Ten best short-story collections of the ’00s

One title on the A.V. Club's list of the 10 best short-story collections of the ’00s:

My Father’s Tears And Other Stories, John Updike (2009)

The decade saw a minor resurgence in interest in the work of John Updike, as many of his earliest short stories came back into print. His death this year similarly prompted an interest in his novels, particularly his towering Rabbit books. But his final publication was this spare volume that provided a fitting companion to his earlier stories. While a bit repetitious, My Father’s Tears was a solid reminder of just why Updike became one of the go-to chroniclers of American life in the 20th century and beyond, as his aging characters confront the change that faces them as they turn toward mortality.

Best story: “Blue Light” turns Updike’s gaze even farther forward in time, as his characters examine just how their children will remember them.

Read about the other collections on the list.

(h/t: escapegrace)

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: historical novels

Rebecca Stott is a professor of English literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. She is the author of the novels The Coral Thief and Ghostwalk and a biography, Darwin and the Barnacle, and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of historical novels.

One title on the list:

The Rings of Saturn
by W.G. Sebald
New Directions, 1998

In "Rings of Saturn," the *German author W.G. Sebald weaves fact and fiction into a book that is part memoir, part travel narrative, part meditative essay and part history. The story twists and turns and shuttles back and forth through time and along England's desolate East Anglian coastline. As the unnamed narrator makes his way south on a walking tour through sand dunes and villages, he describes the relentless erosion of the coast, and as he does, stories wash up—like the workings of memory—wherever he goes. A postcard here, a newspaper cutting elsewhere, the remains of a mulberry tree, a photograph—these lost objects lead him to discussions of Chateaubriand, Swinburne and Conrad, mackerel fishing fleets, skulls and silkworms. For Sebald, history and memory is like a storeroom in a derelict mansion—full of dusty, nearly forgotten things, each of which, in the author's hands, yields its own haunting tale.

Read about the other four novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best chases in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best chases in literature.

One chase on the list:

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Cripes! The black riders are after them. Frodo, Sam and the mysterious "Strider" are chased by the ring wraiths, who have sold their souls to the evil Sauron. Frodo is carried across the river Bruinen by the elf Glorfindel. When the nine dark riders follow a huge wave carries them away. Hooray!

Read about all ten chases on the list.

The Lord of the Rings made Lev Grossman's list of the six greatest fantasy books of all time, and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best volcanoes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

NY Times: 100 notable books, 2009 -- fiction

The staff of the New York Times Book Review named their "100 Notable Books of 2009."

A few of the books and writers from the fiction side of the list that have appeared here on the blog:

'American Rust'
By PHILIPP MEYER
Meyer’s crime novel/road novel hybrid also manages to chronicle life in a dying mill town. (Spiegel & Grau, $24.95.)

Read an excerpt from American Rust.

Learn more about the book and author at Philipp Meyer's website.

The Page 69 Test: American Rust.

'Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It'
By MAILE MELOY
Meloy’s calm, intelligent prose renders her stories’ self-sabotaging characters — lawyers, unfaithful spouses, eccentric older women, Montanans — eminently understandable. (Riverhead, $25.95.)

Visit Maile Meloy's website.

What is Maile Meloy reading?

The Page 69 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

The Page 99 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

'Nothing Right: Short Stories'

By ANTONYA NELSON
Nelson is drawn to the damage that results when strong women foolishly trust weak men. (Bloomsbury, $25.)

Read more about Antonya Nelson's new short story collection, Nothing Right.

Writers Read: Antonya Nelson.

Antonya Nelson's five most essential books.

'Typhoon'
By CHARLES CUMMING
British and American spies clash in the buildup to the Beijing Olympics. (St. Martin’s, $25.99.)

Learn more about the author and his work at Charles Cumming's website.

The Page 69 Test: Typhoon.

Read about all 100 books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Norman Tebbit's six best books

Norman Tebbit served in the RAF before becoming a Conservative MP. An ally of Margaret Thatcher, he held a number of high-profile government posts in the 1980s.

He told the Daily Express about his six best books. One title on the list:

NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
by George Orwell

The year in question may have been 25 years ago but I fear the world of Doublethink and Newspeak that Orwell so brilliantly portrayed in his classic novel is approaching us more rapidly than ever. In fact, if you look at political discourse these days, you'll find it's arrived.

Read about another book on Tebbit's list.

Nineteen Eighty-four is #7 on a list of the 100 best last lines from novels. It disappointed Neil deGrasse upon re-reading. The book made Daniel Johnson's five best list of books about Cold War culture, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers, is one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King, and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best rats in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about bankers

David Charters is a former diplomat and investment banker. He has published six novels and is best known in the U.K. for his best-selling Dave Hart series of satires, set in the fictional world of "Grossbank."

