My 2010 YA Favs

I do read adult books, I promise.  But I get so much enjoyment from the wonderfully rich young adult genre that I’ve decided to list those favorites.  At first I planned on sticking to the post-apocalyptic/sci-fi/fantasies (my true YA favs), but there was an almost normal one I had to throw in.  Here they are in no particular order:

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly: The almost normal one about a suicidal teen-aged girl who has suffered a family trauma,  finds herself whisked to Paris by her father so she can complete her high school thesis, and gets immersed in the diary of a young woman during the French Revolution.  Both classical and modern music are sited along the way, so be sure to turn up the volume on your favorite Radiohead, Smiths, or Ramones tunes as you read.

Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld: The second in a steampunk trilogy that has a fact-based different take on the early part of World War I.  Think Darwin/enhanced/evolutionary creatures vs giant metal clankers (biological vs mechanical technology).  I can’t really explain it.

Ship Breaker by Paola Bacigalupi: Not really a post-apocalyptic tale, but it’s post-oil world might as well be.  Young Nailer has a job gutting washed up obsolete oil tankers for whatever he can get. Nailer finds his ticket off the beach and away from his abusive father when he and a friend rescue a rich swank from a shipwrecked clipper.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins:  I could not put these books down!  An after-the-battle-the-world-is-a-completely-different-place-with-completely-different-rules tale of another teen-age girl taking her world by storm.

Linger by Maggie Stiefvater: I feel a little guilty loving this second installment of a trilogy about people that change into wolves during the winter, but it is beautifully written and I can’t wait until the next one.  Also infused with music and lyrics, I think you’ll need The Loft on your sirius/xm dial.

2010 Top Picks

I shouldn’t be allowed to post my  2010 picks since I fell of the blog this year but hey I’m looking out at more than 2 feet of snow having just finished two of the books listed below and thought what better way to jumpstart 2011. 

So here goes (in no particular order):

Just Kids by Patti Smith (which clearly wins the BGB  book of the year award)

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Game Change by John Heileman and Mark Halperin

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

Room by Emily Donaghue

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

How Green was my Valley by Richard Llewellwyn (everyone should read at least one classic per year)

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

More Favs of 2010

Everyone else is doing it, so I will too!  My top picks for 2010 – the books I read (but were not necessarily new) in 2010.

In no particular order:

Just Kids by Patti Smith (review)

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (review)

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky – Heidi Durrow (review)

The Singer’s Gun –  Emily St. John Mandel (review)

The Blood of Flowers (review coming) – Anita Amirrezvani

The Best Non-Fiction I Read in 2010

As always, the rule for my annual list is that for a book to make it here, I have to have read it for the first time this calendar year. It may or may not have been published in 2010.

I’ve learned something extremely important from the first two books on my list: Anyone can write a great book in two easy steps! This program is foolproof. Here are the steps:

1. Become a brilliant poet.
2. Write a prose memoir.

It’s that easy! Step 1 might be a little tricky, though.  My favorites:

Natasha Trethewey, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I’ve loved Natasha Trethewey’s poetry from the jump (full disclosure: I’m also lucky enough to count her as a friend), but as a historian I’m kind of in her wheelhouse: most of Trethewey’s poems have to do with change over time and memory. She obviously brings these same concerns to her memoir, in which she writes lyrically about regional and personal devastation–and rebuilding. How many ways can a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet break your heart? More than you think.

Patti Smith, Just Kids. OK. Enough already. The proprietor of this very blog finally wore me down and I read Just Kids last week. I didn’t think it could possibly live up to the hype, but Smith blew me away; she has earned every last letter of the praise she’s received from Tim and everyone else for this book that evokes a time and place and way of life completely and lovingly. I had always assumed that when I finally got my New York City time machine up and running I’d set the dial for 1942 so that I could bend an elbow with Joseph Mitchell and Joe Gould at McSorley’s Ale House. But now the first stop might have to be the lobby of the Hotel Chelsea in 1969. I guess we all like to think that we live in ways that keep us open to all of the possibilities that life offers, but Patti and Robert set the bar a hell of a lot higher than most.

