It has been a year of blog neglect partly due to my raising a child while writing a thesis, and partly due to my uncanny goal of reading 72 books this year (the logical extension of last year's 60). This year, instead of a top ten list, I'm taking a somewhat different approach. I read or reread many excellent books (including old favourites like Charlotte's Web, the first three Potters and my all-time favourite novel The Master and Margarita) so a top ten list would be complicated prospect; how to strike a balance between all-time greats and interesting new recommendations? I also found that my emphasis on quantity resulted in my being a tad less discerning than I might otherwise have been. I was biased toward shorter books. I read hundred-page classics like Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men and The Old Man and the Sea, and ended up reading a disproportionate number of young adult and children's novels (62%). I did maintain a degree of diversity with regard to publication date; I read books from nearly every decade since the 1810s, with a slight bias (11%) toward the 1980s for some reason. But in terms of gender and nationality I was unintentionally biased toward authors who are male (65%) and either American (51%) or British (40%). Next year I'm going to prioritize quality and diversity over quantity and brevity. Any recommendations would be warmly welcomed.
So without further ado, and in no particular order, here is my "Not Exactly Top Ten List" of books read in 2016: The Good, the Great and the Surprisingly Disappointing.
10. Son, Lois Lowry (2012). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ I'm a bit embarrassed to say I only discovered Lois Lowry this year. The Giver is a modern classic, and the first two of its three sequels (Gathering Blue and Messenger) are good. The fourth book in the series, however, stands out as my favourite. I admit it's a bit impolite to begin a list of book recommendations with the last in a series, but hopefully this will serve as an incentive to read it through to the end. My only criticisms of The Giver (besides its film adaptation) were that the supernatural element shows up unexpectedly and seems out of place, and the emotions are blunted (intentionally so, but it still makes for tiresome reading at points). This isn't the case with Son. The supernatural element has been well established in the previous instalments, and the emotions are raw and powerful.
Son begins in the same society and around the same time as The Giver, and so offers another visit to and another perspective on Lowry's dystopia. It is the story of of Claire, a 'birth mother' (a woman assigned to the thankless job of producing children in this meticulously programmed community) who defies the rules of her society by learning the identity of and forming an emotional attachment to her infant son. It's possible that this book resonated with me so much because when I read it my own son was approaching his first birthday, and the emotional framework of the novel is based on a parent's attempt to understand and act upon her love for her son in a society where such feelings and such actions are forbidden. Claire risks everything and goes to extreme lengths, travelling through a frightening and fragmented future world in order to reconnect with a child who never knew her. Lowry, whose son Grey died in a plane accident in 1995, touches on some profound universal themes here. I would recommend it to anyone who has children (or parents).
9. Soccer Empire, Laurent Dubois (2010). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Dubois is an established historian of Haiti and the French Caribbean, but he took a break from his 'day job' to write this history of the French colonial empire through the lens of the French national football team. The famously diverse roster serves as a perfect springboard for an examination of the extent of French presence around the world: from Bernard Lama’s French Guiana and Lilian Thuram’s Guadeloupe, to Zinedine Zidane’s Algeria and Patrick Vieira’s Senegal, to Christian Karembeu’s New Caledonia in the south Pacific. Dubois weaves together the players’ individual biographies with the histories of different regions of the French Empire.
Beyond a work of history and sports trivia, though, Dubois also offers a perspective on the legacy of colonialism in French society. French nationalism has often been tied to an ethnic idea of 'Frenchness.' For many, to be French is to be of French heritage, and consequently the status of immigrants in French society has always been somewhat tenuous. Sports are an interesting locus for this conflict, as some of the most celebrated French athletes are of colonial extraction. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National famously complained in 1996 that the team was made up of 'foreigners' and 'fake Frenchmen'—even though every member of the team was a French citizen. As Dubois sees it, the diverse national football team offers an alternate conception of French identity. Specifically, he describes how the team's World Cup victory at home in 1998 was a moment of national celebration which forced the country to reimagine what it means to be French. To participate in the celebrations one had to accept that the team—made up of players with roots in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific—was truly representative of French society. For a fleeting moment the nation considered "what it might mean to live in a very different world—one in which France was at ease with itself in all its diversity, accepting of its global past and multicolored future." This book comes highly recommended to anyone with an interest in sports, intercultural relations and the ongoing effects of European colonialism.
8. The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (1900). ⭐︎ Given that it is the basis of one of the most celebrated films of all time, I thought this book would at least be interesting. But in the context of the many excellent novels for children I read this year, L. Frank Baum's story of homesickness, magic, and talking creatures was a major letdown. The first warning signs appeared in Baum's brief introduction to the work. In typical turn-of-the-century-American fashion, he states that "the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident. [...] The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [...] aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." In other words, Baum thought he knew better than all children throughout all of history.
