***Best Reads 3rd Quarter 2010 (July - September)

Here we are once again, almost at the end of another quarter.

You know the routine. Your best books of the past three months. List as many and however you like.

Don't worry, there's still 10 days more to read something that blows all previous 3rd quarter books out of the water or ... not!

I plan on not reading anything great before the end of the month. These are the ones that were special. I am surprised that four of the top five are novels.

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Reformation
Sh*t My Dad Says
The Glass Room
Out Stealing Horses
Wolf Among Wolves

I really enjoyed Sh*t My Dad Says, but it really didn't have the substance or the impact of the others.

There were some other books I read that have ongoing impact, but for one reason or another don't amount to 'that is such a marvelous experience you will have to immerse yourself in it.'

Robert

sea of poppies
mockingjay
zero history
the windup girl
exit wounds
generosity

The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book by Timothy Beal
Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine by Huston Smith

Two Rivers by T. Greenwood
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Fieldwork: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski

I've had a great reading quarter, and am not sure if I'll be adding anything to this in the next week or so.

Lots of wonderful fiction reads, including:

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Long Ships by Frans G. Bengtsson
Wolf among Wolves by Hans Fallada
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford
Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa

and runners-up:

A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You by Amy Bloom
Q Road by Bonnie Jo Campbell

And the best nonfiction:

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

Edited to see if touchstones will work!

Hmm...not the best quarter for me.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Stranger by Albert Camus
My Antonia by Willa Cather (best read of the year for me)

A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson
The Broken Shore by Peter Temple
Oil on Water by Helon Habila

I read a lot good books this quarter, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry. But, as for books that fit the favorite pile...I'll just list two:

The Prospector by J. M. G. Le Clézio => Sent to be my Andrew (polutropos)...some books just seem to connect the right way and hit all the right synapses. I just loved it.

Sulphur River Literary Review : Volume XX, Number 2, Autumnal Equinox 2004 edited by James Michael Robbins => Yeah, a literary review, and why not. I've scanned through some literary reviews in the long distant past and was struck by how much I've enjoyed them, but I've never read one cover-to-cover. Somehow they just seem to offer something that a book doesn't, maybe it has something to do with the mixture of forms. Anyway, this was a blast. I discovered some wonderful surprises and wrote down several authors. If you go to my copy (link here) you can see a list of the contributors.

Proust is notably missing - I liked Within a Budding Grove, but have some mixed feelings about it too.

Not too many this time, I've been reading at a slower pace this year. This is partly because I don't have school books anymore, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Faithful Place, Tana French
Barrow's Boys, Fergus Fleming
Company of Liars, Karen Maitland

I'm still finishing Smilla's Sense of Snow, but no way that's making the list.

I've had a good quarter so far:

Fiction: (all 4-1/2 to 5 star reads)
The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
Room by Emma Donoghue
The Sickness by Alberto Barrera Tyszka
Blindness by José Saramago

Nonfiction:
Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman
Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine by Roy Porter
My Ear at His Heart: Reading My Father by Hanif Kureishi

I haven't finished Blindness but it is one of my all time favorite novels, and I'm currently re-reading it for a group read. I may have one or two more books to add to this list by the end of the month; The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin will almost certainly make this list.

My favorites for the quarter were the Booker shortlisted The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt and the book that defeated it, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

Also excellent were Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue, March by Geraldine Brooks and Purge by Sofi Oksanen, all historical novels, which are not something I read often. I also liked Michael Chabon's book of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs and The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.

It's possible I might have another one to add, but it falls in the excellent-but-I-probably-won't-finish-it-before-the-end-of-the-month category.

Best reads with 4½ or 5 stars were:

a couple of tomes:
The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
Cloud Atlas - David

the unique retelling of the Mahabharata Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

and in a more frivolous vein:
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett (a re-read)
Swan Song - Edmund Crispin
I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - JK Rowling

Also good, and deserving honourable mentions, were Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida, Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama and Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier.

a hectic travel schedule in the 3rd quarter left me time for only 6 books (yes, that's half a dozen) :-(

best read: The Abyss by Marguerite Yourcenar

I had a fabulous quarter of reading. These were the very best:

Fiction

Horse, Flower, Bird, Kate Bernheimer (I reviewed this for www.Belletrista.com)
Orlando, Virginia Woolf
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches, Gaetan Soucy
Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Non-fiction

The Best American Science Writing 2009, Natalie Angier, ed.
Travel as a Political Act, Rick Steves
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg
The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Comments for all are on my ClubRead thread.

