My official "no friends included" list of the best books of the year will be running in Las Vegas City Life this week, but I wanted to also list the books that I'm ethically not allowed to list in reputable papers and such. So, here's my list of favorite books from people I don't know, people I do know and people who probably hate me and books by people who wrote books that didn't make my list in City Life. Also, I'm including books in this that didn't come out in 2010 but might have come out in late 2009, too. Because it's not like everything I read I read the moment it arrives on my doorstep...which is another thing: I don't think I bought more than five books in physical stores this year. Maybe 10, if I really thought about it, but no more than that. I buy most of my books online or get them for free (the upside of reviewing a lot of books in magazines and newspapers and such: I pretty much just get whatever book I want sent to me, which is nice). And since there are a grand total of two bookstores in the desert -- a BN and a Borders that is poorly stocked -- it's just a lot easier. Oh! I finally read an ebook on my iPhone the other day. Or part of one. I downloaded a collection of Fitzgerald's short stories and after watching (the abortion of a film that was) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I read the original short story. Just as shitty, but the e-reading experience was fine.
Anyway...here you go, in no particular order (and I have a bunch of books from this year still to read, so this list will probably change...but, you know, as of today, at least, so don't start sending me emails saying, "What about Skippy Dies?" I haven't read it. I'm sure it's good. I'll read it and Matterhorn and whatever other books you tell me to read, provided they aren't by Salman Rushdie, soon, I promise.):
Next by James Hynes
Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Baked by Mark Haskell Smith
The Lost Art of Reading by David Ulin
Half a Life by Darin Strauss
Mentor by Tom Grimes
In The Heart of the Beat: The Poetry of Rap by Alexs Pate
The Day After the Day After by Steven Church
Take One Candle Light a Room by Susan Straight
Slut Lullabies by Gina Frangello
Working Backwards from the Worst Moment of My Life by Rob Roberge
About A Mountain by John D'Agata
Day for Night by Frederik Reiken
Decoded by Jay-Z
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Drift by Victoria Patterson
The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters
Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk by Tony Dushane
C by Tom McCarthy
How They Were Found by Matt Bell
How We Fall Apart by Rick Marlatt
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Fourth Assassin by Matt Beynon Rees
Imperial Life in The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (this came out in 2006...but a new version came out this year with Matt Damon on the cover, so it counts)
This has been a great, awful, wonderful, weird, fucked up, exceptional year. I did and saw things I'd never...uh...done...or...uh...seen. I think I even created new grammar (see: I did and saw things I'd never done and seen.). One consistent thing that exists from year to year, however, is my unbridled narcissism and thus my need to make a list of all of my favorite things and share them, Oprah-style, with all of you. So here they are -- from books to music to food to emails to conversations -- a few of my favorite things:
Favorite Book Released in 2010: Next by James Hynes. I reviewed Next in the Los Angeles Times and what I said there pretty much encapsulates all of the reasons why it's the one book I couldn't stop thinking about since the moment I put it down. (For those who want to know all of my favorite books from 2010, they'll be in the Dec. 30th edition of Las Vegas City Life.)
Favorite Song of 2010: Maybe it's cheating a little bit, since the album it was on came out in late 2009, but I found myself listening to Lucero's "Can't Feel a Thing" pretty much constantly all of 2010. Here it is:
Favorite Movie of 2010: Winter's Bone. I loved Daniel Woodrell's novel (and love all of Daniel Woodrell's work...if you're not reading him, you're missing out on a true American treasure) and this pitch-perfect adaptation of his novel is a masterpiece of desperation, despair and heroism. And Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Ree Dolly, is simply amazing (particularly whilst skinning a squirrel) and John Hawkes as Tear Drop was remarkable and menacing and, weirdly, compassionate.