Next up, two entirely unrelated oral histories:

Terry Pluto, Loose Balls: The Short, Wild Life of the American Basketball Association. A cult favorite among basketball fans, it was first published in 1990. I just got around to it, and I’m glad I did. You literally couldn’t make up more than half of what allegedly went on in the ABA, which had to have set world records for financial illiteracy and profligacy (and the team owners were worse than the players). It’s important to keep in mind that much of what is remembered here couldn’t have happened as reported, but then again we don’t always have to let the truth get in the way of a fun story. Here’s a representative anecdote: Bob Costas’s first job out of journalism school was as the play-by-play man for the St. Louis Spirits. One night he was late to a game; he missed nearly all of the first quarter, so his radio station just broadcast the ambient noise from the arena. Costas was sure he’d be fired, so he was moping around the hotel afterward. The team’s star, Marvin “Fly” Barnes, tried to cheer him up by telling him, “Hey, bro, don’t worry about it. I’ve been looking for a little white dude to drive me around in my Rolls-Royce.” A tremendously fun read.

Alessandro Portelli, They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History. I’m a series editor for the Oxford Oral History Series, which published this book, so its inclusion on this list constitutes a big, honking conflict of interest. But I don’t care. It’s an absolutely gorgeous book and a celebration of humanity. Calling it a labor of love doesn’t come close to describing Portelli’s relationship to the people who tell their story in these pages and the work it took to put this together over a couple of decades. Portelli, a professor of American Literature at the University of Rome, is also the best scholarly oral historian working in English.

Next, some social history:

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. I won’t pretend to have read this one all the way through, but I’ve seen enough to know that it’s magnificent in a lot of ways. I don’t agree with everything Wilkerson does here, but the way she tells a macro-level, truly epic, story through the lives of three individuals is mighty impressive. I hope this book will spark conversations about how the Great Migration turned out for hundreds of thousands of the people who headed north (in short: not always so great).

Multiple authors, Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is one of the most remarkable groups of people ever to assemble in the United States. Here 52 women of SNCC, people who had surprisingly little in common across the board except for a commitment to make America into a more democratic and just place, share an intensely personal collective history of the organization and the work they did from the inside out. Another tremendously heartfelt labor of love.

And finally,

Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia. I can honestly say that I’ve never wanted to visit Siberia and I still don’t, despite Frazier’s archly infectious enthusiasm for his subject. But I’m really glad that I went along for the ride with one of the best writers around.

The best work of non-fiction I read this year was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It’s thoughtful, thought-provoking, and thoroughly human, sometimes maddening and sometimes uplifting. I read it early this year and still think about it constantly. My hat’s off to Rebecca Skloot.

Dishonorable mention: Charles Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free and Michael Lewis, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity. I’ve enjoyed Pierce’s musings on NPR from time to time, and the image with which he begins this post is the funniest and truest thing I’ve ever read on a sports blog. (As a Heels fan, I have to say: Rasheed may be a head case, but he’s OUR head case.) So I was excited to find that Pierce had written on this topic. Unfortunately, saying he mailed it in would be an insult to anyone who still goes to the trouble of mailing things.

Now look at the cover of Panic. Do you notice that it says “Edited by” in tiny letters? I didn’t when I bought it. I thought I was getting what would become The Big Short–I was about six months too early–but instead I got a collection of reprinted Dave Barry columns and articles from The Economist. Boo.

11 Favorites of 2010

I’ve finally gotten my favorite reads of 2010 together whittled down to 11 books.  Why 11?  It’s as far down as my list would go.  This year is noteworthy because it is non-fiction’s strongest showing yet on my year end lists.  I’m not sure what to make of that.

Of course it should come as no surprise that my favorite book of 2010 is…

Just Kids by Patti Smith (review).  I’ve been going on and on about this book for months, and I even said it would be atop my year end list in November.  Just read it already.

My favorite novel of the year, hands down, was Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (review).

The rest of the pack:

The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron by Howard Bryant (review)

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (review)

The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (review)

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (review)

The Big Short by Michael Lewis (review)

The Baseball Codes by Jason Turbow with Michael Duca (review)

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman (review)

Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild by Lee Sandlin (review coming soon…)

Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II by J. Todd Moye (review)

Literary Smackdown

As is my wont, I’m continuing to eliminate my review backlog by pitting similar books against each other in winner-take-all, head-to-head competition.  I’ll start by telling you how they’re similar, then give a brief overview of each book, and finally pick a winner.

