What I Read in 2012

I'm a librarian, and people have a lot of assumptions about librarians. Some people assume librarians are mousy, strict, and repressed. Others believe that we are raging sexpots who can't wait to take down our buns, kick off our sensible shoes, and get wild in the stacks.

But one thing everyone believes of librarians is that we read. A lot.

For some 'brarians this stereotype is based in truth. I have colleagues who polish off multiple books a month, or even a week. Sadly, I am not as quick/strong/prolific a reader as them. I average about one book a month. And (this is a true mathematical statement) about 10 magazines a month. I am a magazine freak.

This year I did pretty well on the reading front. Below is a list of the books I read (a few of which I am still reading) and my thoughts on them. Enjoy, and if you like, please leave a comment with your favorite book you read this year!

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The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta is one of my favorite authors, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Southern Festival of Books in 2011. The author of Election, Little Children, and The Abstinence Teacher, Perrotta writes about big, difficult issues set in middle-class, suburban locations. And even though many (most) of his characters are deeply flawed, he writes with such compassion (minus the pity), that you feel for even the worst characters. In The Leftovers, Perrotta veers from his previous plots, which were grounded firmly in reality. This novel opens a year after the "Sudden Departure": a Rapture-like event in which a significant number of people (a mix of Christians, Muslims, atheists, and others) disappear mysteriously off the planet. No one can make sense of what happened and why. For some, life keeps moving forward as usual, but for others, the answer lies in following self-proclaimed holy men or joining cults. The Leftovers follows the Garvey family as they try to make sense and find meaning in what happened.

5 out of 5 stars

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Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality by Hanne Blank






Straight was one of the books I reviewed for Library Journal this year and let me tell you, I actually squealed when I received the book in the mail (they just send you a book, you don't get to choose what you review). Hanne Blank is a gender studies scholar who wrote an excellent book entitled Virgin: The Untouched History a few years ago about the history of the concept of virginity. Straight discusses the history of the concept of heterosexuality; a concept that, incidentally, is only a little more than a century old. Before the late 1800's, there was no "heterosexual" identity because there was no "homosexual" identity to counter it. Instead, there were simply culturally and religiously approved sexual acts (married, procreative intercourse) and sinful/deviant acts (pretty much anything else). It wasn't until the likes of von Krafft-Ebing and Freud got their hands on the idea of sexuality as part of one's identity that what we understand today as "straight" and "gay" emerged.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Everyone knows about The Girl Who Was on Fire and her trials as she navigates a battle royale in a futuristic, dystopian version of the United States. Collins' first book of the Hunger Games trilogy comes as a wonderful shock of fresh air after being endlessly exposed to Edward and Bella's fucked up romance in the other popular teen series. And yes, the "kids killing kids" plot of the novels is controversial and upsetting to say the least, but Collins uses the horror of the Hunger Games to make a strong statement about political authoritarianism and violence-as-entertainment, while revealing that true heroism comes in the form of trust, love, and mercy.

4 out of 5 stars

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 Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

If you don't follow the Sookie Stackhouse series, the plot of Deadlocked, the penultimate book in Harris' wildly entertaining series, will mean nothing to you. If you do follow it, I have a simple two-word prediction for you:

Sam. Merlotte.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life by Samhita Mukhopadhyay






This book was a Christmas gift sent to me by one of my closest friends. It was the perfect book for me at the time I received it. I had just spent a few months on OkCupid, which is an addictive and very fun dating site. But dating is a source of anxiety for me since there is so much up and down and ambiguity. After the last fella called off our short-lived what-have-you, I was sick of it. Outdated, a book about dating from a feminist perspective, didn't really say anything new to me (it is an excellent book for young, budding feminists), but it was a wonderful reminder that love in unpredictable, and although we can't control others, we can control our responses to others and our boundaries. It was also a reminder that dating-while-feminist puts you in the driver's seat and having standards makes it easier to find someone compatible. For what it's worth, around the time I started reading it, I was in a much better relationship with a much better person than those OkCupid dudes.

