Staff Top 5s of 2010

Nicole Krauss, author of the bestselling History of Love, showcases her brilliant storytelling yet again. Her artistic way of weaving a tale and the amazing characters she develops are beyond compare. It's no wonder she's featured on the New Yorker's 20 under 40 list for 2010.

Cutting for Stone is both an excellent read and a gift that keeps on giving: I've recommended this book to many, many customers — some of whom have come back to thank me personally and buy more copies as gifts. The plot travels in many diverse directions, but eventually converges to create one solid story; you'll love, laugh, hate, and cry throughout its panoramic unfolding. This is such an outstanding novel, one can only dream of an encore. 

This is a book that matters, and it pleases and succeeds on so many levels. Ruth and the Green Book is the story of a young girl and her parents who travel from their home in Chicago to visit relatives in Alabama. The book is set during the segregated 1940s, a time when it wasn't easy for a black family to find places to eat, shop, and sleep while making their way across the country. Aided by "The Negro Motorist Green Book" — a travel guide listing black-friendly businesses — the young family works together to make their journey. This is a children's picture book, but readers of any age will be uplifted by its soft images, gentle beauty, and the sense of love and community it imparts to the reader.

This novel reads like intercepted radio transmissions from the first two decades of the 20th century: a looping cacophony of coffins, cabaret, cocaine, and cryptology. Serge Carrefax hunts for meaning in minutiae and for secret messages from his dead sister, his journey carrying him to a multitude of locales: the mansion where he spent his childhood, a German spa, the trenches of the First World War, Soho séances, and Egyptian tombs. McCarthy betrays the truth that life can hold moments of flickering significance, even if they're hidden in a deluge of patternless data and doggy-style sexual encounters.

Much like the man himself, Werner Herzog's journal from the filming of Fitzcarraldo is hallucinatory and horrific, lovely and poetic all at once. This is a book about madness and obsession, about depth and illusion, about a place where nothing is as it seems. Filled with darkness and light, it's the story of a vision so contradictory and shifting it becomes life itself. I've stayed in Iquitos on the Amazon, and this is by far the most honest, accurate description of the place I've ever read. In fact, I've never read so honest a description of any place.

In Freedom, Jonathan Franzen bulldozes through the façade of the progressive, modern American family. His characters are intelligent, analytical, selfish, needy, and full of regret. They come off as unlikable, but are instead complex, realistic people choking on their freedom; each earns our sympathy as they actively poison themselves and the ones they love. Franzen's writing is intimately elaborate, offers astute observations, and, in its entirety, amounts to a tremendous achievement — clouded in gloom, but ultimately shining with hope.

With chapter headings taken from song titles (creating the most persistent mental playlist ever), a 19-year-old "slacker" protagonist, skateboard-fu, the world's most adorable disembodied head, and a wicked sense of humor, this is far from your typical young-adult paranormal novel. There's no overblown angst or family drama and no sad attempt by an adult author to emulate teen-speak. Though marketed to the YA audience, this book is far more Dresden Files than Twilight Saga. And that's a very good thing.

Award-winning novelist and master storyteller Salman Rushdie delivers once again with this enthralling fantasy novel aimed at younger readers. A follow-up to an earlier adult novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Luka and the Fire of Life follows the adventures of a young boy and his talking pets as they set off on a quest to save his father's life. So, gather the kiddies in your life and settle into a comfy chair — Luka and the Fire of Life is just the kind of engaging novel that simply begs to be read out loud. Fast paced, exciting, and written with humor, wit, and whimsy, everyone will hang on your breath as you turn the pages. Recommended for readers ages 14 and up.

Sam Steward moved between culture both high (he was a close friend of Gertrude Stein) and low (he became one of the foremost tattoo artists in the country, well before tattoos became socially acceptable, and authored several volumes of erotic fiction). He also kept detailed diaries and a "Stud File" of sexual partners, including Rudolph Valentino and Thornton Wilder. This highly readable biography gives a fascinating look into both pre-Stonewall gay culture and the mind of a man who above all else remained absolutely true to himself — no small feat at that time.

The Passage is a page-turner that grabs you from the start with its great storytelling and character development. The style of writing and portions of the plot reminded me of The Stand by Stephen King. This is the first book in a series, and I can't wait to read the next.

