Despite a year filled with wedding planning, marriage, pregnancy and a wee baby, I somehow found time to digest some wonderful books in ’09. I’ve only been doing this ranking for a few years (check out 2007 and 2008), but this was easily the most difficult ranking I’ve had to do. I can only hope that I can work my way through as many tremendous works in 2010.
So without further ado, here are “The Scooties” winners:
#1. “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy
What I Wrote Then:
“In this world of blogs and tweets, 10-second sound bites and podcasts, iPhone apps and texts, we are losing the ability to truly impact other human beings through the written word. We absorb, we scan, we move on. We don’t think, we don’t digest, we don’t consider. As a writer, it can be quite frustrating, upsetting and frightening, to see the language stolen, to see prose and grammar bastardized, to see tone twisted. So to find a book that reads like a 300-page punch to the diaphragm … to stumble across a work of art that evokes emotion … to not so much read, as experience, a piece that elevates as it depresses … it can restore a little faith to a vessel that’s increasingly found wanting. And if I found anything in McCarthy’s stark, gray, lonely, ashen, tilted world, it was that—a rediscovery of inspiration through literature, blooming like a solitary white rose in a field of rock.“Being a witness to McCarthy’s immense talents can be a bit overwhelming and make you feel unworthy of calling yourself a writer … but it still made the journey along this road an unforgettable and awe-inspiring experience.”
What I Say Now:
This was a tough list to put together because is it is difficult to rank so many good, classic books in some kind of order. But the easiest choice was this one; that’s how good “The Road” was. In some strange way, McCarthy’s prose sort of gave me back some of the belief I had lost in the written word … and I know of no higher compliment to pay an author. McCarthy’s prose is black-and-white proof that less is more, that sparse can be mind-blowing, that gray can be beautiful.
Read My Review
Passage to Remember:
“I want to be with you.”
“You can’t.”
“Please.”
“You can’t. You have to carry the fire.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“Yes you do.”
“Is it real? The fire?”
“Yes it is.”
“Where is it? I don’t know where it is.”
“Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.”
#2. “War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy
What I Wrote Then:
“With its voluminous length and the hard work required to complete it, ‘War and Peace’ has basically become synonymous with any supremely long, boring or insanely difficult work. Even the largely unfunny Woody Allen once said, ‘I read “War and Peace” in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.’“Initially, I was drawn to this read by a desire to familiarize myself with Tolstoy's work and to simply be able to say that I freaking read ‘War and Peace.’ Gradually, though, I began to get sucked into the story—especially the statements on the proceedings of the Moscow elite—and to recognize Tolstoy's profound brilliance and unique style.”
What I Say Now:
I think that embracing the challenge of “War and Peace” is such an undertaking that, when you’re in the midst of it, it’s easy to lose sight of the subtleties and nuances of the story. It may be that only after time and distance does reflection show what a marvelous job Tolstoy did in joining myriad plot lines and creating—and involving you in—a memorable world. This true classic was truly worth both the time and effort.
Read My Review
Passage to Remember:
"She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one another's eyes—and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly became possible, inevitable and very near."
#3. “Hell’s Angels,” by Hunter S. Thompson
What I Wrote Then:
“It is this tone that permeates the book; Thompson doesn’t shy away from the controversial or dance around the despicable. He tells it the way he knows best: all details included and no holds barred, letting you decide what you want to believe and how you want to feel about it. At the conclusion, it’s still not apparent whether it is a more or less complex deal than what you would think; the Hell’s Angels aren’t complex or misunderstood. They are just outlaws who live in a world of their own morality and making; as Thompson maintains, they are losers, pure and simple. They aim to take out their unvoiced frustration on a world they don’t understand, then blame it on the world for not understanding their frustration and taking issue with the attack itself. In the end, they’re just wandering thugs; in the end, none of it meant anything anyway. After all, this is who they were and nothing more, nothing heroic or romantic, notable only for the same reason society has always been drawn to those who live on the edges of morality.“The larger story is the birth of Gonzo journalism through its mainstream publication in ‘Hell’s Angels.’ The idea that Thompson partially becomes the story, and impartiality be damned, is ultimately crystallized in this work that partly reads like one long op-ed piece. The high of creating an entirely new literary genre must be similar to the way Thompson tries to explain the thrill of winding out his bike on the open road …”
What I Say Now:
To say it was a year of Hunter S. Thompson at Scooter & Hum would be an understatement. After tackling the epic “Gonzo,” I wanted to read some early Hunter S. Thompson, before he turned into, well, Hunter S. Thompson. I wanted to find the piece that launched a new literary genre and reflected the raw, emotional genius before it was degraded and diminished by years and years of truly hellacious abuse. In “Hell’s Angels,” we see the master before he became, essentially, a prisoner of himself; here we see Hunter S. Thompson blurring the lines of journalism, satire, fiction and comedy.
