Elements of Style -- Illustrated!!!

I already own a copy of The Elements of Style by the immortal authors William Strunk and E.B. White. But I couldn't resist the new edition, The Elements of Style (illustrated). Artist Maira Kalman has added fabulous color drawings to the famous work on grammar, mechanics and style. "Somebody else's umbrella" illustrates how to properly form possessives. A red-haired boy in his PJs demonstrates dashes: "His first thought on getting out of bed -- if he had any thought at all -- was to get back in again." You can see some of the illustrations on Kalman's web site; check them out here.

Honorable Mentions of 2005

Here are three books I read this year that were really excellent, not quite Top Five, but definitely my honorable mentions for 2005

• Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel (2005). Calling this book a "coming of age" novel is literally accurate, but it doesn't quite convey the eccentric delights of narrator Dwight Wilmerding, slacker and searcher in contemporary Manhattan. Dwight is looking for meaning, but his funny voice and social conscience make stand out. I read another short story by Kunkel in the literary magazine n +1 (Issue 3, it does not appear to be online), and was very impressed with that too.
• Too Late to Die Young by Harriet McBryde Johnson (2005). I can identify with Ms. Johnson as a smart woman and a Southerner, and then she takes me a little farther down the narrative road with her, and I can imagine what life is like as a disability rights activist who uses a wheelchair. Her memoir is funny and sharp, and it takes apart of lot stereotypes and preconceptions about ability and disability.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1936). I read this for a library science class this year and immediately put it to work on my friends and family. It promotes the fiendish idea of getting people to do what you want by being really polite and nice to them, and by making them feel good about themselves (insert evil cackling laughter here).

Spoonreader's Top 5 Books of 2005

In the wonderful novel High Fidelity, the narrator Rob Fleming compulsively compiles Top 5 lists of everything from his favorite pop songs to his worst break-ups. In tribute to that book, I will be unveiling several Top 5 lists between now and the end of the year. My Top 5 lists, of course, will deal with books, read and unread.

Here are the Top 5 books I read this year. Not all of them were published in 2005, but I read 'em all this year, so here we go. They are in ranked in order.

• No. 5: Pretty Birds, by Scott Simon (2005). Irena and her family live in cosmopolitan, multicultural Sarajevo when it comes under siege during the Yugoslav war of the 1990s. The family, along with their talking African Grey parrot Pretty Bird, survive without electricity or water in a city transformed by sniper fire and violence. By turns tragic, funny and realistic, this important novel captures the atrocity of warfare unleashed on the modern city. Its author is National Public Radio host Scott Simon, who based the novel on his reporting and direct observations from war-torn Sarajevo.
• No. 4: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O'Connor (1955). Through her biting, incisive portraits of Southern mores and manners, O'Connor gets at the very essence of life: the loneliness of physical existence, the fragility of genuine emotional connection and the transcendent hope that there is a world beyond the mere physical senses. My favorite story was "Good Country People," in which an angry, educated spinster unexpectedly meets her match in a traveling Bible salesman. O'Connor truly deserves the title "master of the short story."
• No. 3: The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, by Paul Elie (2003). This book is about the art of literature and life. It's also about poverty, about peace activism, about the 1960s, about the Catholic church in the 20th century, and about the elusive nature of moral authority. It's also a beautifully written biography of four Catholic writers who were contemporaries: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor (see above) and Walker Percy.
• No. 2: Break Blow Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World's Best Poems (2005). Feminist outlier Camille Paglia takes a break from the culture wars to make an analytical, insightful tour of the world's best poetry. She tackles the likes of Shakespeare, John Donne, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and William Butler Yeats as well as a few newbies like comedian Wanda Coleman and folk singer Joni Mitchell. It's a fun English lit class with its feet on the ground and its mind on the sublime.
  
• No. 1: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (2004). I wrote about this book -- a novel in the form of a letter written by a country pastor to his young son -- just recently, so I won't add much now. (You can read my previous post here.) Aside from being beautifully written, it also includes an important story of spiritual and social justice.
  

On the ephemerality of rankings

I picked up a copy of Kazuo Ichiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go at a charity book sale this week. You'll remember (from my previous posting) that Time magazine put this book on its best 100 novels since 1923 list, even though the book came out just this year. Personally, I think it takes awhile to draw a true conclusion on the merits of any particular novel, and a book should be out for at least a year before I would include it on my top 100 novels list.
Meanwhile, The New York Times doesn't think "Never Let Me Go" is good enough to make its 10 best books of 2005 list (though they did grant the novel a place on their list of 100 notable books of this year).
I bring this up just to emphasize the point that I think "best of" lists are really interesting conversation starters, but not the end-all and be-all of good taste.
I will let you know what I think of "Never Let Me Go," probably sometime in '06.
Finally, I'm contemplating my own best of list for 2005, but it will be best books I personally read in 2005. I'm not fast enough to keep up with all the interesting books published in a given year! More on this topic later.

2005 Best Books list, part I

It's that wonderful time of year again, when magazines and newspapers start publishing their best of the year lists.
The New York Times published their Top 10 list today, with five places for fiction and five places for non-fiction. The list includes links to the reviews and, in some cases, the first chapter. Yeah!
The whole list is here.
You'll also find links on this page to the NYT's 100 notable books of the year and links to previous years' lists.