Favorite Reads of 2011

There are 12 days left until the first day of 2012 and while there's a possibility of squeezing a last book or two into 2011, I've started thinking about my favorite reads of 2011.

My 2011 Top 5 Adult Books:

1. Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy- Was it just yesterday that I was talking about coming late to the game on cultural happenings? I believe so. I've decided that this blog won't center around the latest and greatest necessarily. There are so many moving books out there that I am a firm believer in reading what strikes you when it strikes you and not sticking to the NY Times bestseller list, the 100 most influential books of all times, or any other list to find your next read. That being said, Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline published in 1980 was my favorite read of 2011. Having grown up in the south and having visited Charleston twice, I appreciated the interplay of class and social mores in this novel. Will McLean, the narrator and protagonist relays the story of his years at the Citadel and the brotherhood that develops between him and his 3 roommates. The hazing ritual depictions in this book are disturbing, but the plot and prose were so compelling I could hardly put the book down until I was finished.

2. Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy by Carlos Eire  Eire picks up his story in this book where he leaves off in Waiting for Snow in Havana, his 2003 National Book Award Winning memoir. As a Cuban boy, Eire was put on a plane with his brother to the States in Operation Pedro Pan, shortly before the Cuban revolution. He never saw his father again and was only reunited with his mother years later. Eire writes about his struggle to find his way in the U.S. and his brother's decline. My interest in the refugee experience led me to Eire's writing, and I'm so glad it did.

3. The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker I'll come right out and say it; I was on a Mormon kick this year. I saw the multi-part PBS documentary on Mormonism in 2010 which spurred me to visit a local Mormon temple that was having a re-opening celebration back in April. Honestly, I found the experience to be slightly creepy, but it also led me to read a few books by Mormons and ex-Mormons. This book was one of those. Baker was raised Mormon and despite her inclinations as an adult to cast off her conservative upbringing, she just can't shake her faith. Although my Christian beliefs are very different from her Mormonism, I could identify with her family life and the influence it continues to have on her long after she moves out of her parents' house. I first heard Elna Baker on The Moth on NPR where she was hilarious. I'd definitely recommend this book to twenty-somethings looking for a good laugh.

4. First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria by Eve Brown Waite Eve Brown Waite is an ex-Peace Corps volunteer. I am an ex-Peace Corps volunteer. She did not complete her 27 months of service. I did not complete my 27 months of service. She, however, went on to marry a Peace Corps poster boy, move to Africa and find a happy life living abroad while her husband worked for an NGO. I loved this book because she walks the reader through her acculturation processes in both scenarios and champions the "if at first you don't succeed, try again" philosophy. I haven't made it back overseas since my Peace Corps stint, and although I don't know if I will ever work abroad again, I like to believe that if given another chance, I too could make life abroad work out for the good. Beyond her attitude, I loved her humorous outlook on the trials of doing without American conveniences.

5. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua Chua stirred up quite the controversy at the beginning of this year for her extreme approach to raising her children, but I detected a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek lingo in this book. I do not believe that you should berate your child, but otherwise, I see little wrong with the way Chua chooses to raise her daughters. Hers is one approach, and in time we will hear how her grown daughters fair and what they have to say about their upbringing. This was a fast, thought provoking read that raises questions about what childhood should look like and what methods parents should employ to produce responsible, productive and happy adults.

And because I just couldn't leave this one out.....

6. A Widow's Walk: A Memoir of 9/11 by Marian Fontana This was one of three 9/11 widows' memoirs that I read this fall. With the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we saw a surge in publications about all things 9/11. Sifting through those led me to this 2006 memoir. Fontana's husband was a firefighter who responded to the World Trade Center that day. Fontana was left to pick up the pieces of not only the tragedy in her family life but also in the firehouse where her husband had worked. Her memoir is as much about a community trying to come to terms with what happened as it is her own journey forward. I have my eye out for her forthcoming book The Middle of the Bed.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers- Mordicai Gerstein

In my adult life I have found that I come late to all sorts of cultural knowledge that other people knew about/saw/read/listened to years ago. I've come to accept that through a combination of a conservative upbringing, an adolescence spent dancing 5-6 days a week for years on end and by simply having inclinations to pick up TIME over People or The New Yorker over Cosmopolitan, there is a lot I've missed out on over the years. I'm not talking about simply not having heard of Adele until a few weeks ago or not having ever watched a full episode of Modern Family (both of which are true for me), but I'm talking about never having seen an episode of the Smurfs, having no recognition of who actors and actresses like Goldie Han, Kate Hudson and Robert De Niro are and what movies they might have been in, and never having seen the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer claymation Christmas special or any other claymation or cartoon Christmas special for that matter. The list of my cultural unknowns is endless and glaring when I'm with anyone other than my husband or close friends.

All this is to say that it may come as no surprise to you then that I had never heard of Philippe Petit's walk on a wire between the World Trade Center towers on August 7, 1974 before reading the children's book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordicai Gerstein. Inspired by the story and the illustrations of this book, I was spurred to learn more about this Philippe and his incredible act. Tonight, thank to the luxury of being finished with classes for the semester, I watched Man on Wire, an Academy Award winning documentary about Philippe's previous walks between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral, the pillars of Sydney Harbour Bridge and most notably, the Twin Towers. As I watched the documentary, I was of course struck by the madness of it all, but I couldn't help but smile at Philippe the artist, a man who when asked why he spent 45 minutes a quarter of a mile in the air above Manhattan risking his life on a wire answered, "There is no why". In the documentary he spoke of this saying, "That was a very, again, in my way of seeing America, a very American finger-snapping question. I did something magnificent and mysterious, and I got a practical, 'Why?'. And the beauty of it is that I didn't have any why". As rational and practical as I can so often be, I love being reminded of all the years I spent growing up in the dance studio under the tutelage of instructors pushing me and my peers to create art through dance that was beautiful because of its excellence and because it was life in motion. Everyone has the potential to make something beautiful of his or her life, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Philippe's efforts to do just that. I put Petit's book To Reach the Clouds on hold at the library to explore his story a little further. If you were born after 1974 and haven't learned much about this event, check out the trailer for Man on Wire below.

IQ84- Haruki Murakami

I've been hearing great things about IQ84 by Haruki Murakami. While it doesn't necessarily seem like my type of book, Murakami's website was interesting to explore, and his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running has caught my eye in the bookdrop in the past. Check the book trailer out along with his site if you are interested in Japanese fiction, dystopian fiction, or Orwell's 1984. You can read the first chapter at Murakimi's site:  http://www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/site.php .

 

Press Here- Herve Tullet

Herve Tullet's Press Here is an engaging, interactive book that readers of all ages can have fun with. Check out this book trailer; it describes the book better than I would.