Oh, this is fascinating. I love the whole topic of re-reading, as you can probably guess from Big Reader! Our experiences of books definitely change if we go back to them years or decades later. And you know how they say education is wasted on the young? Some books are wasted on the young, too...
I adore Didion's style. Brilliant! And Carla, I don't know that you can improve on Pride & Prejudice, really. I do love Persuasion, too, though, and Emma, and Northanger Abbey for a satirical romp,
I keep a list -- I have read (or mostly, listened to) 117 books this year, not including books read solely for research and/or partials. I just finished an Australian novel called All That's Left Unsaid...I had mixed feelings about the book, but loved reading a book set in a specific neighbourhood of Sydney and hearing the Ozzie accents of the readers.
It is so hard for me to pick favourites. My best "discovery" this year was the British writer Tessa Hadley. She's no discovery, really -- she publishes stories regularly in the New Yorker -- but oh, I adored her book The Past, in particular, but also The Latecomer, and Free Love, and I would gladly read anything she writes in future. Intelligent, beautifully calibrated, structurally interesting, deeply felt.
I've been on a bit of an Annie Ernaux kick, and just finished The Years. Hers is an interesting project. I actually like the shorter books, especially Shame, better than The Years, I think, but I admire what she is up to there.
Speaking of autofiction or whatever it is, I loved Remnants, newly translated from the French. I actually awarded it a prize -- here's my citation:
“Memoir, auto-fiction, documentary, dream—Céline Huyghebaert’s Le drap blanc, ably translated in English as Remnants by Aleshia Jensen, is all these and more—an original, probing, and deeply moving attempt to come to terms with the death of a parent and a family fractured by poverty, alcohol, and loss. Through overlapping and sometimes contradictory accounts, an image of the father emerges for writer and reader alike—one that can never be fixed and absolute but must always remain mutable, blurred, and incomplete.” —Susan Olding
For a completely different, much more plot driven and hilarious read, I really enjoyed
The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and also
The Plot. She's sharp and observant and so smart about family dynamics. Another laugh out loud book was
Fleishman is in Trouble. Not to mention Kevin Wilson's
Nothing to See Here (and his latest, too, although it's more uneven.)
And The Book of Goose is peculiar and magical.
The Office of Historical Corrections is a fantastic story collection.
I also read a lot of really great nonfiction and poetry, from Braiding Sweetgrass and Lost & Found to Whitemud Walking.
