Books I Enjoyed in 2018

Year's end is always a prod to take stock on what you did and didn't do. In this case, I'm looking back to see what I read. I read at night, on airplanes, on Saturdays, and because of this in-between style of reading the books tend to blend. If you asked, I might draw a blank.

So with this focal point, I'll give, in no particular order, a brief list and summaries of books I enjoyed this year. And I remember enjoying them!


A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles. Watch for the sly wit in the beginning; this book cracked me up right away, and I knew I was in for an entertaining ride. Not a fast ride, exactly; it's a long novel, but definitely entertaining. Imagine being imprisoned in the finest hotel you can think of, complete with restaurant and shops. It gives an interesting picture of an era in Russia, the descriptions or clothes and food and people and scenes are vivid, the interactions delightful. I was engaged from the beginning, but when he meets the little girl who wants to be a princess, the book perks up even more.

Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles. I enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow so much I wanted to keep reading, and since I have a crush on New York City, I knew this book would be for me. Set in Manhattan in the 1930s, and full of smoke, boardinghouses, champagne, style, and a social scene, it's another story that transports us to another time as we follow a young woman navigating from poor to rich. This was Towles's first novel.

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker. A slim, poetic book of nonfictional prose in diary form documenting the author as he obsessively tracks the life cycle and habits of the Peregrine Falcons near him in England in the early 1960s. He rides his bicycle for miles. He hikes. He waits. He watches carefully. So deeply does he go that the reader learns as s/he waits and watches, too. The beautiful language makes this book like drinking a thick hot chocolate or looking at a luscious painting. The narrator makes it clear that he wants to be the falcon, not own it. A desire for a kind of freedom. 

Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here by Joseph Heller. My cousin tipped me off to this memoir by the author of Catch-22. Why? Because her father, my uncle (and cousin, we have a complex family), is mentioned in it, as are his parents' (my cousins, also) drugstore, which I learned had a lending library as well. All of this on Coney Island in the 1920s and 1930s and '40s, where they grew up. Because of the time period, the book dovetailed nicely with The Rules of Civility, and gave me an actual picture of New York from someone who grew up there. It isn't usual to find a published book that gives you a clear picture of your relative's upbringing. Anyway, the memoir moves seamlessly from subject to subject, looking at school here, or food there, swimming here, social clubs there, working as a telegram courier, and what it meant to be Jewish and poor and living in Coney Island year round. And also what life was like for Heller's single mother, raising three children by herself after her husband died.

The Polish Boxer by Eduardo Halfon, translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn, Ollie Brock, Lisa Dillman, Thomas Burnstead, and Anne McLean. There was an article in The New York Review of Books, "What Can't Be Forgotten" by Francine Prose, that reviewed all three novels by Eduardo Halfon, a writer I had not heard of. The Polish Boxer is the first, and until I was a few chapters in, it seemed like linked short stories, particularly since each is titled. We learn about the protagonist, his life as a professor, the life of his students, and about his relationships. He then gets a series of postcards from a half-Serbian/half-gypsy musician he's just met and goes on a quest to find him. The translators collaborated to make the prose in English seamless and beautiful and haunting. The protagonist, half-Polish/half-Guatamalan, may be searching for himself as well. A gently powerful book. I'm looking forward to reading the next two: Monastery, and Mourning.

Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret as told to Georges Belmont. Although she is described as his housekeeper, Céleste Albaret was really his caregiver and confidante in the last nine years of his life. She had kept a respectful silence about Proust's day-to-day life until she became elderly and decided it was time to set the record straight and tell the world who he really was. It is a gentle, intimate book, published in 1972, translated from the French by Barbara Bray. Even though I knew the ending, when Proust died, I cried. And this was my third time reading it. The jacket flap begins with a quote from Proust: "No one on earth knows me better than you do. You know all about me. I tell you everything."

Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith. I'm only 66 pages in, so far, but as someone who loves libraries, reading, language and the meanings and sounds of words, this is fun for me. Did I mention humor? Smith likes to twist up the language for humorous purposes and to mix fantasy and reality. An example in the story, "The Beholder" in which the protagonist seems to be growing a wooden lump with thorns in the middle of her chest and goes to get an opinion about it: "I'm going to refer you to several consultants at the following clinics: Oncology Ontology Dermatology Neurology Urology Etymology Impology Expology Infomology Mentholology Ornithology and Apology, did you get all that?" (I don't know how many of those are made up, although I'm pretty sure "Mentholology" is, but auto-correct didn't try to change any.)

There There: A novel by Tommy Orange. In this novel, interlinked short stories with several characters come together to form an overall arc. Orange shows the world as it is for native people living in urban environments, a view rarely shown to or seen by mainstream culture. It's a compelling book about looking for oneself and where one belongs, one's family, and what makes it hard to fit anywhere. While it is a specific flavor, it has general appeal. My heart went out to these characters.

Passwords Primeval: 20 American Poets in their Own Words, interviews by Tony Leuzzi. Talk about process! This book is packed with all the things you didn't learn in that MFA writing program in graduate school, but in a personal and fascinating way. And one of those interviewed was a professor I had, but he never told us these things! Anyone who writes or wants to write should read these interviews with contemporary poets. It's a culturally diverse group of poets, but it is interesting how many of the same poets they cite as inspiration, such as Whitman. From reading about the poets, I went back to the library to check out books by the ones that interested me the most.

In the section, "A Speech at Póvoa" in The Polish Boxer, Halfon writes that the subject of a conference is "Literature Tears Through Reality." After looking through this book list, it occurs to me that even if the stories are imagined or embellished, they can still feel real. That's not a new thought. Each writer invents a world, and if they're good, the reader can walk around on solid floorboards and not fall through.

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