4 out of 5 stars

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Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell

Written by the co-creator of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, this humorous book is a very light read. It's good, but not as good as Wendell's previous book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Nothing will ever top Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir Fun Home in my mind, but her follow-up,  Are You My Mother? comes close. In Fun Home, Bechdel details her father's life as a very intelligent, closeted gay man. Her father's death/possible suicide coincides with Bechdel coming out as a lesbian in college, and she weaves her and her father's stories together in a magical way with her words and images. Bechdel picks up with her mother's story in Are You My Mother? and ties it to her own experience in psychotherapy. Where Fun Home was close up and emotional, Are You My Mother? is removed and erudite. Still, Bechdel's second memoir captures the sadness in her and her mother's lives while refusing to wallow in melodrama.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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She Walks in Beauty by Siri Mitchell







I have a terrible secret: I love Christian romance novels. It started when I worked at Books-a-Million and picked up Deeanne Gist's book A Bride Most Begrudging because the cover was really pretty. But not all Christian romances are created equal. Too often, they ooze with chaste sentimentality and eye-rolling preachiness. (see Colonial Christmas Brides below). But Siri Mitchell impressed me with her novel Love's Pursuit which has a tragic love story and an interesting setting (the Puritan colonies). She Walks in Beauty is not quite as good as Love's Pursuit, but it also had a fascinating setting: the Gilded Age (late 1800's) among the extremely wealthy class in New York City. Clara Carter is being pushed by her aunt and father to marry a rich, boorish man because, shhhh! the family money is all gone. Clara can't stand her strict beauty regimes and the endless, boring balls and dinners--especially once she becomes aware of the suffering of the poorer classes in New York. There is some preachiness, as to be expected in any religious novel, but it's preachiness on the side of honor, character, and kindness.

4 out of 5 stars

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Gone Missing by Linda Castillo







This crime novel takes place in Ohio's Amish country. Detective Kate Burkholder grew up Amish, so when Amish teen girls start to go missing from the local communities, Kate is on the scene to gain the trust of the families. A fairly gruesome book, especially at the end--but, hey, what would a crime novel be without some bloodshed?

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players by Stefan Fatsis

Scrabble is like a communicable disease. Once you start playing with someone who is *really* into it, their obsession rubs off on you. A close friend of mine got me into scrabble (I played it before, but hadn't really bothered to learn the official rules or anything) and lent me this book, which is a journalist's account of attempting to become a professional scrabble player, which is more difficult than it sounds. My friend infected me, and then I went on to infect my dad. My game is still comparatively weak, but I don't quite have the passion for it like Fatsis did.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene






Keep Sweet is short young adult novel that takes place on a fundamentalist Mormon compound, complete with 14 year old brides married off to gross, abusive older men who already have multiple wives. Alva Jane dreams of marrying her sweetheart, but after she gets caught illicitly kissing him, she's beaten, imprisoned, and married off to an older, terrifying man. That's when she starts to question her whole life and religion. A bit unrealistic (I doubt a young, very isolated teenager would go from complete belief in her religion and culture to complete rejection of it in a matter of months, but then again, there have been similar stories of "escape" from crazy-ass religious cults, so who knows?). But it was very short and entertaining.

3.5 out of 5 stars

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Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed recently revealed herself to be the writer behind "Dear Sugar", the advice column on The Rumpus. It seems really cheesy to say that this book, a collection of Sugar's greatest hits, changed my life, but....this book kinda changed my life. Or, at least, my worldview. Strayed advocates the concept of "radical empathy", which doesn't mean having no boundaries, but does mean putting yourself in another's shoes before judging them. Strayed is an excellent advice-giver because she's been through very difficult times in her life and is open to sharing what she's learned throughout the highs and lows in her life. Somehow, despite cutesy soundbites like "acceptance is a small, quiet room" and "To make a home in the body is an act of faith", Strayed manages to dig far, far deeper than trite quotables. This is a book for people who believe in humanity. I really fucking recommend it.

