The Best Books of 2010

It seems appropriate to end this year with some sort of list. Isn't that what people do? Top ten movies of the year! Ten ten celebrity scandals of the year! Top ten Wikileaks of the year!

Well, without further ado, here's my add to the end-of-the-year fray:

Rina's Favorite Books of the Year

1) Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud by Jonathan Safran Foer: I started 2010 off with an amazing read, and I'd still happily recommend it. A friend once commented that he was hesitant to read Foer because of his pop-celebrity: don't let it deter you.

2) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McMann: The only one on this list that I haven't previously quoted: I wanted to, but I simply couldn't find a passage that encapsulated everything that I loved about the novel. A beautiful tribute to a New York past and, in its own way, a New York present.

3) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan: Although I'm particularly partial to McEwan, this was absolutely riveting. A couple falls in - and out - of love. Tragedy from misunderstandings.

4) Tales of the City trilogy by Armistead Maupin: After hearing a friend rave about this series for over a year, I finally picked up Maupin's trilogy. It's set in 1970s San Francisco, and while I've had the pleasure of visiting the city on multiple occasions, it made me think about the city's role in transforming cultural norms and the counterculture movement. Also: a really great, (sometimes trashy) scandal filled trilogy!

5) The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar: As I noted in my original post, Dr. Iyengar's book is a fascinating look into how individuals make choices, taking into account factors like cultural factors or cognitive biases. It was a little tedious at times, but four months later, I still find myself re-reading - and quoting - her passages on individualist versus collectivist societies. I rarely read non-fiction, but I would happily pass this on.

Happy holidays! xo

Travel in London

Five months in, and despite the occasional mishap, I feel like I finally have the hang of London's beloved Tube. One of the best descriptions I've read comes from Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island:

"The best part of Underground travel is that you never actually see the places above you. You have to imagine them. In other cities, station names are drearily mundane: Lexington Avenue, Potsdamer Platz, Third Street South. In London, by contrast, the names nearly always sound sylvan and beckoning: Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Bromley-by-Bow, Maide Vale, Drayton Park. That isn't a city up there, it's a Jane Austen novel."

(Although, if we're going to be fair, Bryson also points out that: "The problem with losing yourself in these little reveries is that when you surface things are apt to be disappointing. I came up now at Tower Hill, and there wasn't a tower and there wasn't a hill.")

In my Beginning is my End

"I've already marked my beginning, the explosion of consequences, with the touch of a wine bottle and a shout of distress. But this pinprick is as notional as a point in Euclidean geometry, and though it seems right, I could have proposed [other moments]. There are always antecedent causes. A beginning is an artifice, and what recommends one over another is how much sense it makes of what follows."

Poetry Mondays: East Coker

I spent Saturday night lost in London. It was my fault, really: in a hurry, I jotted down an incorrect address and ended up halfway across town, fruitlessly searching for a (non-existant) bowling alley. Eventually I realized my error and popped back on the Tube to head westbound, disgruntled.

When I (finally) got back on the Tube, I was seated next to a young woman thoroughly engrossed in a book. I was curious as to what she was reading: I could make out that it was poetry, but not the text of the book. (Snooping thwarted!). But, even without being able to divine her book choice, it made me think about how I rarely read poetry.

So! Poetry Mondays!

And, to kick it off, a passage from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker". As winter approaches and the days get shorter and shorter, I'm reminded of the following passage:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark.

(The full text can be found here.)

Of the mind, of the self

''And what is identity? The cognitive system arisin' from the aggregate memories of that individual's past experiences. The layman's word for this is the mind. No two human beings have the same mind. At the same time, human beings have almost no grasp of their own cognitive systems. I don't, you don't, nobody does. All we know -- or think we know -- is but a fraction of the whole cake. A mere tip of the icing.''

An Ode to Hermoine

Oh man. I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night, which means I'm still a little hyped up from the sweet deliciousness of dropping into J.K. Rowling's alternate universe for an evening. (Even better, I came home and discovered the Harry Potter wiki, leading to an embarrassing amount of time spent reading about the various character's connections. Draco marries Daphne Greengrass's sister? Who knew?)

But the highlight of the movie for me was watching Hermoine Granger's evolution. Smart, resourceful, courageous -- she's clearly the star of this film. And, in particular, it's hard not to contrast her with another popular teenager character: Bella in Twilight.

Earlier this week, I posted this article on my Facebook, which discusses some of the differences between the women in Harry Potter and Twilight. The author's pre-teen daughter offers the following explanation of the differences between Potter and Twilight fans:

There are 'Potter' people, and there are people who like Stephenie Meyer's 'Twilight' series -- and very little overlap exists between the two groups. 'Twilight' fans imagine their teenage selves being fought over by men, she says; 'Potter' fans want to fight for good alongside the men. My daughter knows which type of young woman she wants to be.

Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoyed the Twilight series. But I thought that passage captured the key distinction between the female protagonists in the series and explains why Harry Potter captured my attention in a way that Twilight never will.

Both are teenagers transplanted into new worlds (Hogwarts, Washington). Both face issues of complicated teenage emotions: navigating feeling like ''the other'' in new environments, raging hormones, parents who just don't understand. Both face imminent dangers to their lives.

But I think the notable difference is how they react to these challenges. When Ron chooses Lavender Brown for the object of his affection, Hermoine is upset -- but she moves on with her life (even while studiously ignoring him). When Edward leaves Bella, she falls apart, sinking into depression and self-destructive behavior.

And when faced with threats to their lives, they each take different paths: Bella spends a large part of the series allowing Edward and Jacob to handle the evil vampires (until, of course, Edward can impart his own superhuman powers to Bella). Hermoine? She's not waiting around for the boys to fix things; years of diligent academic pursuits have made her a force to be reckoned with, one who can decipher ancient runes, tell off the Minister of Magic for his violation of Magical Laws, and conjure potions beyond most wizards' ordinary capabilities. Clearly, she's no wallflower waiting to be rescued.

Stephanie Meyer has defended her portrayal of Bella after critics lambasted the series for being anti-feminist, explaining that feminism is about choice and Bella needs to make the choices that are right for her. While I'm not going to argue about whether Twilight is anti-feminist or not, I do think that there's an important distinction in how each character approaches presented hardships.

And, for that, give me plucky, feisty Hermoine over sullen, woe-is-me Bella any day.

On Love

I've admittedly been a little down on romance lately: not because of any one thing in particular, but the culmination of watching relationships around me disintegrate (and, perhaps, watching Eat, Pray, Love last night with unnamed, and occasionally weepy, friends.)

That said, while I'm not generally prone to thoughts of spiritual messages from the universe, it seemed particularly fortuitous that I stumbled across the following passage from The Prophet while at the British Museum gift shop yesterday:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you,
So shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth,
So is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Desiderata

"And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

(It's a little cheesy, but the full text can be found here.)

On Chesil Beach

There is nothing I can say about On Chesil Beach that hasn't already been said: it's heart-wrenching, elegiac, stunning. And while the novella is about the unravelling of a couple, this exchange between newlyweds Edward and Florence makes my heart melt a little:

He kissed her and told her she was the squarest person in all of Western civilization.
      "But you love me," she said.
"Therefore I love you."

Further Tales of the City

About five hundred people were cheering hysterically while a statuesque man in nurse drag - boobies, bouffant, the works - thrashed about violently on the back of a mechanical bull. In other words, thought Mary Ann, just another Memorial Day.

A battered Volvo pulled alongside the Le Car. "What the fuck is this?" asked a frizzy-haired woman with an infant child and a back seat full of No Nukes posters.

'The Great Tricycle Race," said Mary Ann. She had learned that much from Michael.

"What's that?" asked the woman.

"Uh, well... gay guys on tricycles. It's a benefit for the SPCA."

The woman beamed. "Wonderful!" she shouted, as the cars began to move again. "How goddamn wonderful!"

Curiously enough, Mary Ann knew exactly what she meant. How could anyone feel threatened by this kind of whimsy?

Hippies and Mass Murderers!

From the opening pages of Tales of the City, where the protagonist calls her mother to tell her that she's moving to San Francisco:

"You aren't listening, Mom. I'm trying to tell you I'm a grown woman."

"Well, act like it, then! You can't just... run away from your family and friends to go live with a bunch of hippies and mass murderers!"

How We Choose

This is a long one. Inspired by citations in Blink, I decided to pick up Sheena Iyengar's The Art of Choosing. Dr. Iyengar's book explores different facets of how we make decisions, such as cognitive biases and the effect of priming. Although I thought it was a little tedious at times, for the most part, it provided several interesting studies on how humans react to a lack -- or abundance -- of choice. (I don't think I'm ever going to be able to walk into a supermarket without thinking about her famous jam study.)


What I found most interesting, though, was her examination on how a person's cultural background influences his or her decision-making processes. She begins by distinguishing between individualist and collectivist societies, and reading her two definitions made me reflect how each society has shaped my own decision making process.


