Year of Disappointing Books

While I didn’t acheive my goal of reading fifty books this year, I have managed to read 46 and, my, what a disappointment they’ve been. Out of the 46, maybe three are what I would call expectionally good reading. The list contains The Kite Runner, My Friend Leonard, and How We are Hungry.

The Kite Runner was simply an exceptional read. A book I would normally wouldn’t have even considered buying. My mother in law told me it was great and bought it for me for my birthday. The same week, I heard about it from six other people ranomly and decided it was a sign. When I finally sat down to read it, I finished it it in two days. I couldn’t put it down. The boys’ lives had me constantly thinking about the book. While some parts were unrealistically optimistic, the book overall is pretty depressing and eye-opening. However, the best part is how universal the story is and how much one can relate to the grief and regret. The beautifully flowing and engrossing writing doesn’t hurt either.

My Friend Leonard was another fantastic book by Daniel Frey who wrote A Million Little Pieces, one of the best reads of 2004. What’s amazing about this book is that most of the time, sequals are not interesting. I used to love Chuck Palahniuk but after three of the same , his books started to get old and the style was more annoying than interesting. Not so with Frey. The raw, short, and honest style of this author is fantastic and the story is amazing in the true sense of the word.

And finally Dave Eggers. I’ve been a fan of Eggers for many many years abut I’ll admit that I always thought his fiction wasn’t that great. I loved the Staggering Genius but not so much the Velocity. So when the New York Times said this short story collection was good, I was skeptical. But since it is Eggers, I bought the book anyhow. I’m not a short story fan in general. I am not sure exactly why but I can’t ever seem to get into them and always feel shortchanged by the end. So imagine my surprise when I loved this book. And I mean, loved it! I really enjoyed each story and found them unique and I couldn’t even tell you what it as about these stories that reached out to me but I did love the book.

What’s sad is that those are the only three that somehow stand out. There are a bunch (like the shopaholic stuff) that I expected to be stupid. A bunch that were so so like the Didion book and the Coelho one. Ones that I wished would be better like the Hornby one and Melissa Banks and John Irving – each authors I truly cherish and love the work of. A few non-fcition ones that were interesting like the Armstrong books and Graham – of course- and Blink. I did enjoy the Curious Incident… quite a bit actually. And Saturday was much better than I expected. But none were amazing.

And then there are those that I was really saddened by. The amazing Michael Cunningham who wrote The Hours did a sub-par job with Specimen Days. The author of the wonderful The Secret Life of Bees did a terrible job with The Mermaid Chair. Both of which made me want to cry.

In this year when so many of my favorite authors came out with new books (Irving, Hornby, Banks, Cunningham, Coelho, Gladwell, Eggers, Frey) it’s terribly sad that only three books really stood out. What books have you read in 2005 that spoke to you?