In striving purely for entertainment Baum stripped the work of any entertainment value. What's the point of wonderment and joy if they are not grounded in real human emotions, moral questions and an interesting story? The book is a seemingly endless cavalcade of meaningless encounters, repetitive anecdotes, bizarre violence, and simplistic problems with equally simplistic solutions. The most interesting thing about reading it was considering the differences between the book and its far superior Hollywood adaptation—a rare enough scenario. The Library of Congress has named the book and its sequels "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairy tale," but thankfully Baum didn't have the final word in modern children's fantasy. Thankfully, his contemporaries like George MacDonald were willing to respect the ability of children to appreciate quality literature. Speaking of George MacDonald...
7. The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald (1872). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ This year I read books by several beloved authors with letters for names: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit G. K. Chesterton and (for the sake of consistency) M. L'Engle. Besides their alphabetical noms de plume they have something else in common: they each acknowledged a literary debt to George MacDonald. The Princess and the Goblin is one of MacDonald's best-loved works, a novel that Chesterton referred to as "a book that has made a difference to my whole existence." This is what children's literature should be.
Like The Wizard of Oz, the novel follows a young girl on a perilous adventure, but unlike Baum's story it doesn't rely on an endless stream of new settings and new characters and new situations in order to keep the reader's interest. It takes place on a mountain. Good literature can take place on a mountain. While Dorothy Gale wanders from place to place encountering obstacles and overcoming them, generally with little effort, Princess Irene stays within a stone's throw of her front door, yet she faces challenges far more interesting and nuanced than those in the Land of Oz. MacDonald's twist on the fairy story resides in the fact that you don't have to travel to faraway lands to find adventure—magic and wonderment are waiting right outside your door or up that poorly-lit staircase. Similarly, while Baum tried to rid his work of moralizing, MacDonald's characters face complicated decisions, and he allows them to make the wrong choice. It isn't the terror-inducing moral fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm that Baum was so set on replacing, but neither is it the 'only entertainment' stories that Baum proposed as their successor. It is the morality of everyday life. The Princess and the Goblin is at once wonderful and recognizable, magical and real. MacDonald is considered to be a bridge between traditional fairy tales and the modern fantasy genre, so his works are worth reading for their literary-historical significance alone. It is an added bonus that they're also a pleasure to read.
6. Going Solo, Roald Dahl (1986). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Last year I gave a nod to a lesser known work by everyone's favourite Norwegian-Welsh-fighter-pilot-turned-children's-novelist, Roald Dahl, by recommending the short story collection Henry Sugar and Six More. This year I thought I'd keep it going by reviewing the second half of Dahl's autobiography. The first instalment, Boy, mostly focuses on Dahl's traumatic experiences in English boarding school's, while Going Solo deals with his comparably traumatic experience as a fighter pilot in the Second World War. It was fascinating to hear about the War from Dahl's perspective; in addition to simply being a firsthand account by a great writer, his story reveals both the scope and the impromptu nature of the conflict. In 1939, Dahl was working in British Kenya for Shell Petroleum. When war was declared he was automatically made lieutenant, given control a native platoon, and tasked with rounding up Germans in the colony. He was twenty-three years old. The conflicting excitement and terror are palpable in Dahl's account. Then, as if on a whim, Dahl volunteers as a fighter pilot.
I had the happy coincidence of reading Going Solo simultaneously with Bill Bryson's One Summer, which talks at length about the origins and haphazard nature of aviation in the interwar period. Before there was any semblance of regulation in the industry, hobby aviators could build planes in their garages and anyone in the street could become a pilot. Thousands of foolhardy young men (and more than a few women) risked their lives in the hopes of achieving the unprecedented degree of celebrity that could be attained by feats of aviation. Many perished in the process. In Dahl's account, there is the impression that he was driven to volunteer by a sense of adventure rather than some sort of patriotic obligation. By the time he reports for duty in Greece (after being sidetracked by crash landing in the Sahara and spending months recovering in a hospital in Egypt) it is too late to change his mind. To desert would be treason, punishable by death. All he can do is take orders and try to stay alive. This transition from idealistic adventurer to terrified cog in the military machine was an all too common occurence, and it is worth reading about it as articulated by a master storyteller like Dahl.
5. The Chrysalids, John Wyndham (1955). ⭐︎⭐︎ Spoiler warning. I liked this book a lot until about 3/4 of the way through. From the first, it seems as if it's leading to a conclusion that affirms the diversity of humankind. In a world where all deviations are deemed blasphemies and rooted out, the protagonist, David, meets a young girl with six toes. As shocking as the discovery is, David is even more surprised to find that the girl seems just like everyone else: "She was simply an ordinary little girl—if a great deal more sensible and braver than most." He starts to have doubts about the things he has been taught his whole life—that humans are created in God's image and any variation on that image, no matter how small, is to be shunned and eliminated. Okay. Seems like a pretty typical post-apocalyptic story. Seems like I know where this is going.
