LiteraryTraveler.net

Jeffrey Eugenides, Artwork by Dan Park

There are a heck of a lot of “Best of 2011″ lists coming out this week. There’s the best music, the best films, and, of course, the best books. But with so many “best of” lists, put out by practically every blog, magazine, and newspaper around, it’s hard to tell which books really came out on top.

But fear not! After combing through some well respected sources’ “best of” lists, it was clear which books were the real winners. The lists consulted included those compiled by Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Review, National Public Radio, Barnes & Noble, The Economist, Paste Magazine, Slate Magazine, Goodreads, the Washington Post, the Washington Examiner, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Public Library, The New Republic, Amazon, The Horn Book, Esquire, and The New York Times.

There were, of course, books that made it onto just one or two lists, but to really be the best of the year, a book’s got to make a bigger splash than that. Therefore, the books that made it onto three or more of these lists are posted below on this compilation of what may as well be called “The Best of the Best Books of 2011″:

The Top 15 Fiction Books:
1. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
2. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
3. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
4. Open City by Teju Cole
5. The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
6. A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
7. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
8. 11/22/63 by Stephen King
9. The Submission by Amy Waldman
10. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
11. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
12. The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips
13. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
14. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
15. The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

The Top 13 Nonfiction Books:
1. Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton
2. Blue Nights by Joan Didion
3. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
4. Bossypants by Tina Fey
5. Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III
6. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
7. Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson
8. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick
9. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
10. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
11. Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie
12. 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart
13. Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin

The Top 11 Young Adult Books:
1. Divergent by Veronica Roth
2. The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
4. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
5. Blink & Caution by Tim Wynne-Jones
6. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
7. Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol
8. The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
9. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
10. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
11. Chime by Franny Billingsley

The clear favorite of critics is The Marriage Plot, which shows up on seven different lists. Additionally, 1Q84, Divergent, and Blood, Bones, and Butter all made it onto six. It goes to show how diverse readers’ (and editors’) tastes are across America. Clearly, though, there’s still common ground, and if you’re looking for a good book to devour this holiday season, chances are you’ll find plenty of worthwhile material on this list.

You might have already heard the assertion that we — Americans, specifically — choose to spend most of our leisure time “participating in experiences we know are not real.”  (I read it here, in Paul Bloom’s essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education.)  Reading is part of that, but movies, video games, and daydreaming are included as well.  Still, the author insists, these various media indicate an addiction to fiction, a pleasure in “playing pretend” that extends well beyond our childhood years.  Bloom offers three reasons that people may find imaginative experiences more pleasurable or moving than than real ones — the ability to acquaint oneself with a colorful range of characters, the distillation of experience, and the “technologies of the imagination” — the ability to rapidly shift in time, or read another person’s thoughts — that stimulate the mind in a way that is impossible in reality.

Even our fictional characters crave fiction.  Other Lives, a graphic novel recently reviewed in The Boston Globe, explores this dynamic by following several characters — among them, a conspiracy theorist specializing in web surveillance — as they mingle and sort out their real personalities and Second Life alter egos.  The protagonist of 45, another graphic novel, interviews forty-five people who, like his future son possess the “Super S-gene,” in an effort to anticipate — or vicariously experience? — his future experiences.

The appeal of fiction is both speculative and defensive.  We use it to explore strange, new worlds in a safe environment — and, as I mentioned to a frustrated, creative friend the other day, every modern invention was a “fiction” until someone made it tangible — but it also keeps chaos, amorality, and the ennui that feeds anxiety, man’s “quiet desperation” at bay.  Narrative, specifically, lets us believe that there is a structure, a direction, and a message, a significance, to the stimuli that we find on the page, and in the world.

If the “everything is [existentially] fine” mantra becomes attached to a real world object, we risk having to address the narrative, and the experience, in all of its complexity.  Consider Meghan Daum, author of Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House. She wrote, “I knew it wasn’t just a house I was after but, rather, proof of my existence. The house was . . . an ID badge for adulthood, for personhood, even. It was the only thing that would make me desirable, credible, even human.”  When she finds a house — not the house, which is, like the job or the One, a fiction — “a peculiar darkness” sets in.  “It was as if my mood had been goaded away from situational discontentedness into a dysthymia that seemed now to be heading into full-fledged depression,” she wrote.

The house didn’t get her through that.  The story, at least, helps the reader out.

Every Friday, starting this week, the staff at Literary Traveler will gather up the relevant book news from around the web, bringing it together in a handy post for book lovers to peruse.  Enjoy!

• Will the iPad change the very way we read?  It certainly seems possible.  Penguin and Apple have teamed up to create interactive “books” with audio, video, and streaming content.  The first offering: Vampire Academy.
• Speaking of vampires, Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has published his second book: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.   According to the LA Times, it’s actually pretty good.
• Congratulations are in order for Abdo Khal, winner of this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel She Throws Sparks as Big as Castles.
• Here’s something to keep in mind for your next visit to Boston: literary-minded diners are welcome at the Boston Public Library, where you can “dine with Shakespeare, Aristotle and Dante.”
• Sally Wolff-King, professor of Southern literature from Emory University, talks to PBS about one of Faulkner’s most important sources of inspiration – the 1,800 page antebellum diary of plantation owner Francis Terry Leek.
• Reminder: Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” comes out today. But before you buy tickets, read up on the making of the movie, and the history of the books, with this interesting article from the New York Times.

Time to make resolutions.  And many of us can’t keep them, let’s be honest.  It’s hard to stick to that diet, or lose those 10 pounds we really don’t need to lose anyway, right?  Try a solid New Year’s resolution you can do this year instead.

Here at LT, we suggest a reading resolution.  How many books have you read this year that involve great travels that inspire you?  How many of you still haven’t read On The Road or another great traveling work of fiction that you’ve been dying to read?  If so, then it’s time to set your reading resolution for 2010.

We suggest either trying to set an amount of books to read i.e. 10 great travel books for all of 2010 (we understand you like to read other types of literature as well!) or pick two travel classics you still haven’t had the time to read.  For ideas, troll Literary Traveler and see what inspires you.

Another tip comes from Sharp Brains, an article entitled 10 Brain Fitness New Year’s Resolutions by Alavaro Fernandez, which says:

“If you usually read non-fiction, try something new this season. Pick up a good fiction book. Or vice versa. For bonus points, subscribe to or simply read a new magazine, perhaps one that your partner craves? It will help you understand another perspective.”

We like that idea.

So this year, make a resolution you can achieve, and you’ll feel much more accomplished in 2010!

Jennifer

**Editor’s Note: LT thanks you for all your support in 2009 – we look forward to inspiring you in 2010 as well.  Happy New Year to all our literary travelers!