Read My Review
Passage to Remember:
“It has to be done right … and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms … The Edge … There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
“The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.”
#4. “Walden,” by Henry David Thoreau
What I Wrote Then:
“This is one of those books that had been on my list to read for years, and, as commonly happens with the classics, some new book usually comes along to topple an older one down the priority order. Yet, I couldn’t escape the importance of reading “Walden”; after all, in Henry David Thoreau’s words, “For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?” So I finally stopped putting it off and jumped into what turned out be somewhat of a tough read—but well worth it … So what did Thoreau truly learn in his escape into the woods and the lake? It depends on how you choose to read “Walden” and the life experiences you elect to call upon in deciding which aspects of the piece to highlight. After all, it’s part autobiography, part environmental essay, part rejection of society, part motivational book, part Luddite thesis, part celebration of life, part zoology textbook … and many other things as well.”What I Say Now:
“Walden” probably deserves to be higher due to the sheer number of epic quotations it has delivered, but I thought it got a bit disjointed at times and wasn’t cohesive enough to keep me involved. It became more of a chore to read than “Hell’s Angels,” and that was the deciding factor in my mind. However, in terms of arguably being the defining book of the environmentalist movement and a wide-ranging thinktank on so many disparate subjects, it truly is an amazing piece of work, an awe-inspiring window into one man’s never-stopping mind. The reality is that you could throw any of these four books into a bag and pull them out in any order and it would be just as acceptable to me.
Read My Review
Passage to Remember:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
#5. “Just After Sunset,” by Stephen King
What I Wrote Then:
“As much as I love Stephen King's brilliant novels such as the incomparable ‘The Stand,’ the terrifying 'It' and the epic series ‘The Dark Tower’ -- among many others -- I've always been even more of a fan of his short stories. Having dabbled in the medium in the past, I know how brutally difficult it can be to sketch characters, build drama and create a plot that doesn't feel rushed, all within the constraints of the short-story format. Yet King has always been able to do it with a deft touch that makes it look frustratingly easy.“After poring through ‘Just After Sunset,’ it's easy to say that -- paraphrasing Mark Twain -- rumors of Stephen King's demise (or retirement, which may amount to the same thing for someone like King) have been greatly exaggerated … and for that, I'm thankful.”
What I Say Now:
This tremendous collection of short stories would certainly rank higher in almost any other year, but “Just After Sunset” simply had the misfortune of being read by me within the same 12 months as many epic classics. Put simply, King rates among the finest short-story writers ever, aided by his innate—and almost scary—ability to create well-rounded characters rhythmically, and almost without you even realizing it. As his career has progressed, he has increasingly called on personal experiences and current events, and as I prepare to take on his new novel, the 20-pound “Under the Dome,” I selfishly hope that he still has another short story collection or two left in that nonstop brain of his.
Read My Review
Passage to Remember:
"Reality is a mystery … and the everyday texture of things is the cloth we draw over it to mask its brightness and darkness. I think we cover the faces of corpses for the same reason. We see the faces of the dead as a kind of gate. It's shut against us … but we know it won't always be shut. Someday it will swing open for each of us, and each of us will go through.
"But there are places where the cloth gets ragged and reality is thin. The face beneath peeps through … but not the face of a corpse. It would almost be better if it was."
Editor’s Note: I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a lengthy list of honorable-mention winners that I read this year: “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” (collection), “Gonzo” (Jann Wenner), “Full Frontal PR” (Richard Laermer), “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams), “The Tin Roof Blowdown” (James Lee Burke) and “Darkness, Take My Hand” (Dennis Lehane) were among the other standouts of ’09.
Happy New Year, all!
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