Favorite TV Show of 2010: I really enjoyed The Pacific, so perhaps that was my favorite show of the year, but I ended up watching a bunch of older TV shows on DVD this year that I'd somehow missed and found myself obsessed with Seasons 1 and 2 of True Blood (and bitterly angered by Season 3...I mean, really, what the fuck?) and all of Arrested Development, which I somehow ignored for the better part of the decade. I want to say that I also got really into Boardwalk Empire but I'm now ten episodes behind on my DVR, which might be directly related to how seeing Steve Buscemi naked and fucking made me not want to have sex anymore.
Favorite Poem of 2010: "Schwinn" by Matthew Zapruder in his book Come On All You Ghosts. Matthew is my friend, but even if I didn't know him, this line would still push me towards tears for some inexplicable reason: "Do you remember how easy and sad it was to be young and defined by our bicycles?"
Favorite Nonfiction Book of 2010 That I Can't Mention In My Best Of Books List In City Life Because The Author Is My Friend And Therefore It Would Be Unethical, But, You Know, Some Shit Is Just Good: The Lost Art of Reading by David Ulin. It's a slim volume that is filled great wisdom about reading and interpretation and about a life in letters. It's been on my bedside table for two months and every now and then I just pick it back up and read it again. And that's good stuff, no matter if you're friends with the person or no.
Favorite Piece of Hate Mail I Received in 2010: I get so many weird letters from Burn Notice fans that I don't even bother talking about them all because...well...they are fucking insane, and sometimes engaging fucking insane people ends up with them threatening to kill you and I simply don't want to get any more restraining orders this year. But this letter was actually sent to my brother by one Joan Rhine, since it's apparently difficult to find me on the Internet:
Dear Lee Goldberg: I love your books. I've purchased every one of them, and was happy to see your name as part of the writing team on a recentThe Glades (can you get them to let you write those books, too?). Now, my question with some setup: I recently purchased The Fix by your brother Tod. I am a reader who absolutely loves good long and complicated sentences (like the ones written by Kate Atkinson and Laura Lippman to give a couple of examples). Your brother, however, just likes writing long, long, long sentences. As much as I love the show Burn Notice, I quit reading his book around page 80, and have no desire to see the end--or buy any of the later titles. Can you please teach your teacher-brother how to write? I found The Fix so slow going to try to keep all the actions in sentences running 75 words or more (no, I'm not kidding) and often followed by another long sentence. He has whole paragraphs--eight to ten lines--that are all Micheal talking in one long, run-on sentence. One long sentence every few pages would be fine--heck, one every page would be fine. But when he's talking in Michael Westen narrative 90% of the sentences become 75 words or longer. It doesn't make for relaxed reading in the evening, let me tell you. I know you're not your brother's keeper, but he credits you with giving him the leg up to get the gig. He's already lost one potential fan in me, and I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one. I would have told him this myself, but I couldn't find a website/email addy for him. And please keep giving us the wonderful Monk series. I absolutely love those books. I can't wait for the paperbacks and always buy hardcover.
Sincerely,
Joan
It was such a great letter that it inspired a fantastic contest...that you can read the results of here.
Favorite Food From Trader Joe's: The S'mores. Mmm. S'mores.
Favorite Guilty Pleasure Pop Song of 2010: I'd like to state for the record that I don't like country music. I'd like to state for the record that I generally don't like songs that sell millions of copies because, generally, I like songs sung by sad, angry men about women wearing high heel shoes breaking their hearts like, uh, the Lucero song above (which sort of sounds like a country song, I realize). Yet I have an unnatural love for Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" which was a country song in 2009...and then a pop song in 2010...which made it doubly guilty as it relates to my musical taste.
Favorite Conversation I Had With My Wife Concerning People Who May Or May Not Have Been Planning On Killing Us While We Were On Vacation:
Woman at store/restaurant/museum/just walking down the street who somehow felt compelled to speak to us: Where y'all from?
Wendy [she always answered for us in these situations, perhaps because she was afraid I'd come back with, "Why? Do you know me? Who do you work for? Who do you work for! I will fucking kill you!"]: California.
Woman: Y'all on vacation or something?
Wendy [because I would have answered, "No, clearly not. Don't you ride tour buses all day at home, you fucking whore? Who do you work for? Are you following me? I will fucking kill you!"] Yes.
