My old high school teacher, Bob Stewart, reads voraciously and each year about this time he sends me his Top Ten List. Bob reads 4 or 5 books a week, many of them galleys that I send him, and gives booktalks to the Show Low library patrons and has his own monthly TV show called Books with Bob. I love getting his lists and his recommendations and I thought I’d pass them on to you this year. I’ve added a few notes of my own. Let us know what you think of these.
1. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, and Stephen J. Dubner
Prepare to have your conventional ideas of everything shattered by these two rogue pseudo-scientists. Brilliant. (Gayle’s note: This is a revised version of the book that has been out a few years but continues to be a bestseller at CHB).
2. The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
Set in Sydney, Australia, this is an anti-utopian novel that shows us the perils of anti-terrorist hysteria worldwide. (Gayle’s note: This book was on many Best of 2007 lists this year. It is coming out in paperback from Grove Press in January 2008).
3. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo
Compassion for all. No winning without losing (a la Malamud). Effects of class in dying New England town; small town rhythms captured perfectly. (Gayle’s note: I loved this book—it was a bit too long but Bob is right about the rhythms, the essence of small town America, the conflicts between the haves and have-nots. Brilliant writing as usual from one of my favorite writers).
4. The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
One of my favorite authors—Crow Lake was my top pick the year it was published. This follow-up again moves the reader to look at how black and white judgments (confused impulses toward city and country, love and hate, good and evil) inherently bring tragedy into our lives. Set in late 40s and early 50s, the classic tale of two brothers in love with the same woman. The last line of the jacket copy says it all: “War touches all, then or later.” (Gayle’s note: This book was too sad, too tense, too hard for me to finish. The tension I was feeling as I read the first few chapters made me put it down. She’s a great writer, sometimes I just can’t read this too true fiction).
5. The Gentle Axe by R. N. Morris
A thriller that takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1867 where police investigator Porfiry Petrovich faces his most challenging murder case since the events made famous by Dostoevsky in the novel “Crime and Punishment”–a case with disturbing parallels and even darker implications. Witty and humane—he has a double task—solve the mystery and keep the bureaucracy at bay.
6. Before I Forget by Andre Brink
Brink has been nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature and should win it. Set amidst South African politics, this novel is highly erotic and literate. A writer suffering from writer’s block finds words again as he recounts his life as defined by the many women he has loved. It is his tribute to the power of love.
7. Are We Rome: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy
An impressive 200 page documentation in which Murphy persuasively argues that we are beginning to resemble the fall of ancient Rome in the burgeoning corruption of our government and in our arrogant ignorance of the world outside our borders.
8. What’s So Funny by Donald Westlake
Best caper mystery novelist ever. John Dortmunder, Westlake’s intrepid burglar hero is as ingenious as always but his confederates and fickle fate undo his efforts to steal a valuable old Russian chess set that has been ‘missing’ for fifty years. (Gayle’s note: Westlake is a great, funny writer. This is his 13th Dortmunder (a burglar released from prison who has strayed back into his life of crime) story and his characters always feel like old friends revisited. There’s not a lot of mystery but just a lot of fun).
9. Lions at Lamb’s House: Freud’s Lost Analysis of Henry James by Edwin Yoder, Jr.
Wonderfully imaginative recreation of a ten day visit that Freud makes, at the request of William James, to Henry James’ home in England. You should have a psychological dictionary nearby, as you will need it to decipher the talks. Yoder catches the complex interplay of egos and manners and beliefs that might have taken place between these great men. (Gayle’s note: This is one that I haven’t read but definitely will in the next few months. Sounds interesting and enlightening, all in the form of a novel—my favorite way to learn).
10. Stalin’s Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith
I love these contemporary Russian detectives especially Arkady Renko who has been in other novels Smith has written starting with Gorky Park. Renko is a victim of his own integrity and sardonic wit and casts a searing light on contemporary Russia. (Gayle’s Note: Not my cup of tea—Stalin’s ghost appearing on subway platforms and bodies of Black Berets turning up at morgues, but I may try this one as I met Martin Cruz Smith’s daughter, a bookseller in northern California, and was embarrassed that I hadn’t read any of her father’s recent novels).
