Title: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt
Author: Caroline Preston
Genre: Fiction (Graphic Novel)
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a perfect example of a book where an innovative approach to storytelling takes an otherwise pretty traditional story and makes it into something special. In this case, author Caroline Preston uses an extensive collection of vintage memorabilia to create a vintage Smash Book for a young woman coming of age in the turbulent 1920s.

At the opening of the book, our heroine, Frankie Pratt, is a new high school graduate contemplating her future. For a graduation present, her widowed mother gives Frankie a scrapbook and her father’s old typewriter. Although Frankie has a scholarship to Vassar, she has to turn down the offer to stay hope and help her mother on the farm. After an innocent affair puts Frankie’s reputation on the line, her mother finds her way to send Frankie to college. At Vassar, Frankie meets luminaries of the time period and continues to try and find her calling, first in New York, then Paris, and finally in what seemed like the most unlikely place of all.

Like I said, the plot of The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is a pretty simple one. In novel format, I doubt this book would have been anything to write home about. But the way Preston incorporates a host of vintage pieces — everything from letters to postcards to fashion spreads to candy wrappers — gives the book so much character. As I read, I was torn between wanting to savor every page and speed ahead to find out what cool new pieces Frankie was going to put in her book.

I also loved the way Preston seemed to effortlessly meld the different pieces together. For being a book put together by an author years later, the book feels almost entirely authentic. It’s fascinating. On her website, Preston talks about her love for vintage ephemera and how she had to collect over 600 difference pieces to put Frankie’s story together. She even used an actual 1915 Corona Portable typewriter to type out the notes Frankie inserts — how cool is that?

If you can find a copy of this book to, at the very least, page through to check out the beautiful illustrations, I highly recommend doing so. The story isn’t amazing, but the way it’s told make this book shine.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt’ by Caroline Preston is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: What It Is Like to Go to War
Author: Karl Marlantes
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Book Expo America
Rating:

Review: I think one of the reasons I’ve procrastinated on writing this review is because I just don’t quite know what to say about What It Is Like to Go to War. Karl Marlantes’ nonfiction follow-up to his widely-regarded novel Matterhorn a fascinating hybrid of a nonfiction book — part memoir, part history, part manifesto — that explores a central conflict from Marlantes’ time as a Marine:

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn’t teach me how to deal with killing.

Marlantes has an impressive intellectual background, and he pulls from a huge range of sources to develop his thesis about how we can help the young warriors (a deliberately chosen descriptor for soldiers) we send to war as they fight and when they come home. As Marlantes explains near the end of the book:

Throughout this book I have attempted to honestly share my experiences of combat with an eye toward how I might have managed those experiences with more wisdom and psychological, spiritual, and ethical maturity. I have argued that had I been more conscious when I was fighting in Vietnam, I would have contributed just as effectively, or even more effectively, tot he war aims of those in power. I would have wreaked less havoc and pain and still gotten the job done.

As I read, I felt a bit like I was sitting down and trying to have a discussion with someone who clearly knows more and has thought more about a topic than I have. That’s not to say the book in inaccessible, because it’s certainly not. Marlantes makes his arguments clearly and without condescension. But I also ended up not really knowing what to say in response to many of his arguments except, “Yes, absolutely!” I’m very curious to read and hear what other soldiers or military experts might have to say in response — any good sources to seek out, let me know!

What It Is Like to Go to War is a meditation on what it is like to be a warrior, and a compelling argument about what we can to do help young warriors when they return from battle. It’s a wide-ranging and thoughtful book that I hope will make the rounds among the sorts of people who can make the types of decisions that will most help the young men and women we send to war.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘What It Is Like to Go to War’ by Karl Marlantes is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Notices into Fearless Home Cooks
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: Fresh from her stint at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Paris (chronicled in her first memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry) author/chef Kathleen Flinn isn’t sure where her path leads. The idea for her next project comes after a chance encounter in the grocery store. Flinn notices a woman filling her cart full of processed foods. When she gets up the nerve to ask the customer about it, Flinn discovers that the customer wants to eat better, but feels overwhelmed choosing and preparing healthier options.

