Signs of Life 2007 : Best Books

Ever wonder what people who write books are busy reading? Which titles they’ve found most enjoyable or have hit them the hardest lately? For this year-end issue, we asked some of our culture’s best and brightest what they had on the nightstand—or on the back of the loo, in one exceptional case. So be sure to check out these recommendations—all worthy of your time, as our penthusiasts point out. And Paste also endorses, with equal elan, the works of any of the authors here who kindly shared their reading lists. Good writers know good books and articles, and—psst!—they write great ones, too.

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Andrei Codrescu
Nostalgia
by Mircea Cartarescu
[New Directions] 2005

This is a novel of interlinked stories by Romania’s most wonderful fiction writer. It’s Cartarescu’s first appearance in the U.S., in a splendid translation by the poet Julian Semilian. Nostalgia is a vertiginous memoir of childhood in communist Bucharest, a bleak place that the child’s imagination turns into a land of fabulous adventures and prophetic poetic insights. Cartarescu’s writing puts him in the distinguished company of Magical Realist writers like Borges and Marquez. The author has published a dazzling series of novels since Nostalgia, and it is my hope that Semilian and New Directions will keep up what they’ve started, to make a home in English for this magnificent, world-class writer.

Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist and screenwriter; a columnist on National Public Radio; and editor of Exquisite Corpse, a literary journal online at Corpse.org.

Melissa Pritchard
Not On Our Watch: The Mission To End Genocide In Darfur and Beyond
by John Prendergast and Don Cheadle
[Hyperion] 2007

With its foreword by professor Elie Wiesel and an introduction by senators Barack Obama and Sam Brownback, Not On Our Watch is part memoir, part history and part handbook for helping expose—and end—the first genocide of the 21st century. Its authors educate and persuade in various concrete ways to help millions of Darfurians still threatened with extinction by the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed, an Arab nomad militia. The book notes dozens of successful grassroots campaigns and provides personal insights into how an actor and a senior advisor to the International Crisis Group came together to write a brilliantly concise, vital call to transform passive awareness into public activism.

Melissa Pritchard is author of seven books, and a key supporter for the Daywalka Foundation, a human-rights organization that addresses human trafficking and other issues.

Rosanne Cash
The Kite Runner
by Khaled Hosseini
[Riverhead] 2004

The best book I read in 2007 is one I resisted at first. When I finally read the first page, I didn’t put it down until I read the book’s last sentence: “I ran.” The Kite Runner could have been conceived in another century, with its grand themes of moral imperatives, redemption, cultural identity, guilt, loyalty and love. It has none of the alienating qualities of self-consciousness and irony—a ubiquitous irritant in modern fiction— and all of the elegance of a truly great work of literature.

Rosanne Cash is a singer, songwriter and author.

Charles Frazier
Returning to Earth
by Jim Harrison
[Grove/Atlantic] 2007

For my money, Jim Harrison’s body of work looms as one of the major literary achievements of the past half-century, and Returning to Earth is one of his best books. It is the story of a family coping with the loss of a father to ALS, and the reimbursement they find in a deep, earthy spirituality. If, like me, you’ve been reading Harrison for 35 years, you’ll enjoy visiting with an old friend. If you’re new to his work, this fine book will introduce you to one of the great American voices, rich with a ragged, big-hearted humanity.

Charles Frazier is winner of the National Book Award and author of the bestsellers Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons.

Vendela Vida
The Septembers of Shiraz
by Dalia Sofer
[Ecco] 2007

I don’t know Dalia Sofer, and if I hadn’t seen her author photo or known that The Septembers of Shiraz was her first novel, I might have guessed she was 83 years old; this is the kind of book usually written by a person with a lifetime of experience of living and loving. The novel follows four Iranian family members in the early 1980s, and their attempts to escape a changing political and religious environment. But it’s not just the plot that kept me riveted: Sofer has an eye for detail, and a talent for pointing out truths that others bury.

Vendela Vida is co-editor of The Believer magazine, and the author, most recently, of the novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name.

Continue to page two for more book picks from Jack Pendarvis, Kenny Leon, Junot Diaz, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Naomi Klein, Tom Junod, Charles McNair and Dave Eggers.