Emma, Jane Austen. The longest Austen novel also features one of her most delightful characters. Emma is both endearing and meddlesome, and her happy ending is very satisfying. What I love most about Austen is that her stories are so timeless. Despite the specifics of the culture in which they live, the characters are still so real and undeniable in their motives and choices that they could be anyone, anywhere. Time reading Austen's work is never wasted.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. Most of the time my favorite non-fiction book. Lamott is brilliant in a way I can't describe. She is the most authentic writer I know. Every single moment of her life is on display for her readers to see, but she doesn't exploit or indulge. She simply tells stories, and she does it in such a way that they utterly liberate and inspire whoever reads them. Despite the fact that Lamott is very different from me politically and I constantly change my mind about whether or not I think she's actually a Christian, she brings a different dimension to my spirituality that I desperately need. Since first reading her seven years ago, she's been one of my greatest role models as a writer.
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy. This was a re-read, and I posted about it the first time I read it in early 2008. I wanted to read it again because I was so captivated by the language. I wasn't disappointed this time around, either; Roy's ability to put together a beautiful sentence is stunning. The story is still sad and not redemptive enough for it to be a favorite, but because this book is like reading one long poem, it was worth a second look.
Hinds' Feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard. This book was recommended to me by a good friend as a way to better discern the love that God has for me, and it lived up to my expectations. It tells the story of Much Afraid, a crippled shepherdess who longs to go up to the High Places with the Shepherd. Her journey is a beautiful allegory for the life of the believer. Much Afraid's companions along the way are Sorrow and Suffering, which first terrifies her, but as she goes she realizes more and more how much stronger she is because of them. She travels through desert wastelands and up treacherous mountain passes. At times the Shepherd is close and comforting, at other times He seems distant and uninvolved. But His tender love for her is always a given, and it has encouraged me greatly to think of God in this way. This is a story that I will read again, and that I would recommend to anyone else.
Downtown, Pete Hamill. I've read one of Hamill's novels, Forever, which I liked but which I would also describe as a poor man's Winter's Tale. I picked up this one because it is subtitled "My Manhattan," and billed as a memoir of his experiences in downtown Manhattan. I bought it before I lived downtown, but now that I do I was even more interested to read it. And I enjoyed it - it contains a great deal of interesting tidbits of little known Manhattan history, most of which I didn't know. It also describes the evolution of a number of iconic and lesser known buildings, which I intend to track down at some point. But I thought it would be more of a memoir than it was, and I was left wanting to know more about Hamill's personal experiences in the context of the city he so lovingly describes. If I didn't live here I don't think I would have liked it very much.
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand. I first read this the summer before my senior year of high school. It was an assignment for AP English, and I had to annotate as I went. I mostly wanted to read it again because it's ten years later and I thought it would be amusing to see what brilliant thoughts I had about it pre-adulthood. And that's what it was. Mostly what I did back then was state the obvious, and in many cases completely miss the obvious, which was even more amusing. As a story, I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed The Fountainhead. I think I'm done reading it, but I understand better now why it's such a classic. Rand's characters tend to be preachy, and her female lead in particular is abhorrent, but her message makes sense. I disagree with her philosophy, Objectivism, but I disagree just as strongly with its opposite, Collectivism. There's no mention in the book of what I would call the happy medium between those two, individuality within community. I wish any of her characters had lived according to that philosophy, because they would have been much easier to like and probably would have enjoyed themselves a lot more.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac. This book wasn't quite what I thought it would be, but it was still a good read. It's a novel about Sal Paradise, whose wanderlust leads him to take multiple road trips with various companions. It takes place in the last 1940s, and Sal and most of his friends are former Army officers who have returned from World War II with no direction and very little motivation. Staying in any one place too long feels stifling, as if the world around them doesn't make sense after their war experiences and they have to keep moving to stay in control of it. Kerouac's descriptions of different places in the country are evocative and moving, although the scenes that take place in dance clubs invariably degenerate into a mess by the end. I was especially taken in by his observations of the American West, whose landscapes are so near and dear to me. I understand that the theme of the book is movement and displacement, but I couldn't help but be disappointed in Sal's primary traveling companion, Dean Moriarty. Dean tries to live right but just ends up fathering illegitimate children in various states and then abandoning him. It's tough to root for a character like that, even if the author does what he can to help you understand why.
The Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins. I read The Hunger Games and its sequel, Catching Fire, last fall following the recommendation of a friend who is almost as passionate about YA literature as I am. She is a fellow Harry Potter lover, so I trust her judgment. The first book especially is an extremely compelling, suspenseful story. The second is slightly weaker but still powerful. The third, Mockingjay, which was just released last week, was a pretty big letdown. I don't want to divulge too much and risk spoiling it, but it just didn't resolve well for me. The major relationships central to the first two books were wrapped up hurriedly and not well-explained and the hero of the trilogy, Katniss, dissolved into a self-involved whiner by the end. Too bad, because I'm always looking for the next Harry Potter, and this was not it.
Onward to the fall, which will involve a great deal of reading and hopefully a lot more writing, since someone will be requiring that of me!
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