Waiting, waiting…

It is at once the most exciting and most nerve-wracking moment of the early stages of writing a novel. Last July, I came up with an idea for a novel that amused me. For the next nine months, I sat at my computer at 9 AM, five to seven days a week, and hacked away until the story and characters took shape. Now, after two drafts, I have a 400-page manuscript that is ready for the next and most crucial step of a long, long journey toward publication: the opinions of other readers.

See Now Then, by Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid’s new novel, her first work of fiction since Mr. Potter in 2002, is a startling and unusual piece of writing. This story about the dissolution of a marriage is more of a poem than a novel, a 180-page stream-of-consciousness narrative that loops back and forth in time. The book has the cadences of poetry but the brittleness of Philip Roth at his angriest. See Now Then is the loveliest nasty novel I have ever read.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders

I love to finish a book and feel as if I have just completed one of the best books I will ever read. That’s how I felt when I concluded Tenth of December, George Saunders’s fourth collection of short stories. The New York Times Magazine proclaimed that Tenth of December was the “best book you’ll read this year”. There’s plenty of time between now and the end of the year, but it’s unlikely that another story collection will equal Saunders’s range and narrative skill.

The Real Jane Austen, by Paula Byrne

The criticism against Jane Austen from people who don’t like her work, or perhaps from people who have formed an opinion about her without reading her novels, is that she was nothing more than a spoiled woman who wrote dainty books that were not at all intellectual — in other words, the dreaded and much-maligned lady novelist. But as Paula Byrne demonstrates in her excellent new biography, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, Austen was hardly the bubble-headed lassie some would have you believe. This was a woman who, in her teens, wrote stories about children who bit off their mother’s fingers and heroines who poisoned their sisters. And supposedly innocent Jane knew enough about the laws regarding conduct in the military to make vulgar puns about sodomy in the Royal Navy.

My Favorite Books from 2012

In 2012, I began writing book reviews for Bookreporter.com. What made the privilege of being able to write for a wider audience even greater were the discussions, most of them online, that I enjoyed with equally passionate readers. Reading is at once the most solitary and most communal of experiences. You read on your own, but you know as you’re doing it that millions of others are reading as well, many of them perhaps reading the same book you’re enjoying. To talk with people about books is one of the great joys of my life. I’ve been honored to share the experience this year with so many others.

Who’s Next: Discovering the Genius of Tom Lehrer

The trouble with cutting-edge humor is that it doesn’t take long for the edge to dull. Comedic plays and films and television shows once thought to be the ultimate in risk-taking often seem quaint when you revisit them years later. But not all comedy ages. You may not think it as funny as I do, but one can’t deny that the humor of Monty Python, from the convention-shattering Monty Python’s Flying Circus to the heretical poke in the eye that is their 1979 film Life of Brian, is still peculiar—a term I use with affection. Their seminal creations are now between 30 and 45 years old, but they still surprise with their inventiveness and daring. They are, in the best sense of the word, strange.

Raised from the Ground, by José Saramago

This being a José Saramago novel, you knew there would be a dog. Indeed, several dogs appear in Raised from the Ground, a 1980 novel that has only now been translated into English. Every Saramago novel has at least one dog in it, either as one of the main characters (Blindness) or in a supporting role (All the Names). In this tale of farm laborers in 20^th century Portugal, an elderly worker named Sigismundo Canastro tells his mates a story about the day he went out hunting with his dog, Constante. When Sigismundo saw a partridge, he aimed his rifle at it and fired. The partridge wasn’t killed, but it still fell amidst the gorse on the opposite side of a pile of stones. Constante ran after the bird but never came back. No matter how many times Sigismundo whistled after him, the dog never returned. Sigismundo assumed he had lost the dog and went home without him.