Instead of a straight-up best-of list, a slightly more eclectic look back at what I read in 2009. Best large Russian book, Tolstoy’s big one; best small Russian book (and most scurrilous of any nationality) Moscow to the End of the Line by Venedikt Erofeev. Best fantasy, parts two through four of the Princess of Roumania series. Most overrated, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Best SF, Brasyl by Ian McDonald. Best non-fiction, The Discovery of France by Graham Robb. Most off-putting but finished anyway, Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming. Best surprises, The Final Reflection by John M. Ford (along with his How Much for Just the Planet, the first two Star Trek novels I’ve read in a quarter century) and Bleachers by John Grisham. Best look behind the scenes of history (also best dissection of a fellow national leader), To the Castle and Back by Vaclav Havel.
Complete list (in order read) is below the fold. Links are to previous writing about the book or author on AFOE. See also 2006 and 2007.
Now and Forever – Ray Bradbury
Georgisches Reisetagebuch – Jonathan Littell
The Tourmaline – Paul Park
Bleachers – John Grisham
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
The Emperor of Gondwanaland – Paul di Filippo
In Europe – Geert Mak
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
The Spirit Wrestlers – Philip Marsden
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The White Tyger – Paul Park
The Tin Roof Blowdown – James Lee Burke
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
To the Castle and Back – Vaclav Havel
The Night Watch – Sergei Lukyanenko
The Merchants’ War – Charles Stross
The Engines of God – Jack McDevitt
White Eagle Red Star – Norman Davies
Gold and Iron – Fritz Stern
Deepsix – Jack McDevitt
Visionary in Residence – Bruce Sterling
Omega – Jack McDevitt
München Leuchtete – Thomas Mann
Stalin’s Children – Owen Matthews
King Lear – William Shakespeare
Georgia: In the Mountains of Poetry – Peter Nasmyth
Absurdistan – Gary Shteyngart
The Scar – China Miéville
How Much for Just the Planet – John M. Ford
Macbeth – William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
The Final Reflection – John M. Ford
The Revolution Business – Charles Stross
Norse Code – Greg van Eekhart
The Discovery of France – Graham Robb
Henry V – William Shakespeare
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Travels with Herodotus – Ryszard Kapuscinski
Victory of Eagles – Naomi Novik
Brasyl – Ian McDonald
Live and Let Die – Ian Fleming
The Hidden World – Paul Park
Reappraisals – Tony Judt
Moscow to the End of the Line – Venedikt Erofeev
2008, since I didn’t put up a list at the beginning of 2009
Dreams From My Father – Barack Obama (book of the year for me)
Ich dachte an die goldenen Zeiten – Bohumil Hrabal
The Princess Bride – William Goldman
Halting State – Charles Stross
Chindi – Jack McDevitt
Der Virtuose – Margriet de Moor
Romeo and Juliet – William Shakespeare
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama
Iron Kingdom – Christopher Clarke
The Jennifer Morgue – Charles Stross
The Ghost of Freedom – Charles King
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Clan Corporate – Charles Stross
Ali and Nino – Kurban Said
Playing for Pizza – John Grisham
The Children of Húrin – J.R.R. Tolkien
Black Garden – Thomas de Waal
Azerbaijan Diary – Thomas Goltz
Georgia Diary – Thomas Goltz
Nixonland – Rick Perlstein
The View from Stalin’s Head – Aaron Hamburger
The Turkish Gambit – Boris Akunin
Bread and Ashes – Tony Anderson
Shakespeare – Bill Bryson
New Europe – Michael Palin
The Tempest – William Shakespeare
The Girl from the Golden Horn – Kurban Said
City on Fire – Bill Munitaglio
The Lies of Locke Lamorra – Scott Lynch
The Android’s Dream – John Scalzi
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2010/01/24/taking-stock-of-2009-books/
Suetonius writes more like a gossip columnist than a historian. In this brief work we learn that Augustus was a compulsive gambler, Tiberius was a pervert, Nero was in love with his mother, Galba was a passive homosexual, and most of the emperors liked boys as well as women. From the introduction we learn that Suetonius also wrote a book called *Lives of the Famous Whores*; this work has not survived, but given the scandalous nature of these biographies it seems entirely plausible that he wrote it. Suetonius perfunctorily includes the facts that are of political interest in the lives of the Caesars, but it is clear that his real interest is in their sordid personal lives. The moral of these unedifying stories seems to be that if you’re an emperor you can get away with just about anything.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/12/17/the-twelve-caesars-by-suetonius/
This novel was BRILLIANT. I laughed out loud all the way through it. Celine is part Vonnegut and part Bukowski, a French genius of both tragedy and comedy.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/11/22/journey-to-the-end-of-the-night-by-louis-ferdinand-celine/
File under “Who knew?” The Guardian reports that Rory Stewart has been selected as a candidate for the UK’s parliament from a safe (10,000 majority) Conservative seat. In one of those moves that makes me think that parliamentary systems are odd sometimes, one of his first actions will be to move so that he actually lives in the district he will represent. “I will be straight on to the estate agent in the morning,” the Guardian quotes him as saying. “I’m very much looking forward to living in the constituency and getting to know everybody.”
