Here is the round up of the books I read this year. I didn’t quite reach the two books per month target. If I had finished everything I started, I would have, but I had trouble sustaining interest in some books this year.

1. Heart – A personal journey through its myths and meanings by Gail Godwin

   This book was a great start to the year. I had abandoned the book I was reading (Regards by John Gregory Dunne) in favor of it. It contains lots of good information and could be a little scholarly at times. I learned much about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Hindus (Upanishads stories), Buddha, Confucius, Islam … well, a lot! It definitely pointed the way for further areas of study.

2. About Alice by Calvin Trillin

   In his memoir about life with his late wife, Trillin is sweet and funny. The first chapter had been excerpted in New Yorker magazine and drew me in immediately. It was a short, quick read about a lovely, gracious woman.

3. Leaving Church – A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor

   I loved this book and will probably buy it just to have it. Even after singing in the choir at St. James Episcopal for a few years, I still question myself about it and wonder at my motives. This memoir gave me some insight into a life lived in faith, regardless of ecclesiastical affiliation. Here is a particular quote that spoke to me:

   You have everything you need to be human. There is nothing outside of you that you still need–no approval from the authorities, no attendance at temple no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book. In your life, right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human.

4. Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

   I enjoyed this book despite being occasionally revolted by graphic descriptions of the life and death struggles of the hunter-gatherer life. I seem to be getting more squeamish as I get older. I read it for a Vermont Council on the Humanities book discussion at the library. The author is from New Hampshire and has lived with the Kalahari San (African bushmen). Her approach seems more authentic than Jean Auel’s popular “Clan of the Cave Bear” series. “Reindeer Moon” has been included in the anthropology classes and Marshall Thomas is an anthropologist herself. I attended a book discussion with her during which she was curiously inarticulate. Just a bad day or writerly shyness?

5. Grace (Eventually) – Thoughts on Faith by Anne LaMott

   I haven’t read the last couple of LaMott’s books of collected essays because she can grate on me and her writing sometimes seems formulaic. Here she is, griping, grousing, creating a messy situation and boom! … a tiny reversal, Big Flash Of Insight and it’s all better. Until the next essay. It wears on me. I didn’t have huge hopes and I wasn’t disappointed. She does write awfully well and for that it was worthwhile.

6. I Feel Bad About My Neck (and other thoughts on being a woman) by Nora Ephron

   This was an amusing, quick (one day) read. Sometimes superficial, but with an easy conversational style. The last chapter on death brought mist to my eyes. And I liked the chapter on the things she wishes she had known sooner including:

   The plane is not going to crash.
   Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of 35 you will be nostalgic for at the age of 45.
   If the shoe doesn’t fit in the store, it is never going to fit.
   The thing that’s waking you up at 2 AM is the second glass of wine.

7. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

   Subtitled “A guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them,” this is a great tour of great literature. It inspired me to read Gabriel Garcia Marques who had always intimidated me. Definitely planning to read more of the other books she excerpted.

8. Love In the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

   A wonderful story. I was both repulsed by and sympathetic toward Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. In particular, the way he seemed to inadvertently cause the deaths of his lovers. The ending–forever cruising the ruined river on a quarantined steamship–was poetic. And their relationship at the end: “It was as if they had leapt over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love.” Also of note from page 329 as she sits in the twilight with Florentino Ariza (her childhood sweetheart with whom she has been reunited after many years of married life with another):

   Fermina Daza stopped smoking in order not to let go of the hand that was still in hers. She was lost in her longing to understand. She could not conceive of a husband better than hers had been, and yet when she recalled their life, she found more difficulties than pleasures, too many mutual misunderstandings, useless arguments, unresolved angers. Suddenly she sighed: ‘It is incredible how one can be happy for so many years in the midst of so many squabbles, so many problems, damn it, and not really know if it was love or not.’

9. Counting on Grace bu Elizabeth Winthrop

   I read this for the Vermont Reads 2007 book discussion that took place in June. This was intended to be for all ages so it is a “Young Adult” selection. Quick and easy, but not terribly engaging. French Canadian immigrants working in a cotton mill in 1910. It was preachy and heavy-handed. Yeah, child labor is bad. I get it.