But then suddenly the story takes a turn and ends up coming to an opposite and unsettling conclusion. It is disclosed that David and his friends are also 'mutants,' as they can communicate via telepathy. With the protagonist at risk, the threat of ostracism or worse becomes real. Clearly the solution is a fundamental change in the society's way of thinking. But then, after taking 150 pages to explain that even people with six toes and telepathy are, in fact, people, the author decides that one type of person is essentially better. A perfect, idealized woman shows up from a faraway, futuristic and enlightened society (New Zealand, obviously) to rescue David and his telepathic friends. She starts saying things like "In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind we cannot tolerate their obstruction," and "ours is a superior variant," and "it is not pleasant to kill any creature, but to pretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception." A little too eugenic for my taste. I'll stick with The Day of the Triffids (which, incidentally, was #1 on my top ten list for last year).
4. Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo (2000). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Of all the books I read this year this one was the most pleasantly surprising. I really didn't know anything about it. I assumed it took place in the South and I thought it was about a horse maybe (I guess I hadn't looked at the cover). Honestly, I had no interest in reading it. But my wife recommended it, and I loved it. As it turns out, my surpassed expectations were appropriate, as this is one of the central themes of the book. The protagonist, a ten-year-old girl called Opal, is constantly surprised when she gets to know people who end up being totally different than she imagined. A familiar story, it's true. But one that is worth revisiting often. With the help of a stray dog, the titular Winn-Dixie, Opal adjusts to her life in a new town, and because of Winn-Dixie a ragtag cast of broken people find joy and acceptance in each other's company. The story is quite simple, but the characters are relatable and it is told with much heart. 
3. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas (2011). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ I was always intrigued by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All I knew about him was that he was a theologian who was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I assumed that the events that led a pastor and a pacifist to become embroiled in a conspiracy to murder the head of state must be interesting in and of themselves. His life story is undoubtedly fascinating. Rarely has history placed a more principled person in a more morally convoluted context. The fact that Bonhoeffer had the literary capacity and lucidity of thought to articulate and print his perpectives on his historical context is to the world's benefit. One can't help but wonder what he would have contributed to post-war dialogues if only he had outlived the War.
But this biography is about more than just an incredible person. It offers a thorough look at religious life in Nazi Germany. Metaxas covers a whole spectrum of religiosity in the Third Reich: from the racist neo-pagan mysticism of Nazi officials like Heinrich Himmler, to the state-sanctioned Nazi-ideology-imbued religion of the Deutsche Christen (who tried to purge Christianity of its Jewish elements), to the Confessing Church of Bonhoeffer and others, who opposed the Nazis' interference in religious matters. The Confessing Church didn't take an official political stance against Hitler, but many of its members, like Bonhoeffer, did. I've studied the Second World War as much any non-European historian, but I encountered so much in this book that I had never come across before. I've read many biographies, and because of the moral extremes that defined Bonhoeffer's life and his world, this one was one of the best.
2. Stuart Little, E. B. White (1945). ⭐︎⭐︎ Spoiler warning. I read all three of E. B. White's novels this year. I'm sure I read Charlotte's Web growing up, but this year I had the pleasure of experiencing it as a read-by-the-author audiobook. Despite missing out on Garth William's iconic illustrations, it was a real treat to hear this superb classic read by White in his Mr. Rogers-esque voice. His characterizations of the stammering geese and the roguish rat Templeton alone are worth the listen. With its idyllic depictions of nature, the ambiguous understanding between Fern and the animals, and its poignant theme of the changing seasons of life, Charlotte's Web has become one of my favourite children's novels. Consequently, I was keen to see what else White had to offer. I was expecting great things from Stuart Little, but was surprisingly disappointed. It starts off promising enough, with the birth of the Littles' second child, who, with no explanation, "looked very much like a mouse in every way." The Littles opt to raise Stuart like an ordinary child leading to an interesting series of inventions and events in their New York City household.
