1. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Counting this as the first book I read this year is a bit like cheating; it would be more appropriate to call it the first book I finished this year, since I started it in August, read some in October, and read most of it before the year turned. But whatever — it's still the first of the year.

Anyway, this post will likely contain spoilers from the two seasons of Game of Thrones that have aired on HBO, but nothing beyond that (since obviously I haven't read those books yet). So if you haven't watched/read yet, stop and do that, because it's really quite good.

One of the things that most impressed me when I was reading the book is how close the TV series sticks to the novel. There are some changes that people like to complain about — and maybe I would too, if I'd read the books first — but nothing that was a game changer, for me. Though I was kind of annoyed that when I bought the paperback at Target, they only had the HBO cover (I hate movie/tv show covers, on principle). As far as book covers with TV art on them go, it's actually kind of cool, so I'll live.

But of all the complicated humans in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, I'd like to look at just one — the often misunderstood Sansa Stark.

The most common criticism of Sansa is that she's obsessed with herself (and her future position as queen), is immature and disloyal to her family. That all, frankly, is crap. Sansa Stark is a young girl who her whole life has been taught to be a lady and rule the house of whoever she should marry. She's told stories of love and knights and magic. She's told to marry the prince and that he's the greatest guy ever. Her annoying sister — who's the opposite of everything she wants to be — tries to ruin her fairytale come true. Really, she's just naïve.

When things hit the fan, she tries to save her family. She doesn't know not to trust Cersei, she thinks she's saved her father's life. Like I said, naïve. It's about putting things back the way they were, trying to keep her family from destruction. She still doesn't realize what a horrible human Joffrey is.

And then, well, she does. And she becomes the Lannister's hostage, Joffrey's plaything.

So yeah, Sansa isn't her sister, Arya. She doesn't like sword fights or running or being dirty. She believes the patriarchy she's been fed all her life, and then she realizes it's all a lie. I don't fault her for that.

26. This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz (and an update)

Happy New Year kids. Obviously, this got derailed in the fall semester. Basically, after number 25 I started reading Game of Thrones, and then things became pretty crazy and my resolution was pushed to the wayside.

But now I'm going to try again. With the book I'll talk about in a second, which I read over Thanksgiving, I read 26 books — exactly half my goal — in 2012. So, I think I can hit 52 in 2013. At the very least, we'll see. I'll probably (finally) finish "Game of Thrones" by tomorrow, so that'll be the first book of the new year. But here are some thoughts on the last book I read, not for school, in 2012:

Before I picked up this book, I read this awesome interview Junot Diaz did to promote it (you may remember my love affair with Junot from last January, when I read his first short-story collection, Drowned). Anyway, if you read that interview, you'll understand why I think he's the bees knees. Par example:

"I have so many young writers who're like, 'Well I was inspired. This was my story.' And I'm like, 'OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service.'"

Famous male writer talking about male privilege? Sign me up.

Anyway, this book was super short (and it was a short story collection), so it was easy to get through, but it was also incredibly well-written and generally amazing. Most of the stories focus on Yunior (who was a character in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), who's a womanizing jerk, despite his generally good heart. 

I don't actually have anything else to say, awkwardly, except that it's really well-written and heart-breaking and wondrous, just like Junot's work always is. What a good writer. I only wish it was longer.

So that's it amigos. Hit me up with your book suggestions.

25. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower

Man, I love short story collections. I wonder — have I read what seems like so many since January because they're trendy right now, or have they always been this popular? Or, do more of them just happen to be really well-written? No idea.

I did appreciate that Tower bucked one trend at least; lots of other collections link the stories and characters together in small or large ways. This one is that one's granddaughter or co-worker or the person they hit with their car. I really enjoyed those, but it's not the route Tower chooses (though, I kind of was hoping that the last story would link them all together. It didn't).

What does link the stories together is pain, loneliness, divorce (almost all of them had at least on divorced character), and humanity. They were little snapshots of people really screwing things up, and it was pretty awesome.

My favorite story was about a kind of homely teenage girl, Jacey, whose glamorous, ballerina cousin visits and makes her feel childish and dumb and undesirable. She tries to make herself feel better, but only makes herself feel worse. Been there, done that. 

The book is about older men with unresolved issues, sons and daughters dealing with selfish parents and stepparents, and husbands and wives just trying to find happiness. Also the last story is about Vikings, which is really random but also cool. Something for everyone, I guess.

Anyway, I recommend it. It's a really fascinating look at human relationships.

24. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Shockingly not about angry grapes. Who knew?

Did ya miss me?

I made the same poor decision in my speed reading quest -- I picked a very long book to read. But once again, it was worth it.

I faced the same problem when I read Steinbeck's other epic tome, East of Eden. Both are amazing, but in spite of how much I enjoyed them, they took forever to finish.

