Top 10 books I read this year so far, in the order that I liked them

1. A Widow for One Year by John Irving
Roomie Joanna’s been pushing John Irving on me for a while, so I finally took her up on an offer to borrow this novel, which the movie The Door in the Floor is based on. Really uniquely segmented story in which twisted familial backgrounds lead to two overlapping characters’ smarmy adventures later in life (I’m keeping the description vague so as to not give away any of the juicy details).

2. Slaughterhouse-Five and 3. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
What I love most about Vonnegut is how he masterfully manipulates readers into feeling conflicting emotions simultaneously. Finally got around to reading eerily hilarious & upsetting WWII-centered Slaughterhouse-Five (it’s been on the list for a while). Then I was lucky to snag an advance copy of Armageddon in Retrospect — the newly released war-themed story collection I already posted about here.

4. The Kite Runnerby Khaled Hosseini
You’ve heard of this. I also liked it.

5. Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab by Melissa Plaut
Breezily-written memoir by a soul-searching female cabbie, based on blog entries chronicling her daily adventures on the streets of NYC. Plaut provides enjoyable insight into a world most city-dwellers neglect to ever fully consider (but should).

6. Ball Don’t Lie by Matt de la Pena
YA novel about a forgotten teenaged foster kid who channels his anxieties and frustration into basketball. It’s serious and gritty and really good (and I’m only slightly biased because the author was my fiction writing teacher at Gotham). The book was also adapted to a film that premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

7. I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
Hilarious collection of autobiographical essays by a sarcastically self-deprecating New Yorker. Tales are easy to identify with and will teach you how to: bake a cookie likeness of an abusive boss, dispose of past relationship trinkets, shirk hellish bridesmaid duties, and get to the bottom of which estranged friend of yours may have shit on your bathroom floor.

8. Fargo Rock City : A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota by Chuck Klosterman
You know dude’s a skilled music writer when I become enthralled with the in-depth social politics of heavy metal. While I still have no desire to actually listen to the genre, I ate up every cleverly-explained historical factoid & anecdote within this book, and formed a newfound appreciation for the impact hard rockers made on the music industry as we know it.

9. About Alice by Calvin Trillin
I worked hard to hold back tears on the subway while reading this book. Longtime New Yorker staff writer Trillin lost his wife, Alice, on September 11, 2001, after a three-decade battle with lung cancer, and pays tribute to her with this slim collection of touchingly honest essays detailing what she taught him about marriage, love, and life.

10. Middlemarch by George Eliot
This was good but grueling. Because Middlemarch topped my list of classics I’ve meant to read for years, I resolved in ‘08 to make my way through the 1000+ pages of old school small town drama. I admittedly put the super-hefty book down a couple times to take magazine breaks— but since chapters had originally been serialized, it was easy to pick up where I left off each time.



More book reviews from 2007:
My notable books of 2007 — Part One: non-fiction/memoirs
My notable books of 2007 — Part Two: fiction
My notable books of 2007 — Part Three: best & worst fiction