2008 between the pages

As long as we’re on the topic of last year’s reading, while I didn’t find it stellar, there were some good books across the months.

Tops would be Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe, by William Rosen. It’s a little like that old James Burke series, Connections—Rosen starts off talking about the Plague of Justinian and works his way around every aspect of the Byzantine empire. Written as well as it’s researched.

I got on a Bill Mauldin kick a while ago. So when Todd Pastino published a new bio of the iconic WWII cartoonist, I picked it up. In Bill Mauldin: A life Up Front, Pastino does an excellent job with a really fascinating subject.

If I didn’t already want to live in France, John Baxter’s Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas would make me want to move. Baxter’s an engaging writer who chronicles more than just his culinary contributions to the Christmas celebration of his French in-laws. An Australian who spent time in the US and UK before finding the love of his life, Baxter weaves his life and love of food, films and females throughout the narrative.

I finally got around to reading David McCullough’s biography of Harry S. Truman. It took a while to get through, being more than 1000 pages, but really fascinating.

On the fiction side, Eliot Pattison has written a series of detective novels set in the nightmarish and breathtaking world of Tibet. Pattison’s detective is Inspector Shan Tao Yun, a universal symbol like Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko—a policeman who won’t fit an investigation into political needs. This devotion to the truth leads to his imprisonment in a Tibetan labor camp, where he becomes a student of the monks who are his fellow prisoners. The series begins with The Skull Mantra; I tore through all the published novels in a couple of months.

I also read Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, the novel on which last year’s movie was based. It’s a bit more fabulous (fable-like) than the film; and very, very good.

The final fiction entrant is The Bearskinner: A Tale of the Brothers Grimm, told by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Max Grafe. Yes, it’s a children’s book, but with a lesson about faith, generosity and human connections.

So, that was the year in books. Let’s see what 2009 brings.