2009: a year in books

[highlyeccentric]

I read a lot of books last year! Actually, I probably read fewer books than in past years, but the books I read, I read for their own sake, rather than mining them for information in quest of essays. Unlike fahye, I don't keep a spreadsheet of books read, so here are some highlights: books that I'll think of when I remember this year, and books that will make me think of this year when I re-read them.

Susanna Clarke - The ladies of Grace Adieu: bought this in a factory seconds store in Kingston, and read it on long, dislocated hot days under the air-conditioner in the hotel where work was putting me up. It was lovely: light and airy and nostalgic, and it did not demand intense emotional engagement.

Germaine Greer - 'The Whole Woman' and 'The Female Eunuch': I did not like these books. I did not like them, Sam I Am. The Whole Woman is very badly written, for one thing - many of the chapters are long rambles about how things suck for women, with no argument in sight. Throw in a big dollop of trans!fail, some gross abuse of medieval history, and weird homophobia directed only at gay men, and you have Germaine Greer. Also, anyone who can condemn anorexics for buying into the patriarchy, and praise self-harmers for rebelling against same IN THE SAME PAGE has, uh, obviously not met a teenage girl since 1970?

Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady: I love Isobel Archer, have I mentioned that? I also love Henry James' writing, love the long slow social drama as he draws it, love the way he creates threats by not giving them form or description. But most of all, I loved spending four hundred odd pages with Isobel Archer. I think she should leave off wondering about marriage and men and run away with ME, and we can be over-analytical slightly self-absorbed bookworms together.

Feminism and Masculinities, ed. Peter Murphy: this book had lots of things wrong with it, not least of all the dearth of female feminist commentators. I didn't like the tone taken by many of the articles, a "what can feminism do for teh menz" approach. But it was FASCINATING nevertheless. It helped flesh out my sketchy theoretical framework for understanding masculinity as a system - a framework which had hitherto been built mostly out of high medieval queer theory. I was also particularly taken by the queer-oriented articles in the book, as this year I began taking the fact of my own bisexuality and building it into queerness, an identity as well as an attraction, a history and a way of framing the world.

Second Person Queer, ed. Richard Labonte: This book, again, was part of taking an attraction and building an identity. The second-person narrative format probably helped with that; likewise, the sheer diversity of queerness and identities in the anthology. One piece on the tricksy business of self-labelling really stuck with me. In addition, most of the writing in this book is absolutely gorgeous, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes pretty things.

Henry Handel Richardson - The Getting of Wisdom: Oh, Laura. I started reading this book years ago and had to put it down halfway through, because Laura's painful social embarrassments caused me too much embarrassment squick. But I persisted through, this time, and it was well worth it. This was part of my little side quest to track down and read the works of various early twentieth-century female Australian authors, particularly that loose circle of feminist-and-possibly-lesbian authors and activists.

Author whose name I've forgotten - Passionate Friends: Speaking of, this was an account of the relationship between two women whose names I've forgotten, and their friendship with Miles Franklin. One was a poet and the other an activist, and one of them was named Mary, as I recall. Anyway, that's not the important point. Firstly, it was fun. I like tracing out the shape of past lives, as well you all know. And secondly, it was very useful from a theory point of view, as the author whose name I've forgotten drew a distinction between the life partnership between her primary subjects and their mutual, long-lasting friendship with Miles. And she drew it on grounds *other* than What They May Or May Not Have Done With Their Genitals. I need to re-read the book, I think (Bron has my copy), but it was a useful look at how to talk about same-sex relationships when the "gay/straight" distinctions of our day didn't apply to the subjects. And it gave me some analytical background for my personal conviction that the most important things is NOT what our subjects may or may not have done with their genitals, but what they did with their lives, as women, together.

Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals: Memorable if only for being the last Discworld book. But also because it tackles class and gender, and a woman's right to parade around in fancy chain mail for twenty-five dollars an hour. Furthermore, it was funny. And I am in LOVE with Professor Bengo Macarona and Dr Hix, respectively. And possibly together.

Sara Rees Brennan - The Demon's Lexicon: HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS I HAVE NO WORDS FOR HOW AWESOME THIS BOOK IS. I... I won't even try to describe it.

Ann Summers - Damned Whores and God's Police: Ugh. I could say so much about this... Why is everyone running around flapping their hands and acting like it's some new 21st century thing that disproportionate numbers of women are suffering from depressing and engaging in self-destructive behaviours? In 1974, Ann Summers dug out statistics on psychiatric admissions and concluded that depression was "THE female disease of the seventies". AND PEOPLE ACT LIKE THIS IS SOME KIND OF NEW DEVELOPMENT NOW? Plus, y'know, all the other stuff about sexism and "the family". This book made a lot of the "for the sake of families" rhetoric make more sense, but I don't know what to do about it.

Adrienne J. Odasso - Devil's Road Down: One of the most beautiful things I've read this year, possibly ever. I love ajodasso's poetry so very, very much. I love the sense of *place* in the title poem, and the physicality in so many of them. A collection of poems about writing - you wouldn't expect such a thing to be so *physical*, to have such a sharp sense of body and action, but it does.

Mo Willems - the Pigeon wants a puppy: Memorable firstly because kayloulee gave it to me, secondly because it's a BRILLIANT illustrated childrens' book, and thirdly because I'm afraid I've been incredibly like the Pigeon this year - wanting ridiculous things, and stomping around until I get them, and then finding that they didn't make me happy and I want something even MORE ridiculous instead.

Sharon Marcus - Between Women: Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England: This book is too awesome to sum up briefly. Again, it was *fun*. I like tracing the shape of past lives. Bonus fun because of the high proportion of feminists and sapphists as subjects of this book, and I, a person who lives by history and narrative, appreciate the sense of inheritance behind me as a key part of this whole identity-building business. This book gave me a brilliant new analytical approach for looking at female homosociality in literature, which is handy for my thesis plans. It also made a distinction I'd never seen before, but toward which I was fumbling vaguely: not between the homosocial and the homosexual, but between the homosocial, the homoerotic and the homosexual (and indeed you could take the prefixes off and apply it to hetero relations as well). Not everything which is erotic is definitively sexual! All three categories of course overlap in interesting and messy ways, but they are not the same at all - and they do not need to be forcibly separated in order for people to function. I like this. This goes a long way toward a framework for understanding my spectacularly un-boundaried friendships.

I read many other books this year, and some of them may turn out to have been hugely important (particularly the banned books i read, even though I didn't finish the ten-book challenge I set). But these are the ones I wanted to make note of. Of which I wanted to make note. You get the idea.