Best of 2011 Countdown: #16

Sweet Sixteen!  I hope Gianna gives me a car and brings me cake.

Gianna:

The Devil All the Time
Donald Ray Pollock
Doubleday

Of course The Devil all the Time made my list! From the author of the crazy good and critically acclaimed Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock’s new novel is jaw dropping; it's dark, bizarre, disturbing, and incredibly good.

 

Set in Knockemstiff, Ohio (where Pollock grew up) the novel follows several characters from the 1940’s (just as WWII is ending) up until the 1960’s. The cast of characters include (and this is just a few characters) a husband and wife serial killer team who drive the highways looking for male hitchhikers, a preacher who is essentially a spider handler (and who knew that would be creepier than a snake handler, by the way), and then the centerpiece to the novel is a tortured World War II vet Willard Russell who seems to be (according to his son), “fighting the devil all the time.”

Donald Ray Pollock

Comparisons to Flannery O’Connor can’t be denied; Pollock is that good (and you may know that I loves my Flannery). The Devil all the Time is as dark as it is beautiful. If you read just the prologue you will get the immediate sense of Pollock’s enormous talent and unique modern voice.  

Liz:

The Stranger's Child

Alan Hollinghurst

Knopf

Alan Hollinghurst won the Man Booker Prize for his last book, The Line of Beauty, so there was a lot of anticipation for his next work.  Luckily The Stranger's Child lived up to the anticipation.  Also, I love the cover.  Covers matter to me. 

Alan Hollinghurst

The Stranger's Child reminded me of books like Brideshead Revisited (a favorite), The English Patient another favorite), Atonement (love it!), and The Children's Book (God I love that book).  Right before World War I, George Sawle brings his college friend Cecil Valance home for a vacation at the Sawle family manor house.  George likes Cecil...and George's younger sister Daphne likes Cecil.  Cecil writes a poem in Daphne's autograph book before the guys return to school.  When the war breaks out, Cecil the poet is killed and he becomes the legendary dead poet; what he wrote in Daphne's book becomes the poem school children memorize for generations to come.  Mystery surrounds the poem, Cecil, and the Sawle family, though.

Here is a story about literary legacy, love, and remembrance.  Hollinghurst is at the top of his game and solidifying his own literary reputation alongside writers like Ian McEwan and Peter Carey.

30 More Days Book Challenge: Day 1

Why stop with a thing that's brought us dozens of readers?  We appreciate all 12 of you.  Really.  Gianna's going to make you brownies.  As I mentioned yesterday, we've decided to continue with the book challenge idea for another month, this time with categories of our choosing. 

Day 1: Favorite Book Jackets

Screw the idiom.  Everyone judges books by their covers, and why not?  Talented people place a lot of energy into matching the perfect cover to a story.  A great cover can lure in potential readers (and a bad one can repel them; see: pink, fuzzy cover on Nick Harkaway's otherwise outstanding novel The Gone-Away World). 

Gianna:

I have been in rooms where I thought a discussion of a book jacket would lead to blows…well, I work in publishing so maybe just slaps...but let's say the arguments can get heated. And I wouldn’t want that job; talk about thankless. No way are you going to make everyone happy. If sales, publicity, marketing, and the publisher are happy you know who hates it? The author. It can be painful.

So many really great book covers in the recent past, some we just blogged about, so I thought I would list a few of my favorites before listing number one (which was pretty easy for me to pick actually). The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine in hardcover was gorgeous; they changed it for the paperback and it's just not as lush. Susan Faludi’s Stiffed is a really cool iconic shot that just fits the bulk and feel of the book, which is very cool. The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken is near perfect in my eyes as is Let’s Not Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexander Fuller. A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel completely nailed the book and set the tone for a genre. A book that I wish would have gotten more attention because I just love it, and the cover absolutely evokes a time and place, is Carousel of Progress by Katherine Tanney (Austin’s own! What up K?...She doesn’t read this blog….)

Okay the wait is over. My favorite book jacket is, and as I said I didn’t really have to think too hard about this at all (nor do I ever try to think too hard on much), is Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, front jacket design by Michaela Sullivan. The jacket is breathtaking and I think about that image a lot. I didn’t pick this book up because of the cover; I actually read an incredible review of this book, put the paper down and immediately went to the bookstore to buy it. However…I would have absolutely picked this up and judged it by the cover. And you know what? I would have been right. I mean that’s how I met Liz! [For the record, as adorable as my "cover" may be, Gianna has never picked me up.  For one thing, she's just not that strong.  I'm not a small person.]

Liz:

Like Gianna, I'm a huge fan of the hardback cover for The Hakawati. I love the opulence of David Mitchell's 17th Century Japan as captured for The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  I also remember the first time I saw the cover of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.  I would have hung that cover on my wall if I had a poster.  I also loved the cover for Michael Chabon's The Final Solution (though I didn't love the book); likewise, I thought the hardcover jacket for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was indeed amazing.  I really did purchase a copy We, the Drowned based on the cover alone.

My favorite book cover, though, is the one for A.S. Byatt's wonderful The Children's Book.  The classic elegance perfectly matches the words inside, a large, family story about the arts and a loss of innocence in the period leading up to World War I.  I love the color and simplicity of the jacket.  This cover enhances what is already an amazing book.