"From early on, members of individualist societies are taught the special importance of personal choice. Even a walk through the local grocery store becomes an opportunity to teach lessons about choosing, particularly in the United States, where stores routinely offer hundreds of options. As soon as children can talk, or perhaps as soon as they can accurately point, they are asked, "Which one of these would you like?" A parent would probably narrow down the number of choices and explain the differences between this cereal and that one, or that toy and this one, but the child would be encouraged to express a preference. After a while, the child would graduate to making tougher choices, and by the ripe old age of four, he may well be expected to both understand and respond to the daunting question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" From this children learn that they should be able to figure out what they like and dislike, what will make them happy and what won't. Because their happiness is on the line, their own opinions truly matter, and they must figure out how to judge the outcomes of their choices.


By contrast, members of collectivist societies place greater emphasis on duty. Children are often told, "If you're a good child, you'll do what your parents tell you," and the parents need not explain themselves. From what you eat to what you wear, the toys you play with to what you study, it is what you're supposed to do that's most important. As you grow older, instead of being asked what you want, you may be asked, "How will you take care of your parents' needs and wants? How will you make them proud?" The assumption is that your parents, and elders in general, will show you the right way to live your life so that you will be protected from making a costly mistake. There are "right" choices and "wrong" ones, and by following your elders, you will learn to choose correctly, even relinquishing choice when appropriate."

On Holy Wars

For that same word, rebellion, did divide
The action of their bodies from their souls;
And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd,
As men drink potions, that their weapons only
Seem'd on our side; but, for their spirits and souls,
This word, rebellion, it had froze them up,
As fish are in a pond. But now the bishop
Turns insurrection to religion:
Supposed sincere and holy in his thoughts,
He's followed both with body and with mind;
And doth enlarge his rising...

Edge

Just finished Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. While I haven't loved other things that I've read by her lately, Atwood's dystopia always manages to get under my skin.

The novel is partially told from the perspective of a young sex worker, and, from the first chapter, this snippet struck a chord:

"[The strip club] was well run, though it was in a seedy area -- all the clubs were. That was a matter of image, Mordis would say: seedy was good for business, because unless there's an edge - something lurid or tawdry, a whiff of sleaze - what separated our brand from the run-of-the-mill product the guy could get at home, with the face cream and the white cotton panties?"

Six Impossible Things

I finally saw Alice in Wonderland, courtesy of the in-flight movie selections on my latest trans-Atlantic flight. Overall, I really enjoyed it: I thought Mia Wasikowska captured the right mix of wide-eyed Alice and skeptical Alice, Helena Bonham Carter's tone was appropriately imperious, and Johnny Depp was brilliant.

But -- and, you knew there was a but! -- I cringed (multiple times) at the deviations from Carroll's original storylines. e.g., Alice's famous line in the film? Not actually said by her in the original:

"I can't believe that!" said Alice.
"Can't you?" the [White] Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: one can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.''

Of finding happiness in the extremes

''You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.''

Blink

After some moving mishaps, I recently found myself book-less and browsing a friend's shelves for something to tide me over until my boxes arrived. I stumbled across Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and while I know a number of people consider him to be a hack, I thought the book was an interesting examination into the decision-making process of individuals and institutions. Basically, Gladwell argues that there are situations where it makes sense to follow your first instinct over careful, reasoned analysis... but not always. Which left me in a bit of a tizzy: how am I supposed to know when to make weighted average spreadsheets and when to just follow my gut?!? ;)

But, tucked in the Afterword is the following explanation:

One of the questions that I've been asked over and over again since Blink came out is, When should we trust our instincts, and when should we consciously think things through? Well, here is a partial answer. On straightforward choices, deliberate analysis is the best. When questions of analysis and personal choice start to get complicated -- when we have to juggle many variables -- then our unconscious thought process may be superior... It seems as if [Sigmund Freud] agreed: "When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature."

Makes sense to me!

Well, there's some comfort in that

Whenever I think about all of the ways that I manage to constantly make mistakes, I'm reminded of this passage from Anne of Green Gables. The snippet is a dialogue between eleven-year-old Anne, an orphan with a penchant for getting into trouble, and Marilla, the woman who adopts her:

"Marilla, isn't it nice to think that to-morrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

"I'll warrant you'll make plenty in it," said Marilla. "I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Anne."

"Yes and well I know it," admitted Anne mournfully. "But have you noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice."

"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones."

"Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting thought."

The Winter's Tale

Forget Twilight; when it comes to romance, Shakespeare makes the ladies swoon:

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that.

- The Winter's Tale, Act iv. Sc. 4.

For the Twi-hards...

