Top 10 Editors’ Best Books of 2000
Our planet may well not have ended with its arrival but Y2K ended up being a unforgettable calendar year, culminating inside the most convoluted presidential election because that old Hayes-Tilden centennial nailbiter.
The initial period of dot-com mania reached its peak (you may well recall that our personal Jeff Bezos was the reigning Time Individual on the Yr), India reached one billion in population, and in the book globe we have been introduced to such influential figures in the decade as Malcolm Gladwell, Dave Eggers, and Zadie Smith.
Here are the top 10 editors’ best of 2000 that you can own them right away …
1. The Feast of Love: A Novel
This is a wonderful piece of literature. It vaguely resembles Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, except that this novel is utterly contemporary. The novel is about love. The author explores different kinds of human relationships. There’s Bradley: the hopeless romantic; there’s Harry Gingsberg: an old philosopher with a troubled son; then there’s Chloe and Oscar: the young, wild lovers. Chloe and Oscar touched me; their love was so pure that it made me cry. This novel is breathtakingly beautiful. I love the language; the characters’ voices are very expressive. I highly recommend this novel. Now run along and get it! …
2. Flags of Our Fathers (Movie Tie-in Edition)
This book is an absolute must-read. At once a biography of each of these six brave men, a history book, a war novel, and a tale of struggle, this book should find its way onto the bookshelf of every American. The lives of these men before, during, and after the battle of Iwo Jima is enough to fill you with great sadness and immense patriotic pride simultaneously. This book is as relevant today as it could have been had it been published 55 years ago. While it is quite usual to hear words like honor, courage, and commitment strewn about by talking heads that pervade our society and media, it is rare to see these demonstrated by actual human beings. The stories of these men will show that that even under great strain the human spirit can thrive, and that occaisionally our heroes can be taken at face value …
3. Cherry
This book is like sitting and listening to your friend’s “fast” big sister spill the details of her last weekend. You hang on every word, half apalled, half entranced….would you, could you? Mary Karr has given voice to life in small town Texas in the late 60’s and early 70’s. We all thought we were destined for something other than small town life. Meandering into casual drug use, slipping into casual sex, and the constant battle to find something “more”. The language is clear and true and unsparing and alive. This was a worthy folowup to “Liars’ Club” the memior focused more on the younger years of Karr, and the havoc wrecked by her parent’s alcohol abuse. As Karr grows older, her parents as less in the story, a telling example of her ability to survive and to move away from dependence on them…and to somehow block or ignore their chaotic interference in her life. This is a great book …
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4)
I had read the first 3 novels In the Harry Potter series and had found them extremely enjoyable page turners, Rowling creates a complete, magical world and her characters are always perfectly developed: You cheer when Harry stands up to Snape, You scowl inside when Malfoy turns up and you feel safe and secure when Dumbledore’s around. But quite simply, the extrodinary and sensational “Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire” leaves the previous books In the dust …
5. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation (Bilingual Edition)
In this translation of Beowulf, the story is the star. I’ve read other translated editions, but gotten so bogged down in the attempts at exact translation (those tiresome hyphenations!) that I never noticed Beowulf himself. Here, we see him develop as a character: first a young hero, then a king, then a seasoned ruler with one last fight to face. And everything means something. Heaney mentions in his introduction that he wanted every word to have weight; he’s succeeded. The introduction alone, incidentally, is worth the price of the book. Reading how Heaney sees poetry and the English language is a privilege; he’s one of our best living poets. Also, though I don’t read Old English, I did appreciate the bilingual edition, just for reference’s sake. I highly recommend this edition. Whether the reader is new to the poem or not, it’s fresh and meaningful here …
6. White Teeth: A Novel
For anyone embarking on a Cultural Studies course, this novel is a must. Throw away your textbooks with their dry statistics! One of White Teeth’s main themes is the mix of cultures in North London, from the Bengali Iqbals, to the archetypal Englishman Archie Jones, to the half-Jamaican Bowdens, and a slight smattering of the Irish. The novel maps these characters as they try to live out their years in a world which is losing religion and tradition. Samed kidnaps one of his sons to be brought up as a proper Bengali back home, while his other son, Millat, flirts with girls and joins the fundamentalist Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation (KEVIN – they’ve got an acronym problem) …
7. Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
I bought this book because it had such a glowing review in the New Yorker, but frankly I was a little dubious about its obscure subject. However, once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. Think money, sex, adultery, lesbianism, aristocracy, drug addiction, gambling, politics, scandals, betrayals, blackmail, fashion, theater, and the French Revolution, and you have just some of the potent elements in this book. Foreman writes with great clarity and verve. The book reads more like a novel than a work of history. And yet it is full of fascinating insights and historical information. Georgiana seems more like a modern woman with thoroughly modern neuroses than an eighteenth-century character. I couldn’t help but root for her all the way along. The evil Bess, on the other hand, is a character straight from the movie Single White Female – a classic evil best friend who cannot completely disguise her intentions. I recommend this book to all readers …
8. A Whale Hunt: How a Native-American Village Did What No One Thought It Could
I couldn’t put this book down. It is simply the most honest book I have read about a modern Indian community. I am a white woman and I have been married into a Northwest Native fishing family for fifteen years. Sullivan doesn’t romanticize the Indian people in his story but he obviously respects them. He sees their shortcomings but he does not judge them. Sullivan understands that no outsider can ever really know what treaty rights mean to Native Americans. Yet Sullivan takes the reader to the reservation and allows us to experience these tribal people as they live through a profound moment in their history. Every detail in this book rang true, even the fact that Mr. Watson, an anti-whaling protest leader, would claim to be adopted by the Oglala. I have run into many white people who believe that they know more about traditional Indian spirituality than actual Indians. The Makahs in this story don’t fit anyones preconcieved ideas of how Indian people should act, feel, speak or pray. This book is about a complex and ambiguous reality. Without preaching, it shows how much we still can learn from Indian communities. I bought a number of copies to give to my friends …
9. A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You : Stories
Great books stay with you long after you’ve finished them.It’s been two weeks since I read Amy Bloom’s newest book and I simply can’t get her stories out of my mind. Driving to vacation on the Cape, I started thinking about her characters Julia and Lionel, a mother and stepson who spent one horribly mistaken, horribly understandable night in bed together and continue to pay the price for years to come. The truly startling thing about Bloom’s stories is not the subject matter (transvestitism, incest, etc.), but the way the characters come so fully alive, you feel as if you’ve been given full access to their most intimate thoughts and feelings …
10. The Sibley Guide to Birds
David Sibley has written an excellent field guide. This book surpasses National Geographic’s “Field Guide to Birds of North America” and the Peterson’s Series of Bird Guides. It includes a greater number of illustrations and portrays more of the various ages of the birds. One has to appreciate the flight views of the many birds. The colors of the illustrations are excellent. The range maps have been adjusted in several cases. The accompanying text is very informative. It is packed with information about each species. Sibley “Guide to Birds” definitely shows that years were taken to produce this comprehensive reference. If there is a downside, this book is heavy. Many pages were required to incorporate all the interesting and informative information contained in this fabulous book! …
