Books of 2011

[brigdh]

This is unbelievably late. But, well, I didn't have time to post this in January, since I was in India, and then I kept forgetting. I'm posting it now for my own records more than anything else, but hey, if anyone's interested, that's great! So: books I read in 2011.

There's 95 books on this list, which is not quite accurate, since due to a combination of a computer crash and the newly-fixed computer then being stolen, I lost my notes for late April, May, and early June. Of those, 18 are by PoC, and 40 are by women (not counting edited volumes). I had a goal of reading 50 books about India, but I ended up with 26. As always, feel free to ask me my opinion about any title! I love talking about books.


Best Served Cold - Joe Abercrombie Jan 3, 2011
Culture Shock! India: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette - Gitanjali Kolonad Jan 3, 2011
Hogfather - Terry Pratchett Jan 5, 2011
Naked - David Sedaris Jan 7, 2011
Naked Pictures of Famous People - Jon Stewart Jan 7, 2011
John Dies at the End - David Wong Jan 8, 2011
D.U.C.K. - Poppy Z. Brite Jan 9, 2011
The Dust of 100 Dogs - A.S. King Jan 9, 2011
Swords and Deviltry - Fritz Leiber Jan 10, 2011
Swords Against Death - Fritz Leiber Jan 12, 2011
Swords in the Mist - Fritz Leiber Jan 16, 2011
Moby Dick - Herman Melville Jan 23, 2011

The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan Feb 6, 2011
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova Feb 6, 2011
Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon Feb 8, 2011
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India - William Dalrymple Feb 14, 2011
Swords Against Wizardry - Fritz Leiber Feb 20, 2011
Miss New India - Bharati Mukerjee Feb 27, 2011

Tiger Hills - Sarita Mandana Mar 3, 2011
The Selfish Gene- Richard Dawkins Mar 4, 2011
City of Djinns - William Dalrymple Mar 5, 2011
Countdown - Amtiv Ghosh Mar 6, 2011
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales - Eds. Kate Bernheimer Mar 15, 2011
A History of God - Karen Armstrong Mar 20, 2011
Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy - Arundhati Roy Mar 20, 2011
Journeys in the Night: Untold Stories from India’s Best-Known Writers - Ed. Negar Akhavi Mar 21, 2011
Swords and Ice Magic - Fritz Leiber Mar 22, 2011

Forever Amber - Kathleen Windsor Apr 1, 2011
Guardian of the Dawn - Richard Zimler Apr 5, 2011
Beauty Confidential: The No Preaching, No Lies, Advice-You’ll-Actually-Use Guide to Looking Your Best - Nadine Haobsh Apr 19, 2011

(This is where I'm missing about two months)

An Introduction to Hinduism - Gavin Flood Jun 20, 2011
The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor Jun 27, 2011
Sundial in the Grave: 1610 - Mary Gentle Jun 29, 2011
How Italian Food Conquered the World - John F. Mariani Jun 29, 2011

Arranged Marriage: Stories - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Jul 1, 2011
Wicked Bugs: The Louse that Conquered Napoleon's Army and Other Diabolical Insects - Amy Stewart Jul 2, 2011
A Game of Thrones - George R.R. Martin Jul 19, 2011

A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin Aug 1, 2011
A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin Aug 11, 2011
A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin Aug 16, 2011
The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History - Katherine Ashenburg Aug 16, 2011
Wicked Becomes You - Meredith Duran Aug 22, 2011
Why Evolution is True - Jerry A. Coyne Aug 23, 2011
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 - William Dalrymple Aug 25, 2011
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India - William Dalrymple Aug 28, 2011
Gender and the Archaeology of Death - Eds. Bettina Arnold and Nancy L. Wicker Aug 28, 2011
A Dance with Dragons - George R.R. Martin Aug 30, 2011

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University - Kevin Roose Sep 1, 2011
The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters - William Dalrymple Sep 5, 2011
Finding Nouf - Zoe Ferraris Sep 5, 2011
The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd ed. - Eds. Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman Sep 7, 2011
City of Veils - Zoe Ferraris Sep 9, 2011
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement - David Brooks Sep 13, 2011
An Indian Odyssey - Martin Buckley Sep 13, 2011
Social Archaeologies of Trade and Exchange: Exploring Relationships among People, Places, and Things - Eds. A.A.A. Bauer and A.S. Agbe-Davies Sep 20, 2011
The Pyrates - George MacDonald Fraser Sep 23, 2011
India: A Million Mutinies Now - V.S. Naipaul Sep 24, 2011
Beautiful Days - Anna Godbersen Sep 26, 2011

Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain Oct 2, 2011
Arabella - Georgette Heyer Oct 4, 2011
April Lady - Georgette Heyer Oct 7, 2011
Mother Pious Lady - Santosh Desai Oct 8, 2011
The Convenient Marriage - Georgette Heyer Oct 10, 2011
Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld - Lucy Moore Oct 10, 2011
Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archaeology - Marcia-Anne Dobres Oct 10, 2011
Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure - Sarah Macdonald Oct 15, 2011
Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction - Eds. Edward M. Schortman and Patricia A. Urban Oct 16, 2011
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco Oct 21, 2011
The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean Auel Oct 28, 2011

In the Shadow of the Taj: A Portrait of Agra - Royina Grewal Nov 1, 2011
Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China - Francesca Bray Nov 6, 2011
The Valley of the Horses - Jean Auel Nov 8, 2011
Contexts for Prehistoric Exchange - Eds. Timothy K. Earle and Jonothan Ericson Nov 10, 2011
Love and Longing in Bombay - Vikram Chandra Nov 10, 2011
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit - Barry Estabrook Nov 13, 2011
For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History - Sarah Rose Nov 14, 2011
Crazy Like Us: the Globalization of the American Psyche - Ethan Watters Nov 15, 2011
Kindred- Octavia Butler Nov 16, 2011
Thus Was Adonis Murdered - Sarah Caudwell Nov 18, 2011
The Shortest Way to Hades - Sarah Caudwell Nov 19, 2011
The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai Nov 19, 2011
Horns - Joe Hill Nov 22, 2011
The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet - Brian Murphy Nov 24, 2011
The Mammoth Hunters - Jean Auel Nov 29, 2011
Red Earth and Pouring Rain - Vikram Chandra Nov 30, 2011

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling Dec 1, 2011
Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India - Ed. Mandakranta Bose Dec 6, 2011
The Plains of Passage - Jean Auel Dec 12, 2011
The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women - Jessica Valenti Dec 12, 2011
Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages - Guy Deutscher Dec 14, 2011
The Age of Shiva - Manil Suri Dec 16, 2011
The Jew in the Lotus: A Poet's Re-Discovery of Jewish Identity in Buddhist India - Rodger Kamenetz Dec 22, 2011
The Shelters of Stone - Jean Auel Dec 24, 2011
Scarlet and the White Wolf - Kirby Crow Dec 26, 2011
Mariner’s Luck - Kirby Crow Dec 28, 2011
The Land of Night - Kirby Crow Dec 30, 2011

5 Worst Books of the Year, in order of terribleness:
5. Tiger Hills, Sarita Mandana. Okay, this one wasn't 'terrible' so much as boring and cliched. It was hard to feel for any of the characters, as they all behaved awfully. Also: way too long.
4. How Italian Food Conquered the World, John F. Mariani. I love to read about food! I love to read about weird histories! So, you'd think this would be the perfect book. Alas, no. Way too few descriptions of pasta or pizza, way too many summaries of "this restaurant was opened in 1880, and then bought by another guy in 1910, then closed in 1920; then this other restaurant...". You get the idea.
3. The Dust of 100 Dogs, A.S. King. Another book I was so looking forward to. Lady pirate gets cursed to be reincarnated as a dog 100 times, until she can finally be born as a human and take her revenge! How could that not be awesome? Mainly by making it that the lady pirate had hardly done any pirating, and that she is less interested in revenge than finding her long-lost (and really boring) boyfriend. Also, how about a really homophobic villain, why not.
2. Scarlet and the White Wolf (and sequels), Kirby Crow. UGH, these books. Have you ever read something to the end just to find out how bad it is? Yeah, this. I was recommended these as fun m/m romance novels, but the characters are childish and annoying, with extremely stereotypical seme/uke roles, personalities, and motivations. The world-building was dumb, the plot was dumb, the love story was terribly written, and the characters were so dumb it was a wonder they managed to survive long enough to fill three books.
1. The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova. HOW DID THIS BECOME A BESTSELLER?! Jesus. Dracula is real, and it turns out he needs to hire a librarian! But first, daring and manly historian and his female researcher/Bond Girl equivalent must fight Cold War-era USSR historians! And then there was the gypsy woman he impregnated and abandoned, but only because he loved her so much (yeah, it didn't make sense in the book either). Plus, an epilogue where it turns out Dracula is still out there, because there's nothing like spending 900 pages reading about how to kill the monster, if it's all going to turn out to be for nothing at the end.