But The Grapes of Wrath was worth it, even if I've fallen hopelessly behind in my quest (though, to be fair, "Game of Thrones" and "Doctor Who" are to blame as well. Also tumblr).

The novel is about farmers who are kicked off of their Midwest land during the Great Depression and head west in search of a better life. It's obvious from the beginning that things won't turn out well for the Joads, but you end up hoping for things to turn around in spite of this.

Besides having some great characters and exchanges, The Grapes of Wrath also has some important political messages about the destruction of the small farmer and the abuse of labor. And, while it would be easy to close this book and say "That's all in the past," migrant farmers still live in America, enduring horrible conditions in search of a better life. The difference is that now instead of calling white people from the Midwest "Okies" and starving them, we do it to people from other countries who we call "aliens." Ugh. I'm not even trying to make a political statement about immigration -- I'm just saying that the people who pick our fruits and vegetables should make a living wage. I mean, all people in America and around the world should. I think that Steinbeck would agree.

Part of the point of the book is how you need family to help you -- or a replacement family. You need someone you love because, as Tom Joad says, quoting his friend the preacher Casy, when you have two people one can lean on the other when the going gets rough.

But in Hoover-era California, these bonds fall apart. People are wrenched from each other and have to find new ways to survive. It's unclear that they will. Good job bumming me out, John.

I feel similarly to how I did when I read Angela's Ashes -- how did people survive this? Obviously people did. I'm in awe of the human condition.

23. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

There were three main reasons why I wanted to reread this book, which I read for the first time during my junior year of high school:

1. It's probably one of my favorite stories ever.
2. It was discussed extensively in Reading Lolita in Tehran.
3. I saw the trailer for the movie.

Actually, I just rewatched the trailer, and I'd have to say that — from that trailer alone — it seems like they did a pretty great job capturing the spirit of West Egg. The one negative comment I have is that Tom Buchanan should have been portrayed by Georgetown alum and total hawt guyy Bradley Cooper, who said he wanted to role. Think about it. Bradley Cooper is what I always picture Tom would be like.

Before I go further, let me say that if you haven't read this book yet, immediately stop reading this blog and find yourself a copy. Then don't do anything until you're done and then you can come back to this post. Everyone good now?

I think I want a new copy of Gatsby. As evidenced by the scribblings I put in many amazing books, my high school teachers were a little obsessed with "active reading." The idea was that you marked up your book, writing questions, considering themes. I like to think that I always actively read — I just don't destroy my books —, but in high school my teachers would do "Active Reading Checks" and flip through our books to make sure we'd written some things down. As a belligerently active reader, lots of my insightful comments on the text are literally just "haha," "that's messed up," "SEXISM," or inane repetitions of what was just said.

In general, I would underline anything I found profound or particularly well written. In many books, that was only a few sentences a chapter. In Gatsby, it's half the book. So reading my four-year-old copy was miserable, because the highlights and comments were so distracting. Duh, Tom is a sexist prick. Duh, some passages are confusing. If I were ever an English teacher, I'd only let students active read in bad books they'd never want to read again, not wonderful ones like The Great Gatsby.

Anyway, this time around, I was struck by how much Nick Carraway, the narrator (but arguably not the main character), sounds like he could have been a JD Sallinger narrator — or I guess how much Sallinger is like Fitzgerald.

Gatsby and Sallinger's works are obsessed with the phony, rich people of New York, outwardly beautiful and inwardly miserable. They hate it, and yet they're obsessed with it.

Fitzgerald is probably one of the greatest American writers ever. Even if he'd just written this one book.  One of the things that amazes me about Gatsby is that it's so short, but so rich — I think Fitzgerald has an ability to lean into silences, to leave enough threads that the reader can pick up on things he's not saying aloud. And that's how he can write the quintessential American story in 180 pages, while it took John Steinbeck 601 to write East of Eden. (Currently reading Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath by the way). Of course, East of Eden is a wildly different book, an amazing epic, but it seems easier to write the great American story in a giant volume than a small one.

This time, whilst reading the book, I had to wonder what's so special about Daisy that Gatsby is so obsessed with her. She's a pretty, flirty rich girl, vain and uninteresting. For all you could say about Jay Gatsby, you can't say he's vain or uninteresting.

When Gatsby is reunited with Daisy, he says to Nick that she's changed, and I suppose that accounts  for some of it — people do change, and it's obvious that Daisy was wracked by Gatsby-related heartache. But I think it's mostly explained by time and the mind. The books ends with: "And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Nostalgia is powerful, the past is powerful, and Gatsby became attached to a summer love. What he wanted when he was 19 was no longer what he wanted when he was 30. That's real life, but it's not something you expect, especially when you've been chasing that thing ever since you first set eyes on it.

