Favourite books read in 2010

These are not necessarily published this year, but the ones I read and enjoyed, in no particular order:

1. Makers by Cory Doctorow
2. Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay
3. The Shaking Woman: A history of my nerves by Siri Hustvedt
4. Killing Time: One man's race to stop an execution by David Day
5. The City and the City by China Mieville
6. The Making of Mr Gray's Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame by Ruth Richardson
7. Ten Hail Marys by Kate Howarth
8. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
9. The Lucy Family Alphabet by Judith Lucy
10. Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals by Christopher Payne
11. Brief Lives: Gustave Flaubert by Andrew Brown
12. Baba Yaga Laid An Egg by Dubravka Ugresic
13. Otherland by Maria Tumarkin
14. How We Die by Sherwin B Nuland

and one I'm still reading

15. 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley

and three I really liked

16. The Possessed: Aventures with Russian books and the people who read them by Elif Batuman
17. A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin
18. Mr Rosenblum's List by Natasha Solomons

If I had to choose, I'd go for The City and the City as my favourite fiction for the year, and 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel tied with The Making of Mr Gray's Anatomy for non-fiction.

Review of Speaking Volumes by Ramona Koval

Ramona Koval appeared at this year’s Brisbane Writers Festival, being interviewed, along with Anna Krien, by Stephen Romei. She discussed a number of interviews included in Speaking Volumes, making mention, amongst others, of Harold Pinter and Joyce Carol Oates, for quite different reasons. She makes a fascinating interviewee, so open to whatever is asked her, and willing to sing as well – in Yiddish! Although there is no singing mentioned in the book, Koval notes that she and Saul Bellow spoke some Yiddish after their interview ended.

This collection of her interviews with writers contains a large proportion of the ones included in an earlier book, Tasting Life Twice: Conversations with Remarkable Writers, with some updates. The difference is that six of the writers in the 2005 book are not included in the later one, but are replaced by interviews with Margaret Drabble, André Brink, John Banville, Jeanette Winterson, Hanif Kureishi, Anne Enright, John le Carré and Barry Lopez.

Continued here at Transnational Literature.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month is about to start. I did participate in this one year, and did get over 50 000 words written, much to my utter surprise. That draft novel sits somewhere on my computer, and somewhere in print form, along with a lot of other stories that never again see daylight. However, it was a good 'practice' novel draft, and writing it so quickly helped me see how difficult it is to develop characters and plot in a meaningful and interesting way. I don't really think I have a (publishable) novel in me, but it was a worthwhile exercise.

I don't want to do it this year, because I actually want to write a 10 000 word essay instead. NaEssWriMo?

Review of Myths About Suicide by Thomas Joiner

Thomas Joiner's Myths about Suicide is a powerful and important book that aims to attack the stigma around suicide, to 'expose myths' and 'shatter misunderstandings' (10). In it he continues on from his first (Why People Die By Suicide, 2005) but writes with clearer expression and less unnecessary repetition, making for a stronger book and one that better succeeds in its aims.

He divides his book into three main sections after an introduction: 'The Suicidal Mind', 'Suicidal Behavior', and 'Causes, Consequences, and Subpopulations'. There are eighteen myths he deals with throughout these chapters, with discussions of other misunderstood issues included (for example, 'slow suicide', genetics, hospitalization).

As in his first book, he emphasizes the factors that must be present for a person to consider suicide. These are perceived burdensomeness (so the person believes they would benefit others more by being dead than alive), sense of low belongingness (alienation from their community), and loss of the fear of pain and death (such as by habituation to pain, hard circumstances and dangerous situations). He applies these factors to examples of cases, making them clear and understandable.

Review continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

Review of Becoming A Doctor edited by Lee Gutkind

There is a theme through these nineteen pieces by doctors and one psychologist, that of remembering the humanity of both doctors and patients. Medical students are often taught that they should keep emotionally distant from their patients, that it will help with their treatment of them, and also with their own self-preservation. But to carry this to the extreme, or to carry it to every single patient regardless of the circumstances, is that appropriate? Or even possible? What sort of person could not get involved, to some degree, with a dying patient they have cared for?

Review continued at Metapsychology Online Reviews.

The Art and the imagination:Explorations in Creative Writing by Kevin Brophy

Kevin Brophy has written two books about creative writing, Creativity: Psychoanalysis, Surrealism and Creative Writing (1998) and this one, Explorations in Creative Writing. Both of these explore areas of creativity and writing that make them decidedly different from most other books on the subject: they are not how-to books, not strictly 'inspirational', nor are they strictly 'scholarly' approaches to literature. They are truly explorations of the vastness and intimacy of creative writing, with particular emphasis on the imagination and surrealism.


Explorations is divided into three main sections: Reading Writing, Making Writing and Talking Writing. Brophy explores Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', the prose poem, gender issues, sentence-thinking, the novelisation of the poem. He gives us samples of his own short stories and poems, as well as those of others, including an excerpt of the strange but moving 'Sheep-Child' of James Dickey.


In my ignorance of this poet and this poem in particular, I sought out the complete verse, and listened to a recording of Dickey reading it. One wondrous thing that books can do is to lead you to other books and authors, and I was completely seduced by this poem I had never heard of before. Brophy introduces this piece in the context of metamorphosis and Kafka's famous story.


Brophy informs the reader in his introduction that this is a book about 'how writing gets done', and also how important reading is to a writer. He continues his references to the personal, with illustrative, and unsentimental, stories of his children and family life, particularly the birth of his first child, his daughter Sophie, in the first chapter. The openness and vulnerability of his writing here is appealing, and relevant to the process of writing in surprising ways. He writes that a 'parent is like an author whose characters have got riotously out of control - but in ways that can make the author see, briefly, what he or she is' (22).

Continued at the now-archived dotlit site.

Review of The Making of Mr Gray's Anatomy by Ruth Richardson

Art and the body

Mr Gray’s Anatomy inevitably reminded me of working as a student in the anatomy lab at university and the smell of formalin used to preserve the bodies. It permeated your white lab coat and remained in your nostrils. The bodies themselves were greyish and shrunken, and kept under plastic sheets on steel tables. Some students took to dissection with aplomb, entering competitions with skilful displays of the brachial plexus or the facial nerve. One or two found the sight of the female breast on a cadaver so disturbing they had to leave the room. Others, like me, just tried to keep up.

Read the rest at M/C Reviews 'words'.