A ‘Best Books’ of 2008
January 6th, 2009 by Megan
Since it’s been waaay too long since I’ve contributed, now seems as good a time as any to throw my opinion into the ring… With no further ado, my Ten Best Of:
1. The Book of the Dun Cow, and
2. The Book of Sorrows, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. – beautiful, heartrending, tender, heavenward
3. Home, by Marilynne Robinson – quiet, unsentimental though gentle narrative of choice and redemption
4. Culture Making, by Andy Crouch – thought-provoking treatment of what it means to “make culture” and how to think about doing it in the light of Heaven
5. Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton, by GKC – delightful, full of slippery, revolutionary paradoxes
6. A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken – what it means to be made over in the image of Christ (plus a walk-on by C.S. Lewis)
7. Planet Narnia, by Michael Ward – transforms understanding of Lewis’ Narniad, which in turn transforms understanding of the universe, which in turn transforms understanding of the Creator
8. Travels with Charley in Search of America, by John Steinbeck – charmed, in spite of myself; a humorous travelogue about an America I’ll not see
9. Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, by Kathleen Norris – wry, thoughtful, insightful, encouraging
10. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman – though written almost 25 years ago, frighteningly spot-on in its observations and understanding of consequences of visual media on our minds and attention spans
Special Mention
Earth-light, Selected Poetry of Gwendolyn MacEwen – earthy, surprising… Poetry.
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2 Responses to “A ‘Best Books’ of 2008”
Books? Books? Who has time to read books! I think you left one off.
Everyone should read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon. It will soon be a Coen Bros. movie.
An astonishing performance in recreating a world in which 1947 reclocation of Jews is changed from Israel to Sitka, Alaska, and is at once a noir mystery, a messianic tale of apocalyptic dimensions, slyly humorous, bawdy, like an M C Escher visual linguistically rendered in Hebrew dialect.
C S Lewis, who liked Voyage to Arcturus(!), would approve.
Indeed, who has the time to ready any books anymore? But maybe the Kindle will help assuage any fear that the written word is falling by the wayside in favor of bit-sized fare. The weight of a book in your hands…
My own top list from last year (pretty much doesn’t include anything written last year), but in which I did manage to read a much higher number of books than in years gone past. In order to make it seem like a longer list, I have also included some short stories:
8. The Road by Cormac McCarthy ~ an almost unfathomably dark tale about the hazardous journey undertaken through a post-apocalyptic American landscape by a father and his son.
7. The Life You Save May Be Your Own (short story) by Flannery O’Connor ~ A one-armed handy man named Tom Shiftlet arrives on the doorstep of an elderly southern woman and her mentally-challenged, adult daughter.
6. The Man in the High Castle by Phlip K. Dick ~ Fascinating account of an alternate history where the Axis powers defeated the Allies, the US being divided by Germany and Japan, and Africa being nuked into oblivion. In this novel, a mysterious author (the titular ‘Man’) pens a novel called ‘The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’, depicting an alternate history in which the Allies defeated the Axis.
5. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame ~ Mole, Rat, Badger, Toad, Otter and the others have adventures in and around the River Bank near the Wild Wood. A piece of powerful nostalgia for me.
4. The River (short story) by Flannery O’Connor ~ A really great short story about a young child searching for the Kingdom of Heaven in a muddy Georgian river bed.
3. Our Friends from Frolix 8 by Philip K. Dick ~ Powerful story about a futuristic Earth ruled by big-brained super-humans. Normal humans (‘Old men’) are relegated to the fringes of society, even incarcerated and executed. But not Thors Provoni. Thors Provoni: the intrepid astronaut who escaped from Earth and flew out into space to search for ‘someone.’ Someone to bring back with him, to overthrow the regime that oppresses mankind. Lots of Jesus references.
2. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor ~ Can you tell I went bingeing on Flannery late into 2008? Anyhow, what a stupendous novel about street preachers in the south! Hazel Motes, the main character, arrives home from the army to find nothing waiting for him. He sets out to prove, in essence, that he doesn’t have a soul. He attempts to live his life based upon this ‘principle.’
1. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis ~ Can you believe it? I had never actually read this whole (very short, too) book before! Mesmerizing. Deserves to be made into an avant-garde film that plays in art house theaters before getting distributed all over the world and lapped up by hungry viewers.