5 out of 5 stars

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The God Problem: Expressing Faith and Being Reasonable by Robert Wuthnow

This is another book I reviewed for Library Journal. Sadly, it was not as interesting as Straight. Wuthnow, using language studies, examines how people of (specifically, Christian) faith believe and express that belief without coming off as insane. For example, nearly everyone he talked to about Heaven qualified their thoughts on what the afterlife would be like by saying something like "no one really knows" or "I imagine...", because to claim to know what Heaven is really like would be unreasonable. This one was a bit too esoteric for me, and also bizarrely condescending. I felt a bit of contempt come through on Wuthnow's side for his interviewees. Perhaps that's me projecting, but his repeated exclamations of "how do people believe in this crazy shit?!" (dressed up in academic language) annoyed me. Everyone believes in some amount of crazy shit--we couldn't get through life without some level of belief in crazy shit.

2.5 out of 5 stars

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn






Gone Girl is one of *the* books of 2012. A jaw-dropping, page-turning, acid-and-barbed wire story of a marriage from hell, Gone Girl tells the story of Nick and Amy Dunne, a once-hip New York couple whose marriage unravels once they lose their jobs and move back to Nick's hometown in Missouri. When Amy goes missing one day while Nick is at work, the insidious, mutual contempt of the couple rises to the top of a pile a unusually perfect clues that point to Nick as the killer. The book goes back and forth from Nick's point of view to Amy's, and reveals not one, but dozens of twists that shock until the very end. This is one of the few books I've stayed up waaay past my bedtime to read in long time.

5 out of 5 stars

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Christmas Colonial Brides by Lauralee Bliss and Irene Brand

Okay, here's an example of bad Christian romance. I picked up this collection of four novellas set in the early years of America because I am a sucker for the colonial period in American history. Unfortunately, the stories were, by and large, historically inaccurate sentimental pap with plodding dialogue and insufferable characters.

2.5 out of 5 stars

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Undressing the Devil by Angel Strand







One thing that makes my enjoyment of Christian romance even weirder is my *other* love of steamy (very, very secular) romance. Undressing the Devil by Angel Strand is an erotic, historical romance with a very interesting setting: 1930's Europe. As Hitler and Mussolini build their war machine, Cia Finnemore galavants around Italy, Switzerland, and England with various lovers. When Blackshirts burst in on Cia and her boyfriend one night, the BF murders them and then runs off, forcing Cia to hide with friends until she can make safe passage to England. And that's where I'm at right now...I'm only half-way finished. The setting and pace really set this book apart from other, cheesier romances.

4 out of 5 stars


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In conclusion: Best books I read this year:
The Leftovers
Gone Girl
Tiny Beautiful Things

Runners up:
Are You My Mother?
Straight 

Delicious Oscar Bait

Movies: Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook

November, December, and January are my three favorite months, movie-wise. Why? Because this is the season when directors and producers push to have potential Oscar contenders released. It's a three-month party of (generally) better-than-average films!

This does not mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I love all Oscar-winning films. I found the last two films to win Best Picture--The Artist and The King's Speech--to be cute and pleasant. Was my mind blown and world shaken by them? No. In fact, since I like lists, here is a list of all the Best Picture winners that I can say I truly love or made a difference in my life:

Casablanca (1943)
Annie Hall (1977)
Amadeus (1984)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Titanic* (1997)
American Beauty** (1999)
The Departed (2006)
No Country for Old Men (2007)

*I realize this isn't the greatest movie ever, but it did make a huge impact on me in middle school.
**Ditto

Point is, even though not all Oscar-winning or -nominated movies are great, Oscar season itself is peppered with many indie gems, old-school epics and musicals, costume period pieces, and many other films vying for that top spot. And this delights me.

Two movies I've seen lately will most definitely be up for some awards come January and February. Lincoln is an intimate historical piece that, rather than attempt to cram all of the 16th president's life into two hours, focuses mostly on January of 1865, as Lincoln struggles to pass the 13th amendment abolishing slavery before the end of the Civil War.

