One of the best books I've read in the last 6 months is . .

[blind_school]

A boarding school memoir called Stand Before Your God by Paul Watkins. Watkins was born in RI, sent to the Dragon boarding school at age six in England and later to Eton College. He only saw his family at Christmas, Easter and for a month in the Summer a great read.

[Bromfield]

Thanks for the link to the mystery website. It’s great! I just finished Michael Connolly’s new book–The Brass Verdict. Loved it. Harry Bosch and the defense lawyer from The Lincoln Lawyer get together in this book.

[padad]

“A boarding school memoir called Stand Before Your God by Paul Watkins. Watkins was born in RI, sent to the Dragon boarding school at age six in England and later to Eton College. He only saw his family at Christmas, Easter and for a month in the Summer a great read”

that is like reliving a nightmare with nostalgia.

[blind_school]

In the book he learns to love his school in England. He says you have to start as young as possible in the UK system or you will never get adjusted to there way of life.

[momomom]

My book group just read “Dreams From My Father” in honor of our new president. It is an insightful memoir of his life from early childhood to adulthood. Extremely readable!

[padad]

“In the book he learns to love his school in England”

Stockholm Syndrome?

[epistrophy]

[National</a> Book Award Winners Are Honored in N.Y. - washingtonpost.com](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111904636.html?hpid=moreheadlines]National”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/19/AR2008111904636.html?hpid=moreheadlines)

“Hemings Saga Wins National Book Prize
Matthiessen Trilogy Takes Fiction Award”

Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for nonfiction Wednesday night for “The Hemingses of Monticello,” her multigenerational portrait of a family once lost to American history.

Accepting the award, Gordon-Reed spoke of “the journey that black people in this country have been on” since the Hemingses were owned by Thomas Jefferson. Referring to the election of Barack Obama, she added that all of America is “on a great journey now.”

Peter Matthiessen won the fiction award for perhaps the most unusual of the evening’s nominated books. “Shadow Country” is a heavily reworked, 900-page version of three linked novels Matthiessen published in the 1990s based on the life of the legendary Florida pioneer, murderer and murder victim Edgar J. Watson.

“This book was quite a trial for everybody, including me,” Matthiessen said. “It took me 30 years to pull together.” He hadn’t prepared any remarks, he said, because he worried what he’d do with that “pathetic little speech” in his pocket if he didn’t win.

Mark Doty won the poetry award for “Fire to Fire.” Judy Blundell took the young people’s literature award for “What I Saw and How I Lied.”

The nonfiction finalists included historian and Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust for “This Republic of Suffering,” Washington-based New Yorker staff writer Jane Mayer for “The Dark Side,” Jim Sheeler for “Final Salute” and Joan Wickersham for “The Suicide Index.”

The other fiction finalists were Aleksandar Hemon for “The Lazarus Project,” Rachel Kushner for “Telex From Cuba,” Marilynne Robinson for “Home” and Salvatore Scibona for “The End.” Kushner’s and Scibona’s novels were their first.

The awards dinner changed venue this year, to the grand Greek revival ballroom at Cipriani Wall Street, in a building that formerly housed both the New York Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the National City Bank. Given what’s happening down the street at the current Exchange, with the Dow dropping below 8,000 just a few hours before, the pre-dinner chatter kept cycling around to the economy.

"It’s like you pick up a newspaper and the headline is ‘Confederates Fire on Fort Sumter,’ " said Faust’s husband, Charles Rosenberg, using a historical allusion appropriate to his wife’s Civil War specialty.

“Pretty soon all banks will be restaurants,” Grove/Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin said jokingly, going on to say that right now, “I’d rather be in the book business than the banking business – but not by much.”

“Are we hearing the string quartet playing on the deck of the Titanic yet?” Public Affairs Executive Editor Clive Priddle asked.

But there was hope.

“Compared to the world around us, where everyone cannot see the bottom,” said Priddle’s Public Affairs colleague Peter Osnos, “publishers are in a space that they recognize.” And hey, unlike other media, “we don’t have advertising to lose, and we don’t have subscribers.”

