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Best Books of 2008

Jill

It’s my goal to read the all 10 of the best books of 2008 by the end of March, because I (embarassingly) have not read a single one, and it’s making me feel like I have culturally atrophied since finishing school. I’m currently reading Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World by Edward Said, which a Feministe reader was kind enough to send me, but I’m curious if you all have any other book recommendations.

So what have you read this year? What’s worth a look?

And while I’m asking for your advice, my small digital camera was stolen in Cambodia and I need to buy a new one. I have an SLR, so I just need a small point-and-shoot that I can toss in my bag. I had a Panasonic that I really liked, but of course everyone says that Canons are the best. Suggestions?

36 thoughts on Best Books of 2008

  3. I’ve been looking forward to reading A Republic of Suffering since I heard Faust’s interview on Fresh Air, but a dissertation and a need for fiction bedtime reading has been standing in my way…

    I have a Canon PowerShot SD750 that I have consistently adored as a point-and-shoot for the last year. It has a macro function that one may easily get obsessed with… I’ve seen better reviews of the SD850, because it has a slightly larger lens and ISO that goes up to 1600 rather than 800. But if you’re going to spend close to $400, you might as well go ahead and get an SLR.

  4. I have a Canon Powershot A550 and I love it to pieces! It takes great pictures, has incredible battery life, and is small enough to be convenient without being “too” small. You can find one for about $150-200 online.

  5. I would recommend mine, actually… The Canon SD1100 IS. It’s little, and it still has the viewfinder for when you really need it. 8 megapixels and 3x optical zoom, but it starts up pretty quickly.

    Plus, it’s really intuitive to use, and ease of use with a point and shoot is good for when you need other people to take pictures for you because your feminism led you to get really, really trashed.

    And it comes in pink!

  6. I love the pink Canon SD1100 IS also: I brought it to Italy and it worked like a charm (doesn’t hurt that it’s pink either—most of the other tourists had black or grey cameras).

    On books: I haven’t read any of the 10 best yet either (though Morrison and Lahiri’s novels are next to my bed awaiting me patiently). I did just finish a lighter read that I recommend: Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (told from the perspective of a woman who had a years-long affair with Frank Lloyd Wright–includes references to several early 20th century feminist writers). It’s historical fiction at its best.

  7. If you want something with awesome art work to go with, I suggest Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home or the series Y the Last Man, about what happens when all the men in the world (sans one) die in the same instant. Pretty interesting, and the author remains true to reality in that different women/cultures react in different ways.

  8. Volume 2 of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, by M.T. Anderson. This means you’d have to read Volume 1, of course. These two novels are, due to the limited-imagination of the publishers (or public) classified as Young Adult; two very fine novels about a young African American man, a slave, during the Revolutionary War.

    Probably you already read The Shock Doctrine? Which was published before 2008, but it’s so important it should be one of the top 2008 books anyway.

  9. Also, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Quite beautiful French novel, with a middle-aged woman and a twelve-year-old girl as the protagonists.

  10. The best novel I’ve read this year (though it came out before 2008) was The
    Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay    . Fantastic book, smart and deep and fun at the same time. I zipped through it.

  12. I have nothing but praise for Micahel Kimmel’s “Guyland” and Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach.”

    And I love my Canon PowerShot TX1!

  13. I don’t think I’ve read anything that came out this year (I decided not to buy hardcover books anymore except for special occasions, and have been working my way through lots of old books I’ve had around for a while), but I MUST jump in to second The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, funny and outlandish but also totally believable and moving. Every time I see it mentioned, I feel the need to emphasize how awesome it is, it’s that good.

  15. It didn’t come out this year, but my favorite piece of recent fiction is “Suite Francaise” by Irene Nemirovsky. I also really liked “Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson. Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” is also terrific, though its a series of short stories. Currently, I’m reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Steig Larsson – though, since I’m knee-deep in law school “currently” means I read a few pages every few weeks 😛 Its good so far. Can’t think of any particularly good non-fiction…I think I stopped indulging that desire when lawschool started.

    Good Luck – and I’m eager to hear what other people have found compelling. I’m always in search of a good book 🙂

  16. these are a couple years old, so maybe everyone’s already read them, but for non-fiction:

    “Gang Leader for a Day” is about a sociologist immersion and study of chicago’s gang culture. a lot of stuff is very similar to the wire, which just enhanced my love for that show.

