The list, 2007

Fiction

1. The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn, Robin Maxwell
2. White Apples, Jonathan Carroll
3. Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell
4. Travel Light, Naomi Mitchison
5. Eight of Swords, David Skibbins
6. High Priestess, David Skibbins
7. The Probable Future, Alice Hoffman
8. The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett
9. Crystal Rain, Tobias Buckell
10. The Android's Dream, John Scalzi
11. The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford
12. The Dog of the Marriage, Amy Hempel
13. The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
14. The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler
15. Best American Mystery Stories 2004, Nelson DeMille, ed.
16. The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler
17. In the Palace of Repose, Holly Phillips
18. The Last Hot Time, John M. Ford
19. Black Juice, Margo Lanagan
20. The Last Colony, John Scalzi
21. The Star, David Skibbins
22. Firebirds Rising, Sharon November, ed.
23. Firedbirds, Sharon November, ed.
24. Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian
25. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
26. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J.K. Rowling
27. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J.K. Rowling
28. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J.K. Rowling
29. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J.K. Rowling
30. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling
31. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
32. Days of the Endless Corvette, Man Martin
33. A Gentleman's Game, Greg Rucka
34. A is for Alibi, Sue Grafton
35. I Love You, Beth Cooper, Larry Doyle
36. Blood of Victory, Alan Furst
37. The Cater Street Hangman, Anne Perry
38. Open Season, C.J. Box
39. So Yesterday, Scott Westerfeld
40. Swords and Deviltry, Fritz Leiber
41. The Man with a Load of Mischief, Martha Grimes
42. Kingdom of Shadows, Alan Furst
43. The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
44. Farthing, Jo Walton
45. The Foreign Correspondent, Alan Furst
46. Ha'penny, Jo Walton
47. Dark Voyage, Alan Furst
48. The Old Fox Deceiv'd, Martha Grimes
49. The Burglar in the Closet, Lawrence Block
50. The Anodyne Necklace, Martha Grimes
    

Non-Fiction

1. My Love Affair With England, Susan Allen Toth
2. The Little Book of Value Investing, Christopher Browne
3. Yes, You Can Time the Market, Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth
4. Expectations Investing, Michael Mauboussin and Alfred Rappaport
5. What Jesus Meant, Garry Wills
6. Fantasyland, Sam Walker
7. The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman
8. Beyond Belief, Elaine Pagels
9. Baseball Between the Numbers, Jonah Keri, ed.
10. The Inner Game of Golf, W. Timothy Gallwey
11. What Paul Meant, Garry Wills
12. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Alison Weir
13. The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman
14. The Bounty, Caroline Alexander
15. The $64 Tomato, William Alexander
16. Writing the Breakout Novel, Donald Maass
17. How to Write a Mystery, Larry Beinhart
18. Someone Will Make Money On Your Mutual Funds, Why Not You?, Gary Gastineau
19. Predicting the Markets of Tomorrow, James O'Shaughnessy
20. The Soul of a Chef, Michael Ruhlman
21. The Food You Want to Eat, Ted Allen
22. The Kitchen Detective, Christopher Kimball

2007 Review: Me

A recurring pathology: I start the year expecting to accomplish, well, everything, and then, not having accomplished everything, I am disappointed. That's what comes of expectations set to vertiginous heights. But this year I did manage to accomplish my hastily conjured and not-all-too-well thought out resolution: I wrote two novels.

Now, neither has been edited to a presentable state, but the Third Novel is coming quite close and will go out to agents by the end of January. Still, I am pleased. Having labored on the First Novel for years, it comes as a surprise that I can write a long-form story end-to-end in less than 2,500 days. As it turns out, I wrote first drafts of the Second and Third Novels in 54 and 64 days, respectively.

Gym-going was lost once I started writing the novels (as was most reading) and that has to change. Not only because it's ridiculous to pay the gym and then NOT go, but also because I'm not getting any younger here and being of the House and Lineage of Debilitating Heart Disease, I need to get my act together.

As for reading, I got to half again as many books as I read last year, padded out by bursts of obsessive reading on a single author (J.K. Rowling, Alan Furst and Martha Grimes). I'd like to get up to 75 books in 2008, but that will depend largely on my upcoming professional endeavor: the CFA exam. More on that next week.

