year in books

Here comes the fifth installment of my "last year's books". I'm not obsessed enough to count, but I'm pretty sure I haven't reached 100 yet. Nevertheless, going back through old installments, I'm sometimes surprised at what I'm supposed to have read. Who knows how much gets lost in the time between I read a book and write down my thoughts on it?

Never mind, here goes it for 2013:

• A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul – This is a spectacular book, a foreign resident's increasingly alarmed observations in an unspecified African country. Despite its age (25 years), it's fresh and relevant. My favorite of 2013.
• A House for Mister Biswas by the same author is much weaker. The novel details the life of the author's father, which is uneventful and centers on a quest for house ownership, a passion I can't share.
• The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall – A humorous novel about a plyg family, written by a Mormon. How could I not buy this book? It's often hilarious but never demeaning. If you have spent time in Salt Lake and can picture Southern Utah, you must read this book.
• A Thousand Years of Good Prayers by Yiyun Li – I first encountered Li's writing in The New Yorker, melancholic stories of displacement and loss. The stories here are in a similar vein, though the migrants are different. Some come back to China or look back on it, but most have lost their familiar ways in a country of enormous changes.
• Me talk pretty one day by David Sedaris – This book provided sustenance on an epic train journey to Germany where I went to return it to its rightful owner. I realized that there is such a thing as too much Dave Sedaris.
• In Morocco by Edith Wharton – When I traveled to Morocco last May, I exasperated my companion with warnings about the mystery and peril of her country quoted from this book, written in 1920. The bits on culture and history are still relevant, though, and astutely observed.
• Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid – Published before The Reluctant Fundamentalist by the same author, this book is not quite as snappy, but the story of desire, injustice, duplicity and bitterness is vibrant throughout. The end rattles out of predictability several times to leave the reader dazzled.
• Was wir nicht haben, brauchen Sie nicht by Dieter Moor – The author, a rigid Swiss straight from the freezer, bought a farm in an unimaginable backwater between Berlin and Poland and slowly, very slowly warms up and connects with the locals. Funny if you can relate to the history and geography of the place.
• Open City by Teju Cole – A Nigerian grad student walking the streets of New York to find himself and his place could have been really good, but a lack of emotional connections between the protagonist and his surroundings makes the book deeply unsatisfying. It's just babble.
• Letter to Daniel by Fergal Keane – Collected posts from a time when there weren't blogs, only From Our Own Correspondent on Radio 4. Quiet but powerful missives from a changing world, Hong Kong, South Africa and Ireland.
• The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker – A glorification of OCD that came into being when the author got worked up about the new paper towels in the toilet that weren't quite as nice as the old ones.
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – Mandatory reading, given the overreactions from all sides that its release triggered. I didn't think much of it, but it's important for the violence, cowardice and vice it exposed in so many.
• The Living Great Lakes by Jerry Dennis – Most unusual, a rumination on the Great Lakes region performed while afloat. Concerning for the most part the transfer of a concrete-hulled boat from Lake Michigan to Maine, the book strays from its topic towards the end, but that's not to its detriment. A most unexpected delight.
• The Road from Damascus by Robin Yassin-Kassab – A good read, but what does it matter? There are infinitely more pressing issues on the subject of Syria these days. The author knows this and tries to do something. Follow his blog and engage.
• London Orbital by Iain Sinclair – I had earlier discovered what kind of writer Sinclair is, and that I didn't like it at all. This book is more of the same, and not just more but way too much. I struggled halfway through and then gave up, much like with Downriver.

Fourteen books, not bad for a year when I was often distracted and my mind rarely at home.