Lightning strike! Flinn decides her next adventure will be to set up a basic cooking school for home cooks that want to do more and cook better, but don’t have the basic skills to get started. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is an account of Flinn’s first class, and offers practical advice on everything from basic knife skills to reading recipes to developing flavors to getting the most out of every grocery dollar.

The one word I can think to describe this book is “comforting.” As a wannabe foodie myself, I think I pretty well fit the profile of most of the people in Flinn’s first class. Reading about their challenges and successes made me feel like I too could move beyond the few dishes I know how to make well to being a cook that can improvise and make a meal out of the leftovers in my fridge in no time flat.

I loved that Flinn included recipes for the dishes she taught in the class, as well as tips for how to start improvising with simple foods like dressings and marinades. It also helps that Flinn has organized the book around some of an amateur cook’s biggest challenges — What do I do with the very specific leftovers from a recipe? How can I save money cooking? What are ways to choose the best products? What does “season to taste” even mean?

This is not a book that will have much useful information for an expert cook or someone who is comfortable in the kitchen. But for those of us with limited skill but a desire to learn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School could be just the book to get started with.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Kitchen Counter Cooking School’ by Kathleen Flinn is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: Oryx and Crake
Author: Margaret Atwood
Genre: Fiction
Year: 2003
Acquired: Bought
Rating:

Summary (Source): Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride.

Review: Oryx and Crake started out really slow for me. Whether that was my reading slump or a fault of the book, I couldn’t tell you, but the first 100 or so pages felt like they dragged. There is quite a bit of setup to the story, which on most days wouldn’t seem slow, but in the middle of a reading slump seem tedious. In order to show how Crake became the mastermind of some sort of crazy world, you have to start with Jimmy and Crake as kids, and that part of the story is really more about setting up what kind of society these characters are functioning in.

But once the book got some momentum and began to explore the central relationships of the book — Jimmy/Snowman and Oryx and Crake — it starts to play on Atwood’s biggest strength, her ability to absolutely nail writing about people and how they connect with each other. Although Oryx and Crake is a sort of sci-fi/dystopia book, the focus on people and their relationships was the part I loved most.

One of the reasons I admire Atwood so much as a writer is that she writes books that have stellar plot lines that suck you in and won’t get go and that make you feel smarter having finished them. She balances that excitement/intelligence line so well, and Oryx and Crake is no exception. I can’t wait to grab a copy of the second book in the Madd Addam trilogy, The Year of the Flood.

Other Reviews:

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Review: ‘Oryx and Crake’ by Margaret Atwood is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys, Lost at Sea and of the Beachocombers, Oceaongraphers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
Author: Donovan Hohn
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: Confession time: I picked up this book because I fell in love with the subtitle. I have this readerly weakness for a great subtitle, and Moby-Duck by Donovan Hohn has one of the best that I’ve read in awhile:

The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys, Lost at Sea and of the Beachocombers, Oceaongraphers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

Doesn’t that make your heart flutter a little bit? Just me?

Anyway… Moby-Duck is a hilariously awesome book that covers just as much ground as the subtitle suggests it will. Hohn’s quest — evocative of Captain Ahab’s quest to find the great white whale — is to follow the life of a single plastic duck. Strange? Absolutely! But worth the read? I’d say so.

Hohn gets started on this seemingly strange journey after reading a newspaper story about a freighter accident in the North Atlantic that dumped 28,800 plastic bath toys into the ocean. Years later, the little beavers, frogs, turtles, and ducks were appearing on beaches around the world. Oddly entranced and curious about the path of these rogue toys, Hohn decides to chase the elusive ducks wherever they may lead him. Through the course of the book, Hohn goes beachcombing in Alaska, sailing for trash in Hawaii, sightseeing in China’s industrial wilderness, and exploring in the far reaches of the Arctic wilderness.

