Malinda's Top 10 Choices of 2017

New rules this year – since I’ve been doing this for a decade, I’ve started getting a lot of repeats on my list.  So, although at least half of the 144 books I read this year were rereads (did you know that in bygone days, women could be committed for “excessive reading”?), each of these 10 was a book I read for the first time this year. These are my top 10 recommendations for a general audience, not necessarily the 10 books I liked best. One of my favorites was a book on the collection of historical medical specimens – unless you have a very strong stomach and a passion for medical science, I would not recommend it to you.

So – 10 books I read for the first time in 2017 and would recommend to you.

1.       Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys

I read this book because I absolutely adore Ruta Sepetys. You may remember her book Between Shades of Gray making my list before. I think Sepetys writes some of the most compelling novels of our time. For one thing, she chooses topics that are familiar and yet completely new. This book is about one of the worst maritime disasters in history. In happened during WWII but you probably never heard of it, even if you love WWII history, because it was information known to those behind the Iron Curtain and largely hidden from the West. The characters are compelling, the writing beautiful.

2.       Out of My Mind, Sharon Draper

Everyone was all about Wonder this year – so I read it. And I did not care for it. I though the end was contrived and patronizing. This book deserves all the praise – and the big budget movie deal that Wonder got. The main character is a young girl with cerebral palsy who is nonverbal. The story is brilliantly told from her point of view as she attempts to communicate, to make friends, and to navigate school. Thanks to Jennifer for lending it to me.

3.     The Master Butcher’s Singing Club, Louise Erdrich

This is my friend Lolita’s second favorite book, sandwiched between Pillars of the Earth and A Prayer for Owen Meany. Since those are two of the greatest books of all time, I figured I might as well read this one as well. If it tells you anything about how good this book is, while I had pneumonia and was too sick to read, I told myself the story of The Master Butcher’s Singing Club over and over in my mind.  Like Erdrich’s other books, the plot involves a cast of unique, often eccentric, characters whose lives magically intertwine. In this book, the characters include a German soldier turned American immigrant who owns a butcher shop, a Native American veteran who performs a balancing act in side shows, a beautiful mortician, and a mysterious scrap gatherer who searches the night for treasure.

4.     A Man Called Ove, Fredrick Backman

I’ve spoken to many people who tell me they liked this book despite the character of Ove. I loved this book because of Ove; because I am Ove. I am, at my core, a grumpy, anti-social old man who checks the neighborhood parking lot every morning to see who is parking illegally. (Okay, my neighborhood doesn’t actually have a parking lot. However, my blood pressure markedly improved when my neighbor whose friends did not understand the purpose of a driveway finally moved away.)  This is another story with a great cast of characters – not just the immensely lovable Ove but his neighbors – old and new – with their own sweet, sad, and hopeful stories. Becky  picked this book for bookclub.

5.      Ashfall, Mike Mullin

The Yellowstone super volcano both fascinates and freaks me out.  Even if you don’t geek out about volcano science, you can still enjoy this post-apocalyptic  “what if” book DH recommended to me. The worst case scenario eruption occurs at the opening of the novel, leaving much of North American in a dark, ash filled landscape where they must fight for the few remaining resources. Total edge of your seat kind of stuff.

6.       Underground Airlines, Ben H. Winters

Brian D, who is 1000x smarter than I, recommended this book to me. I enjoyed Winter’s Last Policeman, but this book is on a completely different level. Winters imagines an America where a compromise prevented the Civil War but left modern day America with slave states. Plantations are now run by big corporations and undercover policemen infiltrate abolitionist groups to recover runaway slaves. As different from reality as the premise professes to be, it is the light shed on our own society through Winter’s fiction that makes this book so enthralling.

7     The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

I adore Barbrara Kingsolver from Beantrees  to Poisonwood and back again, so I chose to read The Lacuna this year. I was not disappointed. The main character is taken from the United States to Mexico at a young age. There his life becomes entangled with those of Frieda Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky. It is absolutely seamless how Kingsolver blends history with imagination, mystery and intrigue with raw reality. And the ending is golden.

8.      The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

I listened to the audiobook version of this book because Becky told me that it had an excellent example of an unreliable narrator. It was so much fun! It’s just a really juicy, brain-candy mystery with a deliciously unreliable narrator. I adored it. Beach read for sure.

9.      I am the New Black, Tracy Morgan

When I heard an old episode of Terry Gross interviewing Tracy Morgan about his book on NPR’s Fresh Air, I knew that I wanted to read it. Yes, parts of it are as side-splittingly funny as Morgan was on SNL and 30 Rock, but it is also deeply emotional. Morgan writes about his struggles with a father who was a drug addicted Vietnam veteran who recovered from addiction only to succumb to AIDS – about Morgan’s own days selling crack on the streets – about dealing with fame when he didn’t know who to trust. It is good to learn to understand people who have had very different experiences from our own.

