I went to see "Lincoln" at the movie theater, and enjoyed it greatly. The last time I'd gone to a movie theater was to see "The Conspirator" a year and a half ago. Seems like Abe has to go to Ford's for me to go to Cinemark. I loved Daniel Day Lewis' interpretation of Lincoln as storyteller. Sally Field was amazing--I completely believed her, but still remembered to go home and take my calcium pills. I never could cross over into total suspended disbelief for Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens. Curmudgeon Tommy Lee was still crusty Tommy Lee, just with a bad wig and no sunglasses.
But now I present the Nancy Awards for the best new books I read all the way through during 2012. I will have to add poetry, children's literature, and audiobooks to the awards in 2013, and maybe an old timers hall of fame.
Fiction
Nonfiction
I would laud on the praises for these memorable reads, but I need to fold laundry, make the Krunch, walk, make soup, vacuum, pay bills, and Skype with my grandbaby. I'll just say they made me cry, get angry, laugh, feel wrapped in a cocoon of wonder, understand myself and others better.
Happy Sunday.
© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder
3 comments:
Glad to see your list. Have been wanting to read Quiet!!
Ben Fountain
Texas fancies itself as the kind of place where hard work is rewarded with great success. Few people embody that ideal more than Dallas author Ben Fountain, who released Billy Lynn’s Long Halftme Walk in May to national acclaim — “a masterful gut-punch of a debut novel,” as The Washington Post put it.
That debut was decades in the making, the result of a work ethic that made Fountain the subject of a New Yorker story about late bloomers by Malcolm Gladwell in 2008. But Fountain has been no solitary figure pounding his keyboard in isolation. The former lawyer, a visible and enthusiastic advocate for local writers, drew attention to the plight of Haiti in this paper and on This American Life and tweaked and celebrated our city in the pages of The New York Times.
Although he won awards for his 2006 short story collection, Brief Encounters With Che Guevara, he says he struggled to produce a novel. The payoff for his refusal to quit? Being named a finalist for a National Book Award for Billy Lynn, whose skewering of certain Dallas attitudes will make some people cringe but which made the publishing world take notice of a determined Texas writer. His success is something the entire state can celebrate.
Mike Merschel, books editor in the 12/9/12 Dallas Morning News.
I've been wanting to read the Billy Lynn book, now I want to read the other Nancy Award Winners, too!
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