Best of 2008

voila! My top 8 of 2008.

I've left out the all too obvious winners - namely anything by George Orwell, Khaled Hosseini and Zadie Smith - but the books below all represent reads that had me looking forward to my 5.30am wake-up so that I could get on the bus and stick my nose in book for a couple hours. I unequivocally recommend them all:

1. Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This book sucked the life out of me, largely because I read it right after A Thousand Splendid Suns and no one should subject themselves to such emotional upheaval. In spite of this, I loved it. Set in the midst of the Nigerian civil war and the ensuing famine, it tells the story of two successful grown sisters and their relationships, one with a national civil activist, and the other with a passive British journalist.

2. The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud
Twenty-somethings struggling to find their identities in New York City. Call it cliché, but I’ll read anything that can be described in those words – as long as it’s not written by Candace Bushnell. Fortunately this was also beautifully written and geniusly set in the sweltering summer and fall of 2001. Yeah, THAT fall.

3. Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy
It’s dark and nobody gets a happy ending, but it’s set in a fictional representation of Oxford and perfectly describes what it’s like to be in Oxford, but not IN Oxford. Thomas Hardy understood the best and worst of human nature – and wasn’t afraid to write it even in an oppressively moralistic time.

4. An Utterly Impartial History of Britain; or 2000 Years of Upper Class Idiots in Charge, by John O'Farrell
Maybe the name is a giveaway, but this was a long read. But also incredibly funny. After 2.5 years in the UK I was sufficiently armed to grasp the regional humour (which had me suppressing giggles every day on the bus), but I was still surprised at all the good stuff I didn’t know about Brit history.

5. Jane Austen: A Life, by Claire Tomalin
I’m new to non-fiction, so when I read it, it better be funny (see book #4) but this biography pulled me in and gave me new respect and sympathy for one of my favourite authors.

6. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Thank-you Trevor Meier for leaving this at our house when you visited last. I thought I hated science-fiction, but I read this book in two riveting days. It’s about a bunch of 8-year-old whiz kids who are monitored from birth and trained from toddlers to be space-war heroes. Totally changes the way you think about which way is up… literally and figuratively.

7. A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, by Marina Lewycka
I chose this off the thrift store shelf as a light read for a heavy week. But I smiled the whole way through. About a crotchety (but horny) old man who marries an abusive/useless bleached-blonde bombshell from Ukraine to secure her UK visa, and the response from his college-professor-daughter.

8. Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt
This didn’t win a Pulitzer for nuthin. It’s the story of Frank McCourt’s childhood, moving from Brooklyn, back to Limerick, where his father proceeded to drink every penny of the dole, and oh yah, pretty much everyone dies. Yup, it’s another heartbreaker, but at the core it’s an inspiring all-American-Irish/Horatio Alger tale about a little kid who decides he doesn’t want to pick coal off the streets for the rest of his life and makes something of himself.