Best of the Year Awards: Fiction

This is not at all a recommendation of the best fiction published this year, especially since I don't think any of the books I'll mention were published this year. Merely the best of what I read. I present to you forthwith three honorable mentions and a top ten list.

Honorable mentions (good reads, but no review for you):

More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
Brothers No More, William F Buckley

And now the 10 biggies. apologies to all the books that didn't make it. Most of them were pretty good too, and the only reason Winter's Tale didn't make the list is that I've read it before and already recommended Helprin to everything that moves. Also don't make too much of the rankings. Just a rough approximtion of how much I enjoyed these.

10 Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry --Fairly simple tale of a barber in a very small town, but an illuminating look as well at how our country has been changing. I found myself often arguing with this book, but I consider that a good thing.

9 Heartfire, Orson Scott Card --Kinda weird to recommend the fifth book in a series, but this one played on my emotions quite a bit, as Card usually does. Sometimes I find his stuff a bit uneven, but when he is good, as he has benn in the entire Alvin Maker series, he tells a story like no one else can.

8 The End of the Affair, Graham Greene --My first time reading Greene. I would call this the ultimate anti-romance novel. Deals with life after an affair. The love is gone, only the hatred is left. I think men need to read this kinda stuff occasionally, which I suppose is why Proverbs 7 is in the Bible.

7 High Spirits, Robertson Davies --This is not a novel, but something in this case just as good--a series of ghostly Christmas tales Mr Davies told to the student body of Massey College many years back. Truly one of the oddest and funniest ghost story collections you'll ever find. Some knowledge of Canada would help, but not strictly necessary if you are willing to let a few jokes fly over your head.

6 Strange Travellers, Gene Wolfe --The story of the man staying at the inn on the road to Hell is well worth the price of this book. Also contains a good story about a piano. And it's Wolfe. Need I say more?

5 The Golden Age, John C Wright--Extremely well crafted mdern sci-fi story. Deals with issues of identity and memory, alternate selves, virtual worlds, and utopian societies. Has a good touch of humor plus a great courtroom drama scene. Rivals Cordwainer Smith in terms of sheer imaginativeness.

4 Alastor, Jack Vance --This is a trilogy of tales set in a large cluster of worlds, seemingly united only by a monarch of sorts and a love of a particular sport, though the sport has lots of intersting variations. Each of the worlds Vance describes here has a unique and well realized culture, but the balance between introduction to these worlds and the stories themselves is done in an exquisite way, and like most of my favorite books, has plenty of humor as well.

3 Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy --A laid back tale of the nd of the world as we know it. If you are familiar with Chesterton's quote about how we are not being destroyed by our vices, but rather by virtues run amok (or something to that effect), you'll like this book. A very spiritual and personal and rowdy look at what's wrong with us.

2 Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, John Derbyshire --I was fully prepared to not like this book, but every time I think of it now, I say to myself, "dang that was good." The Derb, as many of you know, is a frequent contributor to National Review (both in fleeting pixels and on dead tree), and is a programmer, a mathemetician and a Chinese-Brittish-American, or something like that. In any event, this book is the tale of a Chinese immigrant who runs into one of his old flames from the old country and decides to have a go and see what happens. Can't give you any more. It's a pretty light and quick read, but powerful as well.

1 Snow in August, Pete Hamill --I had read Hamill's autobiography, A Drinking Life, and while it certainly didn't convince me that he is a great person, it sure convinced me that he was a thoughtful and gifted writer, so I figured I'd see if his fiction was any good. Like a few of the earlier entries, the tale here is not a complicated one. But the emotional impact on me was staggering in places. Hard to explain, but I'm hoping that by giving it my novel of the year award, maybe you'll read it and tell me if you like it too. Has been in mass market paperback for a while, so you should be able to find it cheap.