More Best Of 2011 Books Lists

From The Daily Beast - 10 Books You Might Have Missed But Shouldn't
From NPR - Best Books of 2011 (lots of genres)
From Brainpicking - The 11 Best Art and Design Books of 2011
From New York Magazine - Author Recommends
From the Wall Street Journal - Gift Guides (scroll to bottom left side of this page) include books on science, humor, movies, wine, cocktails Christmas mysteries, photography, art, history and biography) 
And Fiction for Non-Fiction Lovers
From the LA Times - Holiday Books & Gift Ideas
From Salon.com - Best Fiction of 2011
And - Writers Choose Their Favorite Books of 2011
From Time - Best of 2011 Fiction and Nonfiction 
BONUS - Our Friend Lev Grossman's Seven Books to Look Forward to in 2012

Notable Children's Books

From the New York Times - Notable Children's Books of 2011
From the Guardian - Books for giving: children's fiction and picture books
From the New York Times - Notable Crime Books of 2011
From the Guardian - Best Books for Giving

More Top 10 Books

From Shelf Unbound - Top 10 Small Press Books of 2011
From the New York Times - Notable Cookbooks

New York Time Best Books

As I said in my last post, these lists will be coming fast and furiously over the next month.  I will update this blog post with all that I find.  Good reading to you.


New York Times 10 Best Books of 2011

End Of The Year Book Lists

I always look forward to the "best of" lists that come out at this time of year.  They are great for Christmas gift ideas and creating reading lists of things I missed throughout the year.  There will be more of these at year's end and I will pass those along as well.  You can get all of the books listed at Flyleaf Books or they will special order them for you.  Enjoy!

The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2011

Writers Recommend from the Guardian

And for something just a bit different, Salon.com offers gift ideas to fictional characters.  It's not strictly a book list, but there are some very good books included.

Best Novel of 2011?

The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje gets my vote.

"Sleep is a prison for a boy who has friends to meet."

Over the last two to three weeks I’ve been reading a book of 269 pages.  Normally a novel of this length would take me a few days. But shortly into this book I began savoring every word.  Ondaatje’s writing is lyrical and engaging.  The story is of a boy, Michael, sailing from Ceylon to London to meet the mother who left him when he was five or six years old.  Michael meets two other boys on the journey. Characters abound on the ship and the boys learn a little something from each of them.  The story of the boys’ adventures during the crossing and a look back on it by the grown Michael are the heart of the novel. The Cat's Table is beautifully written and the story lovingly told.

Memorabilia

Caroline Preston hits on several touchstones with her new book The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures.  It's a nostalgic look at the flapper era of American history and a lovely collection of archival materials from the period.  The muted colors and prim photos of the scrapbook remind the reader of a hidden diary of a favorite grandmother.  It's a find and a secret all at once.  Frankie's story of love and loss, travel and love is secondary to the way it is interwoven with the lovingly conceived depictions that make the reader want to look at every scrap in the book.  A great gift book.  A beauty to behold.

Preston makes an appearance at Flyleaf Books on Friday, 11 November at 7:00 pm.

The Beauty of Baseball

My favorite baseball book ever is The Brothers K by David James Duncan.  The thing is Duncan is writing about family in that book, not baseball.  And yet baseball is the lens through which the family story is told. It's a lovely story by a great writer.
The Art of Fielding may be my second favorite baseball book ever.  One reason I love it is the setting. At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball introduces us to unforgettable characters striving for perfection and falling short.  The impossibility of achieving perfection in life or in sport are the lessons learned at Westish. 


"That baseball rewards languid virtuosos and frothing monomaniacs about equally is one of the game's weird fascinations. That Academe does the same would not be useful information in the hands of a hack. But The Art of Fielding marries the national pastime to the life of the mind, takes off running, and never flags. Chad Harbach's pen shatters stereotypes like fastballs shatter bats. His sentence-making keeps things fluid and tense as a September pennant race. When the best shortstop alive sounds believably like a Tibetan lama, and when a thrown ball striking a shovel head at dawn leaves your own head ringing with certainty that truth and friendship have triumphed, you know you're in the hands of a writer you can trust."
-David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K

And the Winner of the Booker Prize is...

