Best Books (and Worst) of 2011

I’ve been recording every book I’ve read since 2001.  I’m on my second notebook and have averaged about 45 books annually for the last 12 years.

2011 fell short of my average at 42 books (26 fiction, 16 non-fiction).

My taste is a bit eclectic, but I tend to gravitate toward classics, mystery & suspense and non-fiction – mostly politics and history.  I didn’t deviate from that pattern last year.

Here were my favorite and not-so favorite reads of 2011.

BEST BOOK OVERALL

“Travels With Charley: In Search of America” by John Steinbeck

At the age of 58, John Steinbeck, author of “The Grapes of Wrath” and “East of Eden,” set out on a cross-country journey in an old pick-up truck with a camper on it.  Steinbeck’s goal was to rediscover the United States in 1962.  Amazingly, as Steinbeck drives from Maine to California, his observations about American character still resonate strongly today (Charley, by the way, was Steinbeck’s pet poodle).

The reason I read this book was because a businessman sitting across the aisle from me in an airplane was.  I asked him about it and he told me it was one of his favorite books and he often reread it.  “Sometimes I just grab it off the shelf and read a few chapters,” he said.  “It’s a great book.”

He’s right.  It is.

BEST NOVEL

“A Good School” by Richard Yates

Yates is one of my favorite authors and I try to read one of his novels every year.  This year I read two (also “Cold Spring Harbor”).  Yates really captures the quiet frustrations of middle class living in a way that’s difficult to forget.  He reminds me of Raymond Carver, but with a more nuanced and tender approach, but with the same jarring outcomes.  “A Good School” takes place at a middle-of-the-road boarding school in New England at the start of World War II and is a mediation of the end of childhood and the delicate and complicated relationships between adults and adolescents.

BEST NON-FICTION

(Tie)

“1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” by Charles C. Mann

“The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Mann’s book was a eye-opening pop – basically changing my entire perception of the civilization of native Americans in the United States and Central and South America.  Mounting evidence now points to a thriving and sophisticated civilization of millions of people who may have been more advanced than Europe in many ways.  A fascinating book on how and why civilizations can reach the brink.

“The Spirit Level” is one of those books that articulates what you feel in your bones is true.  In a masterful and scholarly opus, Wilkinson and Pickett show why societies that are more equal in income are better places to live and how unequal societies have more crime, more violence and are unhealthy.  A true must-read.

I found “1491″ while browsing the public library stacks and heard about “The Spirit Level” on the NPR radio program “On Point.”

BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER

“A Stranger Like You” by Elizabeth Brundage

Hands down the winner in this category. A quirky, literary thriller that reads like a back-handed slap at modern Hollywood.  A screenwriter having a mid-life crisis (and possibly a psychotic meltdown) decides to prove to a producer who rejects his serial killer screenplay that his “improbable” ending could actually work.

This one was recommended by my friends at Brighton (Maine) Books.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT (FICTION)

“Moonlight Mile” by Dennis Lehane

I’ve been a huge Lehane fan since his first Kenzie and Gennaro private eye novel.  When I read that “Moonlight Mile” was a sequel to “Gone, Baby, Gone” I was ready to go.  What a letdown.

Kenzie and Gennaro are middle-aged now and, unfortunately, they are one of those middle-aged couples that got really boring.  Lots of clichés, strained dialogue and pathetic middle-aged angst. Painful stuff.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT (NON-FICTION)

“War” by Sebastian Junger

In the course of 15-month, Junger followed a platoon of soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.  His goal was to get an inside look at combat and what it does to soldiers.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t capture the fear, honor, trust or excitement of combat.  It’s a rare miss at storytelling for Junger, who I respect as a journalist and a writer.  The book simply doesn’t hold together as a compelling narrative and instead feels like a series of essays.  And, even worse, he fails to humanize the soldiers.  Here’s my full review.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT (MYSTERY/THRILLER)

“The Frightened Man” by Kenneth Cameron

I was expecting a lot from this mystery that promised a new take on the Jack the Ripper murders.  No such luck.  In fact, the Ripper – which is teased on the back cover blurb – has nothing to do with the plot.  The concept was intriguing – a former Civil War soldier living in England with a perchance for violence gets involved in a murder mystery.  Unfortunately, the writing is stiff and the plot meanders.