Moby-Duck is a ranging and meandering journey of a book, but it never feels like Hohn has gone off course. Part of the reason for that is, I think, Hohn’s background as an essayist. Each “chase” is really a series of vignettes that connect together around the part of the journey Hohn is currently on. It’s nice because it makes Moby-Duck a book you can slip in and out of easily and still get back to where you were.

Hohn also has the essayist’s skill of writing evocative and memorable first and last lines to each piece, and the essayist’s trick of connecting together disparate elements. This, for instance, is the opening line to a section where he writes about polar bears and humans:

Two days out of Resolute, four days from Cambridge Bay, in the smoking lounge, where the yardlong penis bone of a walrus hung, trophy-style, above the wet bar, members of the Louis‘s crew were drinking cans of Pepsi purchased from vending machines, and tapping their cigarettes against the crenellated edges of black plastic ashtrays, and watching, the flat-screen television, a National Geographic documentary called Hunter and Hunted: Arctic Attack.

Later in that same section he writes:

The way we look at polar bears is indicative, I think, of a larger confusion, a larger and perhaps untreatable blurriness in our vision. It’s as though the more pictures we take of the world the less clearly we see it, as if out megapixelated screens weren’t windows but kaleidoscopes.

And then closes with:

On the bridge of the Louis, somewhere in Peel Sound, we were all still watching the bear beside the hole. Its patience was so great that it resembled somnolence. I swear to both God and the monsters thereof, that as we watched, a seal popped up to catch a breath, and as it did the until now statuesque bear sprang forth, catlike, extending its fatal paw. With one terrible and yet somewhat leisurely swipe is snared the seal by the neck, punctured the jugular with one terrible bite, and then, limp carcass hanging from its jaws, trailing blood, lumbered off, making an exit that Nansen describes well, assuming “an easy shambling gait, without deigning to pay any further attention to such a trifle as a ship.” Then it disappeared behind a pressure ridge to enjoy its mean in private.

Those examples don’t capture the sense of whimsy and curiosity that Moby-Duck has, the real sense of fun that Hohn exudes as he moves through his quest, but I still like reading them anyway. Even so, I do think these passages show the way Hohn can write beautifully about the range of topics — from the fun to the terrible — that make up the narrative of Moby-Duck. 

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘Moby-Duck’ by Donovan Hohn is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2010
Acquired: Bought
Rating:

Review: I bookmarked so many fantastic passages from The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, it’s hard for me to pick just one to start this review with. But really, if there’s one quote that epitomizes the things I loved best about this book, I think it would be this one:

This image — of cancer as our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger — is so haunting because it is at least party true. A cancer cell is an astonishing perversion of the normal cell. Cancer is a phenomenally successful invader and colonizer in part because it exploits the very features that make us successful as a species or as an organism.

By giving cancer a human side, both through stories of his patients and through his characterization of cancer itself, Mukherjee has written a medical history that seems to have more heart than any other that I’ve read.

The Emperor of All Maladies is, as the subtitle, suggests, a biography of cancer. The book starts as a fairly traditional medical history, beginning with our first glimpses of cancer in ancient remains through our troubled and evolving medical treatments for this tricky disease. I was fascinated to learn how our treatment for this disease as evolved (or, in many cases, not evolved) since a first treatment was shown to be at least slightly effective.

But what really makes this book stand out from other medical history books is the way Mukherjee uses his experiences as an oncology fellow, working with patients battling all types of cancer, to humanize the story. The book is filled with these unexpectedly emotional and heartfelt moments where Mukherjee shows the impact cancer treatments have on patients and on the doctors administering them in what is otherwise a pretty typical narrative look at the history of medicine.