As ever, there are countless house projects that remain, but the kitchen is done and will get its paint next week. In 2008, my big work is going to be outside, repairing/replacing the kids' swingset and replacing the gravelly surface beneath with mulch or grass. I would like to point out especially that I did get the miniature roses to grow, and after some experimentation with placement and feeding got them to thrive (which is doubly impressive, mostly on the part of the roses themselves, because I had very nearly killed them).

So, 2007: lots done, wish I'd gotten to more, try to squeeze even more in during 2008. Pretty much the same as every year. And that's fine with me.

Through the rude wind's wild lament and the bitter weather

Shutting down for the next week or so as we festivize. See you on the other side.

Merry Christmas.

2007 Review: Novels

If I give myself credit for the two books I'm reading now, I'll have read 43 novels in 2007, almost twice as many as last year.

The breakdown: 13 fantasy, 13 mystery, 5 thriller, 4 SF, 4 literary (a catch-all for stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere), 3 historical and 1 young adult.

Lords of the North is yet another reason that Bernard Cornwell is one of my favorite authors. I must admit I was disappointed that the overall story arc of this book's two predecessors was not concluded with this volume, but I am excited that there will be more books in this series. The first was The Last Kingdom, which I recommend without reservation to anyone interested in Saxon England. Like most of Cornwell's books, these are about an historical figure, here Alfred the Great, but really they're about the people around the historical figure, the hard choices and harder consequences that came from following (or not) those who made history.

On the other hand, all series need to feel like they are moving to a close, perhaps the greatest fault of the doorstop-sized fantasy series that dominate bookstores these days being that they just wander about. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is not the best Harry Potter book (that's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), but it is a fitting and well-played end that was, after these many years, a joy to read. Some thoughts on Harry Potter here, here and here.

But as familiar titles meet their ends, we make new finds. Jo Walton's Farthing and Ha'penny were two of the very best books I read this year. Farthing may well be one of the best books I've read, period, and though Ha'penny does not deal in the same breadth of idea as its predecessor, I actually think it is a better-written book. Both have my unreserved recommendation to anyone who can read. Original thoughts on Farthing here.

John Scalzi has written that Scott Westerfeld's YA books may wind up being the germinal forces in the imaginations of those present-day teenagers who eventually have careers writing SF and fantasy. So Yesterday is a perfect example of why. Smart and funny, the book makes you think (adults, too, or rather, adults especially) without beating you up with its ideas. Original comments.

Similarly subtle in their presentation are Alan Furst's "historical spy thrillers." I listened to four this year, all read by the incomparable George Guidall: Blood of Victory (my favorite, I think), Kindgom of Shadows, The Foreign Correspondent and Dark Voyage. I liked these so much that I'm going to buy them all in dead-tree editions. Furst concentrates his work on the margins of the battle between Hitler and the universe, his books occurring at various points between 1933 and 1945. He makes an unusual implicit bargain: you know that these great undertakings against the Nazis aren't going to work before you even read the books, else the war would have ended that much sooner, so Furst keeps his protagonist alive through the ordeal. Still, you hope against hope that Serebin will be able to block the Danube, that Morath will be able to save Hungarian Jews, that DeHaan will hide the secrets carried on Noordendam. On a writerly level, these is an economy, a thriftiness even, of exposition, style and characterization that I envy.

My favorite mystery (besides Farthing and Ha'penny, which aren't pure mysteries) this year was Eight of Swords by David Skibbins. If ever there was an unlikely amateur detective, Warren Ritter, former leftist revolutionary, now streetside tarot reader, is it. But Warren is so delightfully loopy and pathetic and determined and real that his atypical circumstances seem entirely authentic. High Priestess, the sequel, is even better than Eight of Swords. The Star was also well worth my time, a high compliment considering how many mystery series begin to run off the rails around the third book.

Man Martin's Days of the Endless Corvette and Martha Grimes' first novel, The Man With A Load of Mischief also merit mention here, as they were a joy to read.

