When I agreed to answer it, the question seemed simple enough: What were the two best books of the year?
Well, it turns out that the answer is not that easy. My immediate response is: Adam Cohen’s “Nothing to Fear,” a masterful evocation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first 100 days, and Maureen McLane’s “Same Life,” a dazzling poetry collection (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). The writers are brilliant, and both books won national critical praise. They also happen to be friends I have known for a long time, which is to say that if they wrote the ingredient labels on a cereal box, I would read them. The only honest answer would be those two.
Moving on, a convenient answer would be two books championed by the Tribune: Our Heartland winners Jayne Anne Phillips’ Korean War-era “Lark & Termite” and Nick Reding’s “Methland” about the drug’s toll in the Midwest. I happen to love both, but when I have my official hat on, I would select those.
If I asked 50 smart readers, I would get 100 perfectly defensible answers. Between my years spent judging books with the National Book Critics Circle and countless other groups, I’ve seen that while it is possible to reach consensus on books, it is remarkable to note how little the initial overlap may be. We all operate out of our own biases and literary values. There are always those who advocate for the doggedly researched books such as “Louis D. Brandeis: A Life” by Melvin I. Urovsky. There are those who admire the sly ambition of a novel such as Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice.” And there will be someone who gravitates to the supple prose and contrarian analysis of Rebecca Solnit’s “A Paradise Built in Hell.” And then, but not among my book critic friends, there will be those who really believe that “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith really is the best book of the year.
So, selection of a book is entirely personal and arbitrary. The prospect also makes me feel a bit mean when I think of all the books that need support, great books that have yet to find an audience because luck didn’t go their way. It also feels cruel, given the state of the book business, to celebrate two books when there are so many we never see. (I should know — more than 200 books a day come to the Tribune, each beseeching me for attention.) The Chicago area has lost bookstores, and some libraries have closed. Bookselling and publishing are so beleaguered that mega-best-sellers by Sarah Palin, Ted Kennedy, Dan Brown and all those vampire books put together can’t turn things around.
As hard as it may be for me to select a book, I don’t want to discourage anyone from buying a book. Let me remind you that it is a lot easier to give a book to Uncle Harry than call your mother for his shirt size. But how to decide?
With all those table displays and signs beckoning you to buy a book from a store’s front table, it seems easy to dash into a store, grab a discounted best-seller, get it wrapped and run. Stop yourself. Remember how annoying it was when the teacher reflexively called on the loudest person in the room, instead of waiting a moment to see what anyone else had to say?
But in this noisy world where best-sellers jostle for more attention, we need to think about the person upon whom you are bestowing the book. There is an intense intimacy between a book and its reader, and the role of matchmaker cannot be understated.
So, in that spirit, some characters — based mostly on requests from friends — and the books I recommended.
Grandmother, age 90: Lydia Davis’ “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis” is short fiction, to be read in bursts of energy.
Graphic designer, brother-in-law, 45: “Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World” by Warren Berger, features Bruce Mau’s ideas and explores design’s profound, often hidden, influence.
Neighbor, retired doctor, 70ish: Michael Specter’s “Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet and Threatens Our Lives” explores what it means to doubt science.
Friend, 35, deciding her future: “Life List: A Woman’s Quest for the World’s Most Amazing Birds,” the adventures of a housewife and her obsessions, by Olivia Gentile.
Social worker, 30: Tracy Kidder’s “Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgetting,” an inspiring story of an immigrant from Burundi and his will to survive.
College senior, 20: “Trotsky: A Graphic Biography” by Rick Geary, a dramatic tale, whether you detest or adore the comrade.
Bachelor uncle, 68: Greg Grandin’s “Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City,” about Henry Ford’s attempts to conquer the Amazon.
Nephew, 10: “Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” by Philip Hoose, introduces us to a little-known civil rights hero who preceded Rosa Parks.
Niece, 16: Harriet Reisen’s “Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women” punctures the myths of the Alcott family, rendering Louisa May with nuance.
Cousin’s boyfriend, environmentalist, 38: Douglas Brinkley’s “The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America,” about Teddy Roosevelt as a great conservationist.
So, matchmaking a reader with a book, that I can do. If you would care for a personal book selection, please contact me at [email protected]. And in the holiday spirit, when a book touches you deeply, please rush to share it with someone else.
More Top Picks Best Color Laser Printers
— Elizabeth Taylor, TRIBUNE LITERARY EDITOR
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More of our favorites
“Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives” (Pantheon) by David Eagleman. A bundle of brief, brilliant, “what-if?” scenarios by a witty neuroscientist. You’ll be calling friends to read aloud these lovely, challenging meditations on what might be next.
“Girl Trouble” (Harper Perennial) by Holly Goddard Jones. Gritty, eloquent dispatches from the heartland. These short stories are about ordinary people facing familiar problems, but Jones’ hauntingly accomplished language lifts the mundane to the level of profound tragedy.
— Julia Keller TRIBUNE CRITIC
“Let The Great World Spin” (Random House) by Collum McCann. A weighty and gorgeous novel about a cross section of 10 ordinary people in New York City in the summer of 1974, all beautifully threaded around the real-life efforts of high-wire master Philippe Petit, who walked between the towers of the World Trade Center that summer.
“Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall” (Knopf) by Kazuo Ishiguro. A beautiful collection of five short stories about tiny yet breathtaking life moments, each carrying the themes of nightfall and music.
— Amy Guth TRIBUNE REPORTER
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See more of our favorite books of 2009 at chicagotribune.com/printersrow.
Next week: Favorite Chicago books of 2009. Submit your favorite to [email protected].