How they are similar: Both are weighty literary novels that take place in the 19th Century and feature real people and/or institutions. Please, don’t refer to them as historical fiction.  Both novels feature protagonists named Jacob/Jakob who are the sons of pious men.   Women from their their pasts feature prominently in their respective stories.   Both novels have much to say about the chasm between the plans that men make and the hands that life deals them.  Both novels deserve much more attention than they are getting here.

In the far corner wearing blue trunks: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

David Mitchell is an author that I had always planned to read, but somehow I never got around to it.  His novel Cloud Atlas is often referred to as a modern masterpiece, and his reported experimentation with genre seemed like it would be very much my thing.   I was determined not to let another Mitchell novel slip by unread.

Thousand Autumns takes place at the dawn of the 19th century.  Japan is a a closed country and is overtly hostile to Western influences, particularly religion.  A small man-made island off of Nagasaki is as close as the representatives of Japan’s only trading partner, the Dutch East Indies Company are typically allowed.  The titular Jacob de Zoet finds himself employed as an accountant for the Company.  He’s the son of a minister, and is himself honest almost to a fault. He has gone to Japan to earn his fortune so that he can be worthy of the woman who has promised to await his return.

Of course, lots of unplanned things can happen when you’ve found yourself on the other side of the world with little or no communication home and an inherently limited system of justice.  It is noted in the novel that the Japanese used poetic names on its maps, like “The Valley of a Thousand Autumns.”   This is contrasted with the rigid and austere Japanese society that is bound by tradition and precedent.  Jacob’s life is similarly lacking in poetry.  The novel is at once literary and a historical thriller with a star-crossed love story thrown in for good measure.  Thousand Autumns is a stunning epic of a novel.  I loved it.

In the other corner, wearing green trunks: A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell

A Curable Romantic had several things going for it before I even picked it up.  Author Joseph Skibell is a professor at Emory University, and I do love to support the home team when I can.   The novel is published by Algonquin Books, which seems to be a home of strong, boundary-pushing literature that is also wonderfully readable.  This one also jumped onto the top of the reading pile.

A Curable Romantic takes place in the 19th century, mostly in Vienna, Austria, though other locales in Eastern and Western Europe make cameo appearances.  Jakob has fled his shtetl in Eastern European home to escape the pious father whose “Old Testament” style of justice is meted out with remarkably cruelty.  He becomes a poor doctor and a Zelig-like character in modern Austria, befriending the notable men in and around Vienna.

Two of the most notable men that Jakob befriends are Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and Dr. Ludovic Zamenhof, the father of the Esperanto universal language.  It’s no coincidence that Jakob becomes drawn to these “father of-” men.   Jakob seems constantly in search of a new father figure  as he tries to make a clean break with his past.  But that past literally haunts him throughout the novel.

Although the title describes Jakob as a “curable” romantic, the opposite argument appears to be made within.  Jakob is never really free from the superstitions and beliefs of his shtetl life, and he never truly sheds his romantic notions of life and how it should be lived.

The clash between tradition and modernity is on full display in A Curable Romantic, with Jakob poised precariously between the two worlds.  This is a big, thick novel that is amazing in it scope.  I loved it.

The Winner: This was the most difficult head-to-head battle to judge yet.  It was a tough choice, but… I was such a huge fan of James Clavell’s Shogun and the bearded awesomeness of Richard Chamberlain in the mini-series that I’m not sure that A Curable Romantic had a chance.  But where Shogun still bears the cheesy taint of the late 70′s, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet is very much a cheese-free literary gem.  Yet, it would make an awesome mini-series, too.   Of course, Richard Chamberlain must play the role of a corrupt Dutch trader.  Get me Hollywood on the phone!

Patti Smith on Colbert

BGB: Always Timely

Speaking of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I came across this today via the Facebook:

Penguin Books: What did you think of The Reluctant Fundamentalist? Mohsin Hamid’s brilliant novel – shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007 – has been chosen for the very first World Book Night. Apply to become a World Book Night Giver and you could have 48 copies to give to whomever you choose as part of the biggest book giveaway ever attempted!

