tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4224369724502884424.post4474433590656793119..comments2013-09-20T19:12:40.932-07:00Comments on A Blog of One's Own: Top Ten of 2009Kirstenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06549107457538096059noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4224369724502884424.post-57398666028799070632010-01-06T13:04:13.775-08:002010-01-06T13:04:13.775-08:00Here are my top reads of 2009 (I wish I had time a...Here are my top reads of 2009 (I wish I had time and ability to come up with clever categories like you did, but this will have to do for now):<br /><br />Best Mystery: A tie between The Hamilton Case by Michelle de Kretser, a brilliant, beautifully written, and suspenseful postcolonial deconstruction of the murder mystery, and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James, a more traditional murder mystery with a great heroine, plot twists, and Cambridge setting.<br /><br />Best book to while away the long winter nights: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.<br /><br />Most tragic impossible love story: Three-way tie between Doctor Zhivago, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, and Stoner by John Williams.<br /><br />Biggest tearjerker: Stoner.<br /><br />Most perfect novel: Tie between A Month in the Country and Stoner.<br /><br />Best poetry: The Stray Dog Cabaret, a collection of early twentieth century Russian poetry that's beautifully translated by Paul Schmidt.<br /><br />Most depressing, yet educational: I Didn't Do it for You by Michaela Wrong, about Eritrea.<br /><br />Most likely to change your world view and most impossible to put down, even a week before finals: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman, an exploration of the clash between Western doctors and a Hmong refugee family who both want to heal a young Hmong girl with epilepsy.<br /><br />Most relevant: Tie between The Spirit Catches You and The Shia Revival, by Vali Nasr, which is essential to understanding the politics of Iraq and Iran and which I wish I had read in about 2003.<br /><br />Most difficult to read in public because of reflexive laughing out loud and shouts of "Amen, sister": Reasonable Creatures, by Katha Pollitt.<br /><br />Most likely to make you wonder why she married Martin Amis: Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca, a thoughtful and openminded account of time spent living with gypsies/Roma/Romani people in Eastern Europe.Elizabethhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17781266807890968430noreply@blogger.com