The Best of 2014

In 2014, I cracked the cover of 66 books, making it to the last page of all but five. Using the same 15% rule that I've used in the past (2013, 2012, and 2011),  I should select the 9.9 best books. What follows is the best of my 2014 reading list - 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction - with two honorable mentions tacked on. Happy reading!

Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health
(reviewed January 20, 2014)
Jeanne E. Abrams reveals the extent to which elite, early Americans (George and Martha Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, for example) were marked at every stage of life by death and disease. There is not one who hasn't lost a child or spouse to what we look upon today as a highly treatable disease. The denizens of Washington, DC, are laid low by malaria with alarming regularity in Washington's time; today, such a diagnosis in the city would be regarded as singularly peculiar - and alarming. Revolutionary Medicine also serves as portrait of how medicine has changed. In the time of days of the Founding Fathers, an educated person knew as much of medicine as, perhaps, their physician - who may or may not have ever studied medicine...

Twenties Girl
(reviewed January 24, 2014)
Sophie Kinsella has created a lighthearted masterpiece here. Lara Lington's life is a wreck, and that's before her great aunt Sadie begins haunting her, harassing her about finding a missing necklace, without which she cannot go to her eternal rest. Did I mention that Lara never met Aunt Sadie while the woman lived? Or that Sadie is also determined that, in addition to finding the necklace, Lara will also learn the Charleston? Twenties Girl is completely and utterly over-the-top. It is ridiculous in the best sense of the word and it is hilarious pretty much from start to finish.

A Walk in the Woods
(reviewed April 17, 2014)
Bill Bryson wins the prize for best travel writing in 2014. Bryson, you see, has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. Rather than hike alone, he has persuaded an old high school buddy to hike with him. Never mind that they've not seen each other for some 15 or 20 years. No, it's until the buddy, Stephen, shows up on the eve of the hike seriously overweight and badly out of shape that Bryson begins to doubt his plan. What ensues is general hilarity. From nutty fellow hikers to those who pick up hitchhikers to innkeepers and cab drivers, Bryson brings color - and humor - to each day's long, hard slog.

Cutting for Stone
(reviewed June 15, 2014)
Abraham Verghese made me cry. Not little sniffles, either. He is by far the only author about whom I can say that this year. (In fact, no book has come close to imparting the emotional trauma of Cutting for Stone since Leila Meacham's Roses, which I read in 2010.) This is an epic, sweeping novel that travels from early-twentieth century India to mid-century Ethiopia and onward to twenty-first century America. It is the story of Marion and Shiva Praise Stone, but more than that it is a story of man's unparalleled ability to make terrible, terrible decisions, most often when blinded by love. The prose is lovely and wisdom - "We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot." - is more than page deep.

Elizabeth is Missing
(reviewed July 16, 2014)
Emma Healey's Elizabeth is Missing is not only well-written and well-constructed (often a challenge for books with parallel narratives), but it is also a stunning, poignant look at aging and dementia. Maud's friend, Elizabeth, is missing. Or maybe not: Maud can't really remember. But as she tries to make sense of Elizabeth's disappearance, memories flood back of another disappearance, this of her older sister Sukey who simply vanished in 1946. The reader can feel the losses and confusion mount around Maud and her daughter Helen, whom Maud is often unable to recognize. Healey creates a genuine portrait of a woman falling away from the world, which is terrifying in its realness.

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
(reviewed August 26, 2014)
Susan Jane Gilman's novel begins when five-year-old Malka Treynovsky arrives in New York in 1913. Three months later she's crippled in an accident and abandoned. Taken in by an Italian family, Malka becomes Lillian, and ultimately marries the handsome but illiterate Albert Dunkle, with whom she builds an empire of ice cream shops starting with a single truck. Soon, Lillian is the head of an ice cream empire and a celebrity in her own right, which is wonderful for her right up until it isn't: when she finds herself on trial for both tax evasion and assault. In the midst of this double ordeal, Lillian has decided to share her ordeal with us, darlings, and her voice is what makes Ice Cream Queen the masterpiece that it is.

The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle
(reviewed October 17, 2014) 
John Eisenberg has taken a single event - and a horse race, at that - that happened nearly 200 years ago and imbues it with a level of suspense and outsize importance such that the reader feels the outcome truly matters. In 1823, a southern horse and a northern horse squared off in the first mass sporting event in American history. That summer, the race to be the fastest horse was merely a stand-in in the decades-long superiority contest between North and South that would culminate in the Civil War four decades later.

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
(reviewed November 5, 2014)
David Laskin has painstakingly reconstructed the histories of a dozen young, fresh immigrants to the United States, all of whom - by choice or by chance - return to the "Old Country" as soldiers in their adopted country's army to face the horrors of World War I. In Europe, some men barely see war, while others become heroes. As with the Doughboys write large, most of Laskin's subjects make it home after the Armistice, but some do not. As much about the immigrant experience as the soldier's, The Long Way Home is illuminating on both fronts.

