reverse chronological order
»The Greater Journey
»Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
»Zuckerman Unbound
»The Road to Nab End
The 2011 List
The 2010 List
The 2009 List
The 2008 List
All-time favorites
JR,
William Gaddis
Winter's Tale,
Mark Helprin
Moby-Dick,
Herman Melville
Martin Dressler,
Steven Millhauser
Housekeeping,
Marilynne Robinson
Franny & Zooey,
J.D. Salinger
Infinite Jest,
David Foster Wallace
Delta Wedding,
Eudora Welty
Honorable mentions: Paul Auster, Rick Bass, Peter Carey, Michael Chabon, Charles Dickens, Stephen Dobyns, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Hardy, Graham Swift, Tim Winton.
The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (2011, David McCullough)Why I picked it: McCullough has a good reputation for popular history, and I liked the subject matter (though I think I expected it would focus on the 1920s).
What's it about: American artists (mostly), medical students and the occasional statesman living in Paris from 1830 to 1900.
What I thought: I see why people like McCullough. It's a well-put-together book, thoughtful but not a hard read. He has an eye for the good anecdote, the odd tidbit, and he really gives a sense of the figures' personalities without drifting too far into historical fiction.
The one episode that seemed a little out of place was, in the middle of the artist-heavy chronology, two long chapters on the diplomat Elihu Washburne during the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune — but those were my favorite chapters.
I appreciate that the book includes photos of most of the major works discussed. I must have flipped back to look at Sargent's "Madame X" ten times during the reading, and Saint-Gaudens' Farragut statue at least that much.
What next: De Toqueville is the flip side, a Frenchman in America in the 1830s. I also would be inclined to read more McCullough. Years ago, my friend Jason A. recommended "Brave Companions," so I put it on my list, where it has sat ever since. Now that I realize that's McCullough, too, I'll bump it up.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (2011, Amy Chua)Why I picked it: Saw it in the library, thought David might be interested, brought it home. He said it was a quick read, so I blitzed through it.
What it's about: (What rock have you been under?) A hard-charging Chinese-American professor writes about pushing her two daughters to excel.
What I thought: Easy read, not a whole lot of depth. It's not intended as a how-to (or a how-not-to) or as a study of various parenting methods; it's one family's story, and even that without resolution.
To her credit, Chua has a fair amount of self-awareness — the excerpts that got the huge press early on were the more outrageous, and in context she's mocking herself a little. I appreciated the epilogue in which she described her family's involvement in the writing of the book and discussed some of the choices she made.
Zuckerman Unbound (1981, Philip Roth)Why I picked it: Roth is a big gap in my fiction reading: I hadn't read anything beyond "Portnoy" and "Goodbye, Columbus."
What it's about: A novelist in New York, 1969, deals with unexpected celebrity in the wake of his best-seller.
What I thought: I'm not going to try to analyze one of the acknowledged 20th-century masters in this venue, or on the basis of one book. I'll read more Roth. I know the minority rap on him (narrow, repetitive, misogynist) but I liked this book.
Footnote on the audio: I shuddered when I saw the reader was George Guidall, whose female voice in "American Gods" put my teeth on edge. Here he was fine — better than fine — even with the women.
What next: So many to pick from. I'm not going to methodically knock off the Zuckermans (this is the second of them, anyway). Maybe "The Plot Against America" or "American Pastoral" or "The Human Stain."
The Road to Nab End: An Extraordinary Northern Childhood (2000, William Woodruff)Why I picked it: I knew nothing about this book, but I've been intrigued lately by Northern England and its relation to the rest of the country. (Some of my recent favorite movies/TV are set there: Boy A, the Red Riding trilogy, Life on Mars.)
What it's about: A memoir of growing up in a family of poor, sporadically employed Lancashire textile workers in the 1920s.
What I thought: I was happy to realize that it continued the thread of class and political upheaval in early-20th-century England that I had picked up last year in "The Children's Book." I would have liked it stronger in the actual historical underpinnings, but it's a fairly superficial (though likeable) childhood memoir. Woodruff stretches some themes and episodes beyond what they're worth, and he occasionally goes on a bit long in his what-my-young-self-thought voice.
One thing I would have changed if I were his editor: He gives very little indication of how he (and the others in the book) ended up after the period covered. At the end of the book, at age 16, he's heading to London, and it ends there. There's a preface in which it's revealed that Woodruff ended up living in Florida, but I think the book would have benefited greatly from some attempt to connect his childhood with the years beyond, or at least from an epilogue. (There is a sequel, but from what I understand, this first book was intended to stand alone.) I guess the reader has to realize that if he's writing this book, he probably became more than a machine operator, but there's no explicit mention of that.