Listing books or anything else by merit is always a tall order. Probably two hundred books crossed my desk this year, and I read maybe half of them. Of those hundred, maybe sixty were compelling, and probably twenty of those belong on a list of some sort, but I can can only include a few on my list, and I’m too busy changing swampy diapers and writing my own books to cover all of them, so I decided to narrow things down by going with a theme. Since I ended last year on a crusade to target male fiction readers (see my holiday guest post at EWN), and since this blog is written by three (okay, four—and counting) guys, and since I’m such a macho dude (Baby Bjorn and diaper bag, notwithstanding), I decided to focus my year-end list on manly books. And that’s not to say that these books won’t totally appeal to women, it’s just to say that they all in some way speak to traditionally manly subject matter.War. Hunting. Meat night. And also, all four titles are written by dudes, though I’m not bracing myself for any kind of backlash, here. My final caveat—and if you’ve read any of my book coverage, you probably already know this—I don’t like to recapitulate story lines or even offer synopses. I just like to comment on the writing. I’m not a reviewer, and I’m not a publicist, I’m just some dude with a blog who cares deeply for good writing. I figure my job as a blogger is just to pique your interest in the writer, and I’ll let the links do the rest.Tom Rachman – The Imperfectionists
I think JR was the first guy in the blogosphere to cover Rachman’s excellent debut, which would make it about the fifth sleeper breakout that JR’s been among the first to champion. Rachman’s prose flows like water, and he’s got the gift for creating fascinating characters in spades. While the italicized newspaper history passages informed the story, they felt a little tacked on to me, though if I was a gambling man, I’d venture that Rachman had some outside editorial input on that count—ie, “people don’t buy short stories, we’ve got to tie these things together, etc”. The book doesn’t need them. Despite the fact that Rachman’s alternating chapters scarcely overlap, they succeed brilliantly in telling the story of newspaperdom in decline. This book made me think of Sherwood Anderson, in a good way.I’m really excited to see where TR goes next
Jimbo is one of the funniest and most underrated American writers working. Fuck it, if he’s a friend of the blog, that’s not why he’s on the list. His satire never hits a false note, he’s got his finger on the global pulse, and the vagaries of modern life, like few other writers. While there’s a considerable dose of the old suburban realism (ala Yates, Cheever, etc,) in Holy Water, Othmer brings a comic danger to the page in the spirit of Kurt Vonnegut or DF Wallace, without being ham-fisted or show-offy. Bottomline: Othmer speaks to the modern man— and the modern man ought to listen.
I love an adventure story. This one is at the decided disadvantage of being constantly compared to James Dickey’s masterpiece, Deliverance—and yet, The Wilding stands just fine on its own, thank youvery much. Even though Percy may have overplayed his hand a little bit thematically, I enjoyed the hell out of this book. Like Rachman, Percy can write fascinating characters, switch points-of-view smoothly and effectively, and keep your eyes nailed to the page, all the while. And I’m told he has a really deep voice in real life, which makes this an extra-manly pick.
Charles Dodd White – Lambs of Men
Despite the fact that the awful cover and the title of this novel put me in the mind of closeted-gay evangelical Christian soft-porn, this is my sleeper for 2010. Charles Dodd White can write likehell. He’s got a southern cadence, at once dark and lovely, without too much of that overwrought Faulknerian bullshit. He knows how to move his characters deftly through the narrative landscape,without gumming up the works with a bunch of strained exposition—which is partly why this book is short. Most importantly, White holds the reader inside the story (where the reader belongs), instead of at arms length (like that drunk Faulkner liked to do—ouch!). Though Lambs of Men is set during the First World War, this Southern Gothic speaks clearly to modern times and modern woes.
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