Merry Christmas!

Hope you're having a lovely day, wherever you are.  We're here:

Edmonds, Washington (waiting for the ferry to Kingston).

Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, etc.

Cheers!

Best Books of 2013*

* meaning, best books that I actually read in 2013.

Funny, funny, I am writing this post while I am *supposed* to be grading final papers.  Yup.  Which is *exactly* the situation that led to my previous best books post (of 2011) right here.

I just finished -- just this morning in fact, while I should have been grading -- Joyce Carol Oates' The Accursed.



Loved it!  It's a big huge old-fashioned Gothic novel/vampire story, set in Princeton with this terrific "historian" narrator who is an interesting figure in his own right and is assembling a history of a purported real Curse in Princeton surrounding its most prominent families.  Characters include Jack London, Woodrow Wilson, and Upton Sinclair.  Note to my close personal friend, JCO (see here for proof): cut the Upton Sinclair parts.  They are definitely the weak link.  But otherwise, seriously, terrific.  Unexpected stuff cropping up, all kinds of curious historical-ish footnotes, and fun with naughty vamps.

Next up, following up on the gothic and ghostly, Vera Brosgol: Anya's Ghost

I stumbled onto this book while Jake and I were shopping at Million Year Picnic, the best comics store in Cambridge.   It grabbed my attention, reminding me of David B's work (see the terrific Epileptic, which I have taught before) and also Marjane Satrapi (see Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, which was a Common Text for all our First Year students a few years back).  Anya's story surprised me, with a ghost that at first appears knowable and benign, but turns out to be more menacing.  It's a story about a teenage daughter of Russian immigrants, and is filled with all those 1.5-gen immigrant issues.  The book came out through First Second Press (I see now, upon checking, back in 2011), one of my favorite publishers of beautiful graphic work.  Lovely and charming in images and story.  And also creepy.

Continuing with the theme of the creepy and the curious, I give you Michelle Tea: Mermaid in Chelsea Creek


I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this one.  It actually showed up at the house due to our subscription to McMullens, which is McSweeney's publication line for children's books.  This was the first of their Young Adult offerings, and it's terrific.  There are serious curiosities, a couple of girls trying to figure out the world, and pigeons.  Someone compared the strange world of Chelsea (an actual town here in Massachusetts) to Narnia, and I thought that was apt; I felt the same kind of curiosity and fascination with Tea's Chelsea as I remember having with Lewis's Narnia when I was a kid. I don't want to spoil one moment of the delightful surprises here, so I won't say more, except for this: expect the unexpected.  Also, this is book one of a trilogy.  I had *no idea* that was the case when I started this, and I was somewhat furious when I realized, about 10 pages from the end "whaaa?  There is no way she's gonna resolve all this....ah! she's NOT going to resolve all this!"  I hate when this happens.  So if you start this, know that it's a trilogy and that the next installment won't be out until sometime in 2014.  I cannot wait.

And speaking of trilogies that have left me hanging for the next installment, I enjoyed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.



I picked this up on my visit to Powells in Portland last summer, as it was on someone's favorites list. One look at that creepy cover and it ought to be obvious to you why I went for it.  But it's more than the cover -- the whole book is filled with weird old black and white photos, some found, some created, that illustrate and sometimes move the story along.  It's another fantasy world here, this one with a troupe of curious oddball children and more than a few superpowers involved.  I liked it a lot, but once again, fell into the trap of book-that's-first-in-a-trilogy-but-I-didn't-know-when-I-started-it.  So again, we wait, this time til January 2014 to find out more.

 Speaking of creepy schools, and revisiting the year in comics reading, my new favorite is Morning Glories (Nick Spenser and Joe Eisma):
 
It's set in a high school for precocious young high-schoolers, but it's not at all what it seems.  If you watched the first season of Heroes (I know, seems like forever ago, but it was only 2006) and liked following Claire's exploits as she discovered that she wasn't just your normal high school cheerleader, you might like this, too.  The first book knocked my socks off.  And then it all just kept getting more complicated.  I have to say, I am not entirely convinced that they're going to be able to resolve all the stuff they've put in motion, but I'm very intrigued to see what happens next.  I just finished Volume 5 (I think 6 will be out soon).  Jake found this for me -- maybe even for Christmas last year? -- at the Harvard Book store, I believe, where it was a staff pick.  Good stuff if you're into off-kilter superhero/high school characters in comic books.

Finally (for tonight at least), I would be remiss if I didn't mention Davy Rothbarth's My Heart is an Idiot:

 
 We've been big fans of Davy since we saw/heard him at a This American Life event way back in 2003-ish (I think that's when).  We love his magazine, Found, which you will find in our bathroom (or maybe we gave you a copy of it?).  Davy's hilarious and writes terrific essays about the truly bizarre ways he's gotten himself into and out of trouble.  This is a collection of his essays.  I can't recommend all of them, but there are some great standouts, and if you like the personal essay form, and like to hear a voice telling you outright crazy thing that really happened, Davy's the way to go.  My favorite is his essay about his Mom, who is deaf, and how he and his brother dealt with that when they were kids.  And hilarity ensues.  Actually, if you just want to read that chapter, you can read it here.  Warning: you will laugh and cry.

But finally, my absolute favorite of the year:  Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

You may recall I previously reviewed Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which I absolutely loved.  Vampires is even better.  The title story is great and has a fabulous twist on vampire lore (which I will not reveal, but know that I love it).  But for me, the real standout -- in fact, as far as I'm concerned, a contender for my favorite short story *EVER* -- is "Reeling for the Empire," in which girls are taken from their homes to work in silk mills, and where, in fact, they become silk worms.  I know Alice Munro is all the talk of the short-story lovers, and I will give her her due, but Karen Russell? She is the next great awesome tremendous short story writer.  She's a genius (and I'm not the only one saying that -- she just got a MacArthur "genius grant."  READ THIS BOOK.

Oh wait, bonus round (because I clearly *really* don't want to grade): I have to give a shout-out to my roots: Gothic novels of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries.  C'mon, they're good for you.  And so trashy! This summer, I read Eliza Fenwick's Secresy, or, the Ruin on the Rock, published in 1795, and it was great.  Austen-crazed friends, why not expand your eighteenth-century novel canon and check this one out?  Buy it directly from Broadview Press, the terrific academic publisher that put it out (now in its second edition) because Amazon has been total jerks to them (and other small publishers).  It's wonderful and naughty and features letters to and from various characters and they get up to all sorts of surprising (sometimes naughty) things.  Good stuff.

There you go.  Happy reading.  I now have to go do some unhappy reading in the form of student papers.  Blurgh.