Reading 2012
Jan. 13th, 2013 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runawaynunHere are some of my favorite books that I read in 2012:
Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
It's a painful book to read - it depicts a poor rural Louisiana family during the days before and during Hurricane Katrina. It's about the complicated relationships between family members including the pit bull China.
The Mirage - Matt Ruff
I'm a sucker for alternate histories, so I'm inclined to love this book. Ruff builds an interesting world in which fundamentalist Christians drive airplanes into the World Trade Center in Baghdad, United Arab State in 11/9. It was interesting to see the inverted world and to see criticisms of our own in it. (Plus, Lutherans are a feared terrorist group, which tickles me to no end.) Some may not like the ambiguity of the ending, but I think it fit the book well.
The Unintended Reformation - Brad Gregory
In questioning and challenging the bedrock assumptions of Western Civilization, Martin Luther unwittingly opens the door to the secular, capitalist society we have today.
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Granted, I read it when I was fully in love with Downton Abbey. It is a melancholy love story - but I see more between a man and his ideal of society than between the butler and housekeeper.
Gillespie and I - Jane Harris
I don't want to give too much away - but let's just say it's a murder mystery in Scotland. And it's amazing.
In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez
Sisters overcome their differences to fight against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
NW - Zadie Smith
Because I love Zadie Smith. Smith traces the lives of three people over their lives and how the intersect.
The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
I'm a sucker for microhistories and found this history of cancer fascinating.
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Someone seen as a saint outside his home can be a monster inside. How his daughter copes with the cognitive dissonance.
Unless - Carol Shields
Although billed as a mother and daughter story it's so much more. Women's voices, women's writing, women's art and how culture reacts towards it.
Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward
It's a painful book to read - it depicts a poor rural Louisiana family during the days before and during Hurricane Katrina. It's about the complicated relationships between family members including the pit bull China.
The Mirage - Matt Ruff
I'm a sucker for alternate histories, so I'm inclined to love this book. Ruff builds an interesting world in which fundamentalist Christians drive airplanes into the World Trade Center in Baghdad, United Arab State in 11/9. It was interesting to see the inverted world and to see criticisms of our own in it. (Plus, Lutherans are a feared terrorist group, which tickles me to no end.) Some may not like the ambiguity of the ending, but I think it fit the book well.
The Unintended Reformation - Brad Gregory
In questioning and challenging the bedrock assumptions of Western Civilization, Martin Luther unwittingly opens the door to the secular, capitalist society we have today.
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Granted, I read it when I was fully in love with Downton Abbey. It is a melancholy love story - but I see more between a man and his ideal of society than between the butler and housekeeper.
Gillespie and I - Jane Harris
I don't want to give too much away - but let's just say it's a murder mystery in Scotland. And it's amazing.
In the Time of the Butterflies - Julia Alvarez
Sisters overcome their differences to fight against the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
NW - Zadie Smith
Because I love Zadie Smith. Smith traces the lives of three people over their lives and how the intersect.
The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee
I'm a sucker for microhistories and found this history of cancer fascinating.
Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Someone seen as a saint outside his home can be a monster inside. How his daughter copes with the cognitive dissonance.
Unless - Carol Shields
Although billed as a mother and daughter story it's so much more. Women's voices, women's writing, women's art and how culture reacts towards it.