I met my goal again this year of reading, on average, a book a week. I failed to review them all, which I predicted would happen after the first few ones, due to laziness and/or my ever growing ADD affliction.

Here are the top 10 books I liked best during the past year: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Art of Fiction by John Gardner, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower, Truth in Comedy by Charn Halpern, Del Close and Kim Johnson, Stoner by John Williams, Guru: My Days With Del Close by Jeff Griggs, Nine Lives by J.D. Salinger, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte.

And here’s the full list.

Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier
Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts by Jorie Graham
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
The Art of Fiction by John Gardner
The Phaedo by Plato
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello
District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Airships by Barry Hannah
Truth in Comedy by Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson
Cloud 9 by Caryl Churchill
Autobahn by Neil LaBute
Endgame by Samuel Beckett
Improvising Better by Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen
Stoner by John Williams
The Eumenides by Aeschylus
Two Trains Running by August Wilson
Stitches by David Small
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies
True Grit by Charles Portis
Unpopular Essays by Bertrand Russell
Our Late Night / A Thought in Three Parts by Wallace Shawn
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Guru: My Days with Del Close by Jeff Griggs
The God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton
American Buffalo by David Mamet
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck by Charles Bukowski
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
Nine Lives by J.D. Salinger
Play It Again, Sam by Woody Allen
Obscenities by Michael Casey
Joe Egg by Peter Nichols
Alcestis by Euripides
Kid by Simon Armitage
The American Dream by Edward Albee
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
Aesop’s Fables by Aesop, edited by Jack Zipes
The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht
Brooklyn Boy by Donald Margulies
On the Shortness of Life by Seneca
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thinch Nhat Hanh
Filthy Talk for Troubled Times by Neil LaBute
The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
The Empty Space by Peter Brook
The Break of Noon by Neil LaBute

Please feel free to let me know in the comments your favorite reads of the past year. Thank you.

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I’m getting behind in the reviews of books I’ve read this year. So maybe this and a few of the following reviews will be short and sweet.

I became aware of The Mystery Guest via the great book site, The Millions. Maybe I missed (or forgot) the part about it being a memoir, and finding out that it was one disappointed me right off the bat. You see, I don’t much like reading memoirs, especially by authors that are within a decade of their writing career. I get it, though, they just have something to get off their chests. And I guess fiction writing is not good enough for them—I’d rather they kill their inner demons through fictionalized narrative. It’s more fun, and I don’t have to feel like the writer is whining all the time.

To Gregoire Bouiller’s credit, his memoir reads like a great novella. It’s the story of a Bouiller being invited as a mystery guest to an artist’s birthday party (someone he’s never met) by his ex. Throughout, he philosophizes about lost connections, literature, and how everything fits perfectly in place.

I enjoyed Lorin Stein’s translation—the prose was direct and reminded me of Camus’ style (or is that how French writers write most of the time?). If you’re ever stuck inside on a rainy day, I recommend this book. And don’t forget to pour yourself some wine at the same time.

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One of the good things about writing reviews long after a book is read is that one usually only focuses on the items that stick in the mind. The downside is that if the book doesn’t have any stickiness, the review can be quite quick.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee kind of falls in that quick category and is also like a good meal. You definitely know that you liked it and you would go back to the restaurant, but you are unable to pinpoint exactly what it was that you enjoyed about the food. With Scorch Atlas, I could tell you want I did or did not like about the book. Both types have their own ways of hanging on to me.

Let me give you a plot summary: A South African professor has an affair with a student and leaves his position. He goes to live with his hippy daughter on her farm and learns that the black-and-white world in South Africa is flip flopping. Basically, what was once the status quo is now old hat.

What I most enjoyed about Disgrace was that reading it was effortless in that I was never awakened from the fictional dream. I found myself staying up late at night wanting to know what would happen next to the professor. I felt that the writer did a great job balancing character and plot, and I would definitely read another of his novels. Other than that, though, I’m unable to go into much more detail. It was just good. Can’t that be enough sometimes?

Perhaps I should add that Coetzee’s prose was smooth and traditional—not that there is anything wrong with traditional. In fact, I most often prefer story over syntax. Whereas, Coetzee spins a good story, a writer such as Scorch Atlas‘ Blake Butler deals in sentence theatrics. Both have their pros and cons.

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Instead of just listing the books I’ve read the previous year, I thought I’d revive this blog and write about the books I read. Of course, I may still talk about random items—I mean, really, don’t you want to know that I don’t think the heater is working properly in my house at the moment? Writing about the books I’ve read will at least help me keep the blog up to date, as well as help me remember why I do or don’t like some of the books. My analysis probably won’t be academic; it will primarily be stream-of-thought reflections on the books. I reserve the right to change my mind, and I’m open to your thoughts and debates about particular books.

The first book out of the gate for 2010 is Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler. I was drawn to read this book by Kim‘s review of it in Time Out New York. Her review sums up this short story collection best.

The 14 linked stories in Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas depict the fragility of the American family through relentless accumulation of apocalyptic detail. Parents disappear or are held captive by their children. Babies are born malformed and enormous. Homes are destroyed by water or fire or accreting dust.

Malformed babies! Apocalyptic landscapes! Sounds awesome. And it was for about two, maybe three, stories. Then it grew tiresome. Maybe that was Butler’s plan all along, and if so, then bravo to him for making the reader feel as tired and downtrodden as the characters.

While I enjoyed the bleak settings of most of the stories, what I found most frustrating was Bulter’s syntax. I never understood why he would use more words, primarily prepositions, than necessary. For example, in the story “Seabed,” there is this sentence: “The men he’d spent endless nights with pounding shots with, fly-licked blood now flooding from their mouths.” I know it’s the editor in me, but damn I want to cut out that first “with.” I can hear the poetic structure of the sentence, which I find good up to a point. But when I start noticing style over substance, then I start to get bored with the story. Do writer’s really want readers to be bored with their stories?

Maybe Butler is more interested in wordplay, and if so, then I think some of these stories would have worked more effectively as poems and short plays. I think that sort of variety would have kept me interested, seeing as how these apocalyptic stories all seemed to run together, pages and pages of full-justified text.

In the end, I remember some of the story ideas, but not the full story. The ideas I enjoyed most are the mother eating lace to so that her daughter would have a gown and the children holding their mother hostage so that they could feed on her. My favorite story was “Smoke House,” because it was the most straight forward and the most tender in its telling of the pain of losing a child. It was the one story I got caught up in, not once thinking about the syntax. It was the one smooth item in an otherwise charred book.

Speaking of charred, the book’s design is top-notch. It was designed to look like it went through hell and back, and it looks it. Still, shouldn’t a reader remember more of the stories instead of the design?

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