But at the end, Daisy wasn't worth it — "'They're a rotten crowd,' I shouted across the lawn. 'You're worth the whole damn bunch put together.'" And Gatsby dies for a dream based on nothing. Man.

I'm going to stop now, but could literally continue for an hour. If you have Gatsby thoughts, leave a comment or shoot me an email. And I'll leave you with a quote, my favorite from the book, on Gatsby's smile. Can we just consider how beautiful these words are?


"It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

22. Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Here's another book that has been sitting on my shelf forever and I never read. I have no idea what possessed me to finally pick it up last week, but I did. You should probably listen to this song while you read this post. Or this one — but the other one is definitely more relevant.

I'm not Irish, but growing up I always wanted to be because most of the kids in my Catholic elementary school were. On St. Patrick's day they'd come in with green stickers, shamrock pins, Irish sweaters, and Erin Go Bragh hats. St. Joseph's Day was the closest Italian equivalent, and — though we got delicious pastries — the two days certainly can't be compared. Also, I think freckles and red hair are beautiful, which I think played a roll.

But I can't say that I contemplated seriously about the history of Ireland until my senior year of high school, and even then, it was only because of a passing comment my teacher made — she said that the British taxes on grain could have been considered genocidal, since the Irish were dealing with the potato famine.

Actually, I take that back — junior year I read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" in an English class, so I guess I'd thought about it a little bit then too. But Ireland often seems like a historical footnote, the Irish constantly looked down upon by the English/British, struggling to survive.

In this memoir, Frank McCourt recounts his childhood; his parents both moved from Ireland to New York, met, procreated, got married. His father's an alcoholic, squandering his money and making his boys promise to die for Ireland. When his infant sister dies, Frank's parents move him and his three brothers back to Ireland.

There's lots of suffering to go around, but the depressing existence Frank endured is lightened by the childish humor he brings to the text. One year in school he must imagine what'd have happened if Jesus had been born in his city, and he concludes that it's a good thing He was born Jewish instead because in Ireland he'd have died of consumption and there'd be no Catholics.

Another great moment is also influenced by his school teachers, who constantly try to convince the boys that they ought to be willing to die for their faith:


"The master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who wants us to live."

In Frank's Ireland, everyone is obsessed with death — what you're dying for, if anything. Your relatives who are constantly dying, from old women to small babies. Young Frank can't help but wonder why.

Frank also deals with Catholic guilt, which Jack Donaghy describes much more eloquently than I could... But it's both humorous and sad how so many people in Frank's life use religion as a means — a way to get kids to behave, to make money at your First Communion so you can go to the cinema. At the age of 10, Frank is hospitalized with typhoid fever and is punished by a nun in the hospital for talking to a girl in the room next door. God doesn't like platonic fraternization of 10 year-olds apparently — too much temptation...

Since it's a memoir, the book doesn't have a climax or anything; the miseries just pile unto each other until the book ends. And while it's an upsetting book to read — it's upsetting to read about any suffering, I think, especially suffering that actually happened/continues to go on today, though in different corners of the globe —, it was also extremely enjoyable.

21. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Yesterday I read a New York Times editorial in which a middle school teacher, Claire Needel Hollander, discussed summer reading. She said how she usually told parents that "Any reading is good reading" but that this wasn't true. Sh e argued that while the poorest readers could gain skills from anything, more advanced readers didn't have that much to gain from The Hunger Games: 

"While “The Hunger Games” may entrance readers, what does a 13-year-old gain in verbal and world knowledge from the series? A student may encounter a handful of unfamiliar words, while contemplating human dynamics that are cartoonish, with violent revolution serving as the backdrop for teen romance."

And well, I just have to disagree. I mean, she's correct with regards to the vocabulary, but the plot? Pshh. I'm still thinking about it months later. Anyway there's this one line that seems particularly relevant. Before Katniss and Peeta enter the arena, he says to her that night:

"I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don't own me. If I'm gonna die, I wanna still be me."

Isn't that the quintessential human struggle, especially under the pressures of totalitarianism and tyranny? It's what Winston and Julia struggled for in Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's was the reason why the book club was started in Reading Lolita in Tehran, it's what Lenny and Eunice try for in a destroyed American in Super Sad True Love Story. And, it's what gives Laila and Mariam (and other characters) strength in A Thousand Splendid Suns in the face of the tyrants they encounter — the Soviets, the Mujahideen, the Taliban, their husbands.

Each woman clings to herself and each other in order to survive, in order to retain their humanity and dignity in the midst of a society that wants to make them literally inconsequential.

I bought this book two years ago, and I know I started it at least once before, but it never stuck. I guess I didn't like it. That amazes me in retrospect because I loved this book. I'm in awe of it — its beautiful words and characters, its tragic wonder.

But I hate the cover.