The book that sticks out for me is Dr. Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath. If you're not familiar with this author of psychological gothic (!), read either this book or Spider. Both are excellent. Patrick McGrath is an author who deserves to be more widely read.

To #8 above, I'm adding Desert, another by J. M. G. Le Clézio, which I finished last night. It's a tough read in some ways as it goes slow, doesn't capture you up front, wanders a lot...it's a sort of a work for reflection, maybe. Anyway, I loved it.

Hmm. It's always hard to pick the best books, so I'm going to go strictly with the ratings and list the books I gave at least four and a half stars to:

Ring for Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Powers and Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin
Iron Council by China Mieville
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

I haven't been reading as much as I would like, but the outstanding book of the last three months is definitely Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell. I'm in the middle of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but it won't quite make the cut.

I had I dismial quarter as far as quanitiy read, but it wasn't all that bad of quarter either. Only two come to mind being truly good reads though:

Bonk by Mary Roach
Fires on the Plain by Ooka Shohei

Fiction:
The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell

Nonfiction:
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
The Geometry of Pasta by Caz Hildebrand/Jacob Kenedy

Started Franzen's Freedom this week, but I won't finish it until this weekend, so I guess it doesn't make the cut. Having been absent from this group for a while, I'm imagining this book has received discussion elsewhere. Anyways, I'm enjoying it.

Otherwise:
Two different books concerning Afghanistan: Junger's War and Steve Coll's Ghost Wars.
I spent most of August reading Shelby Foote's Civil War Trilogy of The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Vol. 1, The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian and The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 3 Red River to Appomattox. This is pretty amazing and I almost miss reading it.
I started Raymond Carver's Collected Stories earlier this year, but technically finished it in July. These are my favorite short stories, many of which I have read before, but I seem to get something from them each time around.
Enjoyed walking into a library and seeing a handful of slim Roberto Bolano books I hadn't read; I thought Last Evenings on Earth was the best of them, but maybe it's because I read it first.

You made it through Foote's Trilogy in month! Color me impressed. I've never gotten through them that fast...

Oops - that should have been "most of July and August". I was also on vacation and motivated. It's almost like a challenge how each volume is progressively longer. By the time you start the third volume (if you get to the third volume - I notice there are less reviews on Amazon for the second and third volumes than the first), I think you are determined to finish it for any number of reasons, not the least being the achievement of actually having completed it!

Looking back, there were more than I thought:
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Blue Manuscript by Sabiha Khemir
The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Tree of Red Stars by Tessa Bridal
The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaetan Soucy
and I'm almost finished with
Wars I Have Seen by Gertrude Stein, which is brilliant -- review to come this weekend.

>13 deebee1: deebee, I'm afraid I've beaten you - I only managed a pathetic 5 (yes, FIVE) books this quarter. In part because at the moment something has to be really good for me to finish it, otherwise I just chuck it aside in frustation (I dread to think how many books I've started this quarter; my house is littered with partly-read books). One that I did finish was a complete dud but it was all that was to hand. Of the rest, they were all good (or I wouldn't have finished them), but the best was:

A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

I didn't exactly have the greatest reading quarter either - in fact, this entire year has not been great. Not bad, exactly, just not a lot of "wow" books. I did really enjoy February by Lisa Moore and Kartography by Kamila Shamsie though.

I had a few five star books:

In Love and Trouble, short stories by Alice Walker
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
Bedelia by Vera Caspary
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

And a couple of four stars:

Consequences by E M Delafield
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Harare North by Brian Chikwava

>7 avaland: I have to add Buddha's Orphans by Samrat Upadhyay to my list. It has really grown on me since I have finished it.

I had a pretty good quarter, most of it non-fiction.

Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939 - Katie Roiphe
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 - G.J. Meyer
The Secret History - Donna Tartt (which I realized I never mentioned anywhere but which I LOVED)
Mockingjay (Book Three of the Hunger Games) - Suzanne Collins
Killing Mr. Lebanon: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri and its impact on the Middle East - Nicholas Blanford