Mindy Withrow

2008: a year in books

You might describe my Christmas as a book exchange with pretty wrapping.  More than a few crisp volumes (plus other bookish accoutrements) changed hands.  I am happily stacking new books on the TBR pile, wearing this gorgeous Emily Dickinson-quote necklace, ready to switch over to my new reading journal in a couple weeks when the current one is full, and eagerly anticipating the arrival of my Poets & Writers subscription.  I hope yours was similarly bookish!  And with the new year now at hand, I can’t resist compiling a few lists of the year gone by.

I wrote a lot this year.  Not as much as I should have, but enough to explain why the spacebar on my laptop is giving out.  I started and completed Rescue and Redeem, the fifth and final book of my History Lives series, releasing in just a few weeks now.  (I counted up all the biographical chapters in the series—if you’ve read them, you know each chapter is something like a short story, with its own unique setting and characters—and it’s the equivalent of 63 short stories.)  I also wrote the foreword to Normal Kingdom Business, a book by my friend Andree Seu; contributed essays and reviews to several publications; tried my hand at several short fiction attempts (something I plan to continue with in the coming year); put time into my ongoing novel project; and began researching and outlining a new book-length creative non-fiction project.

My notes also reveal that I read 46 books in 2008, EXACTLY the same number as in 2007.  (Weird!)  I’d set a goal of reading at least one a week this year, but got waylaid in late spring and early summer when my looming book deadline completely took over.  The category breakdown is a little surprising.  I would have guessed I had read more fiction than non, but of the 46, only 22 were fiction, specifically: 20 novels (including 5 debuts), one young adult novel (I would have sworn I had read more YA this year), and one story collection.  The 24 non-fiction titles included 8 memoirs, 2 biographies, 12 works in the theology/spirituality/religious history/philosophy departments, and 2 books on writing.

Many of the books I read this year were my first introduction to established or classic writers, people I had wanted to read for so long and finally got around to picking up.  These included:  Iris Murdoch (phenomenal—more already on the stack), Susan Howatch (creator of my new “theological soap opera” category!), Mary Gordon (quietly powerful), Wendell Berry (already more on the stack), Amy Bloom (not as compelling as I expected), Rex Stout (classic!), Kathleen Norris (enormously thoughtful), Nikolai Gogol (now I remember why I went on hiatus from 19th century novels), Anne Lamott (funny!), Thomas Merton (complex in every way), and Annie Dillard (brilliant stylist).

Here are some of the “bests” (click for my reviews):

Best novel read this year (and a first novel): 
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
Closely followed in no particular order:
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin (first novel)
The Outcast by Sadie Jones (first novel)
Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hill (first novel)

Best spirituality (decided by relevance to my life these days):
Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett

Best writer(s) on writing (I can’t choose!):
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Best history:
The Bone Gatherers: The Lost World of Early Christian Women by Nicola Denzey

Best memoir:
Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

What are your bests?  Leave a comment or link to your year-end wrap up.

And now back to reading.  I’ve just started Janna Levin’s A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (Christmas present from my attentive husband), and it already promises to rank very high on next year’s lists.

Happy 2009!

30. December 2008 by Mindy
Categories: My writing, On reading, Your turn | 7 comments