After reading nore about it, it’s official.  We need a World Book Night in the US.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

The blurb about The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid, sounded pretty interesting — a beared Pakistani man begins a conversation with an uneasy American man in Lahore, Pakistan.  The way it’s written, it’s almost as if you you, the reader, are the uneasy American that he is speaking to.  It’s told as a one-way conversation, and every now and then the narrator “responds” to a gesture by the listener and asks questions of his listener or otherwise changes the direction of his monologue.

The narrator tells his own story — a story of how he left Pakistan to attend Princeton and then took a job with a fancy firm in New York City, and then how events unfolded before and after September 11 that brought him back to the very spot he tells the story from.  Hamid is a very good writer, and his storytelling, in this structure, borders on frighteningly polite.  Our narrator speaks impeccable English and constructs flawless sentences, seemingly out of an urge to make the American listener comfortable through decorum.  And as he recounts the events of his life, he touches on incendiary issues related to religion, culture, and politics, from multiple vantage points based on his then-current station in life and perspective.

I’ll confess to feeling uneasy throughout the book, which I suspect was exactly Hamid’s goal — to make the reader put himself in the position of looking at these times through the eyes of someone impacted differently by them.  This is a well-crafted, riveting story that manipulates the reader in ways that few authors have the skill to do.

Friday Links

Author and BoingBoing guy writes in The Guardian about copyright in the digital era.  Like he does.  Seperately, he put his money where his mouth is for the launch of his new short story collection, which he is releasing in a variety of formats – including the free download that you are welcome to remix.

In Salon, an article about the pathology of Sherlock Holmes that touches on the new BBC Sherlock series that I love.

Steve Martin has a new new novel out about the art world.  The author/comedian/actor/banjo-stylist caused outrage at a recent event held at the 92nd Street Y by talking about – gasp – his new book and the art world.  The erudite Manhattanites were so offended by this unforeseen turn of events that the Y gave refund vouchers to all attendees.   Steve Martin also recently talked art with Steven Colbert – and it’s highly entertaining.

Sea change?  Indie booksellers are now selling e-books via the new Google eBooks store.

Salon’s Best Nonfiction and Fiction of 2010

Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Novels of  ’10

And finally, this:

Another Literary Cage Match

I’m continuing to eliminate my review backlog and have some fun by pitting similar books against each other for mortal literary combat.  I’ll start by telling you how they’re similar, then give a brief overview of each book, and finally pick a winner.

What the books have in common: Both  novels dabble in the absurd.   Both are ostensibly written by the narrators.  However,  the narrators are of the unreliable and possibly deluded variety.  They frequently question the veracity of their own accounts.  Neither novel is for the reader who requires realism or a  straightforward narrative.  Both are deserving of more attention than they are receiving here.

First Up: Orion You Came And You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henahan

The narrator may be a secret agent of sorts sent to extract some information from a man who runs an elaborate puppet theater.  Her gang of agents hangs out at Tiki Ty’s Tiki Barn, a “bookstore-slash-vintage surfing memorabilia museum” whose proprietor serves shrimp and an excellent dipping sauce.  She may be Russian (most don’t think so) and she fancies herself a stage actress.  She may also occasionally visit herself in a bed in a mental hospital.  Or I could have misread the whole thing.  The best (and occasionally annoying) bit of our narrator’s tale is her circular and repetitive way of describing a scene:

I proceeded with a little bit of caution, but caution proved difficult to maintain in the face of such swanky music. My caution was compromised by a snifter of sidestep.  My caution collapsed into cocksure caliente.  My caution fell at last away into a frenzied frug.  The people inside took no notice of my frug’s flawlessness, a flawless frug just par for the course in a joint like this.

The Challenger: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

The narrator of How to Live Safely is a time machine repairman.  He comes by this line of work honestly, his helped his father create one of the first time machines in the family garage.  He knows quite a bit about time machines and how they work:

The base model TM-31 runs on state-of-the-art chronodiegetical technology: a six-cylinder grammar drive built on a quad-core physics engine, which features an applied temporalinguistics architecture allowing a free form navigation within a rendered environment, such as, for instance, a story space and, in particular, a science fictional universe.