Daniel Day-Lewis carries the burden of such an inspiring and legendary historical figure on his 6' 1" shoulders more than capably. Day-Lewis is, I think, one of the only actors who could so totally inhabit this role--both in spirit and physical presence--that the actor himself becomes invisible. We are watching Lincoln, complete with his reedy, high-pitched voice, stooped posture, and predilection for telling amusing stories at the drop of a (stovepipe) hat. This isn't a surprise to me, since Day-Lewis has made a career out of obliterating any trace of Day-Lewis as he disappears into his intense and difficult roles.

The myriad other actors in Lincoln are just as impressive (and sometimes just as "invisible" behind feature-masking facial hair and makeup). Pretty much everyone in Hollywood is in this film (just check out the cast list on IMDB), but a particular standout is Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, a woman who weeps and gnashes her teeth in agony at her husband's feet in one scene and makes a witty and cutting remark at a party the next. It's believed that Mrs. Lincoln suffered from bipolar disorder, and she was most certainly severely depressed for years after two of her sons died in childhood. Mrs. Lincoln was a woman who might be described as "difficult", but Field portrays her as a sympathetic (and, at times, funny) woman with some serious grit to her, in addition to an endless sea of rage and sadness.

Another standout performance is Tommy Lee Jones as radical abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens, much like TMJ himself, is an old grump. He heckles and sneers at the congressmen who disagree--even a little--with him. He gets one of the best burns in movie history during a climatic scene where he is asked to explain his views on race equality.

Other wonderful performances include Lee Pace as Fernando Wood, a congressman firmly against abolition, Jared Harris (best know as Lane Pryce on Mad Men) as Ulysses S. Grant, and James Spader as W.N. Bilbo, the leader of a group of men Lincoln sends out to convince congressmen to vote for the amendment--whether it means promising them a job, appealing to their good Christian character, or something more shady.

Lincoln delighted me because I learned so much from it--not only in the theatre, but afterwards when I went home and immediately started Googling to find out answers to questions I had during the film. It's a historical film that intellectually challenges the viewer rather than spoon-feeding us a Hollywoodized version of history.

In sum, Lincoln deserves any and all accolades it receives. It's an excellent movie and bears watching multiple times to catch the details you missed the first time.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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I also watched Silver Linings Playbook recently. SLP is a film than defies genre. It's definitely both a drama and a comedy, but it's also a bit of a sports movie and a romance. It's about broken, but genuinely good people.

Bradley Cooper--an actor I have much disdain for, but who was excellent in this movie--stars as Pat Solatano, a man recently released from a mental institution after beating the crap out of his wife's lover after catching them in the shower together. Pat can't get his act together. He goes home to live with his loving, but passive mother (Jacki Weaver) and obsessive-compulsive Philadelphia Eagles fan of a dad (Robert De Niro). Pat has delusions of getting back together with his wife and spends his time exercising and reading the books she teaches in her high school English class. These pursuits aren't enough to occupy Pat and he continues to live an emotionally destructive life. Then he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a young widow with a depressive streak herself. Both Tiffany and Pat have no filter and screwed up social skills. Tiffany blatantly propositions Pat a couple hours after they first meet. Pat attempts to manipulate Tiffany into contacting his wife. Etc, etc.

 The two find a reason to work together when they enter a dance competition. This competition is extremely important to Tiffany and, over time, becomes important to Pat as well.

Silver Linings Playbook is notable because it portrays mental illness in a sympathetic and light-hearted manner without making a total cartoon out of it. The film really does walk a fine line between hilarity and gut-wrenching emotion--often in the same scene. In a few scenes, Bradley Cooper cries in a way that is utterly unselfconscious and cringe-inducing because of how REAL it sounds. Yet, his performance is not melodramatic in the least (especially given that Pat is diagnosed as bipolar. Hey, Mrs. Lincoln, you have a friend down here!)

Silver Linings Playbook is an odd little film that is garnering a surprising amount of Oscar buzz. It's definitely not your typical Oscar bait, and I highly recommend checking it out.

4.5 out of 5 stars