2002: A year to read By Elizabeth Licata He plunked himself into one of the tattered armchairs we had found at the flea market and began pushing the stuffing back into the arm. “You’re going to spend your life telling spoiled, rich people where to eat too much obscene food?” “Something like that, “ I murmured, too embarrassed to defend myself. Ruth Reichl, from Comfort me With Apples. Reports of the demise of the book have been greatly exaggerated. Despite declining literacy skills, the Internet, the prophecies of Marshall McCluhan, and the ever-quickening pace of daily life, people are still finding time to read. In fact, surveys show that the use of the Internet is generally accompanied by an increased use of traditional media. Total book sales in the U.S. continue to rise—about twenty-five billion books in 2000, up a billion from 1999. What has happened, though, is that independent bookstores have great difficulty surviving the onslaught of chains which now offer books, music, gifts, coffee, even lunch. The independents’ market share has dropped, while the share claimed by Internet booksellers continues to rise, though not nearly to the insane levels originally predicted. While I have to sympathize with the plight of these small businesses, it’s difficult not to embrace the extensive availability made suddenly possible by the Internet. I’m happy to get locally unobtainable books by any means necessary, so I often order on-line, sometimes with a pang of guilt—but then, I’ve spent less time looking and more time reading. There were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: Port Said, Shanghai, parts of Turkistan, Contantinople, the South Sea—all lands of sad, haunting music and many odors, where lust could be a mode and expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sunsets would seem to reflect only moods of passion: the colors of lips and poppies. -F. Scott Fitzgerald, from Tender is the Night In any case, there seem to be more books available than ever—in fact, new, “book-replacing” technologies have inspired an impressive amount of books recording their rise and/or fall. Here is a list of twelve books for reading in 2002, a book a month. They have all been released within the last year or two, and represent a variety of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. These are by no means “the best” that have come out, and there is a personal bias in favor of food and gardening books. All of them are widely available—in most cases, without resorting to Amazon.com. For me, each is solid evidence of the enduring power of reading to give pleasure. Comfort Me with Apples/Ruth Reichl The fact that Reichl is editor of Gourmet magazine seems oddly irrelevant to this intimate memoir. Her romantic escapades are at the center of the narrative—we learn about her professional career in the process. Particularly riveting segments including her torrid affair with a fellow food writer, her frustrating trip through China in search of a famous but elusive chef, and her surreal descriptions of the restaurateurs and other foodites she meets in the course of her jobs and travels. Her love of food, eating, and life come through—as well as her occasionally self-destructive search for personal happiness. It could be self-indulgent but it isn’t. You’re rooting for her right up until the last page, just as you might for a well-realized fictional heroine. Random House, 2001. Islam: A Short History/Karen Armstrong Amid all the simplistic “Why do they hate us?” rhetoric, there is a real desire throughout America to know more about the Muslim faith—its history, its book: the Qu’ran, and its various sects and divisions. For a book that takes you from 570 to 2000 in under 200 pages, you could do much worse than this concise, calmly narrated account. The author attempts to show that Islam is not the backward, violent scourge of Western civilization of recent caricature. She suggests that an important reason Islamic countries find democracy so difficult to attain is the legacy of Western colonial practices. Whether you agree with her or not, she does offer a scholarly, well-researched, and incredibly concise account of the religion. Modern Library, 2000. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Marriage/ Alice Munro Alice Munro is one of those rare fiction writers whose reputation is based almost entirely on her short stories, which she has been publishing for over twenty years. In spite of obvious comparisons to such contemporary masters as Raymond Carver—her characters are often rather down and out, the settings deliberately drab—Alice Munro’s stories have a more traditional, nineteenth century ring to me. They also seem far more complex—the reader is always finding new, unexpected twists and layers. Munro’s characters come alive almost instantaneously—her plots have a similar immediate accessibility and fascination. The title story at first seems to be the narrative of a single character, but then it turns a corner, explores another’s viewpoint, then another’s, winding up with a satisfying ending that recalls a de Maupassant treatment. Critics have not hesitated to compare Munro’s stories to those of Tolstoy and Chekhov. Their audacity is fully justified. Knopf, 2001. The Well-Tended Perennial Garden/ Tracy DiSabato-Aust If you’re interested in perennials (plants which come back year after year), this is the only gardening book you really need. It’s easy to pick out great-looking plants at the local nursery, but then what? Some need to be divided, some will give unexpected bursts of reflowering if they are pruned at the right time, and others may have special maintenance needs—and I can assure you you’ll never find out about this stuff at Home Depot. This book makes sense out of the whole confusing world of making plants not only survive, but give you their best performance. The pictures are equally helpful. The gardens look possible—not so unbelievably lush and perfect they must need a team of caretakers working around the clock—and DiSabato-Aust shows “before and after” scenes to illustrate her pruning techniques. Her prose is opinionated and entertaining. Timber, 1998. Half a Life/V.S. Naipul For a writer who has won the Booker and Nobel prizes, V.S. Naipul is still critically controversial. Keep in mind Atlantic Monthly reviewer Diane Mehta’s statement that “in Naipaul's world a despicable fool is the best possible candidate for Everyman.” This isn’t a “feel-good” writer by any means, but Naipul’s ironic, merciless story about a young man who tries to come of age, but doesn’t quite make it, is still fascinating. It’s kind of a mini-epic—as though the stuffing had been pulled out of the 500-page saga this book could easily have been—it does after all, take place in England, India, and Africa. You might not want to read such unflinching examples of the contemporary novel as this too often, but the problems of race and class that plague Naipul’s characters are seldom so absorbingly and ambitiously presented. Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Christopher Lloyd’s Garden Flowers/ Christopher Lloyd Unlike my earlier gardening choice, I would not buy this book for its practical value. It is informative—though you have to keep in mind that Lloyd plants in England, a much milder climate than ours—but the real value is Lloyd’s writing and personality. I have not run across a gardening writer who writes about flowers the same way that M. F. K. Fisher writes about food, but Lloyd comes close. Not that his style is like Fisher’s—Lloyd is much more of a curmudgeon than Fisher could ever be. But his fascination with plants, his personal immersion in the life of his garden is perfectly obvious in these wonderful descriptions, which include a characterization of Acanthus as “neither elevating to the spirits nor sufficiently depressing to warrant any kind of a gasp,” and a complaint that Aconitum is being stigmatized by constant warnings that it is poisonous: “But who is going to nibble aconites anyway? And if we did, wouldn’t we spit out the disagreeable contents of our mouths?” Every entry, from Achillea to Zigadenus, is equally distinguished by Lloyd’s iconoclastic and delightful words of plant wisdom. Timber, 2000. En Famille/Robert Creeley and Elsa Dorfman Who would ever think of writing a poem for a series of different family portraits, done for clients all over the U.S.? It could only happen if the portrait photographer is Elsa Dorfman—who forces you to realize that a family photograph can be so much more than a trip to see the guy at Sears—and if the poet is Robert Creeley, who is always, above all else, completely open to possibility. This book is the result of their thoroughly engaging and illuminating collaboration. Each family group is realized in all of its fascinating irregularity, while Creeley’s poem notes the nuances of “family” with grace and perception. As poet and critic John Yau says, “Robert Creeley and Elsa Dorfman bring us the real news of the different ways the word ‘family’ has been made to leap beyond its lexical meanings. Poet and photographer register how family is being re-envisioned by those who live as individuals within a ‘securing center.’” Granary, 1999. Living Among Meateaters/Carol J. Adams This book is really meant for vegetarians and vegans, but I think meateaters should also read it—particularly if they have vegetarians in their circle of family and friends (and who doesn’t?). This is the other side of the coin. This is what the vegetarians at your dinner table are going through as you offer them—with thinly veiled annoyance if they’re friends, with completely unveiled annoyance if they’re family—alternative food choices. Whatever side of the coin you’re residing on, this book is both entertaining and useful—it touches at the heart of our “issues” with food. Three Rivers, 2001. Mermaids Explained/Christopher Reid As many readers know, up until about three years ago, Spree used to publish mostly fiction and poetry—as a result, we are still on many poetry mailing lists. If the books we’re sent are any indication, there a lot of very, very good poets out there, and it’s lucky that they are finding publishers. Taste in poetry is highly individualized, but for me this book stood out. Perhaps it’s the irony, the unexpected twists, the dry sophistication found in poems that examine Apollinaire and Picasso, British suburbia, and marital infidelity. In any case, this is not the kind of gentle ephemera that might be adequate to listen to while raking leaves. This is poetry with a bite and a brain. Harcourt, 2001. Stuffed/Patricia Volk This is another one of those food-related books that isn’t really about food at all. It’s a memoir, but, unlike Ruth Reichl’s, it barely focuses on the author at all—rather, it is an homage to her extensive Jewish-American family. The cast of characters includes restaurateurs, demolition experts, inventors, and Lana Turner lookalikes. The reader might think that these people seem rather full of themselves for a family that isn’t really famous at all, but that’s the whole point. Any family is always larger-than-life in their own special universe. Volk’s gift is to welcome us in to her family’s universe and to entertain us very well during our visit. Knopf, 2001. This Side of Paradise /F. Scott Fitzgerald This choice could really be any work of literature that has been recently released in a new edition. If you need an excuse to re-read a great book or read it for the first time, these handsome new releases provide it. Particularly in the case of Fitzgerald, whose books are consistently brilliant, yet, like his colleague Ernest Hemingway, the brilliance is overshadowed by the biography. The other problem with Fitzgerald is that people tend to read The Great Gatsby and figure they’ve “done” Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise is his first novel and the one that made him famous, perhaps too famous for his own good. It is set in Princeton at the dawn of the Jazz Age and is roughly autobiographical. Its switch between various formats—plays, verse, and fictive prose—was considered experimental for its time, but what’s most impressive in 2001 is the fresh exuberance of the writing. There’s little in the way of plot, and some might not consider Amory Blaine much of a character, but the pages are fairly bursting with Fitzgerald’s artistry, which became tamed and refined in later novels. As a peripheral note, and as many Buffalonians know, as a child Fitzgerald lived in Buffalo from 1898 to 1901 and from 1903 to 1908. His father was a salesman for Proctor and Gamble at the time, and the family first lived in the Lenox Apartments (now the Lenox Hotel), then on Irving Place, then on Highland. Fitzgerald attended Holy Angels Academy and Nardin Academy. Modern Library, 2001. Kitchen Confidential /Anthony Bourdain Most will read this book with horrified glee, as Anthony Bourdain tells all about what goes on behind the swinging doors of the professional restaurant world. It’s all the more entertaining that most of this does not really affect the average diner—it’s not about people getting poisoned or ripped off. It’s much more interesting than that: a riveting, raw portrayal of “kitchen culture” which can’t be defined unless you’ve been behind those doors yourself. Drugs, violence, and sex are all present and accounted for, but what I found most revealing was the odd selflessness of it all, the dedication to quality that Bourdain and most of his colleagues maintain in spite of the unbelievable stress of kitchen life—and all of its sordid consequences and side effects. Ecco Press, 2001. Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top