parsipur's book linked above, and gave me a picture taken with a wider lens of the literary culture going on in Iran. I'd recommend reading Reading Lolita in Tehran along with this to get some of the arguments posed by Keshavarz in Jasmine and Stars, but even if you don't and simply read JAS alone, it's still worth reading, and gives the reader a broader picture than RLIT did for me.


And now I will stop hogging your flists with this stuff, hokays?