In fact, that humanizing aspect of the book extends all the way to the main character, cancer. By characterizing the book as a “biography” rather than a “history,” Mukherjee is able to extend and use his metaphor of cancer as our malevolent doppelganger through the story and show how the very practice of medicine is an ongoing and battle of wits against an enemy we’re only beginning to understand.

Add to that the fact that Mukherjee’s writing is just beautiful, and you end up with a book that manages to be educational, heartbreaking, frustrating, and interesting throughout it’s more than 500 pages. Once you get into the narrative, this book really flies along. Don’t let the length intimidate you — grab this one the next time you get a chance. I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ by Siddhartha Mukherjee is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Last week I posted a list of mini-reviews to finish out 2011 — books I read but never formally wrote about for one reason or another. One of the books I missed was Priceless by Nicole Richie, which I read as part of a series of literary dares with a dear friend in Madison.

When I was doing some blog maintenance last week, I came across an un-posted “review” that I wrote soon after finishing Priceless (Yes, I did actually read the book!). Rather than let more than 1,100 words of bitter sarcasm go to waste, I turned the review into a post over at Book Riot that went up yesterday where I talked about the Not So Great Expectations Book Club and my thoughts on reading Richie.

Here’s a brief preview, a couple of disconnected paragraphs, which I hope will entice you to click on the link and read my rant in full:

It’s hard for me to express just how low my expectations for Priceless were. I don’t like celebrities or gossip or fashion or reading about beautiful people. I just find it… annoying. And I wasn’t expecting Richie to be a Great Writer or anything. I mean, all you have to do is look at the book cover to know how this book is being sold: the name of the author is about twice as big as the title of the book. This is a book By Nicole Richie… and that’s about the best thing going for it.

…

After Charlotte leaves New York to head to New Orleans, she’s immediately taken in by the woman who cared for her when she was a child. Charlotte worries that she’s only leaving New York with $5,000… how could she possibly survive on that, even when she’s crashing on a couch for FREE? When she goes out to “find a job,” she stumbles into a vintage clothing store and is immediately befriended by one of the most popular girls in New Orleans, the daughter of a rich family in the city. That night, they get dressed up and head to a club. But, it’s different! This time they’re decked out in sweet vintage clothes instead of current designer duds. See, Charlotte is CHANGING! For the better!

I have to admit, sometimes it’s fun to be bitchy and sarcastic about a book, especially when being bitchy isn’t going to hurt this book in any serious way.

Review at Book Riot: “Priceless” by Nicole Richie is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Title: The Western Lit Survival Kit: An Irreverent Guide to the Classics, from Homer to Faulkner
Author: Sandra Newman
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2012
Acquired: From the publisher for review as part of a TLC Book Tour
Rating:

Review: Just about every English major has to take some version of a survey class as a freshman or a sophomore — a look at the major authors and works in the Western (British and American) canon. Although there are many critiques of the canon (it’s not inclusive, the author aren’t relevant, the books are boring…), the point of studying the classics as an English major is to get a good basis for where our major literary traditions came from and how they make an impact today. At least, that’s what I took from my English major.

Another good thing about a survey class is that tackling some of the major classics can make reading classic  literature seem less intimidating. I don’t especially love reading William Faulkner or T.S. Eliot, but having read them in a class where I was guided through helped make me more confident I can take on those books myself (if I feel like it, which, admittedly, isn’t that often).

For people without that background, the classics can seem intimidating, boring, or both. Sandra Newman, author of The Western Lit Survival Kit, argues that reading the classics has shifted from being an activity we do for fun to an activity with Greater Meaning and Significance:

Even people who don’t want to read the great books will read about the Great Books. In fact, reading about the Great Book is now a votive act, like buying a gym membership although you never go, or separating your recyclables before jumping in the SUV.

To combat that sense of the classics as a chore, The Western Lit Survival Kit offers a compact, stand-up comedy look at Western canon that explains why these books are important, what the books are about, and which books are worth reading and why. Covering the Romans all the way up to contemporary American authors like William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Western Lit Survival Kit is a good book to grab for a light-hearted and unpretentious look at the Great Books.