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  I'll be reviewing this selection shortly. 

National Book Award Shortlists

The National Book Award shortlist has been released.  Here is the fiction list.

Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
(Bellevue Literary Press)

Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
(Random House)

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
(Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House)

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
(Lookout Books, an imprint of the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington)

Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones
(Bloomsbury USA)

To see the other lists for nonfiction, poetry and young people's fiction go to the webpage.

Congratulations, Lev

Fox Entertainment has picked up The Magicians as a TV series beginning as early as next fall. If you haven't read it or Lev's newest book The Magician King, start now. They are both a lot of fun.

A Few Items of Interest

The Man Booker Shortlist - I've been negligent for not mentioning the titles on the fiction shortlist.  The six books, selected from the longlist of 13, are:

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt

 Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

*Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

*Snowdrops by A. D. Miller

*first novels

I have not read any of these titles yet.  If you have, please let me know what you think.  A few won't be available in the US until January 2012.  Something to look forward to in the new year.

Here's a link to “A Guide to Navigating NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books.”  My sources tell me this chart could be greatly enhanced with a little work.  Any takers?

And finally, on one of my favorite websites The Millions, Very Bad Things: A Pessimistic Reading List by Emily St. John Mandel.  We could make a lot of additions to this list, too.

The Anguish of Growing Up

We The Animals by Justin Torres is a novel that reads like a family photo album.  Three brothers and their parents struggle with each other and outside influences that cause strife and lead to surprising discoveries.  This is Mr. Torres first novel.  It's a scant 144 pages but those pages are packed with intense emotions, disturbing situations and small acts of love.  The length is perfect for capturing the chaos that is this family.

What happens when you cross The Princess Bride with Where The Wild Things Are?

In a word, Wildwood by Colin Meloy with illustrations by Carson Ellis.  If you are a book person (by that I mean wanting the physical object) not a Kindle user, you will love this book.  It's beautiful.  Everything about it from the heft of the book itself to the way the pages feel under your fingers are delightful tactile experiences.  And then there are the illustrations and color plates.  I mean, when have we had a book published recently that feels so good?  It's a joy to sit down to read this book.


And then there's the story.  A murder of crows kidnaps Prue McKeel's baby brother from the park while he is under Prue's care.  Wild adventures ensue as Prue and her friend Curtis go into the Impassible Wilderness outside of their Porland, OR neighborhood to rescue the child. Meloy creates a wonderful alternate world where animals and humans talk to and negotiate with one another.  While reading this treasure I couldn't help but think what a great read aloud bedtime story this would be for the brave at heart.  


The subtitle of the book is The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I.  I will be anxiously awaiting Book II.  

Lev Grossman reading

Just off winning the Campbell Award for Science Fiction's best new writer during the Hugo Awards ceremony recently, Lev Grossman took time to sign books and chat with fans last night at Flyleaf Books. Thanks to those who came to hear Lev read from The Magician King and answer readers' questions. It was a wonderful event and a great turn out.

Q & A with Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman is the author of the bestselling novels The Magicians and Codex. A well-known cultural commentator, he is the book critic for TIME magazine and has written for numerous other publications, including the New York Times, The Believer, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Salon and Wired. In 2011 Grossman won the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer from the World Science Fiction Society. His latest novel, The Magician King, is out from Viking now.  

FB: Does your love of video games inform your writing?

LG: Oh sure. Games do magic very well, for example. The look and feel of magic in the Magicians books is definitely influenced by the way it looks in games -- those bright colored lights flaring around people's hands.

FB: How do you navigate the line between paying tribute to other authors and seeming derivative?

LG: My rule is, when you’re playing with something an earlier author did, you have to know why you’re doing it, and so does the reader, and it had better be a good reason. You have to be transforming it in some way, putting a new spin on it. You can’t just steal it, you have to earn it.