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932
(reviewed November 29, 2014)
Francine Prose has crafted the most amazingly constructed novel I have ever read. At its heart, this is the biography of Lou Villars, a cross-dressing, javelin-thrower-turned-race-car-driver, Hitler revering, collaboratrice extraordinaire. What makes Lovers so remarkable is that Prose has written, essentially, the biography of a woman who never existed (Lou Villars) written by an author who never existed, the chapters of which are interspersed with chapters from the memoir of a heroine of the Resistance, the unpublished diary of another Resistance hero, famous works of an American writer and Hemingway contemporary, and letters to his parents penned by a Hungarian photographer. There are also chapters devoted to the memories of the owner of the Chameleon Club. And none of these people ever existed: this is not historical fiction based on actual people; it is fiction transported to another time. This book is a fabulous, dizzying ride at the end of which the reader can't help but wish to have been there, Paris's lover, if only for a moment.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
(reviewed December 24, 2014) 
Haven Kimmel's memoir is written in a lighthearted and self-deprecating tone, and the many quirky characters of Mooreland, Indiana, (population: 300) come to life in the pages of Zippy. Unlike many other memoirs, this is a small story of a small life, but there is a touching sweetness to it, and a humor to which anyone familiar with small, Midwestern towns can connect. Fittingly, Growing Up Small is a small book, and a quick and happy read.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

Villa Triste
(reviewed July 23, 2014)
Lucretia Grindle has actually written two books here, one historical fiction and one modern-day mystery, and woven them together rather ingeniously. Caterina Cammaccio is a nurse by day and a reluctant partisan (or Italian resistance fighter) by night in wartime Florence, which is simultaneously occupied by Nazis and overrun with fascists. Flashing to the present day, Giovanni Trantemento, an elderly and decorated former partisan, has been brutally murdered in his own home. As Florence's top cop, it's up to Alessandro Palliotti to solve the crime, but when another former partisan is similarly murdered elsewhere in Italy, it's clear to him that Trantemento's murder wasn't a mere crime of opportunity. I won't spoil the mystery - or how they connect - but I will say that Grindle has pulled off both parts of her novel beautifully, while creating an array of remarkable characters.

The Moor's Account
(reviewed December 27, 2014) 
Laila Lalami's novel is grounded in actual events: In 1527 the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition set off for the New World only to be beset by every trouble that could plague a sixteenth centruy explorer. Narváez, in fact, was carried out to sea on a raft and never seen or heard of again. Four men (of the six hundred or so who set off for the new world) did survive: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and his Moroccan slave, Estebanico. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain achieved great fame with his account of their journey. The Moor's Account is Lalami's telling of this same story, but from the perspective of Estebanico. It is a beautifully written and captivating tale.

In the Land of the Living

In the Land of the Living is billed as a coming of age story. That seems to be a catchall all category for books that don't follow a tidy narrative. And, truly, the most trying thing about this book is that it isn't really about anything. It is an amble through the lives of the Auberon men. What's more, the first generation - Ezer - and two-thirds of the second generation - Dennis and Burt - simply vanish from the story. Unfortunately for me, I found the second generation far more interesting and sympathetic than the third generation - Leo and Mack - with whom I was stuck for the remaining 200 pages.

In many ways, I was reminded of The Goldfinch, possibly my least favorite book of 2014. In the Land of the Living has been on my reading list for months, since it was featured in the UM Alumni Magazine. I'll have to think twice before adding their picks onto my list. After a strong start - Edmund Love, Rich Boy, and The Blood of Free Me, I'm now 0-for-2. (Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin was also a bust.)

The Moor's Account

The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami is another fantastic work of fiction. Like almost all good works of historical fiction, it is grounded in actual events: In 1527 the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition set off for America - and Florida, specifically - to be beset by every trouble that could plague a sixteenth centruy explorer. Narváez, in fact, was carried out to sea on a raft and never seen or heard of again. Four men (of the six hundred or so who set off for the new world) did survive: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and his Moroccan slave, Estebanico.

Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain achieved great fame with his account of their journeys through the New World. The Moor's Account is Lalami's telling of this same story, from the perspective of Estebanico (who began life as Mustafa al-Zamori). In that way, this is Mustafa-Estabanico's memoir, and Lalami does the story justice. The voyage to America, foundering of the explorers' party, and life among the natives, are interwoven with the story of Mustafa, from his birth to the day he became a slave, and then his initial years in slavery, which were spent in Spain.

The story is well researched and Mustafa's background story is beautifully created. Lalami writes things like, "...I had seen wonders that no other Zamori had. .... The world was not as I wished it to be, but I was alive. I was alive." that make me want to fall into the pages and read forever.

No surprises then: I enjoyed this tremendously. I enjoyed it all the more for having recently read A Splendid Exchange, which discussed both the Spanish and Portuguese presence in North Africa (fittingly, Mustafa is a trader), as well as the exploration of the Americas. In the end, this is all about the prose, though, for it is page-after-page of a beautifully imagined and marvelously written story.

