A Christmas List (of sorts)
Good reading before "buckling-up" for 2024 ...
This will be my first annual Christmas List of books. They will be the best books I read in 2023 up to December 1st. They did not have to be published in this year. Feel free to click the book to read the brief review on my site. REPEAT … feel free to click the book to read the brief review on my site. There we have the beginning and the end of a new and improved vaughnstackofbooks promotional campaign.
A brief note on the world of Christmas Lists is in order. In my younger years, it was The New York Times alone at the top. It went with me each year to my favorite bookstores as I began the ritual of buying those near and dear books every Christmas. I would read other lists from The Economist or any other periodical I was subscribing to at the moment but it was the NYT list that held sway. It is so very different today. The NYT list is a distant fourth place behind (in order of preference): The Spectator, The Financial Times and The Economist, barely edging out the consistently terrible WSJ holiday effort. Regardless, I decided to forgo a “list” and have chosen to be pretty specific … like our elections, “all or nothing”.
1. The Book that will Not Leave Me: a TIE between The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut and Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
2. The Great Surprise of the Year: A Manual for Cleaning Women (and other stories) by Lucia Berlin
3. Winner of the Marginalia Award: The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China by Robert Kagan
4. Wonderful Book by a Writer I Still Don’t Like That Much: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
5. Wonderful Book by a Writer I Woefully Underestimated: The Fraud by Zadie Smith
6. The “I Was Wrong all Along” Winner: Trust by Hernan Diaz
7. The Most Entertaining Fiction of the Year: Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
8. The Most Entertaining Non-fiction of the year: The Wager by David Gann
9. The “Blast from the Past” Award: the writer Anita Brookner (July 1928 – May 2016)
10. The Handbook for Life Award: The Wisdom of Finance by Mihir Desai
11. War Book of the Year: Armada by Colin Martin & Geoffrey Parker
12. Best History Book: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown by Anna Keay
13. Best Novel: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
14. The Book I Should have Finished: Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris
That was fun. Any suggestions welcomed.
A final note for the year … I always like the Oscar moment when they do a montage of the famous and not so famous Academy members who died during the year. In the spirit of that, I would like to honor Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry. Larry died in 2021 – I apologize … to Larry.
I wish Cormac had won a Nobel Prize. His stuff will very likely outlive the most recent winners and all who read this letter. His voice was unique. The dialogue crackled, mixing the straightforward with the metaphysical in a way I have not experienced with any other writer. He could in equal measure be funny and horrific. His book are serious, sometimes flawed, endeavors. Even when not exactly located there, his books are our “border tales” told with an unsparing eye. After a reclusive writing life, he became a “bit” of a celebrity near the end – the kiss of death with those odd Nobel folks. With The Passenger and Stella Maris, (to be read next year!) he finished with a bang.
I have not read Larry McMurtry anywhere near as much as I have Cormac. It is hard, however, to ignore a man who gave us the West in fiction that is as beautiful as its subjects. Texas was all over these two men’s books, the difference being (among many), that Cormac’s stare was directed across the rivers to the border while Larry’s crossed the rivers to the Big West up north. They fill in each other’s blanks quite well. They both were overlooked in their own way. Cormac as more of a difficult, disturbing crank and Larry as a slick writer of “westerns”. They both wrote as well as anyone in their generation, anywhere. I hope the shelves carry their books for many, many years.
Happy Holidays
Pete
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