And there was hopeful talk of Obama as well.

Master of ceremonies Eric Bogosian spoke of the president-elect as both a reader and a writer, which he called “great news for everyone here tonight” – to sustained applause.

Gordon-Reed said she had been asked repeatedly about the possibility of Obama’s election as she toured for “The Hemingses of Monticello.” She’s still amazed at the Nov. 4 results. “I’m writing about this era when blacks were totally out of civil society – which was not that long ago,” she said. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Gordon-Reed said she’s been a Thomas Jefferson buff since third grade but didn’t learn about Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings until a few years later, when she got hold of a copy of Winthrop Jordan’s “White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812” – which sparked her life’s work.

In poetry, the other finalists were Frank Bidart (“Watching the Spring Festival”), Reginald Gibbons (“Creatures of the Day”), Richard Howard (“Without Saying”) and Patricia Smith (“Blood Dazzler”).

Finalists in young people’s literature included Laurie Halse Anderson (“Chains”), Kathi Appelt (“The Underneath”), E. Lockhart (“The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks”) and Tim Tharp (“The Spectacular Now”).

Maxine Hong Kingston, groundbreaking author of “The Woman Warrior” and “China Men,” accepted a medal for “distinguished contribution to American letters.” Legendary Grove Press publisher Barney Rosset, who fought and won court battles in the 1950s and '60s for the right to publish D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller, was honored for “outstanding service to the American literary community.”

“It’s an additional privilege to receive this award,” Rosset said, at a time when, “in the midst of a prevailing economic, moral and environmental sense of doom, a dynamic leader has appeared.” And it makes him optimistic about the book business as well.

“Perhaps publishing, that grand, battered and essential institution that I’ve worked in for more than half a century, will go through a similar renewal,” he said.

[epistrophy]

P.S. I think the story of fiction finalist Aleksandar Hemon – his life and career – has to be one of the more interesting and inspiring around.

[The</a> Unforgotten: Books: The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/07/28/080728crbo_books_wood]The”>The Unforgotten | The New Yorker)

[Aleksandar</a> Hemon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandar_Hemon]Aleksandar”>Aleksandar Hemon - Wikipedia)

[The</a> Lazarus Project - by Aleksandar Hemon](<a href=“http://www.aleksandarhemon.com/]The”>http://www.aleksandarhemon.com/)

(My older son’s fiction class, which I’ve mentioned here a couple times recently, just read one of Hemon’s earlier books, The Question of Bruno.)

[epistrophy]

More re Louisa May Alcott (who came up here a little while ago):

[Louisa</a> May Alcott, 1832-1888: She Wrote Her First Book at the Age of 16](<a href=“http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2008-05/2008-05-31-voa1.cfm?CFID=67996484&CFTOKEN=65287691]Louisa”>http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/archive/2008-05/2008-05-31-voa1.cfm?CFID=67996484&CFTOKEN=65287691)

(Imagine that: Wrote her first book at 16 and didn’t do it just to impress the admissions folks at some fancy college – what an innocent time.)

[overseas]

Here are some more teen authors! They go like crazy in my library. [InfoSoup</a> Booklist - Books by Teens for Teens](<a href=“http://info.infosoup.org/lists/byteenforteens.asp?BooklistID=95]InfoSoup”>http://info.infosoup.org/lists/byteenforteens.asp?BooklistID=95)

[padad]

I am so glad to hear that Maxine Hong Kingston is recognized again this year. I have always felt that she has a chance for a major international prize.

Her novels appear to carry on the tradition and style of Chinese novelists who wrote in the very early twenty century, in particular Loa She. I have no reason to think that she has read them extensively or had been influenced by them since so few are available in English. Perhaps it simply illustrates the point that not only that “there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves” (Willa Cather) but also in the ways that these stories are told.

I haven’t given up that the Nobel Foundation will recognize her one day.

