Best books I read in 2015

ALL of the books I read in 2015…subjective favorites in bold:

Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill

The Infinite Sea, by Rick Yancey

On Immunity, by Eula Biss

The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, by John Crawford

A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, by Will Chancellor

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer

Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card

The Female Brain, by Louann Brizendine

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

Hell House, by Richard Matheson

The Collector, by John Fowles

Flatland, by Edwin Abbott

Feed, by Mira Grant

The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Dept. of Speculation, by Jenny Offill

A Little Life, by Hanya Yanigihara

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, by Matt Bell

Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card

Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich

Children of the Mind, by Orson Scott Card

Satin Island, by Tom McCarthy

Deadline, by Mira Grant

Blackout, by Mira Grant

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, by Jon Ronson

Hush, Hush by Laura Lippman

To the End of June, by Cris Beam

The Vanishers, by Heidi Julavits

Terms of Service, by Jacob Silverman

Biohazard, by Ken Alibek

Reaching Down the Rabbit Hole, by Allan H. Ropper

Brain On Fire, by Susannah Cahalan

The Viral Storm, by Nathan Wolfe

The Living, by Matt de la Pena

It’s Not About Perfect, by Shannon Miller

Plague Time, by Paul W. Ewald

The New Killer Diseases, by Elinor Levy and Mark Fischetti

Inside the O’Briens, by Lisa Genova

When Germs Travel, by Howard Markel

The End of Illness, by David Agus

Abroad, by Katie Crouch

My Brilliant Friend, by Elena Ferrante

The Hunted, by Matt de la Pena

No Time to Lose, by Peter Piot

The People of Forever are not Afraid, by Shani Boianju

The Darwin Awards, by Wendy Northcutt

The Ice Twins, by S.K. Tremayne

Find Me, by Laura Van Den Berg

Infectious Madness, by Harriet A. Washington

Hyacinth Girls, by Lauren Frankel

The Story of a New Name, by Elena Ferrante 

 

I guess I would describe this overall as eclectic people with difficult relationships against a backdrop of zombies and germs?

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A subway story

Small child–7? 8?–on the F train sits down next to me, begins quietly singing to the tune of “My Darling Clementine: “Went to Hellll, went to Hellll, went to Hellll just now–”

Her 6-ish-year-old sister: “Which one is that? The up one or the down one?”

First child: “Heaven is the up, boring one. Hell is down.” (resumes singing)

Unfazed grandmother chaperoning them: “That song just goes on and on, doesn’t it.”

 

ETA: Later on, when the train was going from Manhattan to Brooklyn…

8-year-old: “Where are we now? Are we in Brooklyn?”

Grandmother: “Yes. No. We’re underneath the river almost to Brooklyn.”

8-year-old: “Why can’t I see any water?”

Grandmother: “We’re in a tunnel, because if we were just in the water the pressure would break all of the glass in the windows and everyone would die.”

 

…I really admire the undercurrent of subtle morbidness that seems to run in this family.

 

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WTF, Internet?

While using Hopstop (RIP), I found that there was a section for East Anglia, England. What’s the public transport there? Eels?

Hopstop might have fared better if it had the functionality to tell you how long it would take you to walk to the train while staring down at your phone the whole time.

Things I’ve accidentally Googled while trying to search for “Hopstop”: 1. “hoo” – got this: A welcome misfire in the end. Many uses of hoo! 2. “Ho,” constantly. 3. Hope.

Things I’ve accidentally Googled while trying to type “Pandora” into my browser: Panda.

I looked up the noun form of “mundane” online, and doing so somehow caused MS Word to shut down, causing me to lose my paragraph about mundanities.

Instead of getting emergency texts about unlikely flash floods, my phone should really let me know when it’s free donut/coffee/ice cream day nearby.

Weather.com with its constant rebranding is already like a teenager who can’t decide if she wants to be goth or punk or emo. Now it’s also dealing in schadenfreude: “NEW! See Friends at Risk in Severe Weather.”

Further, I need my weather options to span a broader range than “Love!” to “Ugh!”

Found in my saved drafts folder: email titled “Things to Remember” with a list of “Books to read” below a list titled “Diseases to worry about.”

