* Also, a disclaimer: I'm calling this "Best Books of 2011," but don't be fooled; few of these books were *published* in 2011. The year designation simply indicates that I finally got around to reading them. Also, the only reviews you're going to read are good reviews. For the most part, I don't even finish books I don't like. Let that be a warning to you.
Also, a hazard of my job is that there's not a lot of "fun reading" in my life. Almost any reading I do is from the pile of books I want and/or should read because they're related to something I teach. That said, a lot of the books I read for teaching and research really are fun. Some are not. But the thing is, even when I'm reading the fun ones, I'm thinking about work. This ends up with me doing a lot less actual fun reading, and also in me finding a lot of my "fun" reading is also work reading. Did that make any sense? I imagine you'll notice some tendencies in the texts below, given that you may know the classes I teach.
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
Are you ashamed of reading Twilight? You should be. Would you like to read about vampires and feel less dirty? Then read A Discovery of Witches. It's by an actual historian and is about a historian who goes digging around in the archives and discovers a long-lost manuscript. (Yes, it has shades of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian
, but it's different, I swear. Oh, and Kostova's book is also awesome.) So, the historian is a witch. From Salem. Also, there are vampires. And demons. And the whole thing is awesome. I'm only about a third of the way through (it's LONG!) but I am singing its praises now, already. If you have any interest whatsoever in vampires and vampire lit, you will find this very pleasing. One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest
Paul Guest is a poet; I teach some of his poems in my Disability in Literature course. I picked this up -- it's a memoir-- thinking that I might use it in my course, so it was in the pile of "books to read for class." One evening, I picked it up just to check it out, and I seriously could not put it down. It's really terrific. And not just for my class (though it may show up on a future syllabus). Guest had a freak accident when he was 12: he was thrown from a bike he was riding, and ended up paralyzed from the neck down. Given the number of bicycles in our basement, and the sheer number of bike miles completed by our household, this is a shiver-inducing piece of information. Guest's memoir goes back to that day that changed his life, and explores all that has happened since that day. This could be morose, it could be depressing, and it could be awful. But he writes beautifully, with great detail and clarity. I was blown away. It's a great, compelling, don't-close-it-til-you're-done read.
The Dewbreaker by Edwidge Danticat
This one is not for any of my classes. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I picked it up. I know nothing about the subject matter or setting (Haiti in the 1960s), and I think this was actually a freebie -- a book a publisher sent me as a thank-you for doing a survey or something of that sort. I'm not sure why I picked it up, but I couldn't put it down. The story just keeps going, with different characters taking pieces of it, telling a chapter, then passing it on. It moves from Haiti to NYC, it has characters of all different sorts. I'm not going to give away the details, because I knew nothing about it before I started, and I think that's a totally fine way to go into it. But it's really great. You won't be disappointed.
That's all for now. I'm calling it a day and heading home with the stack of papers. I really must grade.
MUST GRADE.
more later, no doubt.
Oh, since I now live with one of your ilk, I must insist that you GRADE. But thanks for the recommendations. :)
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