Got all that.  After describing various pitfalls and safety issues surrounding time travel, he instinctively commits on the biggest blunders imaginable.

The role of all good science fiction, so I hear, is to reflect our own world back to us.  This particular time machine appears to an allegory for longing and regret – and the ability to lose oneself in one’s own story at the expense of the world at large.

Everyone is a time machine…We are all perfectly engineered time machines, technologically equipped to allow the inside user, the traveler riding inside each of us, to experience time travel, and loss, and understanding.

The Winner:

In the end, How to Live Safely seemed less sterile and more about something.  One last note from the book on the subject of time:

My father built a time machine and then he spent his whole life trying to figure out how to use it to get more time.  He spent all the time he had with us thinking about how he wished he had more time, if he could only have more time.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

I had seen the cover for Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain many times, and something about it always drew me back; I knew that I would have to read it at some point, and I just did.  And I’m glad I did.

The book tells the story of Denny, an aspiring racecar driver/driving instructor, his wife Eve, and their daughter Zoe, but most importantly it tells the story of Enzo, Denny’s dog.  And Enzo is the one who tells the story.  I know, I know.  Sounds odd, and kind of campy.  But I thought it worked.

Denny and Enzo were a couple first.  Then Denny met Eve.  Then Denny and Eve had Zoe.  Then Eve got sick.  Then other things happened.  And the book is told through Enzo’s eyes as these things happened.  Stein does a really neat job of telling things from the perspective of a dog who understands everything but can’t communicate back with words, and also of using racing metaphors to talk about how to handle what life deals you.  See, Denny realizes early on that Enzo likes to watch television, and so Denny lets him watch tv while Denny’s at work at the auto shop, often letting him watch the Speed Channel or videos of famous European races.  And sometimes when they’re watching together, Denny explains to Enzo how all of the various elements come together on the track to lead to success or failure.

Enzo has a mind like a steel trap — not only understanding what Denny tells him, but also never forgetting any of it — and is also quite the philosopher, even dabbling in musings on mortality and reincarnation as he grows older.  As Enzo tells of the events that unfold following Eve’s illness, he constantly goes back to brilliant little nuggets that he has learned, which help him to cope and to help him help Denny cope.

So in a nutshell, it’s a story told by a dog using racing metaphors and philosophy.  Which sounds kind of awful but absolutely isn’t.  Check it out.

Boys and Reading: Part 5

I was humbled when a BGB Reader recently passed along a link to a letter written by her son, Haille Bailey-Harris, that was published in The Globe and Mail.  Haille is one of those boys that according to the studies, should be failing at reading:

Raised by my mother alone, I’m a fatherless boy…I’m also an avid video gamer so, according to the research, I should be failing in school, a non-reader, and basically a loser.  And though not discussed in the articles, I have what other studies have said is also a risk factor for dropping out of school: I’m black.  Hell, I should just throw in the towel! It worries me that other fatherless kids might think it’s hopeless, too.

He goes on to recommend solutions for “at risk” boys.  You need to read the whole thing.

I was humbled even further when I noticed that the letter was part of a much larger Globe and Mail series called Failing Boys.  It is an in-depth, no-stone-unturned look at the issues surrounding the achievement gaps between girls and boys.  This is why we have professional journalists, people.

For what it’s worth:  if you haven’t been keeping up with our contributions to the conversation, here’s what you missed:

• In Part 1, I discussed The Center for Education Policy’s report that shows that boys consistently lag behind girls in reading as measured by standardized tests.   I also discussed the debate around the use of “gross out” books as the answer to closing the gap.
• In Part 2, I delved a little deeper into the Center of Education Policy report that kicked this all off.   I also offered some “context” for framing the problem.
• In Part 2.5 I threw out some interesting graphs that I thought added some additional context to the discussion.
• In Part 3, I interviewed author Raymond Bean.  Mr. Bean is the author of the children’s books Sweet Farts and the sequel Sweet Farts: Rippin’ It Old School.
• In part 4 we discussed the need for men to do their part as role models.