One of the things I liked most about the book was Newman’s rating system. After many of the discussions of an author or time period, Newman offers a 1 to 10 rating of the Importance, Accessibility, and Fun of each of the books she mentions. The ratings are both a useful way to decide what particular Jane Austen book you might want to grab first and a way to compare how you feel about the classics to how Newman rates them (Pride and Prejudice, for example, received a perfect score of all 10s). Being able to compare Newman’s ratings with my own scale was a really helpful feature of the book.

However, the book has a pretty uneven tone. The first few chapters are funny to the point of being exhausting. Reading it was like being at a stand-up comedian that never tells stories that lead to punchlines or pauses a minute to take a drink. Or maybe like sitting in a college class with a professor more suited for talking about the classics in a segment on The Tonight Show or The Daily Show  While that’s great for awhile, after the first chapter I had major reader fatigue. A book that is only a series of punchlines about books — even the Romans and the Greeks, which take some humor to appreciate — gets tiring.

Luckily, by the time Newman gets to the 18th Century, the English Professor comes out a bit more and the humor of the book gets balanced with a more serious (although never boring) consideration of the books and authors being covered. Newman suggests reading reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, explains Alexander Pope compellingly, and gives a good run-down of the kind of people who might want to actually read Ulysses. I really liked the book after Newman seemed to calm down, but the first part got to be a bit of a test of my reading endurance.

In the end, I think the book works best when Newman balances her academic moments with a sense of amused pragmatism, understanding that in addition to all the serious reasons one chooses to read the classics, reading should also be fun. One example of this is her aside for what she calls “The Boredom Threshold”:

It’s a curious fact that the more challenging a work of literature is, the more likely the reader is to fall asleep face down in its pages.  Conversely, even the most scornful reader of Dan Brown effortlessly stays awake through his books. One might think that when you gave your brain a lot of challenging notes to untie, it would be more engaged and fascinated than when it is announcing triumphantly that one plus one is two. Alas, that is so not the case.

Paradoxically, the most interesting works of literature are often also the most boring.  This is because, as you give you’re brain more and more things to do, the chances of giving it something it doesn’t feel like doing increases exponentially. Eventually, the grumpy brain shuts itself off, leaving you drooling into the pages of The Divine Comedy, While the brain waltzes off to have a dream about having sex with the person who lent you the copy — and who will now never sleep with you when she gets her drool-laden book, with the comment that, um, you liked page one. The brain, let’s face it, doesn’t care about us.

Do not cave in to the demands of this organ. It is only jealous because we are better-looking than it is.  Ask yourself: who is boss around here? Answer yourself: I, I am boss.Remember, if you let the brain get the upper hand, other organs may follow its lead, ultimately ending in a situation where you can’t sleep with anyone, or go to the bathroom.

Also, some day, the brain will thank you, because reading boring-interesting literature will make it faster and stronger, and more able to reference Dante when it is trying to get the upper hand on the other brains. Or, actually, the brain won’t thank you, because that’s what these ungrateful brains are like. But never mind, soon we will be able to replace them with computers, at which time, furthermore, The Divine Comedy will be a painless twenty-second download.

I like that passage because it shows both a sense of humor and a sense of understanding about how an average reader may feeling about tacking a great work of Western literature. When the punchlines get spaced out a bit, The Western Lit Survival Kit presents the classics in a way that makes them seem accessible and interesting enough to spend time reading.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Review: ‘The Western Lit Survival Kit’ by Sandra Newman is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Part of this post first appeared on Book Riot on 12/15/11 as part of my Best Books of 2011 recommendation, which you can read here.