A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana

A Girl Named Zippy is the sweet and funny memoir of Haven Kimmel, born in Mooreland, Indiana, (population 300) in 1965. Her memories are told with a lighthearted and self-deprecating tone, and the many quirky characters come to life in her telling. Zippy ends on Christmas Eve, which I did not know when I began, of course, but which seems entirely fitting.

I was reminded more than once not so much of my own Midwestern birthplace, but that of my grandmother and great-grandparents, a place which still looms large in my memories. I imagine that such towns did not change much between, say 1965 and 1985, which is why reading this often felt like slipping into something familiar and well-worn. And, although the better part of several decades passed between the two memoirs, I was reminded again and again of Edmund Love's wonderful The Situation in Flushing, which still ranks as my favorite memoir. (It is also worth noting that Kimmel's life and early experiences could not be farther from the life and times of Lady Pamela Hicks, whose Daughter of Empire is the last memoir I read.)

I picked this up at the library after seeing it on BookBub - still one of my favorite web finds in 2014 - and read it in a matter of hours. Time well spent - and easily recommended for anyone who loves memoirs or small town America.

Merry Christmas!

Dance of the Winnebagos

Thirty-three-year-old Claire Morgan gets more than she bargained for when she accompanies her grandfather (in his winnebago) to Arizona to meet old friends and new ladies. In addition to a serious case of TMI as far as her grandfather's love life is concerned, she finds herself in the middle of a growing mystery - and whomever wants to keep it quiet will stop at nothing to prevent Claire learning the truth.

Dance of the Winnebagos is a really quick, fun read. It shares a number of similarities with the Fudge mystery series: there's an extraneous romance; a young, female protagonist who's obviously in over her head and makes decisions that beggar belief; and a plot-driven narrative with a compelling mystery that is strong enough to overcome the two aforementioned weaknesses.

I've already added the next book in Ann Charles's series to my reading list.

The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream (DNF)

I have been slogging my way through Thomas Dyja's The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream for the past two weeks. The premise drew me in - in the middle of the 20th century, Chicago was the American city. And Dyja forcefully and eloquently makes the case that Chicago was the American city for better (art and architecture) or for worse (corruption and racism). Still, after 200 pages (our of 412), I decided to end the slog.

The trouble is that this reader, at least, couldn't see the forest - Chicago - for the trees - all of the individuals who contributed to the city's rise in one way or another. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy certainly made important contributions, as did each of the dozens of other characters, but the story of the city got lost in their biographical details. I would have loved a less detailed history that focused more heavily on the events, rather than the people behind the events.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

I have mixed thoughts on William J. Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, a narrative on the history of world trade from the Sumerians to present day. Parts of it, particularly the opening chapters discussing the creation and growth of Islam and the role of trade in the Peloponnesian War were deeply interesting. Other chapters, such as those comparing the Dutch Wast India Company and the British East India Company (arguably the world's first multinational firms), felt too technical.

I also felt Bernstein missed the opportunity to tie some of the ongoing themes together more cleanly. For example, early in the book he discussed the role of trade in the Peloponnesian War. Similarly, trade was a precipitating factor of the British Opium Wars with China. However, Bernstein did not take the opportunity to compare and contrast these wars, their impact on trade balance and world power, and how trade factored into the dispute. A Splendid Exchange is a linear telling of trade history, but pulling upon earlier examples could have strengthened the book and further engaged the reader.

Berstein does offer excellent discourse on the advantages of trade, and examples of absolute and comparative advantage that any economics student can appreciate. Ultimately, this book is most likely to appeal to those folks with a strong - dare I say professional? - interest in the material.

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

Ever hear of the wildfire of 1910? Me neither. But the fire, filed under "Great Fire of 1910" on Wikipedia, burned an area the size of Connecticut across Washington, Idaho, and Montana in August of that year. In The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America, Timothy Egan (whose Worst Hard Time was one of my best reads in 2012) reconstructs not only the fire, but the policy debate around the whole idea of national forests that preceded and succeeded the fire.

Essentially, Egan explains, the story goes like this: America in the gilded age was a boom or bust kind of place, and nowhere was this more evident than in the mining and railroad towns running across the northern spine of the country (one of the few remaining frontiers). What to do about undesirable resident prostitutes one early forest ranger asked another? Replace them with desirable ones, came the deadpan response. And why, you ask, were resident prostitutes an issue for forest rangers? Because in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service, any number of activities - including tremendous logging and also the construction of railroads - was permitted. It was one of the many compromises Teddy Roosevelt (who comes off much better in The Big Burn than in The Imperial Cruise) had to make in order to establish the badly underfunded forest service in the first place.

By the time the brutally dry summer of 1910 rolled around, Teddy had been out of office for the better part of 18 months and it fell to Howard Taft to "manage" the burning west - or at least read the reports on it - but Teddy's shadow loomed large over the events surrounding the fire. Still, The Big Burn is as much about the likes of Gifford Pinchot (American's first forester) and William Clark (crooked copper magnate and U.S. Senator) as it is about Roosevelt. All-in-all, this is an interesting read, although not nearly as engrossing as Worst Hard Time.