    “White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good” by william easterly is probably the best single argument against both neoconservatism and neoliberalism. it just destroys the idea that people can bring about top-bottom change.

    and i have to say, i haven’t Outliers, but it’s a pretty fun book. it’s not as good as blink, but it’s still good pop sociology.

  17. I have a Kodak EasyShare that I love, but I have heard really good things about the Canon power shots too.

    As far as books I just finished a Women In Literature class and I have some that I really liked. I highly recommend the memoir Jesus Land. I have never been more captivated by a story. The Country Girls Trilogy by Edna O’Brien is a bit older, but excellent. I also liked the memoir Red Azalea.

  18. James Badwin’s The Fire Next Time is fantastic, and I am slightly embarrassed to say that I hadn’t read it until a few weeks ago. So much of what he says is still completely pertinent now, even with the myth that we are living in a “post-race” society.

    As for cameras: I love my Olympus Stylus 820. Great battery life, neat LCD screen, easy to use.

  19. I’m usually a couple of years behind when it comes to books even though I’m still reading a book a week for pleasure (and to help my go-to-sleep routine). I’m about to start a literature distance course so I’m not reading a lot, so as always I’m back to my Jean M. Auel “Mammoth Hunter”-type guilty pleasure along with a new novel I bought on a whim that I’d never heard of — “Man Gone Down” by Michael Thomas. “Man Gone Down” so far is a really pleasant surprise. It’s like a new riff on Ellison’s Invisible Man taking place in the greater NYC area in the modern day. Good stuff.

  20. Julie, “Jesus Land” takes place in my town and I know many of the people and places the author mentions here (I even know the house where she lived), including the teachers we shared in high school. The book caused quite a scandal here when it was first published.

  22. Oh wow Lauren! That’s really interesting. I was really fascinated by the book. Do you think the depiction of the town was accurate? I’m sure it did cause a huge scandal- she wasn’t very complimentary! I met the author recently at my school and she said her parents won’t even speak to her anymore.

  23. I was very impressed with Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side.” For non-fiction that reads like fiction “The Informant” by Kurt Eichenwald. For lighter reading, and if you love animals, “The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen Sheep, Three Dogs, Two Donkeys, and Me” by Jon Katz. I visit his Bedlam Farm blog daily for the photography of the farm, particularly the animals, and of the hospice patients he and the dogs visit.

  24. Julie, let’s just say this: Garbage soup is not unheard of. I make it myself. I think I even put a “recipe” on Feministe somewhere, if not on my personal blog.

    I graduated from the same high school some years after her, and when I was a substitute teacher there it came up during a lunch period in the teacher’s lounge. One retired teacher in particular had been named and was rumored to be quite pissed (I can’t remember who, it’s been awhile). My in-laws are about a mile away from her childhood home in the country, farmland which is steadily being developed. This is my stomping ground, you know?

    But I think part of the discomfort with what she wrote was due to the disbelief that good, upstanding citizens could be so cruel to their own children, something I don’t find hard to believe, having seen it in other families of similar stature growing up. But of course that’s not endemic in Lafayette or anything. We’re not that special. 🙂 And also, we have a big population of children who leave the area and never, ever want to come back due to a lot of the reasons that she puts out there — blatant racism, homophobia, sexism, willingness to turn a blind eye, etc. The prideful area folks don’t want to admit any shortcomings because the city is striving for a more metro kind of reputation. In recent years the Lafayette/West Lafayette area has grown significantly and many of the bigwigs in town like to pretend that it’s more metropolitan than it is — we’re really just a regular Indiana county seat that happens to also be home to a university, which means we get a lot of cool stores and shows and restaurants alongside the factories and farmland and Walmarts. I’m probably going to be here for a long while and subscribe to the notion that progressive ideas can thrive if you work at them (i.e. it’s really easy to be progressive in San Diego, you have to work for it in semi-rural Indiana). The folks who leave usually disagree with me. In any case, I think some of Scheeres’ race representation of the area is exaggerated (there are way more than “a handful of” people of color in the area, largely due to the university), though I don’t doubt the veracity of the racism David experienced. The religious community that her family was involved in is very insular, and to boot, they lived in a rural area and attended a really, really rural school. The majority of people of color during her childhood would have been within city limits, wouldn’t have been involved with the white, weird Lafayette Christian crew, and wouldn’t have been part of their circle because of this.