Yesterday I posted my short list of favorite fiction reads of 2011 — The Magicians, Domestic Violets, When She Woke, The Art of Fielding, and The Imperfectionists. Today I’ve got five of my favorite nonfiction reads to share. They’re in no particular order — trying to rank them would have just been too difficult! Thoughts?

This Life is In Your Hands by Melissa Coleman

If there’s one book I’ve gushed about and tried to shove into the hands of just about everyone who asks for a memoir recommendation, it would be This Life is In Your Hands. What impressed me most about this book is the way Coleman was able to build narrative tension into the story even though she reveals the big tragedy of the book in the first chapter. Not every writer can do that, and almost none can do it as elegantly as Coleman does in this book.

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

For as much as North Korea is always in the news, I never realized how much I didn’t know about that country until I read Nothing to Envy. In this book, Demick interviews North Koreans who have defected from the country to get an insider’s look at what life is like in one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. With North Korea back in the news because of Kim Jong-Il’s death, I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I haven’t managed to write my review of this book yet, but suffice it to say I thought The Emperor of All Maladies was a fantastic read. Mukherjee manages to infuse what could be a relatively standard medical history book with the emotional heft that comes from his experiences working with cancer patients as an oncology fellow. This book is a long one, but Mukherjee’s writing is gorgeous and practically makes the pages fly by.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch

I’m willing to bet that anyone who loves to read will find something to love in Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. A chronicle of Sankovitch’s year of reading a book a day, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is a story about loving books that explores what books mean to readers and how we use the greater truths that can be found through the written word to inform our own lives. It’s a lovely read.

Big Girls Don’t Cry by Rebecca Traister

Te 2008 presidential was a fantastically interesting time to pay attention to politics, and Big Girls Don’t Cry is a fantastically interesting look back on that time. As a young, feminist journalist, Traister brings a different perspective to the subject than most other sources. If there’s any one lesson to take from the book, it’s that discussions of sex, race, and politics are — despite years of advancement for women and people of color — still complex and, often, difficult.

Favorite Nonfiction Reads of 2011 is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.

Part of this post first appeared on Book Riot on 12/15/11 as part of my Best Books of 2011 recommendation, which you can read here.

My first short list of favorite reads in 2011 — which covers everything I read this year, regardless of when it was published — was more than 25 books long. I managed to cut down my list to five fiction and five nonfiction favorites. Since I don’t think I’ll be finishing any more books this year, I’m posting my fiction picks today and nonfiction picks tomorrow. Let me know what you think!

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

As I said in my one sentence review of this book, The Magician King was fucking awesome. When I finished this book I was just giddy and couldn’t stop blabbering about it to The Boyfriend. If you like fantasy, even a little bit, I highly suggest picking up Grossman’s first book in the series, The Magicians, so you can read The Magician King.

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman

I absolutely loved reading Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman. The book is sarcastic, warm, sweet, engaging and laugh-out-loud funny throughout. Norman perfectly captures the absurdity of office life, very much like the hilarious When We Came to the End, but with a lot more affection for every character.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

I loved The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and I have a special, goofy place in my heart for The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which probably makes me the ideal reader for When She Woke. Even so, this literary mash-up uses many of the best parts of the works that inspired it to create an astute and honest look at sexual politics and personal choice in a world so close to the world we live in now it’s spooky.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Not everyone is going to fall in love with a more than 500 page book set at a small college in Wisconsin that pays homage to baseball and Moby Dick, but I was charmed by this book. Reading it was one of those immersive experiences where I fell in love with the characters, setting, and story over a long weekend of reading. I can tell this is a book I’ll go back and read again.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

I didn’t have a ton to say about The Imperfectionists when I first read it last summer, but it’s a book that’s stayed with me since I finished it. I loved the use of interconnected short stories, the setting at an international English-language newspaper, and the characters that filled each story with humor and sadness. The stories change tone quickly and kept me off balance, but in the best way possible.

Favorite Fiction Reads of 2011 is a post from: Sophisticated Dorkiness, © 2010.