Abigail Adams by Benjamin Blythe, 1766

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton.

My first biography of the year – I got interested in Abigail Adams because Frans watches the HBO John Adams documentary over and over, and I like it portrays the relationship between the two of them. That, and how Abigail is alway putting John in his place. Very good book, and I appreciated how Holton emphasizes how Abigail challenged the notion of coverture (the idea that a woman was legally/financially invisible once she married) by making investments, going into trade for a little while, and, towards the end of her life, making her own will. Also fascinating was the huge amount of correspondence going on between Abigail and John, as well as Abigail and her other relatives and many friends and acquaintances. Many of the letters between Abigail and John are available digitally on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Adams Family Papers Archive. I just picked up a copy of My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams – not sure if I’m going to have time to read the whole things right now, but I’ll definitely browse through it.

But I think this is a good time to look back at the books I’ve read over this past year. In January of this year I started my (now verging on epic) Books of 2009 list. I’m happy I decided to keep a list – this year was a huge year of adjustments and it’s interesting to see what I read as a way of coping with, exploring, or just escaping from some of the things I was dealing with. I’ll start a Books of 2010 list tomorrow, but for now, some reflections on what I read in 2009:

• Grand total of 72 books read (not counting journals, magazines, or books for class).
• 61 of these books were works of fiction; 18 of these works of fiction were in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series.
• Only 10 works of non-fiction (I couldn’t quite figure out how to classify Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty), and of these, half were biographical, autobiographical, and/or memoir-ish.
• Only 21 of the books were written by women! That’s not even 30%! And I was TRYING to read more books by women!
• 13 were short story collections, either by one or multiple authors.
• 10 were translated into English from other languages.

Commentary:
Whoa boy, that was a lot of fiction, especially short stories! I think I really needed it after three years in graduate school. I’m really happy that I read a significant amount of translated work, and work coming from outside the U.S. I loved Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series and wish there were ten or twenty more of them. It was especially fun to be just a book or two behind my dad the whole time he was going through the same series. I loved reading Chimamanda Adichie, Margaret Atwood, and Louise Erdrich. I hope I can get my hands on a copy of the final book in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo trilogy (used, preferably!).

And next year? I won’t say I’m tired of fiction (especially since there’s a pile of it still waiting to be read), but I do feel like it’s time to branch out. I’d like to start reading more histories and biographies, especially ones dealing with women’s experiences in different countries/times.

Whatever I do read, it’ll all go on the list.

Jonathan Safran Foer: Everything Is Illuminated
The Wall In My Head
J. G. Ballard: Rushing to Paradise
J. M. Coetzee: Slow Man
Naguid Mahfouz: Palace of Desire
Patrick O’Brian: The Rendezvous (and other stories)
Louise Erdrich: Love Medicine

Hmm, still seeing a Man Imbalance here, though.

The first: Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty. I love Maira Kalman. I love her art. I love what she writes and how she writes it. It has taken every ounce of moral strength I have to only read a little bit of this book every day, instead of rushing through it in one gulp like I want to.

Second: Memories of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, by Emily Ruete. Yeah, for real. Published in 1886. And where is Zanzibar, you ask? It’s here, off the coast of Tanzania:

All I knew of Zanzibar before this was based on that line in Muppets Treasure Island where they’re dreaming about where to sail to and someone shouts, “To Zanzibar! To meet the Zanzibarbarians!” Now it’s a little more real. The book is fascinating.

I also (coincidence? no…) just finished her book of short stories last night. It was the most beautiful collection of stories I’ve read in quite a while (though Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers was amazing too). I think one of my goals for this next year will be to read more writing by women – especially women from outside the US, and especially writing in the form of short stories. I think over my lifetime I’ve read WAY more writing by men than by women. I just did a quick count of the authors on my “Books of 2009″ list and, not counting anthologies with more than one author, I’ve read 36 books by men and 12 by women. This might be a bit skewed because I’m working my way through Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series, but even if I subtract those ten it’s still over twice as many men as women.

Now. Does this matter? A year ago I may have said no. Today I’m going to say yes. I think there’s something important I may be missing out on by overlooking these women writers – writers that may be harder to find out about, or to find books by, but have stories that are just as important as, if not more important than, the stories the men are telling.

I guess in the end a balance might be good. But this year I want to make up for lost time. Today is the first day of my twenty-eighth year*. I don’t want to be over-dramatic, but welcome to the year of the woman. :)

*or maybe yesterday, being my birthday, was, but does the next year really start on your birthday or the day after?

• Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Frans got this for me back in 2006, right when we started dating, and occasionally we’ve read passages from it together. We started reading it again last night, and both agreed it should come on the trip.
• Patrick O’Brian: The Mauritius Command and Desolation Island (#4 and #5 in his Aubrey and Maturin series). My dad and I are both making our way through this series – he’s a few books ahead of me but I’m hoping to catch up this summer. Of course, if I catch up there will be squabbles over who gets a book first – right now he has most of the series with him in Seattle, where he scoured used book stores to collect them.
• Roberto Bolano’s 2666 (first volume). This has Parts 1-3. I’ve read 1, and was supposed to read 2 in June, and would like to write a little about each of them during the trip for the Read-Along.
• Jerzy Pilch’s The Mighty Angel. Not much to say about this one, just that I’ve been wanting to read it, and the small size makes it ideal for sticking in a carry-on.

Enough about sleeping habits. This is supposed to be a post about books. Without further ado, then, my current thoughts on books:

• I’m really enjoying Nigel Beale’s blog. Books, photos, musings, interviews. Unfortunately the photos don’t come through in the RSS feed (at least not on Google Reader) but it’s nice to pop over and browse the actual blog once in a while.
• And have I mentioned I LOVE Open Letter Books? Not just because they publish and write about great books, but also because they’ve sent me TWO freebies already. I just received Jerzy Pilch’s The Mighty Angel in the mail as a result of a giveaway on Facebook. How cool is that? I’m looking forward to reading it, but might save it for the Midwest Trip in July and focus on library books for the next two weeks.
• Words Without Borders is also fantastic. I’m halfway through their Pakistan issue, wishing they published a print version just so I could have a hard copy (yes, I know I COULD print them out myself). They also talk about extremely interesting things on their blog – for example, the fact that Dover has just published Emily Ruete’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, which was originally published in German in 1886 and is apparently the first (auto?)biography ever of an Arab woman. Yes, I want a copy. Now.
• Ooh, what else? How about this: Tony (of Steph & Tony Investigate) has written an awesome review of Angels and Demons (the movie), which includes an evaluation of Tom Hank’s hair. I’m sure I’ll see the movie someday, but between their review and Bob Mondello’s review on NPR, I’m certainly not going to pay theater prices for it. As I’ve told my sister more than once: “Dan Brown? Don’t get me started on Dan Brown.” And then I roll my eyes dramatically. For effect, you know?
• One last thing, as this is getting pretty long. I just got a copy of Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers from the library – I had requested it after reading an interview with Aslam in the Asia Literary Review. I’m loving the book so far – it’s about a Pakistani immigrant community in England and is beautifully written.

I think that’s all for now, as far as books are concerned. Frans is awake and it’s time for breakfast on our newly-rejuvenated back patio.

Clockwise from upper left:

-Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi* Wa Thiong’o (translated from Gikuyu by the author). CANNOT WAIT to read this. I think it was the first novel he wrote in Gikuyu, rather than English. Didn’t realize it was so HUGE. From public library.

-The New Yorker, summer fiction issue. I cannot remember the last time I bought a magazine. Kind of exciting! From Barnes & Noble.

-Sketchbook. Not to read, but to write in. My requirements for a writing book/journal are these: 1) spiral bound to lay flat when open; 2) hard covers for support when there’s no table; 3) no lines; 4) decent quality paper. This meets all the requirements. B&N.

-Asia Literary Review, spring 2009. Wow, this was an impulse buy! B&N.

-Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami. I was hoping the library would have Secret Son, but they didn’t. I’m looking forward to this one, though. My husband spent some time in Morocco . . . connection. From the public library.

-White Noise by Don DeLillo. I’ve never read DeLillo. About a year ago I randomly found a passage from this book quoted somewhere on the internet – something about photography, and a barn. That was enough to make me write down the title; now I finally got my hands on the book. Library.

*Sorry again – diacritics missing as I can’t make them work in WordPress.

In no particular order:

1. Silence by Shusaku Endo
2. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
3. Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra
4. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
5. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
6. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
7. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
8. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
10. Matilda by Roald Dahl
11. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
12. The Odyssey by Homer
13. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis
14. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
15. Beowulf (Rebsamen’s translation)

Ooh, this was a nice little exercise . . . this is an insanely random list, but all these books have been very important at different times in my life (and now). A lot of pleasant/curious/interesting memories were triggered while I was thinking about these.