(Stewart’s been a soldier, a diplomat, a wanderer, a provincial governor in Iraq, a professor at Harvard and is currently a director of a significant charity helping part of Afghanistan, yet the Guardian web edition’s headline writer chooses to identify him as “Former royal tutor Rory Stewart.” What does that say about Britain? Or the Guardian? Or perhaps the Guardian’s perceptions of its audience?)
I would not have pegged the author of The Places In Between as a Tory, though on closer consideration I think he’s too much of a loose cannon an independent thinker to be much of a back-bencher at all. Anyone who drops everything to walk across Asia and spends the winter of 2001 walking across central Afghanistan is not likely to be fazed by a party whip. I haven’t yet read The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, which probably gives a better sense of how he’ll do in constituent service. Maybe he’ll turn out splendidly. Still, he’s had a decade of changing jobs every year or two, is he likely to settle down to work in Westminster? (On the other hand, I asked the same question about Bobby Jindal, with whom I have a passing acquaintance, and he’s still on the job.)
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/27/rory-the-tory/
I admit that I am one of those spoiled, privileged, affluent Western punks who idolize and romanticize Che Guevara. I admire his courage, his charisma, his dedication, and his manhood. That said, I am not blind to his less sanguine attributes and the wrongheadedness of his ideology, which this book expresses in great detail. He agrees with Mao that guerilla insurgents fighting in rural territory must have the support of the peasantry to succeed. This is where he reveals his nasty side. Peasants who cooperate, he says, must be supported and defended, while peasants who do not cooperate…well, if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs. Further on he discusses collecting “taxes” from the peasantry to support the insurgency. Included at the end is his chilling manifesto against United States “imperialism,” in which he states that revolutionaries all around the world should make up for their inferior weaponry with the intensity of their hatred. A hero? Not a saint.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/22/guerilla-warfare-by-che-guevara/
I read this a while back, but reading it again was an entirely new experience. The book purports to deal with the issue of why God is often so disappointing to us, but the biblical exposition actually deals more with why we are so disappointing to God. This book actually helped me to see myself and the world from God’s perspective, and for that I owe the author a debt of thanks.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/10/20/disappointment-with-god-by-philip-yancey/
The premise of this story is simple and intriguing: what would a man do if no one could see him doing it? Wells’ answer is rather disturbing. For a man of science, Wells seems to have had a rather pessimistic view of the consequences of scientific progress, but this story is told with Wells’ usual imagination and plain directness.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/09/16/the-invisible-man-by-h-g-wells/
Like most works of feminist literature–and I have read quite a few–I can find little to argue with in this book. Brownmiller’s arguments make sense to me…but that is because I am a man, and as a man I can readily agree that functionality is superior to ornamentality, that reason is superior to emotion, that intelligence is superior to beauty, that strength is superior to weakness. She’s preaching to the choir. The only criticism I have to make is that feminists like Brownmiller, who clearly resent the feminine roles they feel have been forced on women, are not, from what I can see, representative of the vast majority of women I seen in the world around me. Most women I am in contact with are not content to be second-class citizens, but at the same time they seem thoroughly comfortable in their own skins and comfortable with being feminine. For good or for ill, femininity shows no sign of disappearing.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/09/12/femininity-by-susan-brownmiller/
This is Keegan’s best work. In most of his works he analyzes the science of warfare; in this book he also analyzes the psychology and culture of warfare. He takes exception from the beginning with Clausewitz’s dictum that war is politics by other means, and shows with ample evidence from history that war often is destructive of the political orders that it is supposed to preserve. The scope of his survey of warfare is impressive, ranging from prehistoric primitive warfare to the nuclear age. He is clearly an admirer of the warrior class and the warrior ethic, but he is no idealist or romantic when it comes to war, and he ends the book with the hope that man’s warmaking days will soon be over. Alas, I do not share his optimism, but I do share his love of good historical writing, of which this book is a shining example.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/08/25/a-history-of-warfare-by-john-keegan-2/
This book is a fascinating study of emerging infectious diseases throughout the world. Like most such books, it is a bit alarmist in tone, and it is full of attacks on (mostly Republican) politicians for not taking effective policy measures to prevent and combat new epidemics. Apart from its somewhat shrill alarm-sounding, however, it provides an intriguing history of most of the investigative research done on infectious diseases in the last century, much of which was carried out by intrepid and adventurous field researchers in far-off countries. A highly engaging and deliberately unsettling work by a thorough and meticulous author.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2009/08/22/the-coming-plague-by-laurie-garrett/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire