It's that time of year

I'm a sucker for those year-end best books lists. Sometimes they make me mad; often they make me feel like I need to broaden my reading horizons. I decided to come up with my own best-of-the-year list and conducted a highly unscientific poll among readers of my acquaintance. Here are the results (in my poll, it doesn't have to be a book published this year; just read this year): My best reads of the year came down to one work of fiction and one work of nonfiction. The novel was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, winner of last year's Man Booker. I had a feeling I'd love it -- I had read and greatly admired Mantel's historical novel about the French Revolution, A Place of Greater Safety, and I am of course, obsessed with all things Tudor. So when I heard she'd written a novel about Thomas Cromwell, I figured she had written it just for me.

The work of nonfiction is Cleopatra, the new biography by Stacy Schiff. If you think you know the facts about this woman's remarkable life, think again. Schiff does a wonderful job rescuing Cleopatra from the millenium-long trashing of her reputation, conducted by men who 1) never knew her and 2) had very strong motives to portray her as an evil seductress. A great read even if you're not all that into ancient Roman or Egyptian history.

Here are the results from my unscientific sampling:

Connie, newspaper books editor: "The best book I read all year was Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom.' Yes, I know it is popular to bash this book, or say there were too many white people in it, or that it was "unrealistic" or that the characters were unlikable (what, you want to read about boring people???) But I loved it unreservedly. I could not put it down, and I loved every minute I was reading it. And aside from being funny and insightful and brilliant, it also reflects my entirely cynical worldview: we are hopelessly doomed, not just as a species, but from ever doing anything truly selfless!

"My second favorite was Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit from the Goon Squad,' which is ostensibly about the shifting music industry but really about a lot more. Clever, funny and hopefully not TOO prescient..."

Arlo, poet and literary seminar media director: "I also liked Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad," a novel-in-stories filled with brilliant off-to-the-side-insights into relationships between friends and lovers and clear-headed commentary on the time we're living in. The PowerPoint chapter is a special treat. 

"I finally finished Richard Ford's masterful Frank Bascombe trilogy-- I'd been putting off 'The Lay of the Land' ever since it came out however many years back because I didn't want to live in a world without more Bascombe to look forward to. It's probably the sloppiest of the the three ("The Sportswriter" and "Independence Day" are the others), but I couldn't be sure that didn't make it the best.

Oh, and Charlie Smith's 'Three Delays' just plain knocked me down."

Bob, bookbinder and bookstore manager: "Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence."

My mom: "The book I'm reading right now is easily my best of the year: Daniel Patrick Moynihan: a Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary, by Steven R. Weisman, published in 2010.

"You should read it to understand a lot of things about America in the 20th century.  Moynihan had a unique perspective and personal history. The Senate  is a much poorer place without him (and Teddy)."

A check-outable feast

There's just a month to go before the next Key West Literary Seminar and just in time, we at the Key West Library have received a shipment of books by writers appearing at the Seminar. This year's subject is The Hungry Muse: Food in Literature and the offerings are indeed appetizing. (It's not, by the way, the much-feared "cookbook seminar" and it's not just straight-up food writing, either -- our panelists will include novelists and poets and historians as well as some of the finest food writers in the nation.) We already had a bunch of books by these writers in our collection but the new ones are most welcome, including Eating by Jason Epstein, Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and At Home with Madhur Jaffrey. Jaffrey, by the way, will be at both sessions, as will be Calvin Trillin, Roy Blount, Jr., and Billy Collins. If you're interested in attending, there are still spots left in the second session -- and if you're in Key West, don't forget the Sunday afternoon panels and readings are always free and open to the public. Bon appetit!

And if you're wondering what's up with the slide show below -- well, I'm not much of a cook, to be honest. Given a couple free hours I will invariably spend my time reading instead of shopping for and preparing food. But these are some recent culinary creations of mine worth note -- the Swedish family recipe cake I made for our Stieg Larsson Book Bites session at the library, two pies I made for Thanksgiving (the inevitable pumpkin and the always popular apple-cranberry-raisin from the Fanny Farmer Cookbook), a batch of liebkuchen from another family recipe (and my favorite Christmas treat of the many, many kinds of cookies my grandmother used to make every year) and a cocktail, a Pisco guava punch prepared at the long-distance direction of Embury Cocktails impresario and New York Times-certified cocktail expert Jason Rowan. And all of them turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Recipes available on request.

[slideshow]

Dave Eggers and the power of positive thinking; Or, I'm a believer

At the Miami Book Fair over the weekend, I saw Dave Eggers talk. I’m embarrassed to admit I haven’t read any of his books – though I did read (and love) the original New Yorker piece that became his first book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. And I’ve been a big fan of his publishing enterprises – I was a charter subscriber to The Believer and I like McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, especially the awesome lists. So I figured it would be interesting to hear him talk.

And it was – he was very engaging in describing the 826 Writing and Tutoring Centers, which offer writing help to schoolkids in several cities around the country (with a retail storefront offering, depending on the location, pirate supplies, superhero crimefighting tools, time travel supplies, etc.). He read some funny letters from the upcoming I Live Real Close To Where You Used to Live, kids' letters to Michelle Obama and a sequel of sorts to the entertaining Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country, kids’ letters to President Obama. I really liked hearing him talk about Zeitoun, his most recent book that describes the experiences of a Syrian immigrant (and successful businessman, and husband and father) in New Orleans after Katrina, where he canoed around the city helping stranded people and dogs – until he was picked up by federal authorities who decided he was a terrorist.