 

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Apps I Need

  • Sneeze-counting app, including tracking of the ever-frustrating missed sneezes.
  • App that gives you new weather when you hit refresh.
  • Similar to the many step-tracking apps: an app that counts all of the words you type and delete on different devices throughout the day.
  • App that lets you change Siri’s voice to Morgan Freeman’s or the vocalist of your choosing.
  • Shazam for my moods.
  • Ability to Google “What’s in my fridge right now and when is it going to go bad?”
  • On my homescreen, in bold font: the differences among shallot, scallop, and caper.
  • App that rolls the cuffs of my shorts down when I sit and re-rolls them when I stand back up.
  • Google advanced search constraint that specifies “But not LITERALLY”

 

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Best books I read in… (Part Two)

2011:

The Ask, Sam Lipsyte

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

God on the Rocks, Jane Gardam (and shouldn’t this be the name of a cocktail?)

State of Wonder, Ann Patchett

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee

House of Mirth, Edith Wharton

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

The Sky is Everywhere, Jandy Nelson

 

2012:

The Fallback Plan, Leigh Stein

Bats Out of Hell, Barry Hannah

Airships, Barry Hannah

And When She Was Good, Laura Lippman

Spillover, David Quammen

I guess 2012 was the year I went minimalist, but I cannot fathom why I didn’t include I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck on here. Maybe I was too emotionally scarred.

 

2013:

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

The Likeness, Tana French

Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon

The Baron in the Trees, Italo Calvino

 

2014:

American Elsewhere, Robert Jackson Bennett

Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill

Others of My Kind, James Sallis

The Fever, Megan Abbott

The Word Exchange, Alena Graedon

 

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Best books I read in… (Part One)

I started keeping a word document of all of the books I read during the calendar year back in 2007, bolding the ones that I liked the most. I usually tried to keep the year’s best to ten and later, five–not forcing it, especially in years when I read more books or loved more of them, but it was nice to have a constraint. Here are (were?) my favorites from the past eight years…

 

2007:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson

No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July

Disturbances in the Field, Lynne Sharon Shwartz

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

The Joke, Milan Kundera

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The World Doesn’t End, Charles Simic

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

 

2008:

What is the What, Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng

The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson

Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

The Mineral Palace, Heidi Julavits

Anticancer: A New Way of Life, David Servan-Schreiber

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, Susan Jane Gilman

The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson

There are a few in these lists that actually surprise me–really? That was one of my favorites of the year?–and a couple of others that I KNOW were included only so I could have a list of ten (making it, really, nine winners and the next closest thing)…but I’ll try not to revise history.

 

2009:

A Leg to Stand On, Oliver Sacks

All That I Have, Castle Freeman

The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll be Dead, David Shields

Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg

The Member of the Wedding, Carson McCullers

Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates

The People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, Vendela Vida

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

Even as I do this I’m tempted to further differentiate by bolding, here, the ones that I want to shout about the most. I’m mostly only not doing it because for some reason whenever I use the bold font it doesn’t show up bold, so it would just be a waste.

 

2010:

Whore’s Asylum, Katy Darby

The Man in the Wooden Hat, Jane Gardam

Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson

Lay the Favorite, Beth Raymer

The Photograph, Penelope Lively

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery

Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

As a side note: I’ve taken SO many Europa books out of the library solely because I love their jacket design so much.

 

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Overheard on the…

THE PROFANE

Outside of the doctor’s office: “I’m so fucking tired of dealing with these fucking people that I want to stab and kill!”

On the street: “Oh gee Carlos, thanks for the shitty fucking Snickers!”

On Bondi Beach, Sydney: “I’m her boyfriend, Liberace. Now get a focking haircut and fock off.”

On the bus, woman talking on the phone: “Here is the fuckery of fuckeries: we have to accommodate Deborah.”

 

THE LOVERS

On the train: Him: “I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry.” Her (heavy sigh): “It’s OKAY. I just don’t wanna make an app with you.”

In Manhattan’s home-goods district: Very-pleased-with-himself guy to his girlfriend: “It’s not called the COMPLAINER store!”

Stranger to couple in bar: “You need to celebrate each other every day, not just the 4th of July!”

On the train: Woman: “I have ravioli in my fridge.” Man: “That sounds good. I have a popsicle.”

 

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

On the bus: “So you open the vagina with a speculum, and you’re wearing a kind of miner’s light…”

On the bus, continued: “We’re testing the specul-cam, but that’s more Steve’s shit, the cervix.”