  10.The Cursed Child, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne.

Okay, so every other Harry Potter fan in the world  has probably already read this. But I didn’t want to read it at first because JK Rowling didn’t write it herself and despite some notable exceptions (hello, Heartless, my love) I generally hate it when a writer tries to take on another author’s characters (yes, I am referring to you Wide Sargasso Sea, Havisham, and Wicked – you suck [no, not you Wicked the musical, you’re awesome sauce – just the book by that man who likes to ruin other people’s stories]). Yet, I finally gave in and gave Cursed Child a go. And I loved it. I loved it so, so, so, so, so much! Thanks for letting me borrow your book, B.

PS A Christmas Carol is the greatest book of all time period. You should read it.   

Malinda's 10ish Books for Summer Reading

Summer reading – it’s one of the Best events of the year. I love to spread out on a cozy quilt under a shady tree and dive into a book. Recently, a co-worker asked me for some recommendations for summer reading. I tried So Hard to keep my list to just ten books, but I stealthily name dropped my book friends until it was a bit more than 10.

Without further ado, here are 10ish books that I would recommend for your summer reading list.

1. The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver - I adore Barbara Kingsolver. Sometimes she writes a sentence that I need to read 2 or 3 times just because it is so beautiful. This book is about a young Mexican American man who becomes mixed up with Frida Kahlo and Trotsky and the Committee on Un-American Activities. History + Great Characters + Heartbreak + New Perspectives (I am also especially fond of her books The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.)

2. The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls – Walls’ The Glass Castle is one of my favorite dysfunctional memoirs, and I love this fiction work by the same author. I've read Star three times, I think. It is about two sisters who, abandoned by their mother, must move back to the small, southern, factory town where their family once owned the local mill. It is sort of a modern Southern Gothic, coming of age, classism/racism/sexism tome.  (This book was recommended to me by JM who recommends amazing books like A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Mindset.)

3. Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters - My colleague BD, who always recommends the best books (like Cultural Literacy and The Last Policeman), sent this one my way. It is a politically insightful, perhaps controversial, adult dystopian novel. The setting is a re-imagined America where the Civil War did not happen and there are still several slave states. An undercover African American agent works to catch escaped slaves for a government agency.  It is for the Black Lives Matter movement what The Handmaid's Tale is to liberal feminism. 

4. Winterdance by Gary Paulsen - I literally could not care less about sports adventure books where people go off and do something crazy in the name of proving they can. Except for this book. I love this book. Only the author of Hatchet and The Winter Room could make me care, deeply, about the Iditarod. I read it last summer and was, at points, forced to climb under a blanket because I was experiencing Alaskan cold along with Gary Paulsen. I plan to read it again this summer. 

5. Heartless by Marissa Meyer – If you have ever heard me gush, it might have been about Marissa Meyer. I think she is Beyond Fabulous. This is her most recent book and it is brilliant. It is the story of how the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass became a violent force of nature who roams Wonderland screaming, “Off with their heads!” The way that Meyer takes the stories and poems of Lewis Carroll’s classic works and weaves them into a beautiful, heartbreaking, romantic, adventure-filled YA novel is delicious.  

6. The Rosie Project by Grame Simsion - I read a lot of books about autism and this is one of my fictional favorites (along with Mockingbird and The Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). It's a quirky Australian romance about a genetics professor who is attempting to find his perfect mate by using a carefully crafted questionnaire. It's sweet and funny and insightful. It was recommended by my friend BT (who also passed me the luscious mystery The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.)

7. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell - This book is so weird. Sarah Vowell (who I really would love to have in my circle of friends – along with Anne Lamott) decides to delve into the deaths of assassinated presidents, largely by visiting their places of death and places associated with their deaths. It has a lot of cool history in it, and I relish Sarah Vowell's playfully sick sense of humor. 

8. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - I got this book from my friend LG, who I still love even though she does not appreciate my devotion to Life of Pi. This is like Southern Gothic if that was a British genre. It's got a main character who loves books (which I'm a sucker for), a story within a story, and lots of really twisted family plots. Also, it makes some excellent allusions to classic Gothic novels. 

9. Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe - I read this because I wanted to read the part about the making of the Outsiders movie. I was not expecting much. It was so good that I passed the copy on to my husband who also really enjoyed it. It was well written with lots of crazy stories and endearing stories and inside Hollywood/political stories. It's my favorite celebrity book other than Bossypants. 

10. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell - I love geeky books (looking at you Invisible Gorilla and every book by Erik Larson) and Malcolm Gladwell always makes me feel really geeky and smart. This is a well-written book about how decisions are made. It leads to some introspection as well as some new thinking.