Looking ahead

Best-selling author Harlan Kane returns in January 2011 with the long anticipated The Abacus Conundrum…

Friday Links

The NYT has declared their 10 Best Books of 2010.  Included is Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad.  I don’t see it.

Have you seen the Scorsese-directed HBO Documentary Public Speaking yet?  It’s a fascinating look at author/public intellectual Fran Leibowitz.  Frankly, I didn’t know much about her.  Now I’m fascinated with her.  Check it out.

Patti Smith interviews Johnny Depp in this month’s Vanity Fair.  Apparently you need to actually buy the magazine to read the interview though.  Bastards.

Heather from the music blog I Am Fuel You Are Friends writes convincingly and movingly about Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.

But of course she did.

“Against Amazon: An online archive to educate consumers about the problems and politics of doing business with the beast.”

The Guardian says indie booksellers never had it so good.

Moby Lives on why your Kindle is crap for use as a travel guide.

Go Get Your Book On!

Who knew there was a national push to take your child to a bookstore?  Well, the bookstores, apparently.  To quote Jenny Milchman, the head of this endeavor,

Bookstores hold a place in the hearts and times of our community. They are places to discover an author, a story, a life. Nothing affords the conversation and interaction among books and book lovers that a bookstore does.

So, this Saturday, grab your favorite kid(s) and hunker down at the spot you love most.

If you’re anywhere near Decatur Square (Georgia, of course), the Little Shop of Stories is the way to go. Plan to be there around 11 to celebrate Chanukah with some songs, dreidels, and a reading of Baxter, The Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher by BGB favorite Laurel Snyder.  Pick up a holiday favorites guide, sign up for some super fun holiday events, and if you’re feeling groovy, buy a book!

If wonderful little bookstores are not your thing, head over to your local Borders.  This weekend Borders is offering a $15 gift card to the school of your choice through DonorsChoose.org if you purchase anything.

GET YOUR BOOK ON!

Literary Cage Match

It’s a December tradition here at BGB.  Each year I fall hopelessly behind in my reviews, and I struggle to put something together for each book with the added pressures of the holiday season.  This year I’ve decided to eliminate the backlog and have some fun by pitting similar books against each other for mortal literary combat.  I’ll start by telling you how they’re similar, then give a brief overview of each book, and then pick a winner.

How they are similar: In both novels, each chapter could stand alone as a solid short story, but when taken together they tell the story of a cultural institution in decline.  Each novel is told from a number of perspectives; each chapter represents another character’s point of view.  Both are included in the NYT’s 100 Notable Books of 2010.   Both have titles that are relatively baffling in the context of the stories that they tell.  Each deserves a much longer and well-considered review.

First Up: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Imperfectionists is the unsentimental story of an international English language newspaper based in Italy.  It is also the story of the newspaper industry as a whole.  This particular newspaper begins almost on a whim through the efforts of a wealthy industrialist who runs away from his Georgia home and businesses to begin the enterprise.  Along the way we hear from reporters, editors, proofreaders, over-matched family members who inherit the business, etc.  Each new character adds nuance to the story of the paper by focusing keenly on a particular person’s story who just happens to be involved with the paper.  Rachman pulls off the dazzling trick of making characters that we hear from for the length of a single chapter fully-formed and completely realistic, as opposed to card board cut outs of industry “types.”

The Challenger:  A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Goon Squad is the warts-and-all story of a famous record producer/label owner and the people who fall in and out of his orbit.  It’s also the story of the modern music business as a whole.  Egan also chose to tell her story by focusing on a different character’s perspective over each chapter.  Along the way, we learn about aspects of the music business from callous execs, label-owners, musicians, groupies, managers, and others.  The stories from inside the industry ring absolutely true.  The author must ave spent a great deal of time learning about the industry from both its survivors and its cautionary tales.

The Winner: Despite my oft-professed love for the intersection of music and literature, I pick The Imperfectionists in this particular battle.  Goon Squad is exactly two chapters too long.  The final chapters take place in the future, and Egan’s imagined future of music reads like a comedic parody of everything that’s come before.  The novel completely loses the mood and realism that it worked so hard to create .   The Imperfectionists, however, remains true to its story and allows the story to close with quiet dignity.