The amazing thing, though, about Eggers – besides his seemingly infinite energy and capacity to juggle a multitude of disparate projects – is his positive attitude. I don’t mean he’s positive in a stupid, Pollyanna-ish way, of the variety promoted by self-help books like The Secret and ridiculed by detractors like Barbara Ehrenreich in “Brightsided.” Eggers deals with some tough issues – the early deaths of his parents, or the plight of a young man from the Sudan, or Zeitoun. To name a couple. But he manages to do it without anger or bitterness, and to be positive without being pious. This is a remarkable skill and I sure wish we had more of it around. Snark is fun – I adore The Daily Show and all. But relentless negativity is a drag, especially of the Eeyore variety – the "woe is me, everything was so much better in the old days, texting/digital publishing/television/the internet are leading to the end of civilization" variety. I get it, change is unsettling and there’s some stuff about the old days you miss. Me, too. But when people are wallowing in nostalgia or bitching about change, I always cringe – because the old days were not always great, at least not for a lot of people, and I think a lot of the new stuff is pretty great, whether it’s being able to communicate and share information of all sorts on Facebook or the ability to read and publish blogs from all kinds of people all over the place or to hear directly from Margaret Atwood or Neil Gaiman or Nancy Pearl on Twitter. On the whole, I like the world we’re entering – and even if I didn’t, I would be free to opt out and stick with paper (after all, there is still plenty of it still around and even plenty still being produced). What you get by being bitter and angry all the time is … being bitter and angry all the time. Eggers has obviously figured out that’s pointless -- or at least not very rewarding. I, for one, appreciate that – so much that, at the Book Fair, I resubscribed to The Believer.

We become the Bone Island BBC Blog

I've been an Anglo-phile for a long time, and the BBC is largely responsible. As a kid, we had PBS on a lot, so I got a lot of exposure to costume dramas, via Masterpiece Theater, and Monty Python. In college, I spent a summer in England. I already had the Tudor thing. And it got worse when a good friend married a Brit and moved there, becoming a reason to visit and a resource on the excellent current programming the BBC continues to produce (as well as the continuing steady stream of costume dramas). So I am of course concerned when I hear references to the Beeb under attack from the new Conservative government -- which is closely tied to the Murdoch empire, and if you think this is a bit paranoid, read this investigative takeout from the New York Times. And when I saw a reference to this video on Neil Gaiman's Twitter feed I immediately checked it out -- and was charmed. I just love goofy dorks. I've had this song stuck in my head for a week now -- and I'm still not sick of it.

Even more amazingly, they posted it, at my suggestion, on the Smart Bitches Trashy Books blog. Woo hoo! Long live the BBC! The comments section is pretty fun, too.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3q2iZuU5WM&feature=related]

Lots of Americans, of course, know about Monty Python, the costume dramas and newer offerings on BBC America, like the rebooted Dr. Who and Top Gear. But this song lists -- and everyone should consider a region-free DVD player so you can watch -- a lot of other great shows, including The Thick of It (if you liked the movie In The Loop, this series is its genesis and continuing sequel), Steve Coogan's brilliant Alan Partridge shows, and Shameless, Paul Abbott's great series set in a Manchester housing project, with David Threlfall as drunken, useless but endlessly entertaining patriarch Frank Gallagher. This series also helped launch James McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff, among others. Another Abbott production is State of Play, a six-hour miniseries that is available on U.S. DVD format (we even have it at the Key West Library). McAvoy's in that one, too, but the real treat is Bill Nighy as the crusading editor and Kelly Macdonald's Scottish accent (you haven't heard someone pronounce "It's muhrr-duhrr" until you've heard her).

We become the Bone Island Bike Blog

There's been a lot of talk about bikes around Key West recently. Much of this talk was from a local weekly newspaper, which has railed for months against the dangers posed by "scofflaw bicyclists." The police department, obligingly, launched a special enforcement effort aimed at bikes to curb wrong-way riding, running red lights, etc. As someone who both rides and drives, I'm all for the enforcement. However. I was very concerned about the city taking sides in the bike versus car battles that take place on the streets every day. Then the sexton got into the act, locking the Frances Street gate to the City Cemetery. I don't ride through the cemetery much -- I live on a street that is midway along the cemetery, so riding through shoots me a couple blocks out of my way. But I felt strongly enough about the hasty and unilateral decision to go down and speak at a City Commission meeting (where a vote to re-open the gate failed, 5-2). So my latest Letter From Key West, for WLRN's Under the Sun program, is about that. (The photo, by the way, is of my grandfather Douglas Grafflin -- he's the one on the right, acting goofy -- and his older brother, Don. Since I posted this photo on Facebook last night, I have learned a bunch of interesting family facts: Uncle Don left college to join a barnstorming flying circus as a mechanic. And three out of my four great-grandfathers belonged to cycling clubs, which must have been in the late 19th or very early 20th centuries).

Completely unrelated addendum: This is a much-deserved Google bombing link to the name Judith Griggs. You don't have to follow it or do anything -- as I understand it, the existence of the link is what matters -- but if you're curious about why I should do such a thing, there's more info here.