FB: Do you think genre fiction is reaching any new heights of cultural/critical acceptance? Do you think it’s even important that it does?

LG: I’m not going to pretend I don’t care if I got critical respect or not. Or I could, but it wouldn’t be very convincing. I think its happening incrementally, but Id like to see it happen faster. I think a great cultural rebalancing is in the offing, that really fully acknowledges the value and importance of genre fiction.

FB: Building a unique world is important for fantasy writers. George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien created elaborate maps and lore behind their worlds. What’s your world-building process?

LG: It’s a bit chaotic. I don’t start the way Tolkien did, by writing Elvish dictionaries and such. I think about the story I want to tell, and I build the world that the story needs. Then sometimes the world turns around and changes the story and so on. You push and pull from both sides till everything fits. Consistency is important. C.S. Lewis got away with being inconsistent, but we can't all be C.S. Lewis.

FB: Do you have any advice for young writers interested in writing genre fiction?

LG: Read everything. As much as with literary fiction, writing a fantasy novel (or whatever) places you within a tradition. You have to have read deep into the past of the tradition you're writing in if you want to extend it into the future.

FB: What did returning to the world of the Magicians feel like psychologically?

LG: I’m not totally sure I ever left it.

FB: Your books draw on many disparate elements from different worlds. Do you believe it is important to cross-pollinate in literature?

LG: I don't know. I think it's one of the strengths of my writing, at any rate. My parents were both English professors, before they retired, and I wound up spending time in literary academia, so I got the chance to read really extensively in the history of the novel. There's a lot of stuff that I can take from outside fantasy and bring into the genre and use there in ways that haven't necessarily been done before.

FB: What do you think of e-readers and the decline of brick and mortar bookstores?

LG: I think crotchety, skeptical thoughts. The novel was created as a medium that exists on paper. I think of it as software: books -- not phones or Kindles or whatever -- are the hardware that novels are optimized for, and that's where they're best experienced. I could go on. I tend to rant about this issue.

FB: Post-collegiate malaise is an important element of your books. How do you make such a static psychological condition interesting?

LG: Don’t knock post-collegiate malaise! It’s the stuff of great literature. Look at Ulysses. But it’s true, it’s not the most dynamic of states. There’s a reason why I only give the characters a chapter of slacking around New York City after they graduate before they get sent off to another world.

FB: How much do you outline your writing ahead of time?

LG: Oh, I outline the whole thing. But as the saying goes, no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. And in this case the plan has many enemies in the form of my characters, who don’t always want to do what they’re told.

FB: What do you think of the state of genre fiction today?

LG: I'll tell you the truth, which is that I think that genre fiction is going through a great cultural renaissance, and that’s where the most exciting stuff in contemporary literature is happening. When people write the literary history of the 21^st century, I think the explosion of creativity in genre literature is what they'll write about.

FB: Do you enjoy the huge successes of nerd culture or does a part of you think your once-obscure interests are being violated?

LG: Can I say both? Both.

I'd like to offer a special thank you to Hank Stephenson who helped me with the above questions. Please come to Flyleaf where Lev will be reading and signing books at 7:00 on Tuesday, 30 August. 

Magic in the Air

I’ve been waiting to write about Lev Grossman’s new book The Magician King.  Now that it is available at Flyleaf Books I can tell you what I think of it. I was curious about how Grossman would follow up on the success of The Magicians.  If you haven’t read the first book, Grossman creates a world where magic happens at a school secluded from the rest of the world that goes on without the knowledge that real magic exists.  Sound familiar?  The book was inevitably dubbed Harry Potter for grown ups when it came out in 2009.  The world Grossman creates is for adults; his young adult magicians face adult problems and have to find ways to overcome them.  Grossman provides a number of nods to previously published books in the genre.  In fact, The Magicians is a kind of examination of and appreciation for fantasy readers.  If you like finding the Easter eggs in movies and you’re a fan of fantasy, look at what Grossman wrote about the illusions to previous works of fantasy for tor.com.

