BOOKS READ IN 2020

Here are the books I read in 2020. Do I think I'm showing off? Maybe a little. It's my privilege to convene a monthly book-show broadcast on WOSU 89-7 NPR News (third Friday of the month, 11 am) I can use that as an excuse for keeping track. In such a difficult years, books were more company and more of a comfort than ever.

This was the year of reading fived of the six Palliser novels by Anthony Trollope. You need to have an obsession with Victorian era politics to make your way comfortably through these. I don't have that. Somewhat tedious, but like running a seven minute mile-something I'll never do-reading this demanding series seemed like a challenge. 

I delighted to discover the Chicago based author  Brian Doyle, and dismayed to learn of his early passing. His novel' Chicago' was a rip snorting delight, God rest his soul.

I read Cleanness by Garth Greenwell on the elliptical at the gym, when we could still go to the gym. Parts of it shocked even me.

Conversations with Beethoven by Sanford Friedman was brilliant. The composer was deaf. What we have here are the written notes given to him by his inimaters, friends and enemies over twenty years  until is death in 1827. Replies are implied, often hilarious.   

In my sixties I finally read Kerouac, and the memoirs of Arthur Rubinstein and Pablo Casals. I'm not related to author James Purdy. His volume of short stories was a delight. One pundit called these, "like a box of poisoned chocolates. Closer to home I discovered Louis Bromfield.

If 2020 has exhausted and discouraged you, I found this book a wonderful balm:

Here are a few of my favorites read in 2020:  

James Purdy

An asterisk * means I really enjoyed the book. **** means hysteria.

You'll note some web addresses to cut and paste. I urge you to do so if you want to know more. I include these because I forget what I've read two days after finishing a book. Does this happen to you?

BOOKS READ IN 2020:

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (fire children)

The Adversary by Edmond Carerre (Jean-Claude Romand)

The Mutations by Jorge Comensal (Ramon, cancer parrot)

Janis Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren

****Chicago by Brian Doyle    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25663660-chicago

****One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/books/review/one-long-river-of-song-brian-doyle.html

Long Bright River by Liz Moore  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43834909-long-bright-river

Cleanness by Garth Greenwell https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/books/garth-greenwell-cleanness.html

The Sacrament by Olaf Olafsson 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/olaf-olafsson/the-sacrament-olafsson/

*When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46205807-when-we-were-vikings

**On the Road by Jack Kerouac

*Dear Edward Ann Napolitano

A Drink Before War by Dennis Lehane

Secret Guests by Benjamin Black https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45186564-the-secret-guests

Sidney Lumet: A Life by Maura Spiegel

The Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini

The Given Day by Denis Lehane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHCzJxAlF70

Dangerous Melodies: Classical Music in America from the Great War through the Cold War by Jonathan Rosenberg

The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood, by Donna Rifkind.

*’’This is Happiness’’ Niall Williams  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42972008-this-is-happiness

Since We Fell  Dennis Lehane

 

American Dirt Jeannine Cummins

Brother and Sister: A Memoir by Diane Keaton

*Conversations with Beethoven  Sanford Friedman

Speak Peace in a World of Conflict by Marshall Rosenberg (NVC)

The Wanderers Richard Price

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wanderers_(Price_novel)

 

Tightrope Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn

 

-----C-19 Quarantine March 17 2020---

Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait by Alison Weir

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

Collected Stories by Ernest Hemingway

An Infinity of Little Hours by Nancy Klein MacGregor

In Praise of the Useless Life by Brother Paul Quenon

The Mirror and the Light Hilary Mantel

*Broken, Novellas by Don Winslow

Victoria: A Life by A.N. Wilson

Can You Forgive Her? Anthony Trollope (Palliser I)

Queen Mary James Pope-Hennessey

*The Complete Stories of James Purdy

    https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-087140-669-9

Pablo Casals by H.L. Kirk

My Young Years Arthur Rubinstein

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

   http://hidden-valley-road.com/

(Back to work during Covid-19; Mayu 18)

Phineas Phinn by Anthony Trollope (Palliser 2)

Actress by Anne Enright

She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexis Coe

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century by John Loughery and Blythe Randolph

*I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

***At the Center of all Beauty:  Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

  https://www.fentonjohnson.com/books/at-the-center-of-all-beauty/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otmv2oOX1pg

*The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45754981-the-glass-hotel

Gather Together in My Name  by Maya Angelou

*Motion of the Body Falling Through Space by Lionel Shriver

   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/08/the-motion-of-the-body-through-space-by-lionel-shriver-review-the-cult-of-fitness

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

*The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance during the Blitz by Erik Larson

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/books/review/night-watchman-louise-erdrich.html

 

Katheryn Howard: The Scandalous Queen (Six Tudor Queens #5)

by Alison Weir

Miss Austen by Gil Hornby

This is Big: How the Founder of Weight Watchers Changed the World—and Me by Marisa Metzer

Lady in Waiting: MY Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown by Anne Glenconner

White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin DiAngelo

   https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-sociologist-examines-the-white-fragility-that-prevents-white-americans-from-confronting-racism