These parameters would have been enough for a great story. Little mouse in the Big City. But about halfway through, the author seems to have decided he needed some sort of plot, and then things falls apart. Stuart befriends a bird named Margalo who then flies away when she finds out a neighbourhood cat is planning to eat her. Stuart decides to go on an adventure in search of his friend. He borrows a working model car (which, without explanation, is able to turn invisible—a function that Stuart opts not to use). Stuart goes through a series of mildly entertaining but entirely unrelated episodes—he is briefly a schoolteacher, and then tries to woo a human girl who (without explanation) is two inches high, totally forgetting about his search for Margalo. There are some lovely bits of descriptive prose, but overall the whole second half is sloppy. And then, as if White ran up against a deadline, it ends. The well-crafted symmetry of Charlotte's Web is totally absent. Incidentally, White's third and final novel, The Trumpet of the Swan, is worth the read. It's no Charlotte, but hardly anything is.
1. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (posthumously, 1967). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Every now and then you'll read something and you'll think 'I never knew literature could be like this!' For my wife it was Thackeray's Vanity Fair. For my son it was Boynton's Your Personal Penguin. For me, without question, it is Bulgakov's magnum opus The Master and Margarita. The first time I finished reading it I went through a period of literary withdrawal. I couldn't read anything for weeks. This was the end of literature, I thought. Nothing else could compare. Fortunately I got on with my life, but not before deciding I would reread The Master. Often. I reread it this year and its position at the top of my list of favourite novels was reaffirmed.
Like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, there were so many forces working against this novel that it really shouldn't exist, let alone be so exceptional. The author wrote it over the course of twelve years (from 1928 all the way to his deathbed in 1940). He wrote it in a place and time when writers and intellectuals were routinely executed or exiled for criticizing the Soviet establishment. He had already been banned from publishing, and only survived the era—unlike many of his peers he died of natural causes—because Stalin himself intervened on his behalf. Committed to his art, writing clandestinely for years, Bulgakov burnt an early version of the novel, and when he died in 1940 he told his wife to hide the (nearly) finished manuscript. It wasn't published until seventeen years after his death.
In countries that are more or less 'free'—in effective democracies, for instance—people write dystopian stories to imagine and warn against worst case scenarios. Indeed, the Huxleys, the Bradburys and the Lowrys enjoy freedom of expression which allows them the luxury of condemning any inkling of authoritarian activity in their own society by inflating it in fiction. Conversely, in places where the worst case scenario has already come about, in Stalin's USSR at the time of the Great Purges for instance, writing dystopian fiction would be redundant, not to mention dangerous. Those interested in using fiction to criticize their society instead must turn to subversive literature. Anyone can write a dystopian story. It takes a genius to produce an enduring work of subversive literature from within the context of a real-life dystopia. The Master and Margarita is subversive literature at its most refined.
The novel follows three interconnected plots, each of which would have sent Stalin into fits of alternating hysterics and rage. The first concerns the Devil and his entourage (including a giant foul-mouthed cat who drinks vodka and carries a pistol) as they pay a visit to contemporary Moscow and cause havoc. The second is the tragic love story of the two titular characters. The Master is a novelist who, after his career is destroyed by the intellectual climate of the Soviet Union, is reduced to a spectre himself, abandons his beloved Margarita, and checks into a mental hospital (where he encounters several victims of the aforementioned nefarious mob running amok in the city). The third story appears as chapters of the very novel that triggered the Master's demise. It is an ultra-realist (and not particularly scriptural) account of the encounter between Pontius Pilate (the fifth Procurator of Judea) and Jesus of Nazareth (or, Yeshua ha-Nostri).
Each of the stories is a direct challenge to the stifling ideology and oppressive practices of Stalin's USSR. But it isn't Bulgakov's politics that make the work so enduring. He was not, in fact, particularly political. He was committed to art, and he objected to the restricted role and character of acceptable literature in Soviet society. At the same time, he loved Russia. The work is also valuable for its insight on the vibrance and diversity of life in the the Soviet Union—a place that is often depicted as bleakness itself. If he is political, it is the politics of an artist who just wants to do art. The book dares to pose a question about a more universal conception of literature, and then serves as the answer to the question. It is literature about literature. It is a blacklisted novel about the blacklisting of novels. It's as if he's saying 'Look what I can do! Why won't you let me do it?" It's that scene from The Pianist where Adrien Brody is hiding from the Nazis in an abandoned apartment. As if to mock him, an established concert pianist, the apartment has a piano. At one point he sits down plays the "Moonlight Sonata"—but his fingers never actually touch the keys. Thankfully, seventeen years after his death, Bulgakov's fingers touched the keys.
I could continue, but I'm really not doing it justice. Ultimately, The Master and Margarita defies description. It is so many things at once. One Russian-American novelist said that trying to explain Bulgakov's masterpiece "is like explaining what one cherishes about someone with whom one is in love." To adequately explain the novel I would have to write another novel. But who wants to read that? You should just read the original and see for yourself.
Okay. That's it. Thanks for reading. I wish you another year of well earned paper cuts, makeshift bookmarks and literary discoveries. Let me know how it goes.
