nomadreader

The Top 14 As I sat down to make my list of favorite reads of 2011, I ended up with a top 14. Last year I lucked into a top 10 , but I also read about twenty more books this year, so that makes sense. I don't like to set an arbitrary number of titles for my Best of the Year list, so here are my favorite reads of 2011 (all are books I read in 2011, but not all were originally published in 2011.) 14. The Lover's Dictionary  by David Levithan ( my review ) A love story told through dictionary definitions sounded so interesting I had to try it, even as I doubted how it would work as a novel. It worked beautifully and brilliantly, and it was a surprisingly emotional read. 13. Untold Story  by Monica Ali ( my review ) Untold Story  was one of the titles I was most excited to read in 2011, as I adore literary fiction about real people. Monica Ali's imagination of what life would like today if Princess Diana had faked her own death was a suspenseful, character-driven n...

The backstory: When I Lived in Modern Times  won the Orange Prize in 2000. The basics: Set at the end of World War II, When I Lived in Modern Times  is the story of Eve, a young Jewish woman born and raised in London who finds herself alone in this world after the death of her mother (she has never known her father.) Her "Uncle Joe," a man her mother has had an affair with for years but who has a family of his own, encourages her to embrace her Jewishness and join the displaced persons flocking to Palestine. My thoughts: I read Linda Grant's most recent novel, We Had It So Good  ( my review ), earlier this year and loved it. I was surprised when it didn't make the Orange Prize or the Booker Prize longlist. As I read, I couldn't help comparing the two novels, even though they are quite different. There are some striking similarities, however. When I think of Linda Grant, I can't help but think of the impressive scope of these two novels. Both are well unde...

The backstory: I predicted this book would make the Orange Prize longlist this year, and even though it didn't, I was still eager to read this novel. The basics: At its simplest, We Had It So Good  is the story of Stephen, a son of immigrants in Los Angeles who takes a Rhodes scholarship. It's a family saga of sorts, even though it's only 336 pages. My thoughts: I'm a huge fan of novels that explore the paths we take in life and the journey from young adulthood through adulthood, and Linda Grant delivered a spectacular novel about Stephen's journey through life. Stephen is around the age of my parents, and I appreciated seeing key events from their lives through his experiences. Cultural events form touchstones, and in so many ways Stephen and his friends embody the hippie generation. As a U.S. reader, it was fascinating to see the similarities and differences of these events through the eyes of a man whose parents moved to the U.S. only to see him move to ...