[epistrophy]

Miscellaneous thoughts re literary critic (and Harvard professor) James Wood (currently chief fiction critic at the New Yorker), literary criticism generally, fiction generally, etc.:

[How</a> Wood Works: The Riches and Limits of James Wood](<a href=“http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081208/deresiewicz/single]How”>http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081208/deresiewicz/single)

<hr>

Not long ago someone mentioned Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses. I’ve now just about finished it myself. And it’s one of the more deeply intimate and mysterious and haunting novels I’ve read in a while.

A man in his 60s, living in Norway (Petterson is Norwegian), moves by himself to a cabin in a rural, wooded area near the Swedish border, intending to stay there for the rest of his life. (And if that makes you want to head for the door right there, well, there are lots of other books to read, right?) Bit by bit, he recounts experiences from earlier in his life. The past, no matter how distant it might seem in purely chronological terms, is always hovering right nearby.

The prose (in this translation) is spare, taut, and emotionally evocative. Like many of the best novels, this one offers experiences that simply cannot be had anywhere else.

Among the many admirers of this book are Amy Tan (who says she “finished [it] with an exhalation of awe”), Richard Ford, and Anne Tyler (who called it her favorite book of 2007: [Writers</a> and other cultural figures choose their favourite books of 2007 | Books | The Observer](<a href=“http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/25/bestbooksoftheyear.bestbooks]Writers”>Writers and other cultural figures choose their favourite books of 2007 | Books | The Observer)). The New York Times named it one of the 10 best books of 2007. <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/books/review/10-best-2007.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=out%20stealing%20horses&st=cse[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/books/review/10-best-2007.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=out%20stealing%20horses&st=cse&lt;/a&gt;

[Amazon.com:</a> Out Stealing Horses: A Novel: Per Petterson, Anne Born: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Out-Stealing-Horses-Per-Petterson/dp/0312427085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227560583&sr=1-1]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Out-Stealing-Horses-Per-Petterson/dp/0312427085/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227560583&sr=1-1)

[SuNa]

Dear CC parents, for the past fifteen or so years, I’ve been including a “best books” list in my annual holiday letter. Here are this year’s winners:

The Best Day The Worst Day, Donald Hall: sad, satisfying memoir by a poet laureate
The Birthday Party, Stanley Alpert: gripping true story about crime and
punishment
Olive Kitteredge, Elizabeth Strout: short stories about a flawed, influential woman
in a New England town
Dreams from my Father: definitely worth a close read.
Dancing with Rose, Lauren Kessler: uplifting book about Alzheimer’s with ideas
baby boomers should begin thinking about now.

I hope one or more of these books strikes your fancy. Have a great holiday season.

[Booklady]

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (translated from the French). This is a charming and wonderfully written novel about a concierge in an upscale Parisian apartment building, a 12-year-old girl who lives in the building and is thinking of burning it down, and a new tenant who moves in and the impact he has on them both. It’s not quite like anything else I’ve ever read, and I loved it.

[oregonianmom]

I just finished The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. It’s about a part of U.S. history that I hadn’t really been too aware of: the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s in the high plains. Wow! Highly recommended reading.

[CBBBlinker]

Just finished “The Bone People” by Keri Hulme. Very engaging, although a slightly difficult read. Takes place in New Zealand; interwoven with myths and culture of the Maori people.

[epistrophy]

[PW’s</a> Best Books of the Year - 11/3/2008 - Publishers Weekly](<a href=“/404”>/404)

[Best</a> Books of 2008 : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96539642]Best”>Best Books of 2008 : NPR)

[www.kansascity.com</a> | 11/22/2008 | Noteworthy Books 2008: 10 panelists, 10 books each](<a href=“http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/story/901141.html]www.kansascity.com”>http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/books/story/901141.html)

[overseas]

Thanks, Epistrophy…I am putting finishing touches on an order!

[ebeeeee]

I just finished The American Wife. Loosely based on Laura Bush. Longish book but I was pretty captivated by it. It’s a good read.

[wbow]

i haven’t read as much lately.

i did read through testimony by anita shreeve. i enjoyed it–as a mom of two boys, it was one that made you think about having another discussion with my sons!