Woman: What part of California?
Wendy [because I would have answered, "Look, I don't know your fucking friend, okay? Just accept that I live nowhere near whoever you know who lives in California, okay?"] Near Los Angeles.
Woman: Really? Wow, that must be neat. You know, they've filmed a bunch of movies here. Y'all ever heard of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? That was here. Miley Cyrus just made a movie here. You ever see that movie with John Travolta when he was in the army? That was here. Y'all have key-ids?
Wendy: [because I would have said, "What the fuck are key-ids? Is that some sort of blood disease? Do I look sick to you? Is there something in the water here I need to know about? What the fuck is going on here? Why are you asking us so many questions? Who do you work for?!?"] No, no kids, just dogs.
Woman: Well, dogs are like kids, aren't they? Y'all are so cute. You enjoy yourselves here.
Me [after the woman has gone off to ask other people personal questions]: Why is everyone so nice here?
Wendy: It's the south. It's just how everyone is. I told you.
Me: Well, I don't trust them. I mean, what's with everyone asking where we live and if we have kids? You think they're trying to measure us up for a kidnapping?
Wendy: What?
Me: You know, see if we have anyone who would miss us. Find out where we live, you know, sort of gauge our wealth, see if we have any kids with us they'd need to kill, and then, you know, follow us back to the hotel and snatch us.
Wendy:
Me:
Wendy:
Me: You know. That shit happens.
Wendy: In Mexico.
Me: Aren't we on the gulf of Mexico?
Wendy: No.
Me: We aren't?
Wendy: No, we're on the Atlantic. Do I need to draw you a map again?
Me: No, but anyway, pirates do this shit to. I don't trust these people with their "where do you live, do you have kids" rap.
Wendy:
Me:
Wendy:
Me: And grits. What's with all the grits? These people strike me as unusually nice and unusually attracted to grits.
Wendy: You're an idiot.
Favorite Breakfast I Ate All Year: The blueberry pancakes at the Counter Cafe in Austin. They are the size of two human heads -- if the heads were flattened by a steamroller -- and filled with blueberries -- and were made of awesome -- and topped with syrup and butter instead of hair.
Favorite Dessert I Ate All Year: These:
(Beignets from Huey's in Savannah.)
Favorite Celebrity Interaction: Here's the conversation I had, in full, with actress Wendy Mallick after her performance in Meeting of the Minds, and when I realized that in real life people who are pretty on TV and film are actually sort of otherworldly attractive:
Me: You were really great!
Wendy: Thank you.
Me: You really, uh, inhabited, uh, Emily Dickinson.
Wendy: Thank you.
Me:
Wendy:
Me: My, uh, wife's name is also Wendy, interestingly.
Wendy: That is interesting.
Me: Yeah.
Wendy:
Me: So. Yeah. You were really good. My second favorite Wendy of all time.
Wendy: (smiling...thinking, clearly, that she's going to need a restraining order...and then walking quietly away so as to not engage the crazy man any further)
Favorite Arbitrary Facts About Angela O'Mara, A Person I Don't Know But Who I Am Facebook Friends With: According to Angela's status update from Dec. 7, strategic planning is where she "really shines." Between Thanksgiving and today, she used excessive exclamation points in 18 of her status updates. She has five websites. We have 9 mutual friends, 5 of whom I actually know. So, Angela Stubbs, who the fuck is this person and can you talk to her about her excessive exclamation points?
Favorite Movie (That Is Generally Considered Awful) Of The Last Two Months: Leap Year starring Amy Adams. In the last two months, I've seen this movie maybe 10 times.
Favorite Movie I Watched On Cable For The Entire Year Primarily Because Of The Soundtrack And My Outsized Man Crush On Jesse Eisenberg...And Because I Love It Like A Fat Kid Loves His Tough Skins: Adventureland. I have seen this movie about 40 times this year. I have it on my DVR. I own the DVD. It plays on HBO constantly. Any movie that begins with "Bastard of Young" and ends with "Unsatisfied" and in between has songs by Husker Du and the Jesus and Mary Chain and takes place at a theme park...well...that's my wheelhouse, yo.
