If there’s anything readers like more than a Top Reads list, it’s complaining about a Top Reads list. Earlier this summer, the New York Times published “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” Remember that? Of course you do. Reddit basically blew up that day.
We all had definite feelings about said list. Namely, that it didn’t include genre fiction and books of poetry, the latter an egregious omission imo. It did include several of my favorites: Tayari Jones’s An American Marriage (gutting), Helen MacDonald’s H is For Hawk (gorgeous), Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreter of Maladies (instructive in the very best way), Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (what’s a synonym for gutting?), Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto (magnificent), Elizabeth’s Strout’s Olive Kitteridge (sleepy in the best way), Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (transcendent), and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (masterful and also long).
Only a couple have I discussed here at Rust Belt Girl: Robinson’s Gilead (cue the car-sobbing) and the novel that came in at No. 1 on the NYT list: Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. None of the books on the list that I’ve read could be described as Rust Belt books, so I protest! But not really.
The wonderful thing about Top Reads lists is that we avid readers read them, get mad, and then the maddening lists beget more lists. Which is great. After we got mad at the NYT, they featured another story, “Readers Respond to the ‘Best Books of the 21st Century,’” chock full of the books that should have been on the first list. I saw Best Books lists featuring Appalachian Reads and reading roundups galore. All this leads me to believe that there are never enough lists, the lists are never long enough, and yet they are also ALWAYS incomplete. There’s room for my book and there’s room for your book on those lists. So get to it, writers!
Really, my blog is my ever-changing (let’s say “curated,” cuz that sounds fancy) list. I’d love to know what your favorite book from my list is. (How about from your list?) And then Goodreads is my dump—everything goes there, unless I really hated it, in which case I probably DNF’ed anyway. Are we connected out there at the dump?
Recent (ly read) books that stunned this Rust Belt Girl but aren’t necessarily Rust Belt books are basically the books I keep thinking about and talking about: A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors (let’s all read more essays in translation!); Sonata: A Memoir by Andrea Avery (lyrical, musical, and propulsive); The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylvainen (interestingly atmospheric); The Beginning Was the End: Devo in Ohio by Jade Dillinger and Akron’s own David Giffels (so that’s what New Wave was all about!?); and Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (gutting x 12—what exactly is wrong with me?).
You see, once you get started list-making, it never stops.
Looking for a review or an author review–or even a little writerly advice (I try to take myself)? See my categories above. And find me on Goodreads, where I try to at least rank what I’ve read. Let’s be friends there and on FB and at all the places!
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