On the other end of things, I never was able to make it through Conrad Williams' London Revenant. I'll try again, but I found it really hard going. Others through which I never made it and am not likely to pick up again included Richard Morgan's Market Forces, Allegra Goodman's Intuition and Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.

Who are you and what have you done with Joey Barton?

I was all ready with a damning post about Newcastle's complete impotence against Fulham. And then Alan Smith draws a penalty in the 91st minute, which Joey Barton guides into the net for all three points.

Not what I expected, certainly.

Yes, they had a clean sheet, but come on, it's Fulham. No, they didn't score, and come on, it's Fulham. As I read this week at Football365, Newcastle have been as reliable as a sea lion with Tourette's. So it is that Barton displays some quality this week, while James Milner wastes what chances he has. Again, Newcastle struggle to use Martins' pace to advantage. Even the commentators pointed out that Fulham was playing a high line, with most all their outfield players clustered in the middle third of the field.

That's what separates the best teams from the rest. Not wasting opportunities. That's where that whole "clinical finishing" thing comes from. This was ugly, perhaps, but I'll take the points. Still, this kind of fortune is great until it expires at the least opportune time. This was the period during which Newcastle played its best football last year, and we all know how that turned out, don't we Glenn?

Playing: Brahms, Tragic Overture; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell
Reading: One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead.
Listening: Dark Voyage, Alan Furst
Pipeline: I am in the heavy-lifting part of revising the Third Novel. The start-at-the-end-and-work-back advice has been great, up to a point where I could tell I shifted gears to start toward the end of the novel. So at that point I went back to the beginning and am trying to work these two endpoints together. Also good has been the retype everything into a new document. You absolutely cannot make yourself retype crap. I want to get this done this week so that Faithful First Reader can take a look with enough time left for me to make changes if necessary.

What Mitchell missed

The most insightful and, sadly, accurate thing I've read today about the Mitchell report on cheaters in baseball is from the Cincinnati Enquirer's John Fay:

I've got to think that only a fraction of the players who used steroids were named/caught. Almost all the new names came from the two New York guys, Kirk Radomski and Brian McNamee. Most of the older allegations are from BALCO. So if you got your 'roids from elsewhere, you're probably not in the report. There are a lot of other ways to get HGH, steroids and the like. My guess is a lot of guys were relieved today.

Of course, the first thing I did was download the report and search it for any Reds players. I note with a mixture of alarm and relief that the only Reds named (all but one are former Reds) were all on the fringe, guys who probably started using because they thought they needed an edge or they'd be out of the game. Damn, that's sad.

2007 Review: Short Fiction

So far this year I've read 101 short stories, but as with my non-fiction reading, most of it happened before August 1.

There were lots of great stories this year that I read again or the first time, ones that everyone already knows about. You don't need me to tell you to read Kelly Link, Jeff Ford, Andy Duncan, M. Rickert, Margo Lanagan or Holly Phillips. Just go do it. I will invest this space in the other stories that resonated with me particularly this year. (Again, these are stories that I read this year, not necessarily that were new this year.)

"All Kind of Reasons," Katherine Maclaine in Strange Horizons. This is creepy and could be frighteningly prescient, a world where parents can model, predict and manage the appearance and characteristics of as-yet-unborn infants. What does not change in this world, though, is the way humans wound each other with selfishness and guilt. Top notch.

"The Oracle Spoke," Holly Phillips in Clarkesworld Magazine. I know I said you don't need me to tell you to read Holly Phillips, but I loved this story so much that I can't not tell people to read it. A small gem of a story with an intriguing twist on oft-used material, put together with flawless craftsmanship.

"Under the Red Sun," Ben Peek in Fantasy Magazine, Fall 2006. If Raymond Chandler had written post-apocalyptic steampunk, this is what it would have been like. I loved it.

"Hope Chest," Garth Nix in Firebirds. This is not a great story, but it is such an unusual milieu for an archetypal hero story that I couldn't stop thinking about it.

"Dancing on Air," Frances Oliver in Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 18. A chilling story in the setting of an academic conference. Amusing and terrifying.

"Black Jack Davy," Trent Hergenrader in Realms of Fantasy. Another story in an unusual milieu, evocatively characterized and wound in a persuasive account of jealousy and obligation. I loved this, Trent.