Favorite Book I Didn't Actually Read: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. I really want to read this book. I do. It looks excellent. Everyone I know who has read it has told me how much I'll love it. I really think I will love it...which makes me think, you know, I could just tell people I love it and not read it and instead play some Madden, because I know I love Madden and that way if I don't love Matterhorn, I won't be disappointed if I don't love it, because, in my soul, I already do love it.
Favorite Album I've Never Listened To: Arcade Fire, The Suburbs. I generally like Arcade Fire when they come on the hi-fi (or, well, the Sirius Radio or the Pandora machine) and many people I know tell me this is an excellent bit of blah blah blah blah and that it fundamentally changes the way people will look at blah blah blah and that it's a real artistic leap toward blah blah blah and I just think, you know, maybe I'll listen to...
Favorite Album I Listened To Instead Of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs: The remastered version of Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Favorite Ex-Raider Quarterback I Reference When Jason Campbell or Bruce Gradkowski Play Like Shit: "Good fucking god, somewhere Donald Hollas is unemployed, let's bring his piece of shit arm in to throw a few fucking INTs!"
Favorite Weird Fucking Reading Experience: In March, I did a reading in New York at the Happy Ending Lounge sponsored by the good people at The Nervous Breakdown. (In fact, you can hear my reading here -- my bit begins at around the 15 minute mark.) The Happy Ending is a former (possibly current, judging by the smell) massage parlor that now is a bar which hosts all sorts of events. It's actually a very pleasant place...apart from the very real sense that you're sitting in ejaculate. At any rate, the reading was going along very well up until the point where a guy got up to read his essay (we were all supposed to read something about our childhood or youth or something that essentially met up with the theme of "growing pains" -- my little essay is called "Not My Memoir") and spent a great portion of his reading time not just grabbing on his dick, but actually ripping at his dick and not in a Michael-Jackson-Or-Gangster-Rapper sort of way, but rather in a way that one might generally consider to be...uh...painful...or, at the very least, only pleasurable to a small sub-genre of men who like to have their balls yanked so hard that their prostates pop out of their belly button. I mean, the dude was just pulling and pulling and ripping and yanking and tugging that, at some point, I realized I was in a place that used to be a massage parlor that was now a bar that hosted readings, but somehow this guy didn't get the memo and was, well, jerking off (albeit really painfully...and in front of a bunch of his friends, who seemed not too upset about the ball-yanking-to-the-point-of-blood-in-my-stool ferocity). I don't remember what he read specifically other than it involved all the women who wouldn't sleep with him, which, in light of said performance, didn't seem all that implausible.
Favorite Bad Fucking Book Signing: Sometimes, I know a book signing is going to suck months before it sucks. I was invited out to sign books at a large chain store in the Armpit of Southern California in the late summer. I asked my brother if he wanted to do the signing with me, because I already knew it was going to suck but didn't want to admit it. Here's the conversation I had with Lee:
Me: Wanna do a signing with me at the large chain store in the Armpit of Southern California?
Lee: No.
Me: Are you sure? The events person said they're gonna promote the hell out of it.
Lee: Tod, I can tell you without ever stepping foot in the store that you're not going to sell a single book.
Me: No, it'll be cool.
Lee: If it were going to be cool, you wouldn't want me to be there to cut into your sales. You know it will be awful.
Me:
Lee:
Me: No, no, that's not it.
Lee: You should cancel.
Me: I can't. It'll make me look like an idiot.
Lee: You're an idiot for agreeing in the first place.
So, alas, I went on my own. When I arrived, I saw a huge stack of Burn Notice calendars stacked up on a table by the front of the store -- as in, directly in front of the front door -- with a sign that said I'd be signing the calendars for three hours. Here's the essence of the conversation I had with the woman who greeted me at the store:
Me: Hi, I'm here for the book signing.
Woman: Yeah? What book?
