I got tagged by Sarah Wadsworth on the Most Influential Books thing but all my Most Influential are predictable, like Bleak House and 2666 and Harriet the Spy, so instead Ill list my 10 most influential books from this year, in no particular order: 1. Weatherford, Ghengis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World. (The book gamely tries to rehabilitate GKs reputation by saying stuff like, True, he did fill up city moats with dead people, using their bodies as bridges for his horses ... but on the plus side he banned the practice of punitive disfigurement! Still, I came away admiring Ghengis Kahns strategic genius.) 2. OConnell, The Resurrectionist. (In a DEEEEP coma at the Peck Clinic? Carnival freaks to the rescue!) 3. Atkinson, Life After Life. (People in general should not channel Virginia Woolf, but Atkinson nails it every which way to Sunday.) 4. Sebold, The Emigrants. (Gorgeous homoerotic melancholy. Companion movie: Grand Budapest Hotel.) 5. Ellroy, My Dark Places. (Dames, Dives, and Two-Bit Cons in Hardboiled LA, only its a memoir and one of the victims was his mother. Intense.) 6. Hess, Trailersteading: Voluntary Simplicity in a Mobile Home. (Retirement dreams. It advises that if you want really cheap property, buy land that floods and pull your trailer around to avoid getting wet.) 7. Thompson, The Year We Left Home. (Why isnt this novel more famous? Is it because people think Midwestern Norwegian-Americans are boring? Well, ok. But its still a beautiful story.) 8. Dolnick, The Clockwork Universe. (Taught me everything I know about the Leibniz-Newton calculus battle, only I already forgot most of it.) 9. Kirkby, I Am Hutterite. (She is Hutterite. Its interesting.) 10. Kessler, Clever Girl. (History of an actual Soviet spy ring in the USA during the 1950s. And no, I have not turned into a McCarthyite--just a more nuanced lefty.)
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:12:26 +0000
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