Nothing but the Start

Looking for some book recommendations?

I’ve asked people whom I know to be avid readers for the title of ONE book which they read in 2011 that made an impression on them – ie gave them a new perspective, was enjoyable to get lost in, or difficult to slog through yet difficult to forget. It could be a classic novel, science fiction, biography, business, self help, you name it – and, while some of the same titles popped up again and again, the results are various.

Many people tried to sneak in a second favorite – or two or three. (It didn’t work, I can count – even in Spanish!) Luckily for some (myself included), runners-up were the number one choice of others. One book does deserve special mention though, being included in so many people’s second breath: Jennifer Eagan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad.

I may never own a kindle. I may never walk down the street reading a novel from a thin slice of a tablet (really, I have seen people do this.) I may always board planes with a carry-on that is heavier than my checked baggage because it is filled with books and actual hold-in-your-hand magazines.

That’s what makes me love the list below. It’s a bit like walking into a room with floor to ceiling bookcases just to stare at the bindings.

May this list give you reading inspiration for the New Year!

Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
David Benioff, City of Thieves
Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy
John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
Patrick DeWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Robert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly, All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
Debbie Ford, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
Ian Frazier, Travels in Siberia
Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance
Jennifer Haigh, Faith
John Irving, The Cider House Rules
John Irving, The World According to Garp
Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Shaun Johnson, The Native Commissioner
Brad Kessler, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
Barbara Kingsolver, Lacuna
Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love
Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
Steve Martin, An Object of Beauty
David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
JD Salinger, Nine Stories
Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, De Kooning: An American Master
Rabindranath Tagore, The Hungry Stones and Other Stories
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
John Updike, Rabbit, Run
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

For more, check out the Best Books Read in 2010 list.

One year – to the chagrin and some horror of people who know me well enough to not have chagrin or horror at such a thing – I stayed home on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t go to any parties, I didn’t go out to dinner, I didn’t even watch that car wreck of a ball drop. I may have even gone to bed BEFORE the clock clicked midnight.

The next morning, quite pleased with myself, I jump out of bed: It’s a new year! It snowed two feet last night! The world is for the taking! I donned my boots and set forth into this beautiful new existence that comes with the first day of a new year.

It turns out, the New Year was closed.

Not only did every house on the block belong to a bankrupt film set, but the streets were unploughed, the sidewalks yet uncovered. I walked. I drank in the solitary beauty of a world in which everyone is asleep. And then my marvel turned paranoia and I needed reassurance that I was in Massachusetts and not a twilight zone.

Luckily, Porter Square Books, a delightfully independent store with good books and good coffee and good food was actually open – and the person who took my coffee order did not seem vexed that my arrival validated her need to work so early on New Year’s day.

And finally, here’s my point. (A point to bringing up wintry New England from a Madrid-based computer in May? Yes.) The point is that New Year’s Day in Boston* is like every Sunday in Madrid.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still. Many of us in the United States use our weekends to get things done. “Doing errands” is a true American pastime. And so, a culture shock for an American in Madrid is the inability to do anything that resembles an errand after 2pm on Saturday and anytime at all on Sunday.

This scenario is armed with a plethora of positives. In Spain, one is forced to slow down on Sunday, those with family in the area (and that would be many) spend their afternoon together, there is plenty of time to sit at a sunny terraza with a drink and the world’s best potato chip. There is time to just be. I’d say that’s rather good for the soul, wouldn’t you?

For me, Sunday bestows the time to attempt at shaping these words into some coherent form. And yet, make no mistake that as I write this, my dry cleaning remains uncollected for the second week in a row, my refrigerator is resolutely bare, my shoes need cobbling, and there are a million odds and ends that I need to do and buy but cannot. I cannot because it is also Sunday for the people who work in those stores.

And so, Sundays in Madrid – while there is still plenty to do (lest the Spanish tourism office take offense) – are delightfully quiet. And they often remind me of that New Year’s Day in Boston when I had the world to myself. If Sunday is the cousin of New Year’s day, perhaps it’s an opportunity to set some resolutions, to look at the world and our lives with a renewed enthusiasm that flows through the next six days.

Why not? There’s nothing else to do.

*and by Boston, I mean Cambridge and Somerville.