I got to several shorter works this year that I have wanted to read for a long time. Sadly, all three were somewhat disappointing. Raymond Chandler's short fiction is fun and interesting, but no single story really stands out. Fritz Leiber's tales of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were amusing but not arresting. And count me among those who simply does not "get" Amy Hempel.

I've a pile of anthologies here that I must get through next year. Must, I say. YBF&H 19 and 20, Best American Mystery Stories 2005 and 2007, Logorrhea, The Dark, Feeling Very Strange and The Space Opera Renaissance. To that end, I'm not buying any anthologies or collections in 2007 until I get through these. Seriously. I have until September for Jeff Ford's and Kelly Link's new collections to come out. Hopefully, I'll be ready.

2007 Review: Movies

I saw 33 movies this year. In all honesty, most were comfortable-though-not-great films that I've already seen a hundred times, or they were complete disasters.

The numbers: six sci-fi/fantasy, five animated, five Harry Potter, four westerns, four sports-related, three thrillers, two adventure, two mysteries, one comedy, one musical and one classic.

Only four really stand out upon reflection:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I think what stands out so much to me about this after innumerable viewings is how different it is from most Westerns. The whole statehood and rule-of-law emphasis could have been straight out of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but the pathos John Ford generated from twisting the knife in both John Wayne and James Stewart is genuine without resorting to the kind of hardboiled Western you get from Clint Eastwood.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As I wrote earlier this year, the Harry Potter books are good, and so are the movies. But they are good in different ways. I think Order of the Phoenix is actually better than the book. It excises much of the book's bloat in favor of a taut story that is constantly driving to the end. In this it is different from the book, but no complaints here.

The Lion in Winter. Yes, well. It's my favorite movie. So of course it's here. How Peter O'Toole didn't get his Oscar for this is beyond me. What remains with me always, though, is the electric crackle of the dialogue. Edward Albee has nothing on James Goldman.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I missed this one when it came out in theaters, and it lurked on my Netflix queue for more than a year before it finally wound its way to the top. Easily the best Jim Carrey movie ever (which may be damning the thing with faint praise, but there it is). Best of all, I appreciated that the actions of the various characters did not fit together in an easy ending. Instead, their actions all had rough edges and barbs on them and cut the others in new ways when pressed together. An interesting conceit, realized to great effect both visually and in the plot. Highly recommended. (And, of course, it has Kate Winslet, so what more could you want?)

And now for some awards:

Most Wasteful Casting: Emily Deschanel, Glory Road. We love her in Bones, but her turn here as Don Haskins' wife was an utter waste. No wonder women despair of the roles they get in films. Here is a talented, persuasive and attractive woman who has about five minutes of screen time, all of it coming a step behind and to the right of Josh Lucas. Nonsense.

Most Convoluted Plot. TIE: The Last Mimzy and Meet the Robinsons. Building a time travel plot is hard, but all of the writers involved on these two movies really missed the boat. The best time travel plot ties itself up, either in a chain of time-altering events that don't weigh on the movie until the critical moment (a la Frequency) or in a rhetorical circle that answers questions with a "well it had to be that way for it to work." These two had plot holes big enough to throw a cat through.

Worst Waste of Premise: Superman Returns. Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor is the only reason to see this movie, because Bryan Singer did not remake a movie about Superman. He made the movie he wished had been Superman III. Right down to picking the best Christopher Reeve lookalike instead of the best Superman.

Instant Artifact Award: Rent. This criticism is not just of the movie, but also the musical. And really it's not a criticism so much as a question: how well will Rent age? Its inspiration, La Boheme, is timeless. Why? Because of the love story, the loss, the verismo of it. I never felt the same sort of thrall with the characters and the situation in Rent as I do for Rodolfo and Mimi. Is it because I think the characters in Rent are acting in self-destructive ways and don't deserve my sympathy? I want to say I hope not, but that may have something to do with it--although it does add a different sort of dramatic angle to the whole thing. Regardless, Rent seems bound to its time period in ways that La Boheme is not. I can easily imagine a production of Boheme in contemporary settings and attire. I can't fathom any sort of update for Rent. Perhaps it doesn't need one. But I wonder all the same.

