The
100 Notable Books of 2017 from the
New York Times came out just before Thanksgiving...rather early this year actually, especially since Thanksgiving itself was early. I usually find a couple of books on their list that pique my interest, but I have to confess that nothing really stands out for me this year. George Saunders's
Lincoln in the Bardo won the Man Booker Prize, and as his first novel it has been received well, so perhaps that will go on the list. I'm not a big fan of modern sequels to literary classics, so even though
Mrs. Osmond by John Banville made it on the list, I really don't want to read someone continuing the story of Isabel Archer. Last year when I blogged about the
Books of 2016, I was reading
Portrait of a Lady [1881]. The first half of the book moved slowly, but was interesting; the second half, however, turned into a page-turner in a way that startled me. It's a classic, just as it is, so I think I'll skip Banville's "sequel." I should add that I've discovered two new books published this year that are not on the 100 list, but have already gone on my
Amazon Wish List. They are
The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst and Amy Tan's
Where the Past Begins: A Writer's Memoir.
On last year's post, I noted some of the new books I was hoping to read. and indeed I did immerse myself in three of them. Lucy Barton's
My Name Is Lucy was interesting, but I've been told her novel
Olive Kitteridge is better, so I'll give that a go before passing further judgement. Julia Baird's biography of Queen Victoria was well-written and a good read, but I can't say it captured me as other biographies have in the past. I did find myself questioning Victoria and Albert's relationship in a new way, which is a testament to Baird's writing though. The third book on last year's "to read" list was Colson Whitehead's
The Underground Railroad. This book was fantastic. It's painful to read at times, but it creatively weaves an imaginary actual underground railroad as a metaphor for the journey of a slave on the run, trying to find her freedom. I highly recommend it, and it certainly deserved both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
In 2017 I read 33 books. Among the more noteworthy art history books I read were the following:
Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry [2017], the catalog to accompany the exhibition at
The Jewish Museum and, currently, at the Art Gallery of Ontario;
The British School of Sculpture, c.1760-1832, edited by Jason Edwards and Sarah Burnage
[2017], an excellent collection of essays that explore aspects of British nationalism in sculpture (and, as an aside, includes an essay by me entitled "Before Rome: John Gibson and the British School of Art");
How to Read Chinese Ceramics by Denise Leidy [2015], partly to help my curatorial eye better understand some of the Chinese art we have in the collection at Columbia University; and
A Worldly Art: The Dutch Republic 1585-1718 by
Mariët Westermann [1996], an easy-to-read introduction to art and material culture during the Golden Age of Dutch painting. All that said, my favorite art book read of the year was the book cover you see here: Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton & John Armstrong [2013]. This book did a great job making me--as a trained art historian and curator--rethink what art is all about, and how art by its very nature can be used as a form of psychological and emotional therapy, and conversely how examining art can teach us about the human spirit and mind. I've recommended this book to a number of people already.
Among my favorite fiction reads this year--aside from Whitehead and James, mentioned above--was the classic 1984 by George Orwell [1949], which shocked me with its frightening poignancy even today under the current Pres. Tyrant; The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes [2011], which I find myself still a bit unsettled by, perhaps because I'm not pleased with how the book ended; and My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier [1951], just so I could become familiar with the book before seeing the movie (I like Rachel Weisz, but the book was better). I also read The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy [1886] this year, which was my first foray into Hardy. What has struck me most about this novel has been how, of all the Victorian books I have read, this one captured best how I imagine my working-class, English, Victorian ancestors actually lived their everyday lives. I look forward to reading more of Hardy, even if he is a bit dark. Right now, however, I'm reading the book you see here: Lydia Davis's 2015 translation of Gustave Flaubert's French classic Madame Bovary [1857]. So far, I'm rather enthralled by the lush, lyrical descriptions, and it helps greatly that AA and I went to Rouen and Dieppe this past Spring, so I have a sense of the region Flaubert describes. Even though this is another one of those tragedies where you know how it ends, I look forward to continuing reading this on the subway and before bed over the next week or two...