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of books about bankers.

One title on the list:

The Great Crash, 1929, by JK Galbraith

The naked emperors waltzing down Wall Street and along Threadneedle Street might have been given shorter shrift if more of our politicians and regulators had read this book. The similarities to recent events will surprise and probably horrify you. Will we ever learn?

Read about the other books on Charters' list.

The Great Crash, 1929 also appears on Andrew Ellson's critic's chart of books on cash crashes.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best music books of the decade

The staff at Paste magazine came up with a list of the ten best music books of the decade (2000-2009).

One title on the list:

9. Amanda Petrusich—It Still Moves (2008)

Part travelogue, part exploration of the past and future of Americana. Paste contributor Petrusich follows up her 33 1/3 book on Nick Drake by tracing a line from the Carter family and Elvis Presley to the “new, weird, hyphenated America” curated in the cartoon capital of Brooklyn. Josh Jackson

Read about the other books on the list.

Writers Read: Amanda Petrusich.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 debut novels of the decade (2000-2009)

The staff at Paste magazine came up with a list of the ten best debut novels of the decade (2000-2009).

One title on the list:

8. Hillary Jordan: Mudbound [Algonquin Books] (2008)

“Mudbound, an ambitious and affecting debut, may very well become a staple for courses in Southern literature. It is accessible, engaging and spiked with suspense… Readers now have Hillary Jordan’s tremendous gift, a story that challenges the 1950s textbook version of our history and levels its readers completely in the thrall of her characters.” Tayari Jones, Paste #40

Read about the other nine books on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Mudbound.

My Book, The Movie: Mudbound.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best teachers in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best teachers in literature.

One teacher on the list:

Miss Jean Brodie

Based on one of Muriel Spark's own teachers, Jean Brodie is dangerously charismatic. She talks of being in her "prime", and captures the spirits of a few chosen girls at a posh Edinburgh girls' school. She tells them about art and Italy, but her lessons often allow her to express her admiration for Mussolini's fascists.

Read about the other teachers on Mullan's list.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is one of Ian Rankin's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best works of fiction about World War Two

Antony Beevor has written both novels and non-fiction. His new book is D-Day: The Battle for Normandy.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of works of fiction about World War II.

One title on the list:

Life and Fate
by Vasily Grossman
Harper & Row, 1984

Vasily Grossman's "Life and Fate" is the "War and Peace" of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets called World War II. This deliberate act of literary homage to Tolstoy uses the Battle of Stalingrad in the place of the Battle of Borodino, and there are several parallels in construction. But the characters in "Life and Fate" and the dilemmas they face when confronted by the moral distortions of the system are entirely the product of what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "wolfhound age." Grossman, who had covered World War II from the front for a Red Army newspaper, accumulated stories, incidents and extraordinarily powerful vignettes in his notebooks for later use in his novels. The anti-Semitism that emerged in Stalin's later years convinced Grossman of the parallels between Nazism and Stalinism. This similarity became a covert but recognizable theme in his great novel. Grossman naïvely believed that it could be published during the Khrushchev thaw, but he was soon disabused. The KGB "arrested" the book in 1961 after Mikhail Suslov, the ideological chief of the Central Committee, declared that it must not be published for 200 years. The secret police even took Grossman's carbons and typewriter ribbons. He died a broken man, but an early copy of the manuscript had survived, and it was smuggled out to be published abroad.

Read about the other four books on Beevor's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 50 best winter reads

The Independent complied a list of the fifty best winter reads.

One title on the list:

Blood's a Rover

'At long last, the final volume in James Ellroy's gut-punching Underworld USA saga,' says Maxim [Jakubowski]. 'Staccato style, a gallery of grotesques, puppets of fate and pitiful anti-heroes, and a sharp dissection of recent US history all make this an indispensable take no hostages guide to a descent into hell and further. Breathless stuff.'

Read about the other 49 books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten bird poems

Simon Armitage's nine poetry collections include The Universal Home Doctor and Travelling Songs. Tim Dee is a BBC radio producer the author of The Running Sky, a memoir of his birdwatching life. Their new book is The Poetry of Birds, an ornithologically ordered anthology of the best bird poems.

For the Guardian they each named five favorite bird poems.

One of Armitage's picks:

"Leda and the Swan" by WB Yeats.

A poem of brutality and wild beauty. I've always given swans a wide birth since reading this poem at school.

Read about the other nine poems on their list.

--Marshal Zeringue