Best and Worst Books of 2009

I know, this is very late. My flash drive died a grim and sudden death, so this post was stranded on my laptop for a month. However it has now been brought back to the land of the living, in all its overlong and hastily edited glory.

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I wasn’t going to do this, because I read hardly anything this year. Too busy. Life happened. My total was seventy-two or something, and out of that only about ten fiction books, half of which were rereads. Scary, eh? But it’s tradition, so here we go.

Best:

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr: I read this a long time ago, but didn’t think much of it until last week when my mum read it and liked it so much that she decided to read it to my siblings. I happened to be loafing about and heard the chapter about Pumpel the suicidal dog, and that was that. It’s about a Jewish girl and her family who leave Germany in 1933, and live first in Switzerland and then France. There isn’t a whole lot of plot; it’s very much a character-driven story. The growing Nazi Menace is more or less out of the picture after the first few chapters. But the author tells of their daily lives and their adjustment to two new countries with great humour and understanding of human nature. I enjoyed it very much. It’s one of the few children’s’ books I’ve read that doesn’t explain everything but assumes that the reader can figure out the rest on his own.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes: I’m not much into the Revolutionary War but I really loved this book, especially the first half—when it’s concentrating on Johnny instead of the war and the Patriots (I know, I’m strange), and when he’s an immature jerk who gets what’s coming to him and has to deal with it. Esther Forbes knows her stuff—the details and characters never once jar the reader back to modern times. She has great characters, witty dialogue, and—bonus points!—doesn’t present the British as beasts, either. Hooray.

Various P.G. Wodehouse: I went on a Wodehouse binge this summer. All his books blur together in my head so I can’t remember all the titles—they’re on Goodreads somewhere—but Wodehouse is smashing, all round. His plots and characters are all exactly the same but boy does he make up for it with his humour and his pseudo-English 1920s flavour. Favourites were Leave it to Psmith and Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen.

Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne: Another children’s-book-from-the-far-distant-past. It was quite epic. My seven-year-old self did not appreciate it properly.

The Compass by Daniel Schwabauer: The textbook for the One Year Novel curriculum. Shameless plug: Nina interviewed Ruth, Kayla and I about this a few days ago.

I Am David and the The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia: All rereads, so they don’t really count. Sigh. But you should read them anyway. Hurry, because the fourth Attolia book comes out NEXT MONTH!


Worst: I didn’t abhor any of these. They’re only worst by virtue of my not reading any tremendously bad ones this year. How disappointing—I will have to be sure to put some rotten books on my reading list for 2010, because they’re always such a joy to write about. (Or would be if I had time to waste on them.)

Beyond the Reflection’s Edge by Bryan Davis (with apologies to the Most Kind and Esteemed Friend who lent it to me!): I don’t get why everyone loves this guy! Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t get into his books. I enjoyed this one more than the Dragons in our Midst series, because it was based more in the real world and involved no dragons and long prophetic poems. But I can’t connect with the characters, can’t get into their heads or feel like I know them. The story relies entirely on plot, a convoluted plot that I never really cared about because the characters were so mediocre. And there’s something about his writing that grates me though I can’t exactly define it. Maybe just the fact that it’s a very modern style and that it takes itself so seriously (though DIOM does that more). A lot of this is my own bias, i.e. not really being a fan of the genre. I liked some parts of it, but I can’t remember what they were at the moment. The cover was pretty awesome, that was one thing. And the whole music motif/theme.

Introvert Power by Laurie Helgoe: I had high hopes for this one but alas, it was a dud (to use the technical term). The author seems to think that all introverts are hypersensitive and idealistic. There’s a lot of talk about envisioning dreams no matter how unrealistic they are and visualising fantasies, in order to deal with the abuse of the extrovert world. Sorry, I happen to be a sceptical, rational, unemotional introvert. We do exist, believe it or not. (What’s up with every author who writes about introversion thinking that introvert = INFJ?) The tapping-into-your-inner-self idea is a bit too New Agey-for me. Methinks my inner self could do with less influence, not more.

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters: The title is a disguise. Underneath lurks list upon list of clichés. I don’t need help coming up with those, thank you! Try The Bookshelf Muse’s Emotion and Sensory Thesauri instead. Plus it’s free!

Most want to read in 2010: I have 971 books on my to-read list, so I give up trying to narrow it down. At this rate, I'll be busy for the next thirteen and a half years, except for the fact that this list seems to grow at an exponential rate. Things look bleak. What a gruesome fate.

What were your most loved and hated books this year?