The Magician King is darker than the first book and focuses on Julia’s story in great depth.  It also describes what happens when Quentin becomes bored with being a King in Fillory, the land of magical beings and the magicians who find themselves there.  Quentin seeks an adventure, one that will make him a hero, but realizes the costs too late.
Lev Grossman is reading at Flyleaf on Tuesday, 20 August at 7:00pm.  Stay tuned for an online interview coming soon.


And while I’m on the topic of magic, there is another book about magic that you will want to read called The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  It comes out in a month (13 September).  This book is going to get a lot of attention.  It has already been optioned for a movie.


The Night Circus is the story of two young magicians, Celia and Marco, pitted against each other by their malevolent mentors.  But Celia and Marco are not the most interesting characters in the book.  The night circus has a life of its own and is by far the most enchanting character.  The circus is created using magic and is the field of the challenge for Celia and Marco.  The two magicians enhance the circus and test one another’s magic skills through the circus.  Performers and visitors are largely innocent bystanders. My vision of the circus while reading was a cross between steampunk and Victorian architecture with magic woven in.  Morgenstern does a masterful job describing the intricate beauty and frightening aspects of the circus.  There is an undercurrent of danger throughout the book due to the contest between Celia and Marco and the mystery of the circus itself.

And now for something completely different

I’m on vacation this week and what that means for me is lots of time to read.  Are you missing Lisbeth Salander?  Me, too.  Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole won’t fill that void in your reading, but he may make room in your heart for the love of another Scandinavian crime solver.  Nesbo has a knack for vivid description and intricate plotting.  Although Nesbo is Norwegian and Larsson was Swedish, they share a love of their respective countries.  Both writers describe the settings of their novels in great detail; enough to make you want to take a trip to each using their books as tour guides.  

Nesbo’s books have been published slowly in the US and slightly out-of-order. The translations are very well done. I expect Nesbo’s US publisher, Knopf, will work hard to secure rights to the titles below not yet published in the US and get them into waiting American hands.  (The linked titles below are available at Flyleaf Books just click on the link to order your copy.)

Bibliography, Jo Nesbo (adult fiction)

• The Bat Man (Flagger­mus­mannen - 1997)* NT
• The Cockroaches - (Kaker­lakkene - 1998)* NT
• The Redbreast - 2006 (Rødstrupe - 2000)*
• (Karusellmusikk - 2001, short stories) NT
• Nemesis - 2008 (Sorgenfri - 2002)*
• The Devil's Star - 2005 (Marekors - 2003)*
• The Redeemer - 2009 (Frelseren - 2005)*
• The Snowman- 2010 (Snømannen - 2007)*
• Headhunters (Hode­jegerne - 2008) NT
• The Leopard- 2011 (Panser­hjerte - 2009)*
• Gjensyn - 2011 *

English title and year of publication, Norwegian title and year of publication in parentheses.

*means it is a Harry Hole novel

NT is not yet translated

- With thanks to www.scandinavianbooks.com.

A Parable

Singer-songwriter, Josh Ritter, has written a novel entitled Bright’s Passage.  It’s a mythical story of recovery from war and loss.  The title character is a soldier returned home after World War I to reclaim his life only to lose his wife when his baby son is born.  There is conflict, confrontation, and a guiding angel, but the soul of the book is the description of war.  The harrowing imagery of survival and the aftermath is touching and haunting.

Ritter will perform at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro on Wednesday, 27 July.  Flyleaf will have signed copies of the book available in the store on Thursday.

There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

I finished reading Sister by Rosemund Lupton last night.  If you are a sister or have a sister you will want to read this book.  It’s touching in many ways, but particularly in the main character Beatrice’s (known as Bee) insistence that she knows her sister Tess better than anyone else and therefore does not believe she has committed suicide.  Instead, Bee insists that Tess was murdered and is driven to find out who killed her.  The story is an exploration of how intimate knowledge gained from growing up in the same family changes over time and with distance.  During the search for Tess’s killer Bee confirms she knew her sister well, maybe better than she knows herself.  