Me: Uh, well, the book that isn't that calendar.
Woman: Oh, you're the Burn Notice guy?
Me: Yes.
Woman: I've never seen the show. You know what show I like? NYPD Blue.
Me: That's been off the air for a while.
Woman: Every show I seem to like goes off the air.
Me: It's been of the air for about a decade.
Woman: No, I see it all the time.
Me: Those are reruns. Like when you see episodes of The Golden Girls.
Woman: I like that show, too.
Me: It's off now, too.
Woman: I see it all the time.
Me: Reruns.
Woman: So...you're signing books? Have you written many?
Me: 8.
Woman: I'm sorry, but I've never heard of you.
Me: Do you read?
Woman: You'd think I would read more working in a bookstore, but I don't have the time. I watch a lot of TV, but I've never heard of your show.
Me: It's not my show. I just write the books.
Woman: What do you mean?
Me: [I explain to her what I mean] and so now there are books.
Woman: And people buy them?
Me: So I'm told.
Woman: I don't know why they would. No offence.
Me: Some taken.
Woman:
Me:
Woman: What's Burn Notice about?
Me: About 43 minutes.
Woman:
Me:
Woman: We have you right here in the front of the store. Is that good?
Me: Not really. People are going to think I work here and will ask me for help finding things. And you don't want me doing that.
Woman: But that's a great way to sell your book!
Me: Is the Woman Who Booked Me For This here?
Woman: Oh, no, she's off today. Did you bring posters or anything?
Me: No. I don't bring posters with me.
Woman: How is anyone supposed to know you're here?
Me: Well, that's normally what the book store does. They promote the event.
Woman: Oh, well, the girl who does that isn't here today. Do you have a website? Maybe you should have put something there.
Me: (hating my brother for letting me come to this alone.)
Woman: Another show I like is CSI.
Me: You're in luck. It's still on TV.
Woman: I'm going to go to lunch. You're here until 4?
Me: No.
Woman: The sign says you're here until 4.
Me: I'll be here for an hour.
Woman: What if people come after you leave?
Me: I'll leave signed books.Fa
Woman: Oh, no, don't sign the stock.
Me: No?
Woman: No one is going to want a signed book from someone they don't know.
Me: What about the calendars? You want me to sign the calendars?
*This originally appeared on Maud Newton's page a few years ago, but it looks like some of the html has gone bad, so I reprint it here for your kugel making joy
For the first twenty-five years of my life, I was under the impression that my Nana was a fabulous cook. Her meat pie was positively heavenly. She was the master of cream pies. Her crusts were so flaky and delicious that she could have made a pie out of unleaded gas and dandruff and it would still taste lovely. Her cookies would have left Mrs. Fields blushing with envy. Her baked chicken melted in your mouth. Her potato salad made every picnic at Pioneer Park in Walla Walla, Washington a culinary experience.
Since she was my grandmother, all of these dishes were delivered with a healthy serving of love and affection as well, thus cloaking each dish in a kind of romantic reverie. And yet, of all the dishes she’d prepared over the years, nothing topped her recipe for lochshen kugel.
For non-Jews, the mere idea of kugel often seems incongruent, depending upon the particular sect of kugel being prepared, since every family has a different recipe, some involving vegetables, some incorporating odd fruits, some with potatoes and cheeses. Some come ripped from the pages of a long forgotten portion of the Midrash which talked specifically about White Trash Jews, a subject best not discussed in a public forum. (I’ve tried to wipe from my memory a kugel that included frosted corn flakes, but alas, I can still see it: A relative of a relative via marriage, standing in a kitchen with a box of Frosted Flakes, ready to pour them into a bowl with noodles, an onion and bing cherries. Somewhere, a Star of David was being burned on a front lawn, I just know it.)