10. Inanna (From the Myths of Ancient Sumer) by Kim Echlin with fabulous illustrations by Linda Wolfsgruber

    I love this book. It is beautiful. I want to own it (I borrowed it from the library and only returned it because I had to). I was introduced to Ianna by Gail Godwin’s book “Heart.” Wonderful in particular the love songs are perfect. If I weren’t already married, I would use them in my wedding ceremony:

    Put flowers and sweet herbs on my bed.
    Bring me the man I love.
    Put his hand in my hand.
    Press his heart next to my heart.
    Our pleasures will be sweet.
    I rest my head on his arm.
    Our sleep will be sweet.

    Never mind that she eventually sends him to take her place in the Underworld.

11. Birds In Fall by Brad Kessler

    Sad topic, but very good novel. The first chapter, taking place in the present tense on a doomed airplane flight over Nova Scotia really grabbed me. And the rest–the widowed ornithologist, the innkeepers, the other “survivors” all rang true. I was sorry to finish it.

12. Can You Forgive Her by Anthony Trollope

    Maybe, but I don’t think I can forgive Trollope. This was another one for the Vermont Council on the Humanities book discussion group at our library. It is the book that taught me that it is okay to not finish a book. I did finish this one. I spent my whole vacation reading time on it, putting off more appealing titles like “Eat, Pray, Love.” It took forever to get into and was often tedious. There was more information about fox hunting and parliament than I ever cared to know. There were some good characters, but overall I resented the book for taking up so much time for so little pleasure. Other people in the book group loved it so … your mileage may vary.

13. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

    Terrific. It’ll be a movie soon, reportedly starring Julia Roberts, which I find more than off putting. I’m glad I didn’t know that before reading it.

14. Homestead by Rosina Lippi

    This book was loaned to me by my friend, Frank, because it is set in a small alpine village not far from the Swiss lake front village that my father’s family called home. It’s a winner, covering life over most of the 20th century in one community.

15. Living in a Foreign Language by Michael Tucker

    Interesting only because Italy interests me. Tucker, an actor perhaps best known for his role on TV’s “LA Law,” was charming and smug by turns. I wanted to like it more, but mostly it made me miss Frances Mayes “Under the Tuscan Sun.”

16. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

    Good book with a tragic true ending. This historical fiction is about Frank Lloyd Wright’s and Mamah Borthwick Cheney’s scandalous affair and relationship, written with slightly more sympathy for Cheney than Wright, I think. Quote from Ellen Key (Swedish philosopher) who figures in the story:

    [In Ibsen’s view] the proof of a person is ‘the power to stand alone; to be able, in every individual case, to make his own choice; in action to write anew his own law, choose his own sacrifices, run his own dangers, win his own freedom, venture his own destruction, choose his own happiness.’

17. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

    I tried to read this book a few years ago and couldn’t get into it. This time I soldiered on and was eventually engaged, but it took way too long. It made me want to read or re-read some classics with new eyes. It gave me a sense also of how I take my own freedom for granted.

18. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

    This modern gothic novel held my interest with plot twists and many echoes of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. At times it seemed more fantasy fiction than I normally read, but I liked it quite a lot.

19. Persuasion by Jane Austen

    Even my least favorite of Austen’s novels is still pretty darn good.

Unfinished Books of 2008:

1. Regards by John Gregory Dunne – A collection of essays that I just couldn’t relate to.
2. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot – Poor Eliot took the fall for Anthony Trollope. I was so fed up after my experience with Can You Forgive Her, I didn’t really give her a chance.
3. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg – A recommendation by the bookstore owner who saw me purchasing Francine Prose’s book “Reading Like a Writer” that never really inspired my imagination.
4. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway – I read this years ago and loved it. I read half of it the morning of my birthday and still loved it. Just haven’t gotten back into it since that one golden morning.
5. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle – I tried this one last year and again this year. If it doesn’t work next year, it is going in the Revels North yard sale.
6. Getting Things Done by David Allen – Productivity tips you can make a career out of implementing. Seriously, good ideas but not exactly enthralling reading. Using some of these techniques has made me feel marginally less overwhelmed than usual.