MY YEAR IN BOOKS
One Sunday while prowling my neighborhood bookstore I spotted a youngish father and his 11- or 12-year-old daughter looking for a book.
This reminded me of how my mother used to take me shopping for books. My mother was a teacher, so reading was as natural to us as eating (and considered superior to watching television, which was usually turned off after a couple of hours so the set wouldn’t “overheat”).
At least once a week, after school, she would take me to the Alemar’s on Quezon Avenue, or the National Bookstore in the old Quad at Ayala Center. I could pick out a book for myself — Nancy Drew mysteries at first, then the Star Trek adaptations by James Blish, the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and lots of science fiction.
If I wanted a toy, there was always a discussion — my mother insisted, correctly, that I would tire of it after a few days — but books were considered necessary purchases. I still have those books on my shelves — the Star Treks and Mars books have turned brown with age, but the Nancy Drews are in pristine condition.
The present-day father and daughter were in the Literature section, mulling over a purchase. “What about this?” the father asked, taking a book of Greek and Roman myths from the shelf. Good choice, I thought.
When I was 10 I was obsessed with ancient mythology — all those lusty gods and goddesses — which led me to the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the works of the classical playwrights. As a kid you read them for their plots (Blood! Gore! Revenge!); as an adult you read them again for their understanding of the human condition.
The daughter dismissed his recommendation. “I’m, like, more into fantasy,” she said, then she skipped over to the shelf with the Twilight books.
These are the times when I realize how much I am like my mother, the teacher who was loved and feared by her students. (Recently I crashed a dinner of the friends of friends. One of them said my mom had been his teacher in the fourth grade, and I’d given him piggyback rides.
“Impossible,” I said. “I would never lift any of you. I didn’t like children, especially when I was a child myself.”)
I wanted to tell the father, “That’s it? You’re just going to let your spawn blow off your parental counsel? Defend mythology! Explain to her that the entire fantasy genre wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for the classical tales of gods, monsters, heroes and quests. Tell her how bland and insipid her little vampire romances are compared to the Trojan War, the House of Atreus, Jason and the Argonauts, Orestes hounded by the Furies! Don’t let your gene pool maltreat you like that.”
But I was also raised to have good manners so I ate my lecture and leafed through an NYRB book.
The year’s almost done — time to recap my favorite books of 2009.
Despite the dire predictions for book publishing I’ve had a great reading year. (Frequently asked question: How do you find time to read? Answer: Stop watching TV. Also, if you don’t drive, bring a book to read in traffic. The Christmas rush is well underway, so you should get a lot of reading done.)
Two favorites — Jane Austen’s Persuasion and The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow — have already been written about in this column. P.G. Wodehouse is a perennial favorite — only the funniest writer to ever have put words to paper. The Spies of Warsaw is the tenth in Alan Furst’s highly cinematic (but oddly, never filmed) espionage thrillers set in World War II.
Reading spy fiction and Russian novels got me interested in WWII history from the Russian perspective, and Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-43 is absolutely compelling. It’s an account of the battle that marked the beginning of the end of Hitler and the Nazis: the five-month siege of Stalingrad that cost more than a million lives. Beevor’s book is horrifying in its depiction of cruelty and suffering, and thrilling in its portrayal of courage against all odds. The author not only brings recent history to vivid life, he shows us humanity in all its ugliness and beauty.
Also set in WWII is The Forger’s Spell by Edward Dolnick, the true story of a forger who pulled off one of the most amazing hoaxes in art history. Han van Meegeren convinced Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, that his paintings were by the 17th-century master, Johannes Vermeer. The amazing thing about this deception is that the most casual admirer of Vermeer could tell that these artworks were phonies. And yet van Meegeren managed to fool everyone. When it comes to art, people want to believe despite the evidence of their eyes that the work is authentic. They fooled themselves.
Dead Beat is the seventh volume of Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files,” the adventures of a present-day wizard who works as a private investigator. The series is addictive — do not crack any of these books open as you are about to go to sleep, because you will not go to sleep — but this installment is the most wackily inventive, involving evil wizards, nasty vampires, zombies and tyrannosaurs. Okay, the prose is laden with clichés, but the plot twists are so ingenious you forgive them.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is a throwback to my Nancy Drew days — the adventures of a precocious 11-year-old sleuth who lives with her stamp-collecting father and two sisters in a crumbling mansion.
Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer is so clever, hilarious, and strangely profound, I swore to read every book he’s ever published. Then I realized I have read every book he’s published.
As for Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi with J.R. Moehringer, it’s a sports memoir that truthfully chronicles how a self-loathing prodigy develops into an awesome human being.
Good year.