I regaled my then-girlfriend and now-wife Wendy with descriptions of Nana’s delicacies prior to our trip to visit her the summer of my 25th year. Ever a dutiful grandmother, on that very first night she’d prepared all of my favorite dishes. Baked chicken, a meatpie, a kugel, plates and plates of cookies, cream pies and a bowl of potato salad so dense a Sherpa was needed simply to get a serving on my plate. With a few bites from Wendy, however, it all came crashing down:
Wendy: Nana, how do you get the chicken to stay so moist?
Nana: I baste it with mayonnaise every ten minutes for five hours.
That was all Wendy needed. She danced delicately around the rest of the food on the table, giving me what could only be called the Stink Eye as I plowed straight through the dishes, never stopping to ponder the culinary genius behind it, though hopeful that mayo wasn’t a chief ingredient in the pies, too.
When we got home a few weeks later, Wendy took out the cookbook Nana gave each of her grandchildren and began thumbing through it. “You do realize,” she said, “that all you need in order to make her chocolate cream pie is instant pudding and Cool Whip, right?”
Intellectually, I’m sure I did realize that. When I looked at the recipe and actually saw it, well, it felt… wrong. Sordid. Ugly. But right there was the truth: Mix instant chocolate pudding in a bowl with Cool Whip, add to pie shell, top with Cool Whip and cool for two hours. (Now, to be fair, there was a recipe for a pie crust in the book, but in later years Nana just used Mrs. Smith’s.) I flipped through her recipes and found that these favorites of mine were typically not all that extravagant — meat, vegetables, a pie crust and… voila!
When I finally got to the page with the kugel recipe — which Wendy had decried as “Just wrong. Who eats sweet noddles? Blech!” — the experience was far different. It was like looking at the hand of God.
Every time I’d felt blue in my life, Nana made me a kugel. Every time something good happened in my life, Nana made me a kugel. Every time I visited unexpectedly when we lived in the same city, she’d pull a kugel out of the freezer and we’d eat a few slices. And now here it was!
I immediately ran to the store and picked out the ingredients, came home, made it and… it sucked. It was awful. It tasted starchy and dry and without much flavor. Could Nana’s love really be what made it taste so good? I called my older sister Linda to lament.
“Don’t you know that all of the recipes in Nana’s cookbook are just slightly wrong?” she said. “The measurements are off or there’s a missing ingredient in all of them.”
“Why would she do that?” I said.
“Oh, probably so when you make her recipes they wouldn’t taste as good as when she makes them herself,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’ve backwards engineered them all.” Linda then proceeded to give me the correct recipe for the world’s greatest lochshen kugel. I went out and bought all the ingredients again and made another kugel and it was like Nana was sitting in my kitchen with me. Or, well, the nice, sweet Nana I’d always known, not the evil one who’d screwed with her own cookbook just so her grandchildren wouldn’t be able to make her recipes as well as she did. (There’s no telling how much mayo you’re really supposed to baste the chicken with”)
Nana died a few weeks ago at the age of 95 and in her honor I came home from the funeral and made myself a kugel. It tasted like being seven and losing a soccer game; like being twelve and dining as the sun set over Loon Lake, Washington; like being thirty and sitting on her porch in Seattle; like being all the ages I’ve ever been. Here’s how you do it.
You’ll need:
1 12oz package wide egg noodles 1 cup of sugar 1 grated apple (I prefer a Macintosh, though really any good red apple will work.) 1 handful of raisins (about a half cup) 1 to 2 tablespoons of cinnamon (I like to use a lot of cinnamon, so I go for 2 tablespoons, though my mother uses 1 and my sister uses 3”) 1 egg 1/4 cup vegetable oil
Pre-heat your oven to 375
Boil the noodles until they are done. Drain the noodles, add the rest of the ingredients and stir until all mixed. Pour into a greased metal pan. This is important: don’t use a glass pan. For some reason, cooking this in a glass pan makes it burn more easily and taste not as good. Through extensive trial and error, we’ve learned that a really cheap 9 X 11 pan is the way to go here.
Bake for between 45 minutes and an hour. For a crisp top layer, an hour should be perfect. If you prefer it a little less crisp, watch the cooking from about 45 minutes on to check for browning. Let it cool before cutting into squares.
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