2007's best readin', Part I

I hope everyone had as pleasant a day yesterday as I did! We didn't get to see "Sweeney Todd" after all, as there were technical problems, so we saw "Charlie Wilson's War" instead. The politics were awfully simplified--and the gender politics were pretty atrocious--but overall it was an entertaining and wonderfully well-acted flick. I mean, Philip Seymour Hoffman, is there nothing that man can't do? Then we (Mr. Improbable and I and a bunch of our friends) went out for Chinese food and then back to our place for whiskey and warm cookies. You want cozy good fellowship on a cold night? You can do no better than a decent single-malt and some Toll House slice & bakes straight from the oven. The simple pleasures are always best.

I've always disliked all those top 10 lists and year-end roundups that clutter magazines and blogs this time of year. It's just a gimmick, I used to say, so that lazy writers don't have to actually work during the last half of December.

And then I thought, well, yeah.

So here's my list of the 10 best books I've read in 2007, Part I, in chronological order (of reading, not writing.)

1. A Bell for Adano by John Hersey. Okay, hands up, who's seen this book and thought "Adano" was a person? Yeah, me too. It's one of those books that sort of floats around the edges of awareness--not one of the inarguable 20th-century classics, but something that you vaguely know is supposed to be good and important. So you never get around to picking it up because it's not one of those books you have to read to feel well-read, but it's got too much of a schoolroom aura about it to read for fun. Big mistake. The novel takes place in Sicily in World War II, where an Italian-American major works to earn the trust of the citizens of Adano after the Allied invasion. The book is simple and vivid, with memorable characters and set pieces. It's arguably sentimental by today's standards, but Hersey was a war correspondent and knew whereof he wrote. If you're looking for a book that your whole family might enjoy reading together, this would be an excellent candidate.

2. Now, Voyager by Olive Higgins Prouty. Yes, it was a book before it was a Bette Davis star vehicle (it's also a gay travel agency, who knew? Thanks, Google!). I'm delighted to see that it's been reissued by the Feminist Press (which I didn't know until I looked it up on Amazon just now; I've got a decades-old hardback). Prouty is best known in certain literary circles for having endowed a scholarship that supported Sylvia Plath when she was in college, and while you could not take The Bell Jar away from my 16-year-old self until you pried my cold dead fingers from it, my 40-year-old self is here to tell you that there wasn't anything Sylvia could have taught Olive about female neurosis and self-loathing. And Prouty can write her way out of the bell jar, too. Her depressive Brahmin, Charlotte Vale, fights her way out of her oppressive upbringing and crippling self-consciousness with the help of a good shrink and a better hairdresser. Oprah, babe, you listening? You want to be reading this, you really do. It's a fabulous story rich with psychological nuance--I've never read a better description of how it feels to be shy, anywhere--and local readers will get an extra kick out of the portrayal of Boston high society in the 1930s.