Best of the best of the best lists

Once again, the good librarians at the Williamsburg (Virginia) Regional Library have performed a public service and compiled all the best lists, awards and other honors for books published in 2010 for their annual megalist -- available as an Excel spreadsheet. The fiction winner is Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which is kind of interesting since it hasn't won the Big Name awards (though it still has a shot at the Pulitzer, which is announced this month). And I was delighted to see that three of the eight writers in the Speculative Fiction category (Gary Shteyngart, Charles Yu and William Gibson) will be here for the 2012 Key West Literary Seminar, Yet Another World (check out the rest of the amazing line-up: still room to register!).  So, by the way, will the author of the No. 2 in fiction (and National Book Critics Circle Award Winner), Jennifer Egan. And yes, we have the vast majority of the top books listed here in the library collection.

BTW, for those of you who follow books more than basketball, that other big tournament is getting ready to wrap up -- The Tournament of Books -- and the championship round features the top two novels on Williamsburg's list, Freedom versus A Visit From The Goon Squad. The best part of this tournament is you can go back and read all the different rounds in whatever order you like. I suppose some might frown on this sort of competitive literary exercise, but it's all in good faith and good fun -- I've never seen cheap shots or nasty takedowns here. And any time I get to read anything by Elif Batuman, I'm happy. I wonder if they'd consider adding a nonfiction category?

Update: And the winner is ... A Visit From the Goon Squad! Which I'm delighted to hear, not only because I happen to have a copy of the book in my house (though I'll admit I haven't read it yet -- or Freedom, either) -- and because Egan will be here in Key West, in January, for the Key West Literary Seminar -- still time to sign up!).

Kicking it old media school

[gallery columns="2"] I don't know why this keeps happening, but I go months without writing a book review for print, then I write a couple -- and they both run on the same day. Go figure. It happened again today, with my review of Without A Paddle by Warren Richey in today's Miami Herald and my review of The Possessed by Elif Batuman in Solares Hill (only available these days as part of the Sunday Key West Citizen). Both are nonfiction and both are memoirs. I liked both books very much, though I came at them quite differently, which makes sense because they are very different.

Without A Paddle is the story of a midlife crisis, reached at age 50 when journalist Warren Richey is divorced and unsure about his purpose on the planet. He's got a promising new relationship and a son he loves deeply but his life has taken an unexpected turn. He falls for a sea kayak (purchased in what sounds a lot like Florida Bay Outfitters to me -- that's where we bought our kayaks!). Anyway he soon becomes part of a group of expedition kayak and sailboat racers called the WaterTribe that does these crazy cross-Everglades and other races -- and eventually what's called the Ultimate Florida Challenge, circumnavigating the state by water, with no mechanical power, and a 40 mile portage between rivers across the top. This is not my idea of a good time, but Richey pulls it off and he pulls the book off, too. I had some trouble in the beginning with the short chapters jumping around but I came to like and appreciate it.

Whereas, I loved The Possessed right from the get-go. I think Batuman is, essentially, more my kind of writer -- very funny and acerbic without being nasty. She's also appreciative and realistic about the people she's writing about. Batuman started out as a grad student in linguistics and Russian literature, and goes down some serious academic rabbit holes but maintains a real world perspective -- at least enough of a perspective that she can write about that world in a way normal humans can understand. Yes, it's true, I am bitter about academic writing -- especially in the humanities -- making itself unintelligible to the rest of us. Because if they're not shedding a wider light on human culture for the world, what exactly is the point? But I digress. Batuman's book covers a lot of territory, from an Isaac Babel conference at Stanford to a conference at the Tolstoy estate to a summer in Samarkand studying Uzbek that sounds far more entertaining to read about than to experience. But I didn't mind the jumping around a bit -- for one thing, the sections were whole, not short. And Batuman is a terrific writer. Both highly recommended. Without A Paddle: 3 1/2 stars, The Possessed: 4 stars.

More than 140 characters on recent reading

First of all, I did finish Elif Batuman's The Possessed and I intend to review it for Solares Hill so no review type copy here except to say that I liked it very very much and give it an A. Or four out of five stars if that's the system I wind up going to, which I might. Maybe even four and a half. After finishing that I started on Neil Gaiman's American Gods ... and started following the One Book One Twitter experiment on Twitter. I'm not going to go into the reasons I resisted then finally caved to Twitter -- David Carr does that far better than I in this piece from the New York Times. I don't think it will supersede Facebook in my online life -- most of my friends and family are on Facebook; I hardly know anyone who Twitters. I signed up for a bunch of book-related feeds and will use it for local stuff. (Hey Key West Citizen -- it's great you guys have a Twitter feed and all, but I think the point of Twitter is that you post to it occasionally -- as of this writing the most recent post is 11 days old -- that's not very, um, newsy.) I am starting to get the protocols, with feeds and hashmarks etc. though I still feel like a blundering ignoramus in danger of making an online fool of myself. But I can see its appeal and think it might even be a good exercise for someone like me, who has a tendency to think I must be up on all things all the time. That's impossible on Twitter and good thing, too -- so you just check in, see what others are saying and maybe follow a couple interesting links.

As far as a reading/literary experience goes ... well, it's not a coherent conversation of any kind, that's for sure. More like dropping into a big cocktail party where you don't know anyone but everyone's pretty friendly, and eavesdropping and engaging in a couple quick exchanges. Is that edifying? I'm not sure. It's kind of fun. I can't say I've gotten any big insights into the book from any of the posts that I've read. But I'm grateful to the people who made this happen because 1) they finally got me to read American Gods and 2) now I finally have a rudimentary understanding of Twitter.

I can see that for others, including Neil Gaiman, Twitter is an important part of their lives. I don't know that it will ever become an important part of mine. And I really would like to resist Yet Another Online Timewaster. But it's been an interesting introduction.

The bird pictured here, in case anyone was wondering and didn't already know, is a Northern Mockingbird, Florida's state bird and the primary twitterer of local environs. Recently, many people I know have been complaining about this bird twittering outside their windows early in the morning. Personally I don't mind that but don't like it when they divebomb you because they think you're too close to their nests.