This is Lupton’s first novel. The time shifts and some other devices might be confusing or seem superficial for a reader of thrillers, but this book is much more than that.  I suggest book clubs consider adding it to their reading lists.  It would make for a provocative group discussion.  

Both tear-jerking and spine-tingling, “Sister” provides an adrenaline rush that could cause a chill on the sunniest afternoon — which, perhaps, the friendly company of a sister or two (or, in a pinch, a brother) might help to dispel.  

Liesl Schillinger in the New York Times Book Review

Books of Interest

Being an avid reader, bookstore lover, and book collector, family and friends have often suggested that I start a book blog. It’s an intriguing idea to write about what I’m reading.  Talking about books with people who like to read is pure pleasure for me.  I’m not shy about offering my opinion on what I’m reading or what I’ve read.  I keep a list of my favorite books handy in case anyone asks me for a recommendation.  But, putting those thoughts and opinions into words on the page (or screen) seems risky.  Who will read it?  What if they don’t like what I have to say?  Writers work hard to get their work published.  What right do I have to criticize their writing?  Who cares what I think anyway?

Well, I guess I’ll see.  The owners of Flyleaf have agreed to let me take a stab at this.  I appreciate the opportunity and will try to keep readers of this blog interested in buying and talking about books.

It took some time to figure out what books to write about first.  I scanned the shelf of my most recent reads. Here is the list of books I’ve read in the past three months. 

One Day by David Nicholls

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan

West of Here by Jonathan Evison

Old Filth by Jane Gardam

The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson

The Blindness of the Heart by Julia Tranck

The Long Song by Andea Levy

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Embassytown by China Mieville

Vaclav and Lena by Halley Tanner

Where to begin?  Several of those titles have had a lot written about them.  Here are four diverse books that may grab your attention.

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

The Australian, Brooks, may seem an odd author for such an American tale but she has had great success writing historical fiction.  She is a dedicated researcher and the depth of detail she provides is a strength of her writing.  Caleb’s Crossing is no exception.  Brooks explores the possibilities of two lives crossing paths in a time when both Native Americans (Caleb) and American women (Bethia) had prescribed roles in the country; namely savage and helpmate.  These characters strive to overcome those narrow life roles in a newly emerging culture.  Some stereotypical interactions make me less fond of this novel than of People of the Book. It seems hard to avoid that trap when writing a story based on one surviving letter written by the actual Caleb who became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard in 1665.  In a Washington Post review Paul Chaat Smith writes, “There is too much at stake in pre-modern New England, and Brooks’s achievement is that we see just how much that is, for the red characters and the white ones. They struggle every waking moment with spiritual questions that are as real and unending as the punishing New England winters.”

Embassytown by China Mieville

If you haven’t heard of Mieville, you will.  He is an intelligent, iconoclastic writer with interesting views on life in the 21st century.  The premise of this book is language as truth.  The setting is a future where humans live along side aliens who can only communicate through two voices.  A single voice is unrecognizable to the aliens as coming from a living being.  They can only speak to dual speakers, clones who speak as one. Also particular to the aliens is their inability to lie.  Mieville is a talented writer who is unrelenting in his command of his imagination and ability to convey it.  Those with an interest in how language works and others who love a good story will enjoy this book.  The Guardian’s James Purdan writes of Mieville, “To read fiction is, in some measure, to take those true untruths for granted, which makes it a paradoxical pleasure to come across a novel that reminds us so ingeniously and enjoyably of the conditions of fiction, and of the power that fictional language retains to shape and reshape our transactions with the world.”

Emily, Alone by Stewart O’Nan

As a native Pittsburgher O’Nan’s writing appeals to me because of the setting, but his simple portrayal of the rich internal world of an elderly woman alone and struggling to manage is moving.  Emily is forced into independence after her companion and sister-in-law becomes hospitalized.  Emily looks back on her life with her husband and children in a straightforward way and moves on by setting small goals for herself.  The Boston Globes’ Mameve Medwed states,  “In a portrait filled with both joy and rue, O’Nan does not wield a wide brush across a vast canvas but, rather, offers up an exquisite miniature. Just as Emily prefers Van Gogh’s depiction of a branch of an almond tree over the more spectacular “Sunflowers,’’ so, too, do we readers appreciate an ordinary life made, by its quiet rendering, extraordinary.”