 

Living with the Monks, What turning off my Phone Taught me About Happiness, Gratitude and Focus by Jesse Itzler

The Lives of Isaac Stern by David Schoenbaum

The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love and Meaning by Scott Galloway

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32920226-sing-unburied-sing

Too Much and Never Enough How my Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man by Mary L. Trump

*Black Boy by Richard Wright

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228630.Black_Boy

 

The Silver Swan In Search of Doris Duke by Sallie Bingham

The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality and Me by Nikki Meredith

*Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor               

         https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41723505-shadowplay

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope  (Palliser III)

***The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution by Stephen Heyman

 

*The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11337.The_Bluest_Eye

 

In Search of Queen Mary Pope-Hennessy ed. Hugo Vickers

 

More Than Love: An intimate portrait of my mother, Natalie Wood by Natasha Gregson Wagner  

*The Equivalents: A Story of Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

   https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/555915/the-equivalents-by-maggie-doherty/

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzjJimcjAHg

The House of Kennedy by James Patterson

*The Patient by Jasper DeWitt

Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield

Execution: A Giordano  Bruno Mystery by SJ Parris  (Babington Plot)

Serenade by James M. Cain

Odetta A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zack

Those who Leave and Those who Stay Elena Ferrante (Neapolitan novel 3)

We Are Water by Wally Lamb

 

Raising A Rare Girl A Memoir by Lanier, Heather Kirn

    The author's daughter was born with a very rare genetic syndrome and faced a daunting prognosis: she would be a fraction of normal size, have innumerable physical and mental difficulties and likely a shortened lifespan. Now, at age eight she is attending standard public school classes. This is the story of her family's journey.

Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by Nicholas A. Basbanes

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (Neapolitan novel 1)

The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe

Dean Dixon: Negro and Conductor by Rufus Jones

*Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52741293-shuggie-bain

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40164365-the-friend?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=Tf1iXCKJxx&rank=1

A Star in Bored by Byron Lane (Carrie Fisher)

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43890641-hamnet

 

 

*Squeeze Me by Carl Hiassen

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50644565-squeeze-me?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=2RB1AyuEOf&rank=3

 

*The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes

    https://uk.style.yahoo.com/wild-laughter-caoilinn-hughes-review-063006413.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9zZWFyY2gueWFob28uY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAC53kO1KmKSFAbuOyjZXRWiYIGyLkw3jozMJNZXFEht804-HN5I8IPimjA-36jJo_tE4b-KACNECr7J-69ne7gNxJ0ZsIIeZ_7Ix5Uv9NZwdlpuVozPOA7sdXzVQsvMFhPwBo6FMOL3fTC48PdxRrWLWJiGq2iJXq5HSoGhKvHcT

 

Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope (Palliser 4)

 

The Queen’s Secret by Karen Harper (Queen Mum WWII)

Rage Bob Woodward

The Evening and the Morning Ken Follett

Mantel Pieces Hilary Mantel

Chasing the Light by Oliver Stone

Mephisto by Klaus Mann

*The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45186556-the-other-bennet-sister

 

The Beauty in Breaking by Michelle Harper

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50043108-the-beauty-in-breaking

*Jesus: A Life by A.N. Wilson

****The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona

   https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566535/the-volunteer-by-salvatore-scibona/

 

The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51946068-the-red-lotus

*We Germans by Alexander Starritt

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358112-we-germans

 

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

*A Saint From Texas by Edmund White

     https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/10/a-saint-from-texas-by-edmund-white-review-a-delicious-salacious-romp

The Eyes of the Queen by Oliver Clements

Messiah: The Composition and Afterlife of Handel’s Masterpiece by Jonathan Keates

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51933429-the-guest-list

 

The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (Palliser 5)

Shelter in Place by David Leavitt

      https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/shelter-in-place-9781620404874/

This is not my memoir by Andre Gregory

 

 

Missionaries by Phil Klay

   https://www.npr.org/2020/10/08/921194920/phil-klays-new-missionaries-is-an-ambitious-novel-of-ideas

Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden

*Deacon King Kong by James McBride

   https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51045613-deacon-king-kong

 

Author Interview: D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace

D.T. Max is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and the author of a medical mystery, The Family That Couldn't Sleep.  

 Every Love Story is a Ghost Story is D.T. Max's  is a new biography of writer David Foster Wallace, (1946-2008) either the most original writer of the last thirty years, or a literary con man.
Take your pick D.T. Max comes down in the former camp and he'll take you there as well.

"David and I are just a year apart in age. When he published his first novel, The Broom of the System, it was a revelation to me to read such an extraordinary, funny,  masterful and overwrought piece of prose from someone my own age...When David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker asked me to write a piece about David's death, I was immediately interested, because I knew so little about David Foster Wallace. I didn't know that he had depression, I didn't know that he had addiction issues, I didn't know how funny he was." 