    Honestly, this area is a great place to grow up in if you want a mix of pastoral countryside with the kind of cultural influences that a major university can offer. The city consistently makes “best place to raise kids”, “best real estate” and “best place to retire” lists. You just have to have a decent social community to keep you sane when the bizarro religious backwoods shit creeps in the brainskin.

  25. Absolutely have to recommend Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn – simple, fun, very smart – it’s a little older, but I strongly encourage everyone to run out and pick up a copy.

    Also Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates – short stories about murderesses, all wonderfully disturbing in that Oates-ian way.

    Also anything by Jeanette Winterson. Weight, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – all of them are great.

    Misfortune is another good one – it didn’t come out in 2008, maybe ’06 or something? More recent and very good – victorian transgender mystery novel.

    For nonfiction, I recommend Three Cups of Tea, although I’m not a big non-fiction person so I can’t vouch for that one quite as strongly.

  26. “Iron Kissed”, Patricia Briggs. its the third in a series (Mercy Thompson series), and it is “Urban Fantasy” but WELL worth it. while it does have some flaws (what human creation doesn’t?) it’s beautiful, the myth background solid – and (trigger alert) it deals with a rape, and the aftermath thereof, in the most humane, kind, accurat empathetic way… it helped me deal with stuff over decade old, and even better, explained how i felt and how/why i reacted to things almost perfectly to my boyfriend – he actually UNDERSTANDS now, when before he accepted but felt powerless, incapable of either understanding or helping. it’s a beautiful book (and series!)

  27. “When Will There Be Good News?” by Kate Atkinson. It’s her third foray into crime fiction, but you don’t need to have read the previous two books to enjoy this one.

    She has some of the best female characters ever, imho, and Jackson Brode’s a dish too.

  28. I don’t think I have the stomach to read the biography of VS Naipaul that’s on the NYT 10 Best Books list. There was a review in the Atlantic by Hitchens and he and I were both horrified–apparently Naipaul abused his (now deceased) wife, frequents prostitutes and is generally a sorry excuse for a human being. I just don’t feel like I need to read it.

  29. “Wicked” came out ten years ago, but I just read it this year, so I’m gonna drop some love for it anyway. If you haven’t read it, do it now. It completely reinvents the Wicked Witch of the West as a feminist icon. If you are only familiar with the musical, this is much, much darker and more complex. While the musical is a comedy, the book is a tragedy. It is one of my favorite books of all time.

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  31. That makes a lot of sense Lauren. The town that I live in is a lot like you describe actually- we have a college and many liberal, progressive professors who keep me sane but at the same time we don’t have a lot of diversity in the more rural outlying towns and there is a lot of racism, sexism, homophobia in those areas. I think you’re right about the reason it made so many people uncomfortable, it’s hard to imagine that this kind of abuse happening in a family that you considered to be upstanding. It’s hard too, because she’s telling the story solely from her teenage point of view. I think I liked it so much because while my family was nowhere near as abusive as hers, I identified with her story of growing up under the thumb of religious fundamentalism.

  32. Jill:

    May I suggest Said’s “Question of Palestine”, if you like “Covering Islam.”

    Also, there is a lot of controversy over “Kabul Beauty School.” Regardless of the merits of the accusations against the author, it would be nice if we bothered to read books by women from the Islamic regions of the world (and not just those by authors like Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hrisi Ali, anointed by the MSM as authentic and the only true spokeswomen for all Muslim women), rather than books by Americans who temporarily swooped in to rescue and magically liberate poor, oppressed women of the Muslim world. Big privilege showing here towards Muslim women…

  33. I adored Jesus Land. Magnificent, if we’re adding that to the list. One of those books that makes it hard sometimes to call myself a Christian to strangers.

  34. Aaah, the 10 best books of the year. Coincidentally, 7 of these 10 bestest books! of the year! were written by men.

  35. I have also read books by Muslim women Kat, thanks for the assumption that I haven’t though. This one just came to mind because I recently finished it and very much enjoyed her story- not in a “swooping in and saving people” way but in the sense of her escaping an abusive husband, going to a foreign country and after everybody surrounding her acting like she had no valuable skills, realizing that she did have something pretty amazing that she could offer. I didn’t see it as her liberating the oppressed people, but the fact that she and the women in Afghanistan built this amazing community together.

  36. May I suggest Said’s “Question of Palestine”, if you like “Covering Islam.”

    Read it. It’s excellent. I also really enjoyed Jesusland — good suggestions!

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