Vaclav and Lena by Haley Tanner

This is Tanner’s first novel and it is a winner.  She creates a world inhabited by immigrants from Russia who struggle with their assimilation.  The title characters are two children who become friends because of proximity and ethnicity.  Vaclav is fascinated by magic and enlists Lena in his plans to perform in his magic show on the Boardwalk on Coney Island.  Vaclav’s mother, Rasia, sees what is developing between the two children but is unable to prevent the strength of their friendship even though she knows it might come to a tragic and necessary end.  Susannah Meadows in the New York Times writes, “Ms. Tanner is such a strong storyteller, and her distinctive voice — winsome without being dopey — engulfs you immediately.”  

Flyleaf Books celebrates National Poetry Month

It’s hard to believe we’re almost halfway through April, which just so happens to be National Poetry Month.

Perhaps you’re wondering what it’s like to work in a bookstore during National Poetry Month. Does everyone speak in iambic pentameter? Do the folks behind the registers grimace, swig glasses of scotch, and mumble existential verses? Do the booksellers shake their fists and curse to the heavens when someone can’t tell the difference between a Petrarchan and Spencerian sonnet? Well, no, no, and no.

We encourage vandalism.

Next time you’re in our store, check out our National Poetry Month table. Flyleaf bookseller and Staff Poet Laureate Michael C. Peterson has a ton of great recommendations on display. And while you’re meditating over a villanelle or alexandrine, go ahead and write your favorite poetic lines on our table. Yep, you read correctly. Inspire others by writing lines from the poets who have inspired you: Maya Angelou, Li Po, Dorothy Parker, John Keats, Omar Khayyam, Shakespeare, Shel Silverstein, or Michael C. Peterson.

We’re eager to see what you’ll write!

--Ana

Sally’s Kitchen Jewelry Trunk Show -- Saturday, March 19th from Noon-4:00pm

There are a number of things that make Flyleaf such a unique, comforting bookstore: a wide variety of books, awesome staff recommendations, fantastic authors and reading events, a supportive and knowledgeable community, large windows, cozy sitting space, and, of course, squishables (those plush, marshmallow-shaped stuffed animals – more on those for another day). But hands down, one of the coolest parts of Flyleaf is Sally Stollmack.

For those of you have not yet met Sally, she’s the petite, super cool bookseller who probably knows everyone in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. (One day during the holiday season, Land and Mike kept a running total to see how many customers she knew – they lost count). Seriously, Sally is like sunshine; she’s always upbeat and has such a great personality. But before she was a bookseller, Sally sold her jewelry at Flyleaf not only in glass displays, but also during her Kitchen Jewelry Trunk Show. Her next show is this Saturday, March 19th from Noon-4:00pm and she’ll have exquisite jewelry in addition to some pretty nifty and chic handbags and clutches. All the jewelry is specialty made by artists from all over the world. Here are a few pictures of jewelry, handbags, and clutches she’ll be selling on Saturday. Hope to see you there!





--Ana

Meet Tom Angleberger, the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda -- Monday, March 14th at 7:00pm

Let’s face it: school can be tough, especially when your classmates designate you as the grade-school pariah. That’s what Tommy thinks of Dwight, the goofy and awkward kid of McQuarrie Middle School. One day, Dwight creates an Origami Yoda and the Origami Yoda suddenly offers profound – and correct! – advice for Dwight and Tommy’s classmates. But Tommy is left wondering whether these words of wisdom are really coming from Yoda… or if Dwight is a misunderstood genius.

Stop by Flyleaf on Monday, March 14^th at 7:00pm and meet Tom Angleberger, the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda. As you can see, the Flyleaf staff is very excited about this event. Hope to see you there!

--Ana