Despite the fact that I'm sure I'm opening myself up to mockery with this one, this is for my friends obsessed with Twilight.*

"It continued like that for the rest of the day. While he walked me to English, when he met me after Spanish, all through the lunch hour, he questioned me relentlessly about every insignificant detail of my existence. Movies I'd liked and hated, the few places I'd been and the many places I wanted to go, and books -- endlessly books.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much. More often than not, I felt self-conscious, certain I must be boring him. But the absolute absorption of his face, and his never-endeing stream of questions, compelled me to continue. Mostly his questions were easy, only a very few triggering my easy blushes. But when I did flush, it brought on a whole new round of questions."

* I will not name names, but you know who you are. (*ahem* Bubbles, Linda *ahem*)

This getting older business

... never seems to get easier. Questions abound as my head/heart grapples with questions about my life direction, career path, final destination. Why can't someone just tell me what to do with my life?

Simply Put

... for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new.

To travel, to read

Rereading The Namesake for Mother's Day, and this passage struck a nerve. A discussion, on the value of travel. The author stages Ghosh and Ashoke as having competing viewpoints, whereas I think they're complementary?

Ghosh shook his head. "You are still young. Free," he said, spreading his hands apart for emphasis. "Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late."

"My grandfather always says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch."

Friendship

Celebrating Pam's birthday last night reminded me of meeting her almost ten (!) years ago...

"Grown-up women do the same sort of thing that Charlene and I did. Not the counting of moles on each other's backs and comparing toes lengths, maybe. But when they meet and feel a particular sympathy with each other they also feel a need to set out the important information, the big events whether public or secret, and then go ahead to fill in all the blanks between. If they feel this warmth and eagerness it is quite impossible for them to bore each other. They will laugh at the very triviality and silliness of what they're telling, or at the revelation of some appalling selfishness, deception, meanness, sheer badness. There has to be great trust, of course, but that trust can be established at once, in an instant."

Value Systems

"My father's generation grew up with certain beliefs. One of those beliefs is that the amount of money one earns is a rough guide to one's contribution to the welfare and prosperity of our society. I grew up unusually close to my father. Each evening I would plop into a chair near him, sweaty from a game of baseball in the front yard, and listen to him explain why such and such was true and such and such was not. One thing that was almost always true was that people who made a lot of money were neat. Horatio Alger and all that. It took watching his son being paid 225 grand at the age of twenty-seven, only two years on the job, to shake his faith in money. He has only recently recovered from the shock.

I haven't. When you sit, as I did, at the center of what has been possibly the most absurd money game ever and benefit out of all proportion to your value to society (as much as I'd like to think I got only what I deserved, I don't), when hundreds of equally undeserving people around you are all raking in faster than they can count it, what happens to the money belief? Well, that depends. For some, good fortune simply reinforces the belief. They take the funny money seriously, as evidence that they are worthy citizens of the Republic. It becomes their guiding assumption -- for it couldn't possibly be clearly thought out -- that a talent for making money come out of a telephone is a reflection of merit on a grander scale. It is tempting to believe that people who think this way eventually suffer their comeuppance. They don't. They just get richer. I'm sure most of them die fat and happy.

For me, however, the belief in the meaning of making dollars crumbled; the proposition that the more money you earn, the better the life you are leading was refuted by too much hard evidence to the contrary. And without that belief, I lost the need to make huge sums of money. The funny thing is that I was largely unaware how heavily influenced I was by the money belief until it had vanished."

Beauty

"Down the upper part of the woman's right arm there was an eight-inch-long herringbone-pattern scar. When she saw him looking at it, she at once crossed her arms and put her left hand over the injury, not understanding that it made her more beautiful, that it perfected her beauty by adding an essential imperfection. By showing that she could be injured, that such astonishing loveliness could be broken in an instant, the cicatrice only emphasized what was there, and made one cherish it... all the more."

Sorority

After we've looked at the photographs, as we're walking out, Monalisa says to me about the model, "She's also cut."

"What?"

"I saw, on her arms."

Rustom later confirms this. I've met Marika at least a half-dozen times, but I've never noticed the cuts. Monalisa knew within five minutes of meeting her. The bar girl noticed some tension on the model's face, noticed she was talking a little too much, laughing a little too much. So she looked at her wrists. Later I find out the model's story. She is the mistress of a married man with three children...

Her lover will never leave his wife, so Marika marks time on her wrists. There must be a citywide sorority of these woman who've slit their wrists and survived, who recognize one another automatically. A sisterhood of the slashed.

Reading about Running

"I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run to acquire a void. But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void. People's minds can't be a complete blank. Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum. What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain insubordinate to that void. Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void."

Little Bee

Stuck with the selections at Newark Airport's Hudson News*, I picked up Little Bee for my flight to LA. And, despite distractions from fellow passengers, I found myself utterly engrossed.