5 Best Books of the Year, in order of awesomeness:
5. Sundial in the Grave: 1610, Mary Gentle. Elizabethan England! Samurai! Cross-dressing lady sword-fighter! This book was basically a bunch of really cool things thrown together. It's a bit silly, but I loved it anyway.
4. Moby Dick, Herman Melville. I don't know why this book has such a bad reputation! I loved it. It was funny, it was interesting, it was tragic. I need to read it again.
3. Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie. I'm more of a fan of Abercrombie than a lot of people, but I thought this was just terrific. Having the main character be female fixed the main problem I had with his first trilogy (that is, almost no female characters), but with all the black humor and interesting characters and plot and world-building of those books. I loved the ending, especially.
2. The Great Indian Novel, Shashi Tharoor. Honestly, this book and #1 are tied. This is a retelling of the Mahabharata, mixed with the Indian Independence movement and Indian history up to around 1990 or so. I loved matching the historical figures to their Mahabharata counterpoints, and the writing was alternatively hilarious and tragic. Just amazing.
1. Thus Was Adonis Murdered (and sequels), Sarah Caudwell. Oh my god, are these books amazing. Four lawyers and a professor attempt to solve mysteries, but it is so pitch-perfect funny. I can't describe it; you need to go read them immediately. They're coming back into print later this year, or are available in e-book format.

Comments

[threewalls]

I agree with you that The Historian was an awful book, especially for the ending.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Finally someone else who read Sundial in the Grave: 1610. I loved that book!

So I read most of the Jean Auel books when I was a kid. (And got in sooooo much trouble for reading one of those eight pages sex scenes aloud in the lunchroom in 6th grade.) I've vaguely kicked around the thought of reading them again. Is it worth it? I remember them as rather odd and full of interesting minutiae about plants.

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

Sarah Caudwell ♥! I so wish we had more than just the four books, but each of those four is just a gem.

I read Moby Dick in college and actually liked most of it--I just didn't like banging along through the book only to find that next chapter was yet another 'educational' one about whales/whaling/guys who'd painted whales/etc. I know I should have found it interesting from historical non-fiction perspective, but I just remember thinking "nooooo, get back to the stooooooooory" in a whiny childish way. :D

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

What did you think of Forever Amber, Clan of the Cave Bear, and Crazy Like Us?

I coincidentally re-read Clan last week. It's still a lot of fun.

I recall the Culture Shock: India book being more interesting and readable than one would expect. I especially liked her bit on visiting three families from different areas/castes/religions for dinner.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Here I was just going to write you and say 'someone on my friend's list read that Great Indian Novel you've talked about no one ever reading!'

[askeladden.livejournal.com]

Moby Dick = <3 <3 <3

So strange, so lovely, so incredibly balls-out queer.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

So terrible! And I kept getting people recommending it to me, because I like vampires and history.

[threewalls]

I like vampires and history, too, but it was missing that crucial third thing I like: an interesting book.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Isn't it great?

The Auel books are trashy, there's no denying it, but they're a lot of fun, too. They do have way too many passages of gathering plants, cooking plants, looking at plants, etc, for my taste, but I enjoy the "visit every site of the Upper Paleolithic, even the ones thousands of years apart!" aspect. As a bonus for re-reading them, there's a new one that came out recently ('Land of the Painted Caves', I think the title is?), which wraps up the series. I have gotten around to reading it yet, but based on the title I'm going to guess it involves cave paintings, which sounds like fun.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Me too! But at least these four are immensely re-readable.

I kind of enjoyed the "educational" chapters, if just because I found it amusing how much the level of knowledge had changed since the time of writing, so that now the average person off the street probably knows more and more accurate information about whales than a specialist had.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Forever Amber was a lot of fun! It reads so modern; I absolutely would never have guessed it's nearly 70 years old. Amber is a great character, a bit like Becky from Vanity Fair. And the author makes great use of the time period; pretty much every interesting thing that happened during the 1600s is included. The central romance didn't really work for me, but then, I don't think it was really supposed to? By the end, the author seems to pretty clearly depict that Amber would be best off leaving the guy alone.

Clan of the Cave Bear (and its sequels) suffers from a lot of inaccuracies/changing facts to make a narrative work better, but I still sort of love them. And my Ph.D advisor approves, if just because for once it's a woman who invents everything! And Ayla really does invent everything in the Upper Paleolithic, plus things that didn't happen until thousands/tens of thousands of years later (domesticated horses), plus things that never happened (domesticated cave lions). I don't like Jondalar very much, but despite that, the books make great sick-day novels for me; I could read them for hours.

I really liked the idea of Crazy Like Us, but wished it could have gone deeper. I understand just presenting its central point was probably enough work for a book aimed at a mainstream audience, but I wanted more! Either more case studies (if I remember right, there were only three or hour examples, and only the schizophrenia in Africa chapter felt really in-depth to me), or the case studies that were there had gone deeper and tried to answer why a disease expressed itself in a particular way in a particular culture, or what about the changes reflected the social environment. But it was a great start.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That is a perfect description.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes! Exactly.