Oh, and I was wrong about The Da Vinci Code when I said I thought it would make a better movie than it was a book. No, the movie was just as insufferable.

2007 Review: Non-Fiction

Yes, it's time again for me to look back at what I read this year. I'm starting now because I don't really think I'm going to get much else read this year, but I hope that perhaps this will renew my interest and spur me to carve out a bit more reading time in the remaining 24 days of the year.

These books (and later, stories and movies) were what I read this year; they were not necessarily new in 2007.

Non-fiction by the numbers: my records indicate that I read 23 non-fiction books this year, which is exactly the same number as last year. However, I read 16 of them before August 2, after which I filled most every moment of free time with writing. Of these five were related to investing, four to food, three to writing, three to sports (two to baseball, one to golf), three to religion, only two to history, one to current affairs, one to poetry and one to travel.

Fantasyland is amusing for reasons that have nothing to do with the interesting parts about how baseball views statistics and fantasy leagues. All of that is excellent, and a nice primer on the whole affair, which is where I see a lot of successful teams going, that is, to a more data-driven decision-making process. It is amusing, though, in watching the writer, Sam Walker, devolve in a complete mess as he tries to salvage a win in his fantasy league. An excellent choice for baseball fans. Original comments here.

The World Is Flat is thought provoking. One can skewer Thomas Friedman for his rose-colored look at many of these developments, but the ideas he is wrestling with here are those that will inform how the world works in coming decades. I haven't checked out the most recently revised and updated version of this, but I enjoyed the book enough to check it out again next year. Original comments.

The Bounty is exhaustive and quite nearly exhausting, but entirely worth the read. Caroline Alexander undermines much of the prevalent myth about Bligh and Christian with a steady drip of evidence rather than a single broadside. I listened to the audio version here, and I think the book is likely better for it. The thing can be slow going, but I was completely taken with it in the end. I simply had to know what became of all these people. Original comments.

The $64 Tomato is much like Fantasyland in that much of its appeal comes from watching the author, William Alexander, lose his sanity in the battle for his garden. There is almost nothing here in the way of how-to; Alexander is chronicling his journey, not his methods. This "garden memoir" is certainly worth the attention of most anyone who has ever struggled to make things grow outdoors and would like to do so again despite catastrophic failures.

How can you not love Kenneth Koch? The man behind "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" was a balm to me in high school English as I bemoaned the obtuse poetry found in many an anthology. In Making Your Own Days, Koch shares his take on the creation of, reasons for and inner workings of poetry, with copious examples. Highly recommended (but not really a primer--more suited to a slightly more advanced student of poetry).

On tap for next year: Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller; One Perfect Day, Rebecca Mead; The Poem's Heartbeat, Alfred Corn; and Devil in the White City, Erik Larson.

Restored

I'm back. It took a bit of technological contortion (read: moving a lot of cable), but I did manage to reconnect. Verizon does not make it easy to achieve this. As it is, my computer is now set up in the laundry room.

As promised, now that I'm back I can report that I am indeed done with the Third Novel. I have about two weeks for revision before Christmas swamps all other plans, so I need to get cracking. One thing I discovered as I wrote the last chapter: I now understand why so many mysteries end almost the very moment that the crime is solved. Any denouement from there is rather anticlimactic. Unless it is extremely funny. My denouement is not. Yet. Maybe ever. But that's what revision is for.

And apparently, Steven Taylor--curse him--is right again. Newcastle do play better against good sides. Taylor even took his own game up a notch, scoring the equalizer against Arsenal. Seriously, if Newcastle United were a person it would have been institutionalized long ago. Or at least heavily medicated for its multiple personality disorder.

Routed

My router died. And because of the way Verizon sets up its FiOS Internet service, that means not Internet at home. I'm working on a deadline today and tomorrow for work from the library. Very efficient, that. Verizon says they can have a new router to me on Friday, the day after my deadlines--surely a cosmic coincidence.

Hopefully, the next time I post I'll have a new router, a complete Third Novel and a bunch of year-end posts to share. Until then, I stand in awe of the fragility of technology and life centered around it.