I don't want to give too much away -- the book's back cover explicitly warns against it -- but the book is told from the perspective of two women, one of whom is a refugee living in London. So I'm admittedly biased, since I'm soaking up anything London-related these days, but what really struck me were the passages on displacement told from the asylum seeker's perspective, since they struck home.

"I was thinking, That sunshine, that color yellow, maybe I will not see very much of these now. Maybe the new color of my life was gray. Two years in the gray detention center, and now I was an illegal immigrant. That means, you are free until they catch you. That means, you live in a gray area. I thought about the years, living as quiet as could be. Hiding my colors and living in the twilight and the shadows."

"I am only alive at all because I learned the Queen's English. Maybe you are thinking, that isn't so hard. After all, English is the official language of my country, Nigeria. Yes, but the trouble is that back home we speak it so much better than you. To talk the Queen's English, I had to forget all the best tricks of my mother tongue. For example, the Queen could never say, There was plenty of wahala, that girl done use her bottom part to engage my number one son and anyone could see she would end in the bad bush. Instead the Queen must say, My late daughter-in-law used her feminine charms to become engaged to my heir, and one might have foreseen that it wouldn't end well. It is all a little sad, don't you think? Learning the Queen's English is like scrubbing off the bright red varnish from your toenails, the morning after a dance. It takes a long time and there is always a little bit left at the end, a stain of red along the growing edges to remind you of the good time you had."

* Note: Fail, Newark Airport, fail! According to their website, there's a Borders in Terminal A. Not true! (Also fail: no bagels at LAX's Terminal 4!)

Enchanting

While I wouldn't recommend the book -- it was overly stylized, unrealistic, and (worst of all) dull -- this passage touched me:

"She recounted everything in that special Maya way, her eyes lighting up, her lips dancing in half-smiles, her hands flying everywhere. Prem stopped listening and concentrated on the aesthetic spectacle of Mayaspeak, trying not to hear the actual words."

Black

"Nearly every culture has a history, and some still have a practice, of mourning rituals, many of which involve changes in the dress or appearance of those in grief. The wearing of black clothing or mourning jewelry, hair cutting, and body scarification or ritual tattooing all made the grief-stricken immediately visible to the people around them. Although it is true that these practices were sometimes ridiculously restrictive and not always in the best interest of the mourner, it is also true that they gave us something of value. They imposed evidence of loss on a community and forced that community to acknowledge it. If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up."

The Love Of My Life, Cheryl Strayed

Remix

First, a disclaimer: despite going to law school, I know very little about intellectual property or copyright law, although the field has always fascinated me. My curiosity is particularly heightened right now, since I'm reading Lawrence Lessig's Remix.

I'm only halfway through the book, but Lessig begins by discussing the difference between "RO" and "RW" culture. Essentially, a ''Read Only" culture is one in which culture is consumed in a static manner: think about reading a book or watching a television program. To contrast, a "Read Write" culture is one in which people "read" culture and then "add to the culture they read by creating and re-creating the culture around them." For example, think of the millions of online satires on Youtube, where people splice together videos from different sources to make a point. Some of the examples that Lessig employs are the Bush/Blair parody and the music of DJ Girl Talk.

I guess, in a way, this blog is a wee foray into the RW culture: juxtaposing passages that I'm reading/have read with other things that strike my fancy. It never occurred to me that I was engaging in RW culture, but what a fascinating concept...

Addendum: You can download a free version of Remix here!

Addendum 2: A fascinating article on Remix culture and authorship here.

The Travel Bug

Even though I've been there, Elif Shafak's The Bastard of Istanbul is making me want to pack my bags...

And then you read something...

Happy 2010, everyone. Apologies for the long lag since my last post. I was in a bit of a predicament: I wanted to post, but I was in a reading rut.

First, I went through a series of books that were mind-blowingly inane.

Then, I started 2666, which was fantastic, but I just couldn't finish it. It's a massive tome, and with all of the life changes, I couldn't devote enough time to the novel to truly do it justice.

And then, just when I was giving up hope, a friend lent me Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Have you ever read something that's so incredibly beautiful that it feels like every line is piercing your heart? That you're going to explode from the sheer beauty of the prose? It's been years since I've read something that's moved me so deeply... but it's nearly impossible to excerpt here. There's no one line, no one passage, that jumps out at me: nearly every page had me laughing and thinking. So, with that caveat, here is a sample of how absurdly talented Jonathan Safran Foer is. (By way of explanation, the novel is narrated from the perspective of a nine year old boy.)

"What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet."

And that's just the first page.

Of course, now I find myself in a new predicament: how am I going to read anything in 2010 that tops this novel?