New Year's Eve

Sunshine has published an end-of-year post about interesting books she read in 2007. I thought I'd do likewise, but then I hit a tiny snag: though I certainly feel fairly well read, a number of stock titles in our perceived literary canon have somehow slipped through my cracks along the way. I spent this year catching these slip-ups. What good would come from adding more words to the world’s collective reports on To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Catch 22, Pride and Prejudice, or Of Human Bondage (a list to which I deem it appropriate to add The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree, Jr.)? Therefore, what books I can include for limited review here, following Sunshine’s example, must be culled from my incidental side-reading. Here's nine:

• The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett: features rapid-fire moxie.
• The Stolen Lake, by Joan Aiken: as neatly re-historic as I can imagine.
• The Monster Show, by David Skal: creature cinema with silly psychosexual aggrandizing.
• Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies: tied for favorite book I read all year (any category).
• Life Among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson: every bit as engaging as her fiction.
• A Burnt-Out Case, by Graham Greene: tied with Fifth Business, and also with the Comedians.
• Vampires, Burial, and Death, by Paul Barber (via Gwenda): meditations on burial tableaux interpretation.
• China Mountain Zhang, by Maureen McHugh: the best offhand future naturalism possibly ever.
• The Witches of Eastwick, by John Updike: schools of feminism joust in pursuit of wicked, witchy patriarchy. Possibly offensive.

I would also like to honorably mention Ted Chiang's shorter-than-a-novel The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate (graceful as always), as well as James Maxey's Bitterwood (cleverly populous) which I read for the first time years ago. [Cavin]