Barista behind the counter, muttering as if it’s a curse word: “Bob Saget, Bob Saget, Bob Saget…”

 

TRAVELING

On the train, Sydney: “It’s where they breed chihuahuas with double chins.”

In Australia, woman discussing a trip to America: “…and they were sitting around this pot of ORANGE cheese stuff and all dipping pretzels in it…”

 

RELIGION:

On Lexington Ave: “But my First Communion doesn’t count if I threw up the wafer!”

On the street, man into his phone: “Hi Nick, it’s Michael from the trip to the Virgin Mary…”

 

COSTUMES

On Halloween: A middle-aged man in a graduation cap and gown shouting “Ho ho ho!”

On the street: “You want to maybe paint your face like a scary bitch also?”

On the street: “So the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was walking down Central Park West…”

 

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?

On the street: “I really can’t understand you. Is there a time I can call back when you’re not on medication? Really.”

On the street: “They aren’t selling the hand, you idiot! They’re selling the ring. What is wrong with you?”

 

AMBIGUITY

On the train, not sad about either his eyes or maybe all of his friends and acquaintances’ phone numbers: “I lost my contacts…not a big deal.”

Man on the street to his friend, discussing fruit or maybe zombies: “Yeah, he got it right before it turned.”

On the street, regarding dogs or maybe boyfriends: “James fucking hates being washed.” “Oh, Ben doesn’t mind.”

On the train, talking about his pet or maybe lover: “I love heavy-lidded eyes, or hooded eyes. That’s why I like this crow.”

In a restaurant, describing…something: “…and he bought a float with a seesaw wiener on it…it was like burning man with liederhosen…”

In the elevator, man turning to me as if he’s about to say, “You have a good day!” but instead says “You have…a lot of keys.”

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On Spam

I love checking my website admin page for comments. It’s like checking the mail; there’s always the chance that you get a real message from someone, but even if not, you might get a catalog that passes the time adequately, or online, your spam checker might catch something like this:

“There are four form of birds inside your yard:
The ones that summer along, those who spend the wintertime along (since you are warmer), the temporary ones (like
migrating thru), then your permanent ones which you have year around.
Using an infant bottle brush, scrub inside the feeder then rinse them thoroughly before refilling them.
Hummingbird tattoos sneaking through low-cut jeans is both mysterious and tempting.”

Line breaks left exactly as written…and this was a “response” to my post on enjambment. 

 

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Things My Students Have Said, Part 2

Part II. For part one, see here.

12- and 13-year-olds:

Me to Latin student: “In ancient Rome female roles were usually played by men.”        Student: “Oh, so they were drag queens.”

Student, writing a poem about penguins and making a simile about tuxedos: “Well, often when getting married the guy has regrets.”

“I always get JFK and FDR confused because the FDR road goes to JFK airport.”

Student, honking very stuffed nose: “Look. It’s a trumpet.”                                           Me: “Uh-huh.”                                                                                                               Student: “You’re not a fan of the soundtrack, huh?”

14- and 15-year-olds:

Student, explaining tardiness: “I got hit by a car and rolled down a hill!” (Starbucks drink was unharmed and unspilled)

Me: “0-7 pH is acidic. 7-14 is basic. 7 is neutral, and the human body is close to 7.”      Student: “I’m probably basic.”

16- and 17-year-olds:

Student, explaining functions: “X input can’t have multiple Y outputs, because X can’t be a pimp.”

Me to student: “Did you find your essay on your desk?”                                               Student: “No, but I found this loaf of bread on my way to my room!” (holds it up)

Student, as I was leaving: “Did you know that you’re part of my elf army?”

Me to student: “Any other questions?” (About that/who/which)                                     Student: “No. Oh! I do have a random question.”                                                            Me: “Yes?”                                                                                                                Student: “So, poison…”

“I imagine you getting my SAT score while wearing a Victorian dress, and then fainting. Maybe untying it from the leg of a crow.”

“Claire, I don’t envy your position. I wouldn’t want to deal with myself.”

Me to student: “Junior year is rough. I remember.”                                                       Student: “Don’t try to empathize with me!”

Me, noticing student staring intently at me: “Do you have a question?”                       Student: “No, I was making a plan for how to steal your hat.”

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