I really like Cornflower's comparison of favorite reads to chocolates in a chocolate box. How do you "compare the light and fluffy with the dark and bitter, the soft buttercream with the rich ganache?" Being a chocolate connoisseur, I can appreciate the distinctions between a light fluffy buttercream and a rich, dark truffle. Sometimes only a chocolate filled with caramel and dipped in pecans will do. The thing is, books meet different needs and they may be light and fluffy or they may be challenging and dense. The prose may be elegant and uplifting or the plot may grab me and push me to read at breakneck speed, but I need and appreciate them equally for what they can give me despite their differences.
So with that in mind I looked over my list of reads this past year and tried to decide which were particularly satisfying to me. I could easily have made my list twice as long, but the idea is to pick the best right? That's not to say that I didn't greatly enjoy many other books I read. As a matter of fact I think I take some authors for granted as they continually put out marvelous books (I'm mostly thinking mysteries here). So without further ado, here are some of my favorites from 2008 (in no particular order):
Sue Gee's Mysteries of Glass - I loved this book. It's a gorgeous story set in the English countryside during Victoria's reign. A curate on his first assignment falls hopelessly in love with the vicar's lovely young wife. It's a beautiful book both in the story it tells and the evocation of time and place. The prose is perfect as Gee tells the story of the inner lives of the characters enmeshed in a web of deceit. More...
Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves - This was a surprisingly good book. Actually it was a great read for me. It was surprising only that I enjoyed the setting as much as I did, though I had heard many good things about the writing. Penney won the Costa Award for it in 2006. For some reason the frigid Canadian wilderness in the 1800s didn't appeal to me at the time, but I knew I wanted something good to read, so I took a chance. It was a completely absorbing read and I loved how she constructed the plot using both first and third person narrators and multiple perspectives. It sounds a bit complicated and it was, but it worked very effectively for me! Isn't she writing more? I would happily follow her back into the Canadian wilderness! More...
Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca - Rebecca was a reread and one that I had enjoyed the first time round at that. I'm still counting it as a favorite as I think I appreciated (and got it) far more this time than at the first go (which was many years ago). It's a classic story of gothic horror, though the horror is psychological. I think this is du Maurier's masterpiece as she follows the young narrator's struggle with a dead nemesis, Rebecca. This is just such a perfect novel that works on so many levels. More...
Richmal Crompton's Family Roundabout - Richmal Crompton is one of my great finds this year (there are several on my list). Persephone Books has brought her back out of obscurity, and though many people had recommended this book to me, I was slow to pick it up. Once again I thought I would find a 'family story' not terribly exciting--that I wouldn't be able to relate to it not having children of my own. However, I can't say enough good things about it. It's well written, and while the story is quiet and introspective I never found it boring. The opposite is true. From the very first pages I fell into the rhythms of the lives of the two families portrayed and was sorry to see the story come to an end. I only wish more of her books were in print. More...
Mollie Panter-Downes' One Fine Day - This is a beautifully descriptive story told over the course of 'one fine day' about an ordinary Midlands family. I could easily read and reread some of the passages Panter-Downes wrote in this book. It's set in post-WWII England looking forwards but still feeling the effects of the past. She captures perfectly the lives of one family as Britain was changed irrevocably after the War. Panter-Downes is another of my great finds. I read one of her earlier (now out of print) novels this year as well, which was very good but not quite up to the same standard as One Fine Day. More...
Tobias Wolff's Old School - This book was a pleasure to read for a variety of reasons. How could any reader not appreciate a story about one writer's beginnings? Although fiction, this was also autobiographical, so there was a feeling of genuineness to the story. And Wolff writes with crisp, clear, elegant prose that made it a delight to read and hear the sentences in my head. Both this book and the Sue Gee novel were unplanned reads, each book a choice for Cornflower's reading group, which just goes to show you sometimes the best reads are the ones that happen serendipitously. I wrote about it here and here.
Virginia Nicholson's Singled Out - I read a pathetically small number of nonfiction this year. On the up side, every NF read was a really good one and I would mention them all here, but somehow that seems to defeat the purpose of this list. Singled Out stands out as an especially good book. It is not dry history, but Nicholson writes in an interesting and enlightening fashion about a period I've been very interested in. The book is very anecdotal with lots of personal history and it has one of the best bibliographies I've come across in a long time. I wrote about it here and here.
Wilkie Collins' Armadale- I'm pretty much a sucker for anything by Wilkie Collins, though I have to say Armadale is my favorite of his books that I've read thus far. I read most of the book in 2007 but didn't finish until the early months of this year, but I'm still counting it here. It's a novel full of confused identities, murder, revenge, illicit love--you know, everything necessary in a good Victorian tale (as only Wilkie Collins can write it). I wrote about it here and here.
Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel - Is it possible to dislike a main character (at times intensely) yet still love the story she tells? Hagar Shipley is one of the meaner old women I've encountered in fiction, yet it was hard at times not to feel sympathetic to her no matter that she often made life even more difficult than it needed to be. It's the sign of a truly masterful author who can pull that off. More...
Jo Nesbo's The Redbreast - Ah, Harry Hole. I like Harry. A lot. Yes, right here, another great find. Scandinavian crime writers seem to pop off excellent crime fiction effortlessly. The Redbreast is a complex, fast paced, engrossing story set in Norway that flips back and forth in time. I love a good, gritty crime novel now and then and Jo Nesbo's book fit the bill perfectly. More...
It's hard to keep the list to a simple ten, so I have two honorable mentions. I love historical fiction, so I have to add Catherine Delors' Mistress of the Revolution to the list. I sometimes think that historical fiction gets a bad rap--like it's all just fluffy romance set in an earlier era with a few historical details thrown in for good measure. You'll change your mind if you read Mistress of the Revolution--it's intelligent, literate (and very accurate) fiction. Delors is French and knows well the subject about which she writes. Check out her blog, Versailles and More, for a taste of French culture and history. I wrote about Mistress here.
Linda Gillard is a contemporary author who deserves to be better known. Actually I think she's fairly well known in the blogging community, but her work should be more widely read and talked about. I've greatly enjoyed two of her novels, most recently Star Gazing. Linda's heroines are always strong characters, unique but not always in the way you expect them to be. I hesitate to call her books romances, though I think (unfortunately) that's how they're classified. The situations and characters are never typical or conventional. There's always more at work in her stories than what you see on the surface, and the resolution to the story is not necessarily an easy one. She writes with clear prose and her settings are magical. I wrote about it here.
So, there you have it. A dozen good books I can heartily recommend to you!