For those who have yet to encounter Wallace's work, Max says,

"David Foster Wallace mastered a kind of writing that really had not been done before.  Long,  winding sentences that try and capture everything about the world.  They are what it sounds like when you think. (italics mine.) They are the sound of our own minds going....David brought a wonderful knowledge of sentence structure and how a sentence should sound to this disorderly, exciting kind of mental state...the sort of David Foster Wallace mind dump."




By the time of his suicide in 2008, Wallace was the author of several collections of short stories and non fiction, and his massive novel, Infinite Jest. This 1,000 page novel runs from locker room towel snapping to very detailed discussions of experimental films made by the deceased, but still very present father of one of the novel's leading characters.  There are massive of footnotes as well, and some of the footnotes have footnotes, every word worth reading. You will stay with this book even if you wonder why it so entertaining.

"Infinite Jest is less difficult than most people think. It makes it hard at times to know where you are, but its really an absolutely wonderful story, or really two stories, partially a story about a bunch of kids at a tennis academy outside of Boston, and its partially about a bunch of recovering addicts in a half way house that's just down the hill. David wanted people to read this book. He was not James Joyce. He did not want to make it impossible for you to understand what's going on.

D.T. Max

Max recommends "modestly submitted" Every Love Story is a Ghost Story as a good primer to Wallace's work (he's right) and recommends the on line "road maps" for Infinite Jest. "These reassure you that you are going somewhere, especially early in the book when you have reason to doubt!"

Every Love Story is a Ghost Story  is no facile expose of a life of addiction and mental illness interspersed with flashes of brilliance. It's impressive literary criticism, along with the facts of a complex life.

"I didn't want to write about David without writing about David as a writer. It tries to relate the writing to the life and the life to the writing...In the years since his death (2008) he's become a kind of person people just want to know about. There's a kind of moral force around David, especially for younger people, there's a cliched "Saint Dave"...David used to say when he didn't like something he'd go straight to the bathroom, and that would make him go straight to the bathroom. People think of him as someone who had experiences and wrote about them in ways can help them be stronger, and be more centered and happy in their lives.  That's his great theme, that he's writing for you. He's writing for you as a reader, so you can take away, experience and knowledge that will help you to experience your life more fully . It's a big task. Most fiction writers don't do that, . David wanted you to emerge from his books stronger ."

 D.T. Max points out that he never met David Foster Wallace.

 "I tell people when I started this book I was in love with David Foster Wallace, and when I finished it I was even more in love with David Foster Wallace.  People ask how that's possible...you show so many of his flaws, but to me he's like a Thomas Merton . He's somebody who lived hard in the world and made a lot of mistakes. He did a lot of learning. We can learn from him. In writing the book,  I was trying to learn what David was trying to teach me, about how to live more fully in the world. Our saints today are not going to be virgins! David spent much of his life in 12 step programs. I think that's where he learned that its only those who've been there who know how to get out of the cul-de-sac that we're in, or how to avoid getting into that dead end. That to me is David's great value."



 

The Slap

It's still too early to assemble a "Best of" for 2010. You never know what there is to read, see and hear over the next six weeks. I suspect however, that no book I read in 2010 will impress me more than THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas

A three year old boy is slapped by an adult male-not his father, not a relative-during a backyard barbecue in suburban Melbourne. Hugo, the little boy is clearly a terror. He's been given few boundaries and neither parent rushes to intervene when he begins to swing a baseball bad around in a bid for attention, coming within inches of creaming anyone in his path. So he is slapped and stopped. And then begins the consternation.

Sides have to be chosen. Fractured marriages are examined, healed and perhaps fractured again. Teen age angst is seen to be dangerous and pervasive. Older generations of the Greek-Australian community profiled in this novel are seen as both concerned and intolerant. Hugo's parents need to live in rage to make sense their crumbling lives. Dad is underachieving, angry, and alcoholic. Mom hasn't a clue. Both contribute to the sense of entitlement wrecking kids today. Trust me, back in the day if I or any of my little friends misbehaved more than one adult neighbor would be there to wack us into line. Nobody said a word abut it. It was a way of looking out for one another's children. And Hugo is by no means beaten or abused. He is slapped, once. And he stops with the baseball bat.

Hector, at whose home the slap is delivered by his cousin, Harry, is a successful businessman married to a ravishing veterinarian-and they too live a life pasted together. In the novel's second sentence Hector rolls over in bed and emits "a victorious fart" thus alerting the reader to pages of raw language. Bodily functions, sex, sexuality, drug use, you name it, the authors views and depictions are unsparing. This book is not for the squeamish. But as you blow through you are never (or I wasn't) temped to yell TMI! (too much information!) It's a "can't put it down" book and I was very sorry to see it end. Many novels lose the thread and limp toward the finish. My God, not here. Young Richie has an encounter with Hector a few pages before the end that is moving and gripping and never descends to vulgarity or falsehood. In fact, there's not a false note anywhere in this book. You may dislike these people and you may be repelled by lifestyles and conversations (a dose of racism) but unless you are locked away in a convent this book will ring true. In Ohio, in Boston, in Australia and on top of Mt Everest.

Don't miss The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.