I love looking at history through the telescope of a particular subject, in this case, viewing the New York immigrant experience through their food. Not so very long ago, our hot dogs, bagels, and lasagna were exotic introductions to this country. Cookbooks were rare, with recipes handed down through the generations from mother to daughter. Life was arduous for a mother trying to feed her family in a fifth-floor tenement with no running water. But from the different cultures and religions of our immigrant ancestors, we have inherited a rich groaning board of ethnic foods.

Torn from the pages of MOME quarterly, this bizarre comic album takes on teen humor comics from an abstract angle, full of head-scratching laughs and razor sharp cartooning. If Mort Walker drew Jim Shaw's dreams for an Archie Comics (Japanese edition) super special, it might be half as great as this terrific book. Buy it today, wrap it around your head, make a million dollars!

I hardly ever find young-adult books whose main character is a maddeningly popular girl — the girl with the hot jock boyfriend and the fiercely close but catty top-tier friends — and yet, here one is. Before I Fall is a fantastically authentic read (verging on character study, in the way Sam and her posse grow throughout) all bundled tightly in a warm cocoon of page-turning loveliness. This YA novel is going to go places. Mark my words.

Chris Cilla's Heavy Hand is a surrealistic story that borders on the mystical. The inane banalities of everyday life are counterposed by shocking breaks with reality that are perceived by the characters as just slightly out of place. The desert motif and mythical qualities of the storyline can't help but to bring to mind the writings of Carlos Castaneda. The style is wonderfully balanced between the classic alternative graphic-novel culture of the late '60s and '70s, and yet it's evocative of the early mid-century comic artisans, while retaining something that is uniquely Cilla's own. Outstanding and challenging in equal parts without the danger of falling into postmodernist, self-aggrandizing schlock. Outstanding!

Shteyngart offers a look into the near future where technology and rampant consumerism run roughshod over compassion and culture — a lot like the present, only a little worse.

A dark Romeo and Juliet tale set in a dystopian future America where books are considered dirty and smelly, and everyone gets all their information through their apparatus (i.e., smart phone). Oh, wait, did I say the future? Sounds an awful lot like the present!

As a diehard Narniaphile and fantasy addict, I think it would have been impossible for me not to fall in love with The Magicians. Taking a page from C. S. Lewis, Grossman introduces Fillory, a charming and uncanny alternate world created by a fictional author, whose books play a role in the lives of Grossman's characters. At the same time, Grossman's Brakebills College seems a nod to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Yet, despite these allusions to children's books, this is definitely a story for adults, rife with sexual tension, deceit, and self doubt.

Nobody's perfect, but Tom Rachman comes pretty damn close with his debut novel, The Imperfectionists. Through the lives of the 11 main characters (each with their own chapter), Rachman chronicles the rise and fall of a Rome-based international newspaper, which bares a striking resemblance to his former employer, the International Herald Tribune. Gossipy and fun, yet poignant and timely, The Imperfectionists marks the arrival of a wonderful new literary talent.

Most everyone knows about DNA, the molecular double helix that contains our genetic information. But, few outside the world of biochemistry are familiar with RNA. Yet research over the past 30 years strongly suggests a primordial world of RNA-based organisms near the origin of life on Earth. Life from an RNA World offers a clear account of the latest developments in the scientific quest for the origins of life, written for interested non-specialists.

José Saramago passed away in June 2010, and The Notebook is a compilation of one year of the late Nobel Laureate's personal blog postings. Unabashedly candid, yet composed with obvious humility and a simple grace, these writings offer Saramago as engaged citizen, sincerely troubled by the apparent waning morality that characterizes our modern societies. In these brief yet extraordinarily potent essays, he wrote convincingly about torture, the violent and degrading treatment of women, world politics, war, peace, forgotten everyday heroes, film, religion, history, music, economics, books, education, culture, and other disparate topics.

I haven't enjoyed a book this much in quite some time! Set in a tiny coastal Oregon town, Mink River is populated with characters who seem to leap off the page and speak their lines directly to you. Doyle breaks all the "good writing" rules, yet this book is rich and layered, riotous and quirky, compelling you to read faster than you'd like, because you can't stand not knowing what the heck is going to happen next. Every lush sentence is a tiny jewel that you'll want to roll around on your tongue and slowly savor.

Jack Spicer is a wonderfully bizarre and enigmatic poet, whose work has been out of print for far too long